Always Thank God-1 Corinthians 1:1-9

1 Corinthians, New Testament, Sermons

First Corinthians carefully chronicles the confounding complex conformity to CHRIST CRUCIFIED communicated in the complicated cultural context of continuous critical conflicts within the confused Corinthian church community necessitating confrontation, condemnation, castigation, chastisement and correction by Paul. [This might be my proudest alliteration with 24 C‘s!]

 

Always thank God for others (1 Cor 1:4a) in the midst of many problems in the church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together:

“If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our community [church] grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

“This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men … What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God … The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.” “[The church is] NOT an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

Paul‘s repeated emphasis on Christ and the cross (1 Cor 1:17, 23-24; 2:2) is well expressed by John Stott: “The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God [Rom 1:18]), but rather zeal—burning and passionate zeal—for the glory of Jesus Christ.” The Message of Romans: God’s Good News to the World. 2001.

Paul portrays Christians [the Corinthians] as important players in a grand epic story scripted by God. In his greeting and thanksgiving (1-9), Paul sketches a sweeping picture of a Christian’s [the Corinthian church] calling.They have been called by God to participate in a movement, along with others all around the known world (1 Cor 1:2), to extend the destiny of Israel by living as a covenant people set apart/sanctified for the service of God. God has lavished upon them spiritual gifts that enable their mission of bearing witness to the grace of Jesus (1 Cor 1:4-7), and God supports and strengthens the community during the present age, while they await God’s final judgment of the world (1 Cor 5:8). During the time of waiting, God prepares and sanctifies the community and brings them together into close fellowship with Christ and with one another (1 Cor 5:9).

See the church as a cosmic story pointing toward the final triumph of God‘s righteousness–the setting right of all things in Christ. We are apt to think of the church’s life and mission on a small, even trivial, scale within some denominational program, or within local politics, or within recent history. But Paul frames the church’s identity in an epic cosmic drama. We need this crucial shift of perspective. Our actions belong to a larger pattern of significance than that of our own lives, and the church’s obedience to God’s will matters urgently, because it is part of God‘s strategy for the eschatological renewal of the world (1 Cor 1:7-8).

Despair, pride and petty conflict should fall away when we learn to see ourselves within the story of God’s grace (1 Cor 1:4). We gain a better sense about our own striving and failures, for God is faithful (1 Cor 1:9), and it is God who is at work in calling us and preparing us for his gracious ends.

Practice giving thanks, even though the church is riddled with problems. Paul offers thanksgiving to God (1 Cor 1:4) for the very community that he is setting out to correct. Despite all the present difficulties, he sees this church as the work of God in the world, and he discerns in their midst gifts for which God is to be thanked (1 Cor 1:4-7). Paul models the thankful stance that Bonhoeffer prescribes [quoted above]. He is able to give thanks to God for the problematical Corinthian church because he recognizes that Christian community is, as Bonhoeffer aptly observes, “NOT an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

Specially summoned/called by God. The letter salutation establishes the identity of the apostle and his addressees. Everything that follows is founded upon these identity ascriptions:

  1. God is the one who calls, and
  2. the church–not just at Corinth but everywhere–is the community of people who respond by calling on the name of Jesus.

Paul declares that he is a special agent of Christ Jesus (1 Cor 1:1) AND that the church in Corinth are a community specially summoned by God for service: “…the church of God that is in Corinth…sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be his holy people [saints]” (1 Cor 1:2a). It doesn’t mean that they are specially set apart from other Christians; rather they–together with all other Christians (1 Cor 1:2b)–are set apart from a confused, perishing world (1 Cor 1:18). They/we are the elect of God, caught up in a cosmic drama, and must play a distinctive role in God’s action to rescue the world.

“Called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (1 Cor 1:1). Paul understands his calling to be specially focused on the mission of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles (Gal 1:16). Being called means that it is God, not Paul (Jn 15:16), who ultimately initiates and drives his mission of proclaiming the gospel.

“Called to be saints (hagioi)” (1 Cor 1:2)–not only to a few especially holy people, but to all Christians/members of the community. The Corinthians are not unique or isolated in their calling, for Paul places the church at Corinth and it’s particular concerns within a much wider story, encouraging them to see themselves as part of a network of communities of faith stretching around the Mediterranean world. Later Paul chides them for their prideful presumption that their spiritual freedom liberates them from accountability to others. They must see themselves as part of a much larger movement, subject to the same Lord whose authority governs the church as a whole (1 Cor 14:36). They are NOT spiritual free agents. They are just one branch of a larger operation.

“Sosthenes the brother” is the co-sender of the letter. He’s probably the person described in Ac 18:17 as a leader of the synagogue in Corinth. He was roughed up by a crowd of Corinthian Jews who were frustrated by the decision of the Roman proconsul Gallio to ignore their complaints against Paul. They picked on him perhaps because he was perceived to be sympathetic to Paul. By the time of the writing of this letter–2-4 years later–Sosthenes was apparently with Paul in Ephesus, sharing in Paul’s missionary work. If he was a notable Corinthian convert who had suffered for the gospel, he might have some influence among the Corinthians. Though not mentioned again, his appearance in the salutation perhaps lends some additional weight to the appeals that Paul will make throughout the letter. A fact that will be noted repeatedly is that Paul employs considerable political tact in addressing the touchy situation in the church.

