I Corinthians 1:1-9

Last week we did an introduction to 1 Corinthians. Today we're going to do the first nine verses. I'll go through them. Rather than read them all, I'll read them as we go through. The very first part of the verses have to do with, like Paul and others who wrote in this time, how the letter was structured. And the correspondence usually had three elements to it in the first part of it.

It was the author. You know, in our letters, when I write a letter or you write a letter, you always sign it at the bottom. Well, they sort of signed it at the top. They announced who the author was. And if you're like me, you know, you open up a letter and the first thing you do is you turn over the envelope and look to see who it's from or you go to the last page and see who signed it because you want to know who sent you the letter and what they're saying. The second thing is that they'll put who the recipients are, and then there's a greeting. And then followed after that is the body of the letter.

And it can be expanded or cut down in any way necessary, and Paul did a lot of that. When you study his letters, you'll find that in some he really expands. We just finished up studying Galatians, and in Galatians he was very Kurt and terse and didn't not much of an introduction got right to the point so I Put this map up here primarily because I Wanted you to I talked about this last week, and if I can get the cursor over there Corinth is right here and you see this small isthmus right there and And it was in a prime location that made it what we would call today a multicultural city of the world.

It's a small neck of land and the ships, like we talked about last week, they would dock on one side or the other. They would unload the cargo and take it across just a couple of miles. Or sometimes if the ship was small, they would drag it across. It was that close, but it saved sailing all the way around the peninsula to the other side.

It's kind of like today with the Panama Canal. Without the Panama Canal, if you wanted to sail a ship from Miami to Los Angeles, you had to go all the way down around South America and all the way back up. It's the only way you could go. And that would take weeks and months. Well, now with the Panama Canal, you can go through the middle. It's like the Suez Canal is the same thing. Well, that's what this was, only this was a pretty natural skinny isthmus. So now there's a deep canal there and people can cut across and ships pass through there all the time. But back then it wasn't true.

Well what it means is that the social conditions in Corinth probably were the worst from a Christian standpoint of all the cities in the New Testament. There was no exaggeration to say Corinth was the fountainhead of immorality in the Roman Empire. If you were there, it was kind of a mountainous area, and on the top of this one mountain, it's called the Acrocorinthus, stood the Temple of Aphrodite. An Oriental influence that had permeated the Greek religion. This was Greek, but when you have all of these people from all these countries coming through, their religion and their culture would begin to blend in, and with the Greek religions, and the influx and influence of East and West, the religions got to be pretty sensual. And with this Temple of Diana that sat up, or Aphrodite that sat up on this hill, one of the ways that they had prostitutes that would come down into the city, and they were raising money for the temple, and they did it under the guise that If you want to communicate with God, you want to spend some time with one of these young ladies. So that's how they sold the system. The name of the city literally means to be immoral. That's what the city, the name of the city means.

And if you want to see how it worked, just go to Romans chapter one, verses 18 through 32, and you'll see how Corinth functioned. you'll see how most people in the world function. But that's particularly written, because Paul wrote the letter to the Romans from Corinth, he knew. Slide three. So verse one and two, you're looking at a divine summons, or two comments concerning the author. He has the summons of the author, And the supernatural nature of Paul's summons is expressed in three ways. First, the word called. Called what?

As an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. By the will of God and Sothony is our brother. So, Paul didn't volunteer to be an apostle. He was called to be one. He was commissioned. He was set apart by God for this specific task and set apart he was out persecuting believers that was what he thought was the best thing for him to do and he didn't have any thought whatsoever that he would soon be a servant of Christ that was the farthest thing from his mind and then God intervened on the road to Damascus and we all know what that story is If you take a look at First Corinthians 15, verse 15, Paul says really succinctly, he said, but when God who had set me apart, even from my mother's womb, called me through his grace.

So he didn't recognize the call until he actually got it. But then he recognized that the call was from his mother's womb. Could you say that about us? That we were called to be members of the body of Christ even from our mother's womb? I think yeah, we can say that.

So second thing is that he was called specifically to be set apart as an apostle. Apostles was a divinely chosen man for a specific tax and selected by the vehicle of divine inspired truth. That's what they were here to do. To communicate divinely inspired truth.

