Called Together to be Saints.
Notes
Transcript
Called Together to be Saints.
1 Corinthians 1:1–3 (ESV)
1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Big Idea: Paul introduces himself as a fellow Christ follower and reminds his Corinthian friends that calling Christ Lord should generate life patterns that reflect such a relationship to Christ. [1]
Invitation
The book of Corinthians deals with the real issues we struggle with.
What work of grace might the Lord intend in our lives and in our life together as a church as we come under the teaching of this book?
I want to invite you, over these coming weeks, to begin praying with me that God would take hold of our hearts, minds, and lives by His Word.
Introduction
Paul had visited the city of Corinth and planted a church there around AD 49.
It was a strategically located city. It’s on the narrow four-mile isthmus separating northern and southern Greece.
Rome destroyed it in 146 BC, only to be rebuilt about a hundred years later by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony and it became the capital of the province of Achaia.
Because of its location, it rapidly became a major trade center and a thriving, wealthy city.
And as always happens when cities are located on major trade routes and where economic opportunity abounds, it attracts people worldwide.
It was a vast melting pot of cultures, making it a place of stark social contrasts.
Writing sometime after Paul’s stay in this city, one ancient visitor to Corinth said, "The sordidness of the rich and the misery of the poor were extraordinary.” He said it was “abounding in luxuries but inhabited by ungracious people.”
It was a city noted for its immorality and its debauchery.
The great temple of Aphrodite was located on the top of a hill overlooking the city where thousands of temple prostitutes worked as priestesses,
and below it,
there was the temple of Apollo, which celebrated all manner of sexual promiscuity.
“Corinthianize” became a synonym for adultery and sexual perversity. It was a giant red-light district, we might say.
It was here, in this dark and cosmopolitan city, that the apostle Paul resolved to plant a church.
which he did, Acts 18 tells us, with the help of Priscilla and Aquila.
Paul left the city about a year and a half later,
he spent the next three years ministering in Ephesus,
and while he was in Ephesus he began to hear that not all was well back in Corinth.
The allure of the surrounding culture continued to pull at these young believers.
Sharp divisions began to emerge.
Sexual sin continued to be a struggle,
and the pagan philosophy and the mystery
cults began to creep into the teaching of some people in the churches.
And so Paul’s letter to them is designed to address each of those problems directly.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see why 1 Corinthians might have something relevant to say to our context and our generation, does it?
Many of the issues facing the believers in Corinth characterize the struggles facing Christians today as we wrestle with the call of Jesus Christ to be holy.
while the old life pulls at us and draws us back into the sinful patterns of the world.
But we will see as the apostle Paul addresses them repeatedly that
He does not respond to the Corinthians with angry rebuke or with a series of “how-to” instructions for living a victorious Christian life.
Instead, 1 Corinthians points these relatively new Christians back to fundamental truths about God and
the Gospel of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Isn’t that striking?
As you read through 1 Corinthians, notice how no matter the complexity or the intractability of the problem, again and again, Paul’s answer is essentially really very basic.
Knowing God revealed in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
Learning to apply the Gospel of God’s saving grace for sinners in Jesus with ever-increasing clarity and courage to all the details of our lives. That’s his response to every problem the Corinthians are dealing with.
Paul’s agenda in this letter – and if we’ll allow God’s Word to do its work in our lives, God’s agenda for us as we read 1 Corinthians together in the weeks ahead – is to re-wire our spiritual systems entirely with this simple, straightforward truth of the good news about Jesus Christ.
“Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle”
Paul seems here more interested in announcing his allegiance to Christ. He cares for the Corinthians because God has called him to do so.
He is not driven by his own desire to influence Corinth but is directed by the call and will of God to influence God’s kingdom.
His only desire in writing the letter is for the Corinthian Christians to recognize what it means to call Christ Lord and to worship the one true God. (10:14–15).[2]
Why should Paul tell us what to believe or how to behave? Why listen to Paul?” That was their question.
