What Happens In Corinth: 1 Corinthians

patterns.

Introduction

What happens in Corinth . . .

If you live in the United States, the phrase will jump off the page and immediately remind you of the slogan from which it echoes: What happens in Vegas . . .

Of course, the unsaid ending to the phrase is, stays in Vegas. It’s why the unfortunate alias for Las Vegas is Sin City. Sin loves secrecy.

As you will soon learn on the journey into this ancient city and its tiny church, Corinth may well have been the ancient precursor to modern-day Las Vegas (or at least akin to its caricatured reputation).

Here’s what most amazes me about this whole project of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul was writing to a fledgling community of about 150 people in a city of 150,000. And these 150 weren’t exactly the cream of the crop. As we will see only a few verses in, this little band of believers were a hot mess. Paul doesn’t spend any time wishing for a better church. He works with what God gave him. He knows it only takes a few truly consecrated souls to turn the world upside down. It’s why he opens his letter (and we will open every single day) with these words, To those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people (i.e., us).

It reminds me of the famous quotation by John Wesley as he looked out on the lost country of England.

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.*

Though what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, what happened in Corinth has reached the entire world. Sin loves secrecy, but the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot stay quiet. This ancient correspondence to the Corinthian church will lead us on a winding journey of constant interplay between profound truth and practical (and often painful) problems. We will find their problems look a lot like our problems, and along the way we will hear the gospel in ways both delighting and confounding. From the foolishness of the cross to the most sublime teaching on love, some of the most celebrated texts in all of Scripture come out of this letter. Indeed, Paul’s Holy Spirit–inspired letter will take us from rigorous perversion to the power of the resurrection within the span of a few chapters. And despite his gift of rhetorical precision, here’s where Paul stands through every word:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Cor. 2:1–5)

Grab a few friends. Pop some popcorn. Get ready for some fireworks. And buckle up. Jesus is coming to Corinth, and to Vegas and to your town, and, yes, what happens after that will go everywhere.

* John Wesley, writing at age eighty-seven to Alexander Mather, quoted in Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley (London, 1871), III:632.

WHAT

HAPPENS IN

CORINTH

1 What Happens in Corinth . . .

1 CORINTHIANS 1:1–3|Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Consider This

What happens in Corinth . . . ?

Okay, so a lot happens in Corinth. And, no, it doesn’t stay in Corinth. In fact, what happened in Corinth has made it all the way to your city, your home, your e-mail inbox, or your podcast feed. Welcome to this Daily Text series exploring God’s Word to the ancient Corinthians, and the present-day Americans, and Kenyans, and Russians, and Brazilians, and Mexicans, and Australians, and Italians, and Ukranians, and Haitians, and you get it.

Words create worlds. Words redeem worlds. And words recreate worlds. In the beginning, God spoke words and created the world. It was the satanic confusion of God’s word that led to the fall of humanity. In the fullness of time, God sent his Son, the Word made flesh, to redeem the world.

We think of the apostle Paul as planting churches, making disciples, traveling, and otherwise suffering in jail for the sake of the gospel as his primary ministry. While this is true, the far greater impact of Paul’s mission and ministry has to do with the way he put words together into letters to the first-century churches across the land. Almost all of Paul’s letters were written to solve problems and restore order in the lives of men and women in these communities who were in the process of being saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Paul’s words worked (and work) in the power of the Holy Spirit to restructure and recreate the worlds in which these people lived by bringing the wisdom of the gospel to bear on their lives and relationships. We begin today with one of these letters: Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. Over the course of the next ten weeks or so, we will become familiar with the ancient city of Corinth, its people, and the way disciples get made in confusing cultures. In some ways, the ancient Corinthian culture will feel much like our own.

To get started I want to point out Paul’s foundational assumption in his work. Look for the common word here:

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:

Called. Paul is called, and the people who make up the church in Corinth are called. This letter (and all of Paul’s letters) are written within this overarching framework and mindset. What does it mean for people to be called? It means a really amazing kind of different.

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth as though they had forgotten their core calling. He is not willing to let them phone it in. He is reminding them they are called, to be holy—to be set apart—not some kind of religious organization, but a group of people who are living out their lives in an amazing kind of different fashion. He knows they don’t seem to get this at all, but it doesn’t change the way he approaches them. He refuses to consider them as anything other than called.

Paul is not willing to create a category for people in the church who are just kind of there hanging out or who show up every now and then and throw a five in the offering plate. That’s just not what the church is. As we will soon see, Paul’s letter will quickly get to the business of re-calling the called to their calling.

