1 Cor 1.1-9
Living in tension

Do you ever struggle with the differences between what you want to be, what you want to become, and what you currently are? Or the tension between who people think you are and the person that you know yourself to be in reality?

That’s not a new problem, and we’ll come back to it a number of times over the next few weeks as we work our way through a new series based in Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth.

Corinth has a special place in my heart. It was where Marilyn and I went on our first date.

It was in April 1980, and we were on outreach in Athens with our ministry team and about 200 other YWAMers. We had a day off, and the team bus drivers arranged for a sightseeing trip to Corinth. So I asked Marilyn if she wanted to go, and we had our first date… along with about 80 YWAMers.

We’re going to be spending some time with Paul and the Corinthians, so it’s worth our while to get to know the place a little.

Corinth is a city in Greece. It sits at the point where the mainland and the Peloponnese peninsula meet, and the country at that point is only 6 km wide. Today there’s a canal that joins the Aegean and Adriatic seas. In Paul’s day they had a system where they would drag boats and cargo from one side to the other on a trolley system. (A bit like what they used to do on the beach strip before they dug the Burlington Ship Canal in the 19^th century.) It took maybe 150 men about 3-4 hours of heavy pulling to move a boat from the Aegean to the Adriatic, but it certainly beat days of sailing through the dangerous waters to the south of the country.

So, Corinth was a major seaport. Add to that the fact that anyone travelling on land between the north and the south of the country had to go through Corinth and you get an idea of how central it was. One writer describes it as the equivalent of New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas all rolled into one. Corinth was wealthier than Athens with the kind of competitive edge that you find in a city like New York. Everybody was out to “get ahead” and outdo their neighbour.

It was also a very diverse city. Like any port city it had people from around the known world; Romans (it was a Roman colony), Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Jews, the whole gamut. And, like many port cities, it also had a reputation for being wild. “What happens in Corinth stays in Corinth.”

Paul arrived here about 15 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and stayed for a year and a half. He stayed with his friends Priscilla and Aquila, who, like himself, were Jewish leatherworkers (tentmakers) and he worked in their business. When he left there was a thriving church in Corinth.

Fast forward a couple of years and Paul is now based in Ephesus, on the other side of the Aegean Sea, and he gets a couple of pieces of information from Corinth.

One is a letter that asks a bunch of questions about how to live as Christians. Questions about whether, now that they’re followers of Jesus, they should get married or stay single; whether or not they should eat the food that had been offered to idols; what they should do about manifestations of the Spirit in their worship services; what they should do about a charitable collection for other churches; and when their friend Apollos was going to come and visit. All good, normal questions. The kind of questions you would expect a young church to ask of the person who founded it.

The other source that Paul has is “some from Chloe’s household.” We don’t know who Chloe was, but she might have been a businesswoman in Ephesus who had sent one of her middle managers to Corinth to oversee her business there, and they had come back with some information about the church. They tell a very different story. According to them, the church in Corinth has real problems with infighting, sexual immorality and divisions along class lines.

Tension between our public face and our private struggles

Isn’t that so often the case? When people ask us how we are, we say “fine,” even if our lives are falling apart. We do that, partly because it isn’t polite to dump on other people, and partly (if we’re honest) because we want them to think well of us. We want to spin our image so people think that we’re successful, that we have it all together, that we’re in control of our lives, even if the reality is something very different.

In a place like Corinth, where everybody’s trying to get “one up” on his or her neighbour, you didn’t want to show weakness or the sharks would get you. And that spirit had found its way into the church. We’ll see more of that as we study through the letter; how the believers in Corinth wanted to project an image of themselves that was quite different from the reality.

And, even if we do share some of our struggles, we’re much more likely to share the issues we consider “safe,” than the ones that threaten the way others view us. So, the church in Corinth writes to ask in general about issues of marriage and singleness, but neglects to mention that one of their members is sleeping with his stepmother!

