It’s not often that the start of a New Year just happens to coincide with a new series. But it’s January 1, 2023, and as the Lord would have it, that is exactly what has happened. We recently finished our study in the Book of Romans, and we will proceed this morning right through the New Testament to the next New Testament book, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
And as you have perhaps noticed, I have entitled the series “Christianity for Dummies.”
You might wonder why. The reason is that in contrast to the Church at Rome, we encounter a very troubled church in the city of Corinth, Greece, a church that from the contents of the two long letters which the Apostle Paul wrote to it, clearly gave Paul more grief than any of the other New Testament churches. When it came to Christianity, the believers in Corinth simply weren’t very good at it. If Murphy’s Law ever applies to churches, it certainly applied to the church at Corinth because it almost seems if something could go wrong in a church, it certainly did, and in the church at Corinth. We often talk about our desire to replicate the fellowship and devotion of the first century church, but the First Church of Corinth, Greece was not a first century church any of us would want to imitate. Our series could nearly be entitled, “How to Handle Any Church Problem that Might Come Up." Because that’s exactly what it seems the Apostle Paul was facing when he wrote I Corinthians—a list of questions and problems that needed to be resolved.
If you’ve read I Corinthians you know what some of those problems were. They are actually rather shocking in some cases. There were problems with dissensions and divisions in the church, certain cliques or groups regarding themselves as elite or superior in relationship to other cliques because of the particular spiritual leader or leaders that they followed. Members were defrauding other church members, and they were taking each other to court—to secular courts. There was even an on-going well-known case of incest that the church didn’t merely accept, but applauded, if you can believe that. And incredibly, when the church gathered to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, guess what happened—some people got drunk, and others feasted while some went hungry! The church was very gifted with supernatural gifts, but they managed to abuse even this—they used the spiritual gifts for selfish and egotistical purposes! The church also entertained, even welcomed teachers who brought them a false gospel and a false Jesus, and even denied the resurrection. Slander and gossip were so rampant that the authority and character of the Apostle Paul who had brought them the Gospel and founded the church in the first place, was severely questioned and in some cases, apparently rejected.
Now we might wonder why Christianity was so hard for these folks. Were they really dummies?
Well, in some ways, they were. It’s because many of them had come from a thoroughly, thoroughly pagan culture. Corinth was sin city in 50 A.D. Yes, it’s comparable to Reno, which bears that same name, but probably was much more like Las Vegas, where sin is everywhere and in your face. It was a cosmopolitan city of about 600,000 people in 50 A.D., a crossroads of culture and trade in that it was strategically located on the six-mile-wide isthmus that stretched between the Greek Peloponnesian Peninsula and what we know as mainland Greece, which was called Achaia back then. As a result, it had a port on either side of the city, a port to the west where ships coming from Rome and all points west would dock and a port to the east where ships coming from the east, Asia Minor and Ephesus and the Eastern Mediterranean would dock. The goods from these ships, or small ships themselves, would be transported from one side of the isthmus to the other to be shipped to the other side of the Mediterranean. In addition to this, it was located on the major land route north and south, so it was truly a center of trade and culture. And as you can imagine it was a sailor’s town, who would be looking for all kinds of excitement and mischief to get into once they got to land. And they found that in Corinth. For Corinth was the center of worship of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of love. And every night, 1,000 sacred prostitutes would roam the city offering themselves as objects of worship to whomever might be interested. Corinth was so famous for prostitution and fornication that throughout the Mediterranean “to do the Corinthian thing” meant to be involved in fornication. On top of this, it functioned as the Roman provincial capital, yes, in spite of the presence of ancient Athens to the north, Corinth could pride itself on being the center of authority in Greece under the Romans. And so, there was a lot intellectual and civic pride, along with immorality that spilled over into the church. These pagans were so pagan that at times they clearly did not know their right hand from the left when it came to the Judeo-Christian moral values.
The Apostle Paul showed up in the city in about 50 A.D. where he found fellow tentmakers Priscilla and Aquila and as a tentmaker began preaching the Gospel in the Jewish synagogue.