Paul is reminding the Corinthians of his apostolic credentials straight out of the starting blocks. Literally, verse 1 reads, “Paul, called an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes, the brother.”
The will of God called him, the will of God made him an apostle. His is no derivative apostleship. He didn’t receive it from men. The Church didn’t make him an apostle.
He was called by God's will, which invests him with an authority that does not belong to other Christians.
and our brother Sosthenes
When Paul introduces the letter’s co-sender, Sosthenes as a “brother,” it is more than mere shorthand for “fellow believer.” It is an affectionate term.
that speaks to a kinship relationship that includes strong personal commitments—they come from the same spiritual womb so to speak (e.g., Col. 4:7).
Paul speaks of a specific person already recognized by the Corinthians as his co-worker.
It is at least possible that he is the former chief of the Corinthian synagogue spoken of in Acts 18:17.
English Standard Version Chapter 18
12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, 13 saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” 14 But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. 15 But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” 16 And he drove them from the tribunal. 17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this.
When the Jews in Corinth brought charges against Paul before Gallio the proconsul because Paul was making converts from among the members of the synagogue, including one of the synagogue leaders, and from among the Gentiles in the city,
Gallio dismissed their charges out of hand.
And in their rage and in their frustration, the mob turns on poor Sosthenes who is the ruler of the synagogue. And they beat him
Sosthenes became a Christian listening to Paul’s preaching in Corinth. A strong relational bond likely formed between the two following this event.
If the former chief of the Corinthian synagogue indeed is the one co-writing with Paul here,
he stands as a reminder to the Corinthian Christians of the gospel’s power to overcome whatever pressure they now may feel to compromise their faith. Paul’s inclusion of Sosthenes is not haphazard.[3]
Paul moves from an introduction of the sender to an identification of the recipient.
Although the Corinthian church likely consisted of several smaller house groups, he addresses them with the singular noun “assembly.”[4]
To the church of God in Corinth.
Paul qualifies the ekklēsia he addresses as “God’s assembly” (NIV: “the church of God”).
It was not meeting to honor a wealthy individual or to gain special social or spiritual prominence from being a part of this group.
Neither wealthy patrons empowered spiritual leaders nor Paul himself could claim ownership of this assembly.
The group Paul addresses has been called together by God and belongs to God as his community.
It follows that its location in Corinth is a matter of mere geography.
Paul spends no time, not a word, praising the “great city of Corinth”
—a common practice in the city that many considered one of the most privileged in the Roman Empire. The church is there to bring witness to Christ, not to revel in their status as Corinthians. [5]
to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.
The beginning of His approach to them is that you are saints and here is what it is to be a saint.
there is a great purpose intended in the mind of the apostle in so doing this. He starts out
by stating their identity as saints.
The word saint is hagiosin the Greek. It means holy one. hog e osin
They are holy.
What is so amazing about this is that the fact is that I Corinthians from really the first chapter in verse 10 clear on out until it’s finished deals with wrong doctrine and wrong behavior.
If you could imagine a doctrinal or behavioral moral error in the church, Corinth had it.
They did everything evil conceivably that a church could do, and yet he begins by saying to them, “you are saints.”
There is a very clear difference between your position before God and your practice.
between your standing and your state, as they used to call it in the past, and your actual behavior.
I am a Christian. I am a saint. I have been made holy before God. I am in the eyes of God as righteous as Jesus Christ;
however, I do not always act like it.
My standing is defined as holiness, my behavior is defined as unholiness.
So if you don’t understand that distinction you’ll never be able to interpret the New Testament because you’ll get everything confused.
The Corinthians were holy, holy before God because they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, not holy in the way they lived.
They had not yet made their life match their position. They had not yet lived up to who they were.[6]
Don’t you know who you are?
Why don’t you live up to what is supposed to be characteristic of you?” And in a sense that’s really how a Christian is approached. Don’t you know who you are in Christ? Act like it!
But sometimes our behavior doesn’t always match our position, does it?
Sometimes kings don’t act like kings,
presidents don’t act like presidents, and leaders don’t act like leaders,
teachers don’t act like teachers, and so forth.