Paul will deal with that, and other touchy subjects, in this letter. It must have been a difficult letter to write. And it would have been an even more difficult letter to read – because it would have been read out loud in the church meeting in Corinth.

But he begins in a different place altogether. He knows the issues that the Corinthians have, but he begins, not with their issues, but with their identity.

Tension between who we are and who we’re called to be

Our identity lies in what we’re called

Our primary identity lies in what, or who, we are called. And usually, that calling is done by someone else.

Look at the first line of the letter, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…” Paul is telling us who he is. He’s identifying himself. First of all he tells us his name.

Who gave you your name? Was it you? No… usually it was your parents. In fact one of the questions that parents-to-be agonise over is, “what will we call our child?” Some of them have made some unfortunate choices… [slide]

But, whether we like it or not, the way that we are known is through the name that someone else gave us. That’s the way we know what most things are. It’s a lot easier to talk about the steering wheel or gas pedal on a car rather than have to explain what it does every time it comes up in conversation.

I’ve had to learn a whole new vocabulary since I’ve taken up sailing. It’s much easier to talk about a halyard, than about “the rope that’s attached to the top of the sail that if you pull on it the sail goes up.”

We know what something is because of what it’s called. Calling, naming things, is really important; so important that it was the first thing God had Adam do in Genesis. All the animals are paraded in front of him and he gets to give each one a name.

Some of us were called names at school, and those names and the identity that goes with them still floats around in the back of our heads, ready to pop up when we’re feeling down. “Stupid, ugly, useless.” On the other hand is the experience of being called beloved. As one child put it, “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.  You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

Paul knows who he is, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus…” In Greek it’s shorter “Paul, called apostle of Christ Jesus.” He was called Paul by his parents and called “apostle” or “messenger” by Christ Jesus. He’s not writing this letter because he’s so full of himself that he feels the need to stick his oar in. He’s writing because Jesus has given him the task of preaching the gospel among the Gentiles. He is a messenger of Jesus and the message has gotten a bit scrambled in Corinth, so he has to write.

[I had a similar experience this week. There’s been a thread on Facebook about a “prophecy” for the Church and Israel for 2010. A number of people have copied me on it. I tried to ignore it, but in the end I felt obliged to respond. Part of my calling as a Bible teacher is to try and breathe some biblical sanity into the situation. I didn’t want to write. I don’t like conflict. I felt sick to my stomach to think of the people who would probably be offended by what I had to say. But, for me, feeling that way is usually an indication that this is something God wants me to do. So I had no option but to write.]

I think Paul might have felt the same way writing to the Corinthians. This was going to be a difficult letter. He’ll use some pretty blunt language before he’s done, but he starts by talking about identity, his own, and that of the believers at Corinth.

We are called by God

He calls them …the church of God in Corinth…

The Greek word that we translate as “church” is ekklesia, which has at its core the Greek word “to call” and means any kind of assembly that has been called together. So you could have an ekklesia in a city, which was basically the city council. Today, if Paul were asked to describe a school assembly at Cathy Wever, he would use this word, ekklesia.

So Paul reminds the Corinthians that they are the ekklesia of God, God’s assembly. Remember that we said that calling is usually done by someone else. In this case, God has called the Corinthian believers his own. They’re not the assembly of people who have come together because they like each other. (As we’ll see later, clearly some of them have conflict issues.) They’re not the assembly of people who have a common interest in spiritual things. They’re not the assembly of people who have decided to follow Paul’s teachings, or Apollos, or any other teacher.

In fact their identity doesn’t rest in anything about them. That might have been hard for them to hear. After all Corinth was a city of self made millionaires, obsessed with position and status, knowing the right people, greasing the right palms. But their identity isn’t about what they’ve done, but about who has called them to himself.

God has called them to follow him. And one of the results of following God is that he calls us to do it together with others following the same path. As a result, he has called them together. Their identity rests in being called together by God.