In typical fashion, some Jews came to Christ, including the synagogue ruler Crispus, and others didn’t and brought a lawsuit against Paul, which, amazingly, he won, which then resulted in his being free to preach the Gospel in Corinth for the next 18 months. Many Jews and Gentiles then came to Christ during his ministry, as recorded in Acts 18. He then went off to preach the Gospel in other places around the Mediterranean and after hearing of problems in Corinth, wrote I Corinthians sometimes between about 55 A.D. and 57 A.D., most probably from Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor, which is now occupied by Turkey.
Now the truly amazing thing about the first nine verses, the Greeting of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, is how positive he manages to be despite all the grief and sin that was apparent in the church. We might expect him to say something like, "Hey, all you dirty sinners, repent!" from the outset, but we find nothing of the sort. Instead, he focuses on who they are in Christ, what sets them apart from the other sinners in their town, knowing that who they are, once they fully understand it, will change and determine how they live.
Have you really thought about that question at all, or recently? Who are you? What are you all about? Why are you here? And where are you going? How’s it going to turn out for you? These are very basic questions in life, and it’s important for us as believers to have the right answers.
If you are, for instance, merely a cosmic accident, as most secularist and evolutionists teach, then you are probably going to live and act like a cosmic accident. Eat, drink and be merry, do what you feel like, for tomorrow you may die. And it will be no better for you if you live a good life than if you haven’t.
Or if you are just one of the beasts of the field, an unreasoning beast no different from any other beast, you’ll probably act like a beast. The effect of these secular, atheistic sorts of philosophies can be seen from the impact of atheistic communism in the countries where it became the ruling order in the 20th century—100 million human beings were senselessly and brutally murdered by their own leaders in the 20th century alone.
If, on the other hand, you have been created in the image of God by a loving, benevolent Creator and redeemed by the loving sacrifice of the Son of God to display His image, His love and His glory, then guess what, if you live according to who you are, your identity in Christ, you’re going to have a completely different attitude and direction in life toward God, and toward other man and toward life and death.
And we are to believe that we are special because God has called us for His glorious purposes.
And so, despite all the spiritual failures and sins of the church at Corinth, here, in the greeting, Paul focuses on giving thanks for who they have become in Christ. They are no longer hopeless pagans, but as Paul was, they are now beloved of God, called and gifted for his eternal purposes, destined for His eternal glory. He makes it clear that that identity is not their identity alone, but the identity of anyone and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. It is your identity as well, who you are. And who you are or who you believe you are should determine how you live.
And that’s exactly what it had done for the great Apostle Paul, who formerly had been the not-so-great horrible chief persecutor of the Church of Jesus Christ. This becomes apparent in I Corinthians 1:1. Notice Paul’s identity, how he identifies himself. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother.”
Now, clearly, Paul has written this greeting in this way to assure the Corinthians that he speaks with the very authority of Jesus Christ and God the Father—that what he writes is the Word of God that they are to believe and obey, which was so very necessary for the Corinthians, who had come to faith through Paul’s word in the first place. However, Paul had a pretty high falutin’ identity. He regarded himself to be in that select company of apostles of Jesus Christ, those who uniquely had been chosen by Jesus Christ and sent by the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ with the Good News of salvation to the world. What a calling! And we ought to ask ourselves how Paul had come to such a conclusion about himself. Was it a mere accident? Was it something he had just simply decided to think about himself. Absolutely not! His understanding of who he was and what He did had come from the calling of Jesus Christ, by the will of God as the verse says.
And our understanding of who we are and what we are all about will come from the same place, from the very Word of God, even as we find it here as well as other places especially in the New Testament.
For Paul the revolutionary moment of that realization came in a crisis we all know occurred on the Road to Damascus. As you’ll remember from Acts 8, the Jewish Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, who had just assisted in the murder of the first Christian martyr Stephen was on his way to Damascus to imprison and if necessary, kill other Jews who had become Christians when he was stopped in His tracks by a light from heaven that it turned out that it was the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. And what did Jesus say to Him on that occasion. Paul recounts the experience in his testimony to King Agrippa in Acts 26:16-17. Quoting Jesus, he says, “For this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also the things I which I will appear to you, rescuing you from the Jewish people and the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you.” He refers to it also in this very letter, I Corinthians, in chapter 15, verses 9 and 10. “For I am the least of the Apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what I am.”
