Ponderings on 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 – 4 (2)

“Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 1:1-3/NASB).

One of my professors, when discussing public speaking, said, “The difference between an amateur and a professional is that an amateur will ask, “What do you want me to speak on?”; while a professional will ask, “Tell me about my audience.” To whom is Paul writing?

He is writing to the church, the called-out people of God, a collective group of people in Corinth who are in the world but not of the world; they are physically in the world but their lives, their souls, their hearts, their minds have been called out of the world (John Chapter 17; John 15:18 – 16:4; 1 John 2:15 – 17). These people no longer live by the life of the world, they once were dead but now they are alive in Christ Jesus (Romans 12:1-2; Ephesians 2:1 – 10).

This ought to challenge us. Where do we live our lives? Where is our thought life? What do our hearts ponder? What are we hungering and thirsting for? Are our congregations a distinctive people? Do our congregations manifest the priorities of God’s Kingdom or the changing values of earthly society?

Paul is writing “to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The idea of sanctification and holiness (in Greek the same word family) is twofold, carrying the meanings of being set apart unto God, and being made pure by God and unto God. In Christ we have been sanctified, we are being sanctified, and one day our sanctification will be completed and fully manifested in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:8 looks forward to the consummation of our transformation into the image of Jesus Christ).

Here is another challenge for us. There is a defective view of salvation and the plan of God which says, “God saved me to take me to heaven, therefore in this life I will be preoccupied with going to heaven.” If, when we think of “going to heaven,” we are thinking of, and anticipating, living in the deep Presence of God with His saints; if we are looking for that city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11), then we are on the right path. But if our perspective is simply one of salvation as a fire escape, well then, we are missing the plan of God – for God’s plan for humanity predates “the Fall” – and before “the Fall” there was certainly no need for a fire escape.

1 Peter 1:1 – 9 gives us a picture of our multi-faceted salvation. Peter looks backwards to the foreknowledge of God and His choosing; Peter looks at God’s present work of salvation within us, and then Peter looks forward to the completion and full manifestation of God’s sanctifying work within us. Salvation is so much more than getting a ticket punched, it is holistically our transformation into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29) as individuals and as the People of God (Ephesians 4:13).

If we think that the Christian life is about “getting saved” and then waiting to die and go to heaven the chances are that we’ll be preoccupied with ourselves, not receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in our transformation into the image of Christ, not unduly concerned with the witness and worship and transformation of the People of God (the Church), and that we’ll not be “seeking the Face of God” – that is, intimacy with the Trinity will not be important. This is akin to being delivered from slavery and still living and thinking like a slave, or to being raised from the dead and still living like a dead person (there is one to ponder), or to living like an orphaned pauper and then finding out you are the daughter or son of a king or a rich family and continuing to eat out of garbage cans.

Are we living like those who have been “called out” and who are being sanctified? Is this our mentality? Is this our heart-life? What do our actions tell us and others? Our words?

Paul is also writing to those who are “called saints” or “saints by calling.” When Paul writes to churches, with the exceptions of Galatians and the two letters to Thessalonica, he addresses his audience as “saints”, which can also be translated as “holy ones.” This word is from the same root as “sanctification” and carries the same double meaning – set apart to God and made pure by God. Once again, we have been called saints, we are being called saints, and the fulness of our sainthood will one day be fully manifested in Jesus Christ – after all, John sees a “holy city” descending from the heavens (Revelation 21:2). Are we living in that holy city today? Are we participating in the expression and descent of that City today?

If Paul knew what he was doing, if Paul knew his audience, then Paul never wrote a letter (at least an extant letter) to sinners. I am not sure why we often insist otherwise – for we are not talking about our works but rather the perfect work of God in Christ. We ought not to teach and preach the same way with the same content to the church that we do evangelistically – those are two different audiences. Granted, we often have a mixture in our congregations, but surely the center of gravity ought to be on what Christ has accomplished, on His perfect work; including His work in bringing us from darkness to light, from death to life, and from being sinners to being saints by His calling and work.

Considering what follows in 1 Corinthians – sexual immorality for example – you would think that if Paul wanted to set a motivational stage for leveraging the thinking and emotions of his readers to obedience that he would have called them miserable sinners rather than saints; but Paul knew, as we ought to know, that what Christ has accomplished Christ has accomplished; and that our identify is in Christ, not in who or what we were outside Christ. When we consider verses 4 – 9 we’ll see that Paul extends and expands this view of sanctification and being “called saints” as he confirms the work of Christ and the identity of the Corinthian believers in Christ.

This in turn plays into Chapter Two, for he appeals to the Corinthians as saints, not as those living in the natural. In Chapter Three Paul will contrast the way they are living with who they are (which he begins to do in 1:10), they are saints (1:1 – 9) but they are living like “mere men.”

If I am a sinner then it should be no surprise if I live like a sinner, but if I am a saint then it is a disgrace to live like a sinner. This is about Jesus Christ, it is not really about us.

