Trinity 18

1 Cor. 1:1-9

October 8, 2023

There are many congregations, but one church. The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church finds its expression in local assemblies. That’s what the word church means: assembly. Today’s Epistle reading is a letter to one of those local assemblies: “To the church of God that is in Corinth.”

We tend to think of Christianity in individual terms, a private faith, a personal experience or decision. Certainly the individual is involved, but Paul writes to Corinth as he does to all the other local congregations: collectively: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In dogmatic explanations of the Faith, sanctification describes the new life of obedience that follows baptism. But here, the Apostle describes sanctification as a past event describing a current reality. You already were sanctified—set apart, made holy—when you were baptized. It’s not a description of morality, but a status before God: He set you apart, consecrated you, declared you to be holy. The verb, the action word sanctified is the exact same word in noun form in the next phrase: called to be saints. When you were sanctified, you were sainted, made a saint. But this never happens alone (by yourself).

That’s why Paul then tells us who all the saints are: “together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Saints are those who call upon the Name. In the primitive world, two families of man develop: those who call on the Name of YHWH, and those who seek to make a name for themselves. That was the purpose of the Tower of Babel. Gen. 11: “They said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves’” (v4).

Fallen man seeks to make a name for himself. Saints call upon Another.

How did that happen? How did these saints come to call upon the Name? They were given grace: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.” Grace was given. Grace is given. Meaning, it is not, can not be earned.

What does grace do? It makes saints rich. Not the riches our weak flesh dreams of; the riches of grace are in knowledge and changed speech. “In every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge.”

All of this is preparation for what he will teach them later in the Epistle. The problems in Corinth are many. But they stem from one source: pride. The congregation is deeply divided because of the pride of the members. Paul will chastise them because of their sexual immorality, but he will chastise them just as severely for their mistreatment of each other. He exhorts them to examine themselves, and come to the Table as repentant, judging not others but themselves.

We shouldn’t be surprised to find problems in the church. Preaching on this same text on October 15, 1536, Luther told his congregation, “The devil never takes a vacation when the Gospel is purely preached, but interferes among God’s children and also sows his seed.”

Paul is pointing the Corinthians outside of themselves to Jesus. Nine times in nine verses he repeats some reference to Jesus: Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This constant repetition is like the line from the movie Miracle ascribed to Herb Brooks: The name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back.

There are no lone-ranger Christians. You have been “called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Maintaining that fellowship, that koinōnia, is an utmost aim for the church, the assembly.

Where there is a fracture in the assembly, reconciliation is needed. Reconciliation is not a therapeutic process overseen by counselors. It is a matter of penitent sinners confessing their sins one to another. That’s what saints, holy people, do.

Holy people are called to lead holy lives. The holiness that St. Paul refers to at the beginning of 1 Cor., says D.G. Peterson,

“Can hardly refer to holiness of character or conduct, since Paul spends much time in this letter challenging the Corinthians’ values and behaviour, calling them to holiness in an ethical sense. He does this on the basis that they are already sanctified in a relational sense, but need to express that sanctification in [their lives]” (New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, 548).

Later Paul will warn them that if they don’t repent, they can lose their status as God’s holy people. So he calls them to examine themselves, confess their sins to God and each other.

Here’s the way Martin Chemnitz put it. Martin Chemnitz was the great sixteenth-century teacher who showed beyond question that the Lutheran confession was in keeping with the teaching of the ancient church. He cites, for example, St. Ambrose’s comment about 1 Cor. 1:4, “Grace is given in Christ Jesus in such a way that it is thereby established by God that he who believes in Christ shall be saved, without works, by faith alone, freely receiving the remission of sins” (Loci Theologici, p499). You can see there that the Reformation formulation of grace alone, faith alone, apart from works, is consistent with the teaching of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and the teacher of St. Augustine. But he then goes on, “But this warning should be added: The true meaning of justifying faith is understood best of all in serious exertions of repentance.” This is what our assembly needs most of all: serious exertions of repentance.

St. Paul then points the repentant saints forward to the goal of Christ’s holy people. We confess that goal each week at the conclusion of the Creed: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” The Epistle puts it this way: “as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Revealing means openly showing something already present. The reign of Christ is already at work. The world sees it not, but you see it at a baptism, at the Eucharist, and when two saints forgive each other.

Let grace come, and this world pass away; for your Lord Jesus “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” +INJ+