A Study of 1 Corinthians (3): 1:1-3

 

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

² 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:

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

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned incest, homosexuality, speaking in tongues, or women in the church yet. That’s because these topics tend to grab our interest and distract us from the whole thrust of 1 Corinthians. So I have tried to set that larger context before mentioning “those” hot-button topics. We will get to them in due time.  

Paul, and Sosthenes in some way, are collaborators in this letter. We know little about Sosthenes but what is important here is to note that Paul is not a “Lone Ranger” apostle. He has a wide network of connections and other “collaborators” in his letters. We don’t know how much or what kind of input they had in his theologizing and writing but it is not far-fetched to believe they discussed and debated his ideas or added their own in writing his letters. Pastors and teachers, take note! Your vocations are not to solitude or for the lonely genius. We all need help and we need each other.

Both Paul (and Sosthenes) and the Corinthian church are “called” (vv.1,2) to belong to God. God does the calling, the decisive work in making us his. Yet there remains room in this divine work for human beings to “call” out to God (v.2)!

In his Narnia story C. S. Lewis tells how a young girl enters Narnia for the first time, gets separated from her friend who had been there before, and ends up face to face with great Lion Aslan, the Christ-figure in the stories. Aslan tells her friend is safe and they are in Narnia because he called them there. The girl answers back,

“’I was wondering—I mean—could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to—to Somebody—it was a name I wouldn’t know—and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open.’ ‘You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,’ said the Lion.” (Lewis, C. S.. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia Book 6) (p. 23). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition)

Paul calls this church, which we will soon learn is far from a “good” church, “sanctified” and “called to be holy.” This is temple language, priestly language in the first place. Just as everything set apart by Israel from priests to utensils was “sanctified” or “holy,” set apart for God’s use, so is this church along with all others who call on Christ. Holiness or sanctification has to do with our “set apartness” for God’s service as priests in God’s new temple, the body of Christ (ch.12).

There is, of course, a moral aspect to this holiness. And like the priests in Israel’s temple, the priests in the church struggle with this aspect and often fail. That is what the rest of the letter is about. But here in his greeting Paul establishes this community’s identity, the theme we saw above he spends the first four chapters of this letter reinforcing. Then he turns to the matter of ethics. But “sanctified,” “holy,” “set apart” to serve in God’s new temple is who these Corinthians are in Christ.

“Grace and peace” is a typical Pauline greeting. “Grace” was a typical Hellenistic greeting, like “Good day” in English. Grace means far more than that for Paul and when combined with “peace” signals both the source and goal of God’s plan for us and for our world. God’s unilateral and undeserved goodness toward us is a transforming power at work in us to make us the “set apart” people he called us to be.

And “peace” is that for which we were set apart – the grand vision God has of a world that lives in peaceful fellowship, generosity, and caring on this good creation, God’s creational temple where he will dwell with us forever!