It’s about becoming an amazing kind of different; not about being better than anyone else—just waking up to the beautiful life Jesus calls us into, for all its worth, and living it to the absolute fullest.

The Prayer

Our Father in heaven, thank you for the way you winged your Word into the heart of the ancient city of Corinth; for the way you raised up a band of believers there and called them to become holy, to embrace the amazing kind of different life of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for the way you are now winging your Word into my city, my church, my home, and my heart. Enlarge my heart, Lord, and stretch my capacity for your presence. Break me from the inside out, so I might somehow contain the uncontainable gift of yourself. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The Questions

How might we develop a richer idea of what called to be holy actually means? Rather than all the holier-than-thou images that come to mind, what if we could categorize our calling to follow Jesus in a distinctively winsome fashion?

2 The Core Calling of Every Christian

1 CORINTHIANS 1:4–9|I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Consider This

A few things we need to understand about our context will help shed light on the letter as we begin to move through it.

About Corinth. Corinth was a first-century boomtown. It was a major seaport and a hub of the Mediterranean. In some sense, all roads led to or through Corinth. Corinth was an ancient precursor to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Transplant Las Vegas in San Diego and you get a feel for first-century Corinth. This bustling colony of Rome had a population of around 100,000–150,000.

About the church in Corinth. Best we can tell, there were no more than about 150 Christians in Corinth. Paul planted the congregation in around AD 50. Nobody had grown up in the church. These were first-generation believers who had mostly come out of pagan religions and cults. Given the size of the church around the world today at approximately 2 billion people, we need to keep in mind the infinitesimally small size of these early churches. It’s extraordinary to consider the ultimate impact they had on the world.

About the letters. You will notice later in the letter that Paul references an earlier letter he had written to the church in Corinth. That letter has never been found. The letter we call 1 Corinthians was likely written in about AD 54. It looks like Paul was writing from Ephesus while working with the young church there.

In 1 Corinthians Paul is responding to the Corinthians’ response to Paul’s earlier (missing) letter. Then there’s 2 Corinthians, which also seems to reference another missing letter. In short, it looks like 1 Corinthians is actually Paul’s second letter and 2 Corinthians is actually the fourth one. Bottom line: we aren’t reading a book here. We are reading one side of a conversation conducted through letters. And as I previously noted, from the side of the conversation we get to study, the little church in Corinth was a mess. In the characterization of New Testament scholar and friend Michael Halcomb, we are looking at a first-century version of The Jerry Springer Show.

In today’s text, just nine verses in, we quickly come to the end of the nice, salutary portion of the letter. Paul is employing the faithful sandwich technique. You know what I’m talking about? Start with praise, cut to the hard stuff, and end on a good note. In these early verses, Paul is looking for things to be thankful for as relates to these people. He points out their overabundance of knowledge, gifted speech, and spiritual gifts. He reminds them again of the mission of the Holy Spirit in their midst—to make them strong in the Lord and glorious expressions of the holy love of God in the world he sent his Son to save.

Remember their calling? It bears revisiting. To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours (1 Cor. 1:2).

Let’s stretch this verse out like a banner over the whole letter. We readily want to interpret our calling as something God wants us to do for him. That is actually the fruit of our calling. Our calling is not to do something; it’s to become someone. It is to become someone who, through the power of their life, words, deeds, and relationships, reminds other people of Jesus.

Let’s be very clear—this is why Paul is writing the letter.

Paul has one purpose—for the small but growing group of people in Corinth known as the church to fulfill their calling to become sanctified in Christ Jesus and become God’s holy people. This, and only this, will win the ballgame. No amount of team reorganization or new methods or better mission statements will ever do it. E. M. Bounds famously said it best, The Church is looking for better methods. God is looking for better men.

It will take the Word of God in concert with the Spirit of God to transform people of God into the image of God so they can participate in the will of God to redeem the world for God. If I had to reduce the New Testament to one sentence, that would be it.

Now, did you catch the last part of that text above?

together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours . . .

This letter is also to us. We are included in the group of people known as, all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s be paying attention.

The Prayer

Father God, thank you for this little band of first-century Christians we know as the church in Corinth. It is amazing to contemplate how you took 150 people in a city of 150,000 and unleashed the gospel of Jesus. I confess, I have focused so much on what you want me to do for you. I want to humble myself and ask, Who do you want me to become? And I want to ask you to help me become it by the power of your Word and Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The Questions

The Christian faith and church can be parsed into a hundred different possible priorities. What is the priority for you? For your church? What would it mean for you to respond to your calling to become holy? What would it not