Ponderings on 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 – 4: (3)

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:4 – 9/NASB).

This passage reminds us of Philippians 1:6, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul, as the other Apostles, saw Jesus Christ as the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End; Jesus is the One who initiates our faith and He is the One who completes our faith.

The Holy Spirit has been given to us as the guarantee of this ongoing work of Christ that will culminate in His revelation of Himself through His People and in our completion, as His People, in Him (2 Cor. 1:19 – 22; Eph. 1:13 – 14; Romans 8:18 – 25).

The work of Jesus Christ is such as to make His People blameless; it is Christ’s perfect work of justification and sanctification and glorification (Romans 8:28 – 30; Ephesians 5:25 – 27; 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – 24; 1 Corinthians 1:30-31). As Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:24, “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.” As we, by His grace, behold Jesus Christ and obediently submit to Him, He transforms us into His image. Jesus is the One who knew no sin, and yet He became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).

When our preaching and teaching is Christocentric then our lives orbit around Jesus and He is the Light of our life and we see life in and through Him. We read and hear the Scriptures through and in Him. The thoughts and intents of our hearts radiate from Him and to Him. Jesus Christ is our supreme confidence, He is the love of our lives, He is the heartbeat of the Church. When Christ is our All then we are uninterested in anything less, for nothing compares to the beauty of Jesus Christ, and we cannot desire anything other than intimate relationship with Him and the joy of seeing others come to know Him.

Considering what follows in 1 Corinthians, verses 4 – 9 may take us by surprise. Beginning in 1:10 Paul begins to deal with problems in the church, and yet, prior to 1:10 he has already started dealing with the problems, for Paul is reminding the Corinthians of who they belong to, he is reminding them of the One who began a good work in them, he is reminding them of who they really are – they are not members of a group that follows Paul or Apollos or Peter, not really, they are members of the Body of Jesus Christ.

How often do we begin to address a sinful situation by first pointing out the sin and disobedience, rather than first pointing to Jesus Christ and His perfect work? How often do we first point to our insufficiency rather than Christ’s all-encompassing sufficiency?

When we first point to Christ and His work and His holiness, then our insufficiency and sin is magnified in the light of His glory; but then we are also given hope and a way out of our disobedience as we behold His perfect obedience. Our only hope of transformation is to behold Jesus and allow Him to work in us. If Paul’s approach is foreign to our experience it demonstrates how far we have strayed from Biblical thinking and ministry.

This passage (1:3 – 9) anticipates Chapter 15, the great Resurrection chapter with its promise, “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (15:49). It also anticipates the great cry of 15:55 – 57, ““Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Verse 1:7 with its “eagerly awaiting the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” unfolds in Chapter 15.

We can minister confidently to God’s people when we affirm the perfect work of Jesus Christ in the Church, His Body. This affirmation reminds us that the work of the ministry is first and foremost the work of Jesus Christ and that we are called to be participants (to have koinonia) in His work – not to generate and sustain the work, only Christ can do the work of Christ.

Can we see how 1:3 – 9 plays into Chapter 2? We are to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified (2:2) so that our faith should not be founded on the wisdom of men but the power of God (2:5). Our trajectory in Christ found in 1:7 is connected to 2:9 – 10 which again is connected to Chapter 15.

If we are in Christ, if that which is working within us is the work of Christ, if we are indeed in the “fellowship (koinonia) of His Son” (1:9) then we ought to realize that “a natural man does not accept or understand or discern the things of the Spirit of God” (2:14), in fact, “they are foolishness to him”.

But then, do we believe this? What does our teaching and preaching tell us about what we really believe? Do we believe that only the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ and His Word to us? Do we really need the Holy Spirit to live? To understand? To preach and teach? To understand what we read and hear? Are we functionally self-sufficient? Are we submitting to the Word of God in the Spirit of God or are we superimposing a humanistic mindset on the Bible and church-life?

Do we conform our educational standards to the world? Do we conform our communication methods to the world? Do we import motivational and marketing techniques from the world?

Are we living as the People of God or as “mere men” (3:3)?

“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”” (1 Cor. 26 – 31).