So does ours. We are God’s assembly. Wentworth Baptist is not your church, or my church, it’s God’s church. We are what we are by God’s grace, because he has called us to himself and, in the process, called us to walk with each other. That is at the core of who we are.

We are called to be holy

But that isn’t all. Paul goes on to call them …those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy,

Now, remember that later on in the letter Paul will talk about divisions around personalities other than Jesus, and he will talk about some pretty unholy ways of living, but for now, he’s calling these same people, sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy.

“Sanctified” means “made holy,” and “holy” means, “set apart,” “special.” When Marilyn and I were first married her parents gave us a small set of dishes. We didn’t have any other dishes so we used the ones they gave us quite regularly, which rather upset Marilyn’s mom. The plates they gave us had belonged to Marilyn’s grandparents and were Limoges china from the 1920s. They were special, to be set apart for special use.

That’s what Paul is telling the Christians at Corinth. They’re special, set apart to God. Not because of anything they had done, or achieved, or their status in society or anything like that, but because they belonged to God, and that made them special.

So, when Paul tells them later in the letter that certain behaviour is wrong, he’s not telling them that because he wants to lay a guilt trip on them. He’s simply telling them that that’s not what they’re meant for. Just like those Limoges plates weren’t meant for feeding the dog. (We never actually did that.) And just like we’re not meant for lifestyles that destroy God’s image in us; whether those lifestyles are about the gods of violence, sex and drugs, or whether they’re about the gods of wealth and success. That’s not what we’re meant for. We’re set apart for God and called to be special to him.

And so, it’s the things that God has given the Corinthians that Paul is thankful for. ⁴ I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. ⁵ For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— ⁶ because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. ⁷ Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.

Some of these same gifts were being abused in the church, but the gifts themselves were good gifts from God, and Paul is thankful that he sees them in the church.

When was the last time you said to someone “I’m thankful for X or Y in your life?” Paul knows how important it is to build people up. (He’ll talk a lot about that in the letter.) So he looks for things to be thankful for. It isn’t just a nice thing to say. It has content.

A while ago I was talking with someone who had been through a detox programme and was beginning to get her life in order. I said “You’re looking better.” Now, normally you would expect someone to say. “Thank you.” But she said, “How am I looking better?” I was able to say, “Your eyes are clearer, your skin’s better, you’re looking me in the eye.” Give your encouragement some body, not just nice words.

We are called blameless

And even though Paul is writing to address some pretty serious issues, he doesn’t give up on the Corinthians. He still believes in them and believes that they’ll win out in the end. But once again, it isn’t because of who they are, but because of who it is that has called them. ⁸ He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That word translated “blameless” is another “call” word. In this case it means “you will not be called to account.” When you stand before God, you won’t be called to account, you won’t be accused, you won’t be called “guilty,” because He will keep you strong to the end.

Sometimes we find that hard to believe. Sometimes, it feels like the stuff that life throws at us, or that we get ourselves into, is just going to drown us. That we can’t go on. That it’s no use even trying to be a Christian any more. And Paul reminds us that we will make it to the finish line, because Jesus has promised to keep us strong to the end.

Because God has called us to himself

And we can rely upon that because,  ⁹ God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

God is faithful. He has called us into fellowship with Jesus and with one another, and he is faithful.

When everything is going great, he is faithful.

When everything is falling apart, he is faithful.

When you mess up and get everything wrong, he is faithful.

When nothing seems to make sense, he is faithful.

As we work through Corinthians over the coming weeks we’re going to be looking at some serious issues of Christian behaviour and it might be easy to fall into thinking that Christianity is just about a long list of do’s and don’ts. But these opening verses remind us of the order that things come in.

We don’t seek to live holy lives in order to be accepted by God and do our best to get into heaven.

We live holy lives because he who has called us to himself is holy and he is shaping us to be like him.

And He will keep you strong to the end [because] God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.