The words of an apostle of the twelve became the foundation of the doctrine of the church. And it's the same today. We in Sunday school were studying the book of Romans written by the apostle Paul. And it is the foundational doctrine of the body of Christ.

In Ephesians 2, 19 and 20, Paul says, So then you are no longer strangers or aliens, but your fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. The apostles were the foundation of the church. They were the men that God used to build the foundation. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.

So, in writing to the assembly at Corinth, Paul does so as an apostle, and is careful to state that he's received his authority as an apostle by the will of God and by the call of God. It isn't just happenstance. It was a specific call by God for a specific duty that God wanted him to do, and it was by his will.

There was never any appointment. There was never a committee that got together and said, well, you know, Paul's a pretty good guy. Let's call him to be this or be that. You know, it wasn't like that. Like he was called to go on the missionary journeys was the church got together and said, well, Paul, you know, we're going to send Paul on this journey. Well, this is different.

This is a specific call by God to be this thing, this job as an apostle. And it's not by the will of man, but by the will of God. So, an apostle, I found this in Macaulay, two simple statements. He said, an apostle needs two things. He needs somebody to represent, which is God, and he needs the authorization to do so. So, when you see up here an apostle of Jesus Christ, It points to who he's representing. He's representing Christ.

And by the will of God points to the authorization. He has the authorization by the will of God. Now, and then the next part of that verse says, Sothenes, our brother. Well, Sothenes, some people would say, well, maybe Sothenes was sort of sitting there and helping Paul write or they were writing together or they were discussing it. And just because he mentioned him doesn't mean he's a co-author. He's called a brother. He's not called an apostle. And when Paul begins to address the Corinthians in verse 4, he uses the pronoun I. He doesn't say we. And he does that specifically so that you know that the information is coming from Paul himself. So he addresses the church in verse 2. the assembly of God at Corinth in verse 2. Now watch how he describes the assembly.

Sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all in every place who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, theirs and ours. It's very interesting that he presents it this way. The saints were set apart for Christ. Sanctified means to be set apart. And it's the same thing as saying being called out of this present evil world to have part with Christ above and our calling is heavenly.

And this is one of the parts of the verses that struck me in regards to what we're going through as a society today. I can't sit there and watch what's happening with the coronavirus and think that, well, wait a minute, that's not really who we are. That's not really who I am. Yeah, I'm in this world, but I've been set apart by Christ to Him. I'm a saint by calling. And it's not that I got an invitation, I was called to be one of those.

And not only that, every other believer in every place in the world that's called by the name of Jesus Christ, He's our Lord. We're not of the world anymore. We live in it, we're influenced by it, we have responsibilities in it, but really, positionally, we've been called out of it. And we're to function as believers as though we're just passing through as a visitor. What would be the worst thing that the coronavirus could do to any Christian? What's the worst thing it could do? It could cause you to die. Is that a bad thing for a Christian? Not at all.

It's the next great thing. I get to go home to be with my Lord. Oh yeah, if that's my home, then this isn't. which frees us up from our own self-worry so that we can be available to help someone else who needs encouragement or whatever their needs might be.

In Hebrews 3.1, the writer of Hebrews says, Therefore, holy brethren, holy brethren, that's who we are, partakers of the heavenly calling, that's what we have. Consider Jesus. the apostle and high priest of our confession.

Or Philippians 3.14 where Paul says, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. What's the goal? To be in front of Him, face to face, conform to His image, just in His presence. And God has already determined by the call that that's going to be true of all of us. We're on the road now, but positionally we're already there. The spiritual position that the Corinthians enjoyed...

I'll make a contrast here. As we go through this epistle, we're going to see an awful lot of really bad behavior. And Paul is in the process, in this letter, to try to correct that behavior. But he's not going to do it based on, you're doing bad and you've got to get to doing good.

He starts out by laying out their position in Christ. He starts out by showing them their blessings, and their position, and their set-apartness, and that the Lord Jesus is their Lord, and that there are new creatures in Christ. And then he's going to say, based on who you are, this behavior doesn't fit with who you are.

So he starts with the positive, not with the negative. He's not going to shame them. He's not going to intimidate them. He's just going to say, look, here's who you are. And there's a conduct of life in Christ consistent with your position. And that's how he goes at them. He goes at them with the grace.