So, notice how Paul had come to this understanding of exactly who he was and what he would be all about. It was by the very word of God, the word of Jesus Christ, Christ’s calling upon his life. And this new identity absolutely changed his life! Instead of being a zealous destroyer of Christians, he became the greatest proponent of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the world has likely ever seen! Who you believe you are, determines what you do and who you become. The principle was first stated in the Old Testament in the Book of wisdom, Proverbs 23:7: For as he ( a man) thinks within himself, so he is.” And so, by extension, “As a man thinks about himself, so He is.” At this point, Paul had a choice. He could think of Himself as an awful sinner, a murderer and blasphemer, a total failure in life. Or He could think of Himself according to what Jesus called Him to be, what Jesus said He was and what He would do. In one, case he’s a hopeless failure with no future, condemned and forsaken of God; in the other case, he’s a redeemed sinner who has been transformed into an apostle and servant of Jesus Christ for His glorious purpose of taking the Gospel to others who so desperately needed to hear. What choice did he make? It’s obvious. And the result was that through Christ in Him, He changed the world!
And that’s the choice we all face. Whom will we allow to determine who we are and what we are all about? The world, our sin, or our Great God and our redeemer Jesus Christ? Who are you and what are you all about according to the Word of God?
Well, the Great Apostle, writing the Word of God, answers that question for the Corinthians and everyone else who has called upon the name of the Lord for salvation in the next several verses.
Yes, the Corinthian church was a mess. Yes, the Corinthians were sinning right and left even in their Christian lives. But what does the Apostle Paul do from the get-go in his letter—he focuses on who they truly are and what they are truly all about according to the Word of God, not according to their sins and failures. In verses 2-7, following his own example, guess what he tells them to believe about themselves. Not that they were wretched failures, good for nothings who would never amount to anything. But rather, that they were saints, called and spiritually gifted for God’s glorious and eternal purposes!
Our second point this morning then is this: Believe you are saint, specially called and gifted for God’s eternal and glorious purposes. Because when you begin to believe this, just as Paul did, you’ll begin to act in accord with it.
Verse 2: “To the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified by Christ Jesus, saints by calling with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.
Now notice what God’s Word, written through Paul says about this, church at Corinth, where there are all these problems. Who are you? You are “those who have been sanctified by Jesus Christ—the word sanctified means they have been set apart for God’s purposes, just as Paul had been, although not specifically as apostles in the unique sense that he had been. They were not only set apart for God’s purposes, by Jesus Christ as well, but they were identified as saints by calling. Whose calling? God's? What is a saint? No, it’s not someone designated by the Catholic Church as having lived an especially holy life. Instead, it is someone who had been declared holy by the blood of Jesus Christ that takes away his sins. We are declared holy by God, having been called to faith in Christ who justifies us freely by His grace, so that in God’s sight, we are saints. And Paul goes on to say that this is true not only of the Corinthians, but of all who in every place, including Sparks and Reno, Nevada, call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for salvation!
So, did you know that about yourself? Did you know your true identity in Christ? Did you know that regardless of anything you have ever done, God has declared and called you as a saint, and set you apart for His purposes? By virtue of the fact that you have come to faith in Christ as your Savior and Lord, this is guaranteed to be absolutely true. You have been set apart for God for His glorious purposes, and in God’s eyes, you are a saint, holy and blameless before Him.
Wow, what a thought! It’s a thought that could and should change your life! And perhaps it has.
And Paul’s not done as He describes who these folks are and how they have been gifted for the purposes God has given them. Verse 4: “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How did this new identity and calling come about? By anything they had done to deserve it? Nope. It had come about by the grace—the free gift—of Jesus Christ, who had also enriched them in all speech and understanding,”—I take it as a reference to the gifts of prophecy and knowledge and tongues, and probably preaching and teaching that were so clearly evident among them, despite their misuse of these gifts. And that all these gifts were evidence that the testimony of Christ, that is, Paul’s witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, had been confirmed n them—that is that they had believed in Christ, and the confirmation of their belief had in part been demonstrated by the giving of these gifts and the hope that they had that caused them to wait eagerly for the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ at His second coming.
Now as we read through all this, we run through it as though it is insignificant. But nothing could be more significant than knowing that you are a saint in God’s sight, called and gifted for God’s eternal and glorious purposes. If we are not assured of this, we can fall victims to what I will call this morning, spiritual identity theft, which can be absolutely deadly spiritually. I know, because I have been there.