Preachers don’t act like preachers.
And sometimes Christians don’t act like […], but the Corinthians were holy. They just didn’t act like it.
Positionally before God they were in absolute righteousness because of Christ. [7]
...called to be saints together with all … who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The call to be holy is for the Corinthians and all Christians everywhere.
Holiness is the life that results from the confession that Jesus is Lord. To call Jesus Lord is not a mere theological confession but a statement of life allegiance.
It is not a lofty, transcendent term or a mere synonym for eternal salvation, but
a practical expression of who you entrust your life to for survival - to call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
[9] Paul doesn’t simply mean to say that the church is marked by this stance and posture that we occasionally pray. More than that, he’s saying the whole life of a Christian can be summed up under this heading. This is the distinctive characteristic feature.
They’re always calling, they live calling, clinging to, dependent on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s a habitual state of mind in the church to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They’re constantly calling. It’s how they live; their stance, their
leaning on, resting on, calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in every circumstance, at every juncture.
I wonder – can that be said of us? Our most notable feature, our great characteristic is that we are always and habitually and instinctively calling on the name of the Lord Jesus.
In the context of the Greco-Roman world, it was even a radical political statement.
Caesar’s claim to be Lord, and the populace’s acceptance of him as such flowed from a quite practical consideration.
He was their ultimate patron, to whom they should give their ultimate allegiance.
After all, he was the one who gave all citizens the necessary peace on their borders for them to grow their crops, build their homes, and raise their families with confidence and security.
He was the one who secured a “fair” justice system for all citizens.
He built roads and infrastructure so trade could flourish and wealth could be generated. He encouraged entertainment and sponsored the regional athletic games.[10]
In Summary
Holiness is a life that flows from a relationship with Jesus.
It is not a list of acts to do or avoid any more than a marriage can be reduced to a set of rules and regulations.
To call Christ Lord is to recognize that no one else is lord—not even oneself.
As in a marriage, where a loving relationship generates a desire to do generous acts and to constantly find new ways of affirming that love, holiness flows from a desire to show devotion toward God.
The best way to test our relationship with God is to check our desire to do his will and then find ways of expressing loving appreciation toward him.
To be holy means to belong to God. Holiness flows dynamically from a life in his presence. [11]
Grace and peace.
Calling Jesus Lord was saying that ultimate life security, both now and eternally, depends not on Caesar but on Christ. From him come both grace and peace.
He alone should be trusted—a trust that proves itself in the Christian’s decisions and patterns of life.
Closing
Would you join me with God helping us, let’s resolve to be who we really are – set apart for Jesus Christ.
We are saints, sanctified ones, because of the mighty call of God by His Word and Spirit.
You are no longer defined by your sin and failure, though sin and failure may yet be very present in your life.
You are defined in Christ as a sanctified one.
Let’s be who we really are in Jesus – holy and set apart for Him.
Which means that under the authority of the apostolic Word, we must learn to cling to Jesus.
We must learn to cling to Jesus and to love the Church, preserving and cherishing her unity,
caring for those who are not like us because Christ, into union with whom we have been drawn by His Spirit,
Christ loves her, this Church, warts and all, and has given Himself for her.
If we do that, by God’s grace there is no telling what Christ might do among us for His glory, what use He might put us to in our town and around the world.
Let us look to God, let us learn to be who we really are, let us be holy because we have been sanctified in Christ, let us call on and cling to Jesus, let us learn to love one another preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
[1]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 10). Baker Books.
[2]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 10). Baker Books.
[3]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 11). Baker Books.
[4]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 12). Baker Books.
NIV New International Version
[5]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 12). Baker Books.
[6]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You.
… Illegible or missing text.
[7]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Grace to You.
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
[8]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 13). Baker Books.
[9]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 13). Baker Books.
[10]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; p. 13). Baker Books.
[11]Vang, P. (2014). 1 Corinthians (M. L. Strauss, Ed.; pp. 14–15). Baker Books.