He says, look, the first thing is, is that you're in Christ Jesus. And we could spend the rest of the day talking about what it means to be in Christ Jesus. 140 some times he uses this phraseology in Christ, in the Beloved, in Him, in the New Testament. The New Testament expresses the means of union with Christ and points to the essentials of our salvation.

As a result of this union, the Corinthians are said to be sanctified. They've been set apart. by God, not by themselves. And it's a root word that when we use the term saint or holy, it's the same concept, the same idea. The fact that they were sanctified and the form of the word does not mean merely a process of going on, but it's a positional characteristic of who they are.

They are stamped with separation to God. From God's perspective, they've been set apart. Now, if you read the Old Testament about the Jews, they were set apart too, but they just had a tough time understanding what set apart really meant. And they were totally influenced by the world. The next thing is they're saints by calling. Not merely called to be saints, they were saints by calling.

I hope you see the difference there. I can say, well, I'm called to be an accountant. or I'm called to be, I'm going to strive to be a really good something or other. Paul says, no, you're already what you have been called to be. You have a position. You are a saint. You have been set apart.

So it's a really impressive appeal that I think he makes to their hearts and their consciousness and especially in the crisis which the things that had happened in Corinth and the Corinthian assembly. Roger, starting next week, will get into a lot of that about what was going on in the assembly and what the Christians were doing and of course what they were really doing was living out of the world rather than out of their position in Christ. The last half of the second verse here shows us that sainthood is not limited to those addressed in this letter.

Every single believer is a saint. Every single one. So he's addressing the church at Corinth, but he links it with all that in every place who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, both theirs and ours. What he's saying to them, look, there's one Lord, and that is Lord not only to this local group, this local church in Corinth, but to every believer in all of the world.

So now, he'll continue through the next pages to establish this position, but what he's after is showing that this position and this calling that every believer has is important when it comes to practical conduct in a Christian life. You have to know what you are before you know how you're supposed to maintain your life. So it will clearly show and apply to every believer of all time. That's why we can read Paul's epistles today and they're applicable to us.

Our circumstances and situations are not different than what was going on in Corinth. As a matter of fact, is there any New Testament epistle that sort of portrays an environment that is similar to us greater than Corinth. I don't think so. We can identify with a lot of things that were going on in Corinth. So we're going to see passages that refute the attempt to limit the instruction to a local assembly and that's in chapter 4, chapter 7.

It's The information in this epistle is for all believers of all ages and all times and all circumstances, including the United States in 2020 under a quarantine for the coronavirus. It fits. The Apostle will have to speak plainly as to the disorder in this assembly, but behind all of his plain words of condemnation is the earnest desire.

Here's the desire. that they may enjoy the blessings of grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Verse 3. So he says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting here, in verse Chester McCauley did a really interesting thing here in dealing with this verse. He says, when Paul speaks of his continual thanks, in verse 3 and 4, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus.

When he thanks God for them, how could he say, or why wouldn't we say to Paul, Paul are you kidding? How is this possible? How could you possibly thank God for these idiots, these people that are living? It's not possible to find a more confused, irresponsible, carnal group of believers than those at Corinth. We are led to wonder what the basis of this thanks might be, for it certainly does not lie on their conduct. So Paul doesn't thank God because of their conduct.

He thanks them. The answer is introduced by the word for. Bear with me a minute. Yeah, I jumped ahead. He thanks God and notice this word in blue up there for and the four has to do with the grace of God to thank. How do I say this? The thank you to God was because of God's grace. I can say that about myself. I can say that about any believer I know.

When God calls a believer and saves them, He does it by grace. And when He does it by grace, that's what you thank God for, the fact that He called you by His grace. He didn't call me and He didn't call you because you were a pretty good person standing next to a person that wasn't a pretty good person. Every one of us are hell-deserving sinners, and if He hadn't called us by His grace, we would have never come. I know I wouldn't have.

And then he says in 5 that in everything you are enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge of doctrine. So this grace had enriched them in every spiritual blessing in Christ and given them all the word of doctrine and all knowledge of doctrine. Now think about that. In 2020, or I've been a believer since 1977, when you become a believer you set on a pace or on a course in where you really want to learn the doctrine.