To be “sanctified” (1 Cor 1:2) means to be set apart for the service of God, like Israel‘s priests or the vessels used in the Temple. In the OT, the call to be sanctified is addressed to the people of Israel as a whole (Lev 19:1-2). Paul is thus echoing God’s call to Israel, and addressing the Corinthian Christians–a predominantly Gentile group–as members of the covenant people of God, Israel. Whatever their background, they have now been caught up into the story of God‘s gracious elective purpose. They are to serve as a covenant people, representing God’s kingdom in a world that doesn’t know God (Exo 19:5-6). To be God’s covenant people entails certain obligations of obedience. If the church is to represent God rightly in the world, certain norms and standards must be kept. “Sanctified in Christ” creates / introduces a tension that will play itself out throughout the letter, for their conduct is terribly out of synch with their sanctification as God’s covenant people. Paul’s emphasis in the introduction is on God‘s initiative in calling and sanctifying this community.

Paul pronounces a blessing of grace and peace (1 Cor 1:3). Those who participate in the covenant community are the recipients of God’s freely given mercy, and they therefore stand within the sphere of God’s peace, a peace that should extend to their relationships with one another.   Paul characteristically opens his letter with a word of thanksgiving for the community to which he writes. This thanksgiving section artfully foreshadows many of the issues that Paul will address in the letter as a whole. 3 theological themes stand out:

  1. The grace (charis) of God, who is the giver of all the gifts enjoyed by the Corinthian church (1 Cor 1:3-6).
  2. The eschatological framework of Christian existence (1 Cor 1:7-8).
  3. God‘s call to community in and with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:9).

The grace of God is a gift (1 Cor 1:4). In Christ they have been “enriched … in speech and knowledge of every kind (1 Cor 1:5). This pleased them for they prided themselves on precisely these aspects of their spiritual experience: the possession of privileged knowledge and the ability to speak with spirit-endowed eloquence, including tongues. Yet there’s an ironic undertone; it is precisely these gifts of speech and knowledge that caused division in the church. Paul doesn’t deny that knowledge and speech are authentic gifts of God–he thanks God for them rather than deplore them. Yet he stresses that they’re gifts, NOT expressions of their own spiritual capacity or brilliance, as he later stingingly critiques them for their spiritual pride (1 Cor 4:7). If they consider themselves rich (1 Cor 4:8), it’s only because they were made rich by God (1 Cor 1:5). Thus, boasting is excluded. That they are “not lacking in any spiritual gift [charismata]” (1 Cor 4:7a) is a “manifestation of grace.” Whatever endowments of speech and knowledge the Corinthians have, they have them only by God’s grace as gifts which serve to confirm “the testimony of Christ” (1 Cor 1:6), not to increase their status.

The framework of a not–yet–fulfilled hope (1 Cor 1:7). No matter how richly blessed they may be in the present, they haven’t yet received that which the church/they ultimately longs: the revelation [apokalypsis] of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:7b), his final coming again to triumph over the powers of evil and death (15:20-28). The church’s present existence is a time of waiting, a time in which they must be sustained and strengthened by Christ in anticipation of the end. Paul suggests that the day of Christ’s parousia will also be a day of judgment (1 Cor 1:8). They need God’s help to prepare them to be “blameless” at the final reckoning. Waiting and preparation for judgment is Paul’s sobering corrective to their enthusiastic spiritual experience in the present. Throughout the letter, Paul’s aim is to call their attention again and again to the future-directed character of the gospel and to highlight the motif of the church’s ultimate accountability to God’s judgment. Paul’s tone here is that they can stand confidently, for “God is faithful” (1 Cor 1:9a). God, the giver of the gifts, called them and will undergird their hope.

The call “into the fellowship [koinonia] of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor 1:9b). Koinonia can refer both to the spiritual relationship to Christ and to the community of people called together into that relationship. To Paul, these 2 realities are inseparable. To be “in Christ” is to be in the fellowship of the church–to be called into a relationship of intimate mutuality with one another in Christ, to be summoned to close and even sacrificial relationships with others, including those of other social classes, those with whom one might ordinarily have nothing at all in common. What members of the church had in common was simply their shared calling to participate in the new family created by God’s grace; that’s why Paul addresses them as “brothers and sisters.” This is difficult to grasp and internalize for newly formed Christian communities, such as in Corinth. Being called into Christ’s koinonia is a theme with manifold variations that he will continue to play from beginning to end in this letter beginning in the next verse (1 Cor 1:10), which is the fundamental theme of 1 Corinthians:

 

  • I appeal to [exhort, beseech, plead, urge, request] you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
  • that all of you agree with one another in what you say [agree together, you all agree, have one speech, speak the same thing] and
  • that there be no divisions among you [end your divisions, no divisions in the church],
  • but that you be perfectly united in mind [perfectly joined together, one mind, united in thought]
  • and thought [conviction, purpose, conscience, judgment].

Reference:

  1. Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.
  2. Richard B. Hays. The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Part One. Chapter 1. Paul: The Koinonia of His Sufferings. 1996.

Sermons – upcoming and tentative:

  1. Cosmic Calling (1:1-9) [1 Cor 1:2]. Always Thank God.
  2. All Agree (1:10-17) [1 Cor 1:10]. No Divisions. Perfect Unity.
  3. Foolish Cross (1:18-25) [1 Cor 1:18].
  4. What You Were (1:26-31) [1 Cor 1:26]. No Boasting [1 Cor 1:31].
  5. Christ Crucified (2:1-5) [1 Cor 2:2].
  6. Mature Wisdom (2:6-16) [1 Cor 2:6].
  7. Field Laborers (3:1-9) [1 Cor 3:5].
  8. Construction Workers (3:10-15) [1 Cor 3:10-11].
  9. God’s Temple (3:16-22) [1 Cor 3:16].
  10. True Self (4:1-5) [1 Cor 4:4].
  11. Become Scum (4:6-13) [1 Cor 4:13].
  12. Final Warning (4:14-21) [1 Cor 4:19].
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