A Study of 1 Corinthians (4)

 Thanksgiving

⁴ I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. ⁵ For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— ⁶ God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. ⁷ Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. ⁸ He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

As usual Paul opens with a word of thanksgiving for those to whom he is writing. The Corinthians are recipients of God’s grace and that is more than enough for Paul to be grateful for. “In Christ Jesus” there is a good hope for even the most fractious and troublesome church that God’s grace will keep them and deliver them “blameless” at the end (v.8).

Grace, as we have seen, forms this community in the midst of the Roman Empire into a new people. This people is distinguished from the empire by its anti-imperial ways and allegiance to God rather than Caesar.

“Messiah Jesus serves as an anti-imperial figure against the pretensions of the Roman empire, with its boast to have united all the peoples of the world (2:6–9). The fellowship of the called is the superordinate group with which the Corinthians are to relate most, above their allegiance to the provincial governing authorities or any other expression of Roman imperialism in the Greek east, whose power is fleeting (2:6)”. (Tucker, Reading 1 Corinthians, 36)

Rhetoric and knowledge were highly prized in the empire. Oratory and philosophy gave one status, recognition, and credibility. In Christ the church in Corinth received similar gifts – with a major ironic twist!

-Speech: In 2:1-4 Paul says he eschewed lofty rhetoric and “wise and persuasive words” depending instead on the words given by the Spirit about the cross of Jesus and the power of God for his ministry.

-knowledge: in 1:20ff. Paul rejects the wisdom of this world for the foolishness of Christ crucified as his knowledge.

This kind of speech and knowledge, though not perhaps up to the standards of the 1^st century Roman intelligentsia brings the credibility that strengthens this church’s witness to Christ (v.6).

Here is a specimen of the cruciform hermeneutic Paul employs in his ministry and the striking reversals in policy and practice it brings to church life. Such a hermeneutic is badly needed in Corinth as will soon become clear. Much of their policy and practice is a religiously-veneered imperial ideology in need of conversion. And such conversion is what Paul seeks in this letter. 

Paul begins by affirming their identity in Christ (as we have seen). He adds to that the assurance that “in every way” (v.5) they are “not lacking in any spiritual gift” (v.7) as they live oriented to the Christ who will be revealed to everyone as Lord and Messiah (v.7).

The foundation is now laid for Paul to take on the problems he has become aware of in Corinth that fail to demonstrate this cruciform witness and credibility to the world. For “God is faithful” and we will bear his family likeness by the grace in which we have been called (v.9).