You want to learn what is it about Christianity. I know enough that I received the gospel and I got saved. But what is the deal with Christianity? It just can't be. It just doesn't stop at it just doesn't stop at salvation there's got to be more than that so you start to read and you go to a church and you hope the church is teaching the word of God and you begin to learn what Paul says about these Corinthians that they had all the word all of it not some of it all of the doctrine why because he's the one that taught him he's the apostle so here these guys are He's 18 months with them and he teaches them the whole thing in 18 months. And then he says, you have all the knowledge of doctrine. Now you talk about seminary graduation. Imagine being under Paul's tutelage for 18 months, enriched with all knowledge, and yet your behavior doesn't match what you know.

And that's the book of Corinthians. That's what it's about. that grace had come to them and actually that grace and that knowledge is available and comes to all of us as believers. But he's telling these Corinthians that they had it all. Now they didn't have a Schofield reference Bible sitting on their table next to the chair, but they were taught. And they knew.

And so he's using, he says, I thank God. And Macaulay says, how could you thank God? These guys, these guys behavior is just awful. He says, I thank him. I thank God because of the grace that was given to them in Christ Jesus, and that they were enriched in him and all speech and knowledge of doctrine. That's when I'm thanking God.

So once you find that principle, you find a lot in the Bible where Paul, it's like he said one time, well I don't trust you, but I trust you in Christ. Well who's he really trusting? He's trusting Christ. So when you and I pray for somebody, especially someone we're hoping will have a turn in their life, we pray for them in Christ, because we know we can't persuade them to change the direction they're going in, but Christ can do that, and so you pray from that perspective.

Now, let's see here. Verse 7. Back up. I think I've got my things out of whack, so we're going to stay here for a minute. There had been a testimony to Christ in their midst. They confirmed the knowledge of the truth that they possessed, and the fact that they came behind in no gift were waiting for the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, notice here in verse 7, so that you are not lacking in any gift. What's interesting about this, and I know that Roger is going to expand on this next week, they make it clear.

Macaulay says Paul makes it very clear. that spiritual gifts are not the sign of spirituality. If in the small group of believers we had at Holly Hills, if every one of us or all of us all had a spiritual gift and it was all active, it doesn't mean that we're spiritual, just because you have a gift. And I must say that there are a lot of denominations today that state exactly that. You're not spiritual unless you have the gift, or a gift.

So we could say that Corinth was the most gifted church in the New Testament, but it also was the most carnal. So there's a discrepancy there, and at the time the most reprehensible in terms of conduct, the only church that was charged with massive carnality. If you compare this church with the church at Galatia. What was the problem in Galatia? It was legalism. This church was the most carnal, but it had all the spiritual gifts and still was carnal.

So all knowledge behind in no gift, yet carnal, not spiritual. Here's the problem with that. The flesh can boast in knowledge. It can use gifts for self-exaltation. But we do well to remember the mere knowledge and the possession of gifts will not prevent disorder. And it will not secure spirituality if you don't judge the flesh. So how do you judge the flesh? The flesh is easily judged through understanding what the identification truths are. That we were crucified, we've been separated from it. But if you don't judge it, it gets out of control.

And I would say that it's not only in immoral things, but it's also in things that, I use this example a lot, it's also in things like something in my life as a believer controls me. Say that I'm really good at golf and I can really play the game well. Well, golf becomes my thing. Well, my thing isn't golf as a believer. My thing is Jesus Christ. But golf got in the way. So I'm carnal. Because I'm letting something of the flesh and a talent that maybe God had given me in terms of my expertise and physical ability, it gets in the way.

I may be a terrific salesman. And I can sell anybody anything. And I become a Christian, and so I become a salesman for Christ. Well, Christ doesn't need salesmen. Because He's the one that does things in the body of Christ, not the salesman. Not the salesman. There's a thousand. But you know what's interesting?

One generation passes through, but the Lord remains, and everything with Him doesn't change. However great the ruin or confusion in the Christian profession, the Lord's mind for the conduct of those called into fellowship in which He has a bond, and for the discipline and ordering of God's assemblies remains in full force as it's unfolded in this epistle. And that's what we're going to see as we go through it.

God doesn't change because a generation changes. God doesn't look down on the earth and say, well, those are the Gen Xers down there. and millennials, so I've got to adjust the doctrine to fit them. When the salvation message goes out, what does it do? The message says, you're over there in the world. I want you to leave there and come over here to Christ. Over here is the same always. It's consistent.