Verses 1 – 9 also anticipate the great resurrection chapter (15), for one Day we will fully bear the image of the heavenly; we are no longer of the earth and earthly.

Paul knew his audience. Do we know our audience? Do we know who we are in Jesus Christ?

Ponderings: 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 – 4

For the past several weeks I’ve been pondering 1 Corinthians Chapter Two, paying particular attention to the idea that “the natural man does not accept or receive the things of the Spirit of God…because they are spiritually understood” (2:14). My considerations have been the result of thinking about the sacramentality of Scripture over the past year – the idea that we truly encounter Christ through the Scripture, that Scripture is a means of grace.

I have heard that Augustine said something to the effect of, “When we encounter Scripture we encounter the face of God.” I haven’t found the actual quote from Augustine, I’ve heard it and read it quoted, but without a citation. Whether Augustine actually wrote it or said it, it is in keeping with his high sacramental view of Scripture. Luther, as I recall, viewed preaching as a sacramental event, something of which I’ve long been conscious.

If what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians Chapter Two is true, then only the Holy Spirit can reveal the Bible to us. This means that as valuable as various forms of exegesis may be, and as valuable as understanding history may be, and as valuable as historical context may be (and we aren’t always certain about close historical context) – that none of these things can take the place of the Holy Spirit and an encounter with Christ in and through the Bible. A fair reading of John Chapters 13 – 17 suggests that, if we are to believe Jesus, the Holy Spirit is vital to us understanding the Word of God and the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Again, a fair reading of the New Testament and of its authors’ use of the Old Testament challenges those of us trained in Enlightenment and naturalistic exegesis to conclude that either: 1) the authors had special insight into certain Old Testament passages and that access to such insight is no longer available, 2) or the authors misinterpreted the Old Testament, 3) or just perhaps our training has shut us off from the possibility that the Holy Spirit is still revealing Jesus Christ in and through the entire Bible, including the OT – which of course would be in harmony with both the teaching of Christ in Luke 24 and with the way the Gospel was communicated both orally and in writing in the New Testament period and in the Early Church.

It is possible to have a high view of Scripture but not a high functional view of the Holy Spirit. It is possible to be thoroughly trained in exegesis, in historical disciplines, in ancient languages, and hold to a high view of Scripture, and yet to not encounter the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ in Isaiah, Leviticus, Job, Joel, and throughout the Psalms. What was natural to Jesus Christ and his apostles and their associates has become foreign to us. In Luke Chapter 24 Jesus reveals himself to his disciples in and through the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (what we call the Old Testament), and yet we generally fail to experience the revelation of Christ in this manner and we fail to model this sacramental and revelatory way of seeing Jesus Christ and teaching Jesus Christ, as Christ himself and his apostles demonstrated to us. While the Church Fathers had their faults, just as we do, many of them did not fail to strive to follow the manner of teaching that they received from the First Century Church – they looked for Christ throughout the entire Bible, and in looking for Christ they not only found him, they also found his Church – in doing this they did what the inspired writers of the New Testament did, they encountered Jesus Christ sacramentally from Genesis – Malachi. This heritage of transcendence is something we’ve lost; when we read Hebrews 12:18 – 29 we generally have no idea what we are reading, we have no sacramental connection with “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…the general assembly of the firstborn…” In Galatians 4:21 – 31 we cannot look the text in its face and actually believe that “the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.” We who are earthbound cannot do this, we can’t see what we can’t see.

In fact, when we read much of the NT book of Hebrews we simply cannot fathom what the inspired author is saying because not only is he holistically integrating the Old Testament into the Gospel, but he is also moving between heaven and earth, between the seen and the unseen, in a seamless manner that is alien to our materialistic and naturalistic way of thinking, of exegesis, and of teaching and preaching. In fact, the author is saying in effect, “Do you want to see the Gospel? Let’s look at the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.” He is also saying, “Do you want to understand the Tabernacle of Moses? Then let’s look beyond what the natural eye sees into what exists in the heavens.”

Much of the professing church has become functional Marcionites. We give lip-service to the Old Testament but we don’t read it; and when we do read it we do not expect to encounter Jesus Christ pouring through its pages, its images, its paradigms, its history; nor do we expect to see the Church. We have split the One New Man of Ephesians 2:11 – 22 and don’t see the carnage.

Well, the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22). Some of us are looking for signs, for a therapeutic message; others are looking for the approval of the academy born of the Enlightenment – naturally we will defend our positions, but really, when we come down to the essentials, do we really need the Holy Spirit in our preaching and teaching? Do we really need the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus Christ from Genesis – Malachi, and then from Matthew – Revelation? Are we and our congregations encountering Christ in and through the Scriptures?

And so I was led to ponder 1 Corinthians Chapter Two, but I think in order to do that I need to ponder its context, why is this chapter in Paul’s trajectory in this letter? So it seems good to me, and I hope the Holy Spirit, to ponder chapters 1 – 4 in Paul’s Corinthian letter. Let’s believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him diligently (Hebrews 11:6).