Now most of us know that identity theft has become rampant in our culture. Cyber-thieves have become adept at stealing our social security numbers and our credit card numbers as a means of stealing our financial resources. But there is someone who is way ahead of them in terms of spiritual identity theft, his name is Satan, and he uses the world, and sin, and sometimes even other believers to rob us of our spiritual identity and calling. How does He do it? He lies! He’s the great deceiver. And what does He say to us? Well, in the words of that old pop song, He says to us repeatedly, “You’re no good, you’re no good, baby, you’re no goo--oood!” until when we have finally heard it often enough, we begin to believe it. And guess what happens. When we believe it, we begin to act like we’re no good. We begin to believe we’re hopeless and we will never amount to anything, because what we believe determines what we do. And as a result, we abandon our calling and God’s purposes for us.
Now let me give you one important example of how Spiritual Identity Theft works. You sin. You fail to confess it. You don’t believe God will forgive it. You feel condemned. And because you feel condemned, you withdraw from God and his will for your life. You think you’re hopeless. When all along the truth is found in Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Who are you going to believe? Your feelings, Satan’s lies, the world or God’s Word? It can make all the difference in the world. It can be a matter of life and death, literally.
Some of you are familiar with Neil Anderson, author of The Bondage Breaker and founder of Freedom in Christ ministries. As you may know, it is a deliverance ministry which specializes in delivering people from the lies and bondage of Satan through exposing them to the truths of God’s Word. In Anderson’s "Steps to Freedom in Christ," he invariably has at least one page devoted to our identity in Christ. It took a long time for me to understand why. The reason why is that this is a specific area of spiritual attack, a specific strategy Satan employs to destroy believers, their faith and their ministry. In this particular version of the Steps to Freedom in Christ, which I hold in my hand, statements are made to be repeated by the person counselled, “I renounce the lie that I am rejected, unloved, or shameful. In Christ, I am accepted. God says, 'I am God’s child, I am Christ’s friend, I have been justified, I am united with the Lord and I me one spirit with Him. I have been bought with a price. I belong to God. I am a member of Christ’s body I am a saint, a holy one. I have been adopted as God’s child. I have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit. I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins. I am complete in Christ.'” All these statements are then supported by referenced Scriptures.
And it goes on. All these are vital truths about our identity in Christ, so important to grasp and continually claim for ourselves when the world, and the onslaught of the enemy comes our way in order to prevent Christian Identity Theft. The truth is your spiritual life and your spiritual welfare depend on believing precisely this: I am beloved of God, called, gifted and predestined for God’s purposes and glory.
And that final truth is evident in the final verses of our section this morning. Believe you have a blameless and glorious destiny. Believe you have a blameless and glorious destiny.
In verse 8 Paul tells the Corinthians that their hope of salvation is certain. Because of Jesus Christ. “Who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ, being a reference to Christ’s Second Coming and the establishment of His Kingdom.) Verse 9: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” In other words, you can trust God that He will indeed accomplish your salvation, so you stand blameless before Christ in the Kingdom to come.
What more could you ask? You have an incredible identity, an eternally significant calling and purpose, and a secure and glorious destiny. If only you will believe it.
You are beloved of God, called and gifted for His eternal purposes for a glorious eternal destiny.
Don’t let anyone ever take that away from you.
Now I confess, I used to think this was not all that important. The whole idea of my identity in Christ kind of left me cold. That is, until it became a matter of life and death in my own ministry and spiritual life. As many of you know I came under severe spiritual attack, believe it or not, through the gossip, slander and accusations of church attenders and members, to the point on two different occasions, I came to believe that I was not good at all, or not good enough—either one of them deadly enough to drum me out of ministry. In both cases God had to intervene supernaturally to persuade me that I was the victim of a Satanic stratagem designed to destroy me and my ministry. And interestingly, with respect to the “not good enough” attack, guess what He then supernaturally said to me, “I love you; I have called you, I made you just the way I wanted you to be,” and “you don’t have to be better.” And that saved me and my ministry, and it’s the only reason I’m here before you today!
So, does accepting, and believing your spiritual identity matter? You better believe it does! It can be a matter of spiritual life and death!
Repeat with me: I am loved by God, called and gifted for His eternal purposes, destined for His eternal glory!
Amen! And Amen!
Let’s pray.