So it's noticeable that while thanking God for His grace, the apostle is unable to express any approval of their spiritual condition. So he delights, while delighting to own the faithfulness of God, he can't address them as faithful brethren, because they're not. And he does when writing to the saints at Ephesus and Colossae, he writes to them and says, you're faithful brethren. Well, he can't do that with this group, because they're not, but they still have this position. So if you compare verse 7 here with not lacking in any gifts and then go down to chapter 3 verse 1 and he says, I brethren could not speak to you as spiritual men but as men of the flesh as to infants in Christ. They're fully gifted but they're not spiritual. So having recognized what was of God in the assembly, Paul would begin to deal with the disorders. The next thing in verse 8 is what I call the guarantee. There's a guarantee right here.

God says to them, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's saying there's going to be a judgment. for every person, and there's going to be a Bema judgment of rewards for every believer. God Himself is going to confirm you to the end. He Himself will make sure that you're blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's a saying I heard one time that if I don't make it to heaven, it's God's fault, not mine. Because He sent out the guarantee, if you come to Me, I will save you. I will not only save you, but I will present you blameless before Myself then. I'll do that, no matter how bad your life is.

So the Lord Jesus took care of all the sins. He atoned for all the sins of all the world, especially believers, with His blood. So every failure in life dealt with there, all the wood, hay, and stubble that will show up at the beam of judgment will burn in a fire.

It will be gone. And we'll stand before the Lord. Now think about this. We're going to stand before the Lord unimpeachable and unaccusable. No one will ever be able to accuse us. Why? Because every shortcoming was taken care of by Christ at the cross. That's our position.

Instead of my sins being between me and God My sins will be or Christ himself will be between me and God There won't be any accusing there won't be any condemnation so This is God's plan he plans and has planned for each one of us to be blameless in the day of Christ and totally by the faithfulness of God and So my security doesn't lie in my merits, but in God who has ever been faithful. God is faithful, whom you were called to fellowship of His Son. So believers, what we believers, and I think is true of today and with the circumstances, just simple faith day by day will work. Who I am, what I have in the Lord Jesus, who He is, God's work to have us delight in walking with Him and Him delight in us, in spite of all of our weakness and unfaithfulness, if we'll just trust Him.

And that's the thing I've noticed in the world system. There's an awful lot of fear out there today because people have put their trust in the world and all they know and the governments of the world, and yet they've lost control. and they can't control what's going to happen.

Well, we walk around and we're six feet apart from each other. We wear a mask and we wash our hands. Like I've said the last couple of Sundays, every single COVID-19 molecule, God knows exactly where they are. He knows exactly where they're going. And he knows exactly if you're going to have one to his glory. Non-believers who don't understand that, It's the most fearful thing possible. They just can't get it together.

Well, think about salvation and all of the positional truth that God very carefully lets us know. And he says, God is faithful. He's faithful. By whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's just simple. It's really simple. The blessedness of such faith and the experience of it, lots and lots of people can testify to.

What do you get? You come unto me and I will give you the one thing the world can't give you. You know what it is? It's rest. It's rest. In Philippians, the Lord said, if you come to me with prayer and supplication and make all your requests known to me, What does He tell us? What does He promise? He promises to give us the one thing you can't buy. And that is, I will give you rest for your souls. I will give you the peace that passes understanding. With the peace that passes understanding, there isn't anything that can upset what God has promised to give us and to do. Even this really strange environment that we're living in today. with death sitting out there, that if you touch the wrong person, breathe the wrong air, whatever, you're going to be really, really sick. And especially if you're old like me. I mean, I was talking to Echol yesterday and he said, well, you know, we're high risk people. I said, yeah, we sure are. High risk for what? Early checkout to go home.

Anyway, the peace and rest that our Father gives us who cares for the branch carefully to see that it grows stronger. That's what the circumstances are doing. He watches over every hindrance and every dangers and he supplies to us everything that we need. So let's close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you for your word. We certainly do thank you for your word. We thank you for the environment that we live in today. We trust you with what what you're doing you're causing us to grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear son to be able to settle down and to abide in you and learn new information and new intimacy and new fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and we're so thankful for that and we pray in his precious name. Amen.