The Apostle Paul had been in Corinth for several years helping to build and grow a Christian church there. As an evangelist he was always wanting to get things started, establish local leadership and press on into the horizon to establish another and another church. His message was urgent, his preaching was unvarnished and, more importantly, it was imbued with love. He pushed off from the shore of the new Christian church in Corinth, but kept in touch with them. We have two of his letters to them preserved as 1st and 2nd Corinthians.
It is clear from his letters that he loved these Christians in Corinth. What love had filled Paul’s life? It was the love of God through Jesus Christ. In several of his letters, we can read the accounts of his pre-Christian behavior, describing himself as having been a powerful and loveless religious leader, bent on the destruction of those new Christians. But then he became one of them. That day on the Damascus road he was struck down by the weight and beauty of the pure, altruistic love of Christ Jesus. From that point forward not only was Paul converted to the way of Christ, but he continued to grow and mature as a Christian. For a lengthy time he sat under the steady teaching of Aquilla and Pricilla, discipled and guided by folks who became his trusted friends. The suffering and persecution he experienced as a Christian also shaped him. There is little doubt that his skills as a religious leader and scholar prior to knowing Christ were transformed as he worked with new bodies of believers to help plant the Christian Church of Jesus Christ.
So, when he got word that members of the Corinthian church were squabbling like children, he had to address it. It’s important for us to be realistic about this situation, especially in relationship to identity and maturity. In all likelihood this church was a very young church with very young Christians. Not that they were all youth, by any means. But in the timeline of the New Testament, they had not been a religious organization for long at all. Think about this. What kinds of growth, jostling and exploration might they have been doing as a relatively newly-gathered group of people trying to be like Christ together and toward the world? It is easy to assume that the Corinthian church was a well-formed, mature body of believers. But it was not. They were learning how to have appropriate structures of governance and accountability. They were still experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in new and fresh ways. They were still learning how to be loving. They were still immature. They were still struggling with their identities in the Corinthian culture.
Not only were they immature, but they also were deeply entrenched in their culture. Craig Keener gives us a quick synopsis of the culture in which these Christians lived.
“Corinth was one of the major urban centers of the ancient Mediterranean and one of the most culturally diverse cities in the [Roman] empire. A Greek city by location, the capital of Achaea (which made up most of Greece), Corinth had been a Roman colony for about a century, resettled by Romans after its destruction, and Greek and Latin cultures coexisted and sometimes clashed here. Its location on the isthmus of Corinth, a short land route across Greece that spared seafarers the more treacherous voyage around the south of Greece, made it a prosperous mercantile community. Its mercantile character contributed to the presence of foreign religions and may have accelerated the level of sexual promiscuity, although promiscuity was characteristic of Greek male culture in general. Corinth was known for its prosperity, and the proverbial sexual looseness of ancient Greek Corinth seems to have continued in Roman Corinth as well.”
“Roles were determined by social status in antiquity, and those with wealth and power preferred religious, philosophical and political ideologies that supported their base of power . . . status ideals, although theological errors were involved, the biggest issue was that people were not getting along. The conflicting values of diverse groups in the broader society had been carried over into the church as divisive issues.”[1]
What are some of the first “natural” things humans do
when faced with conflict and division?
What is at stake? Often when someone’s identity is attacked or they feel
insecure about who they are, they lash out. They are trying to answer these
fundamental questions.
• Who am I?
• What is my place in the world?
• Who do I belong to?
• How can/do I contribute?
It seems apparent that some of the new Corinthian Christians were struggling with their identities. And this was creating profound and disturbing divisions in the church. Paul, as the found of this church and traveling to establish other churches, had to write them some letters. These are occasional letters – not every now and then, but written for a particular situation or occasion. Therefore, when we read them, they are quite like listening in on only one side of the conversation. However, in 1 Corinthians, Paul has had some visitors and they had brought him some first-hand reports of identity problems and division in this church.
So, what was Paul’s tack in approaching these issues?
1. He told the who he was. We read in 1 Corinthians 1;1 “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” It is quite clear that Paul knew who he was. This calling and his following of Jesus was what gave him not only the strength, power and authority to call out corrupt behavior, but to give from the vast well of love that God had given him for them.
2. He told them who they were already in Jesus Christ first. They were not citizens of Corinth. They were citizens of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. He called out their new identities over them. We can’t just breeze by these initial verses, because they establish the ground from which Paul can admonish them to grow into the kind of Christians that he knew they could be!
Read I Corinthians 1:2-9.
Can you list out all of the declarations of identity that Paul speaks over them?
· A church of the One True God (not a political, social entity or pagan religion) v. 2
· Sanctified in Christ Jesus v. 2
· Called to be His holy people v. 2
· Together will all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ – everywhere v. 2
· Grateful to be members v. 4
· Covered by God’s grace v. 4
· Enriched in every way, and in speech and knowledge, by being in God through Christ Jesus v. 5
· With Christ among them v. 5
· God-confirmed v. 6
· Not lacking in any spiritual gift v. 7
· Awaiting the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ v. 7
· Kept firm by Christ to the end – for a blameless life v. 8
· Called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. v. 9
That’s an amazing list of positive gifts that Paul said they already had from God! Because they placed their faith in Jesus Christ they were already transformed into citizens of the Kingdom of God. But they were not yet certain of their identities in Christ. And this led to a lot of trouble and division.
Read I Corinthians 1:10-17.
These dear Christians were getting things very wrong. Richard Thompson wrote: “Believers still had too much ‘Corinth’ in them.”[2] There were many great tragedies in the Corinthian church that Paul articulated. The first was mistaken identity. They were not of Christ. They were still identifying themselves with other people—deriving from them their position in society. Their roles were determined by social status—power by association. Human power was preferred over the power of Jesus Christ—which could help them overcome their weaknesses and sin. They were clinging to philosophical and political ideologies to support their base of power and their positions in the church. This led to fractured fellowship, disunity and division.
One of the great tragedies was that Jesus Christ was lowered to the same status as any other human and used as a tool to declare their human power. He was just one of the bunch – not the Supreme Sacrifice and Savior!
Paul didn’t need to spend a lot of time on himself because he knew the greatest need was for Jesus Christ to dwell and rule in their hearts. The Wycliffe Bible Commentary states: “Paul is not defending himself against opponents but addressing the misbehavior of the Corinthians . . .The Gospel must never be presented as a human philosophical system, it must be preached as a salvation.”[3] Kevin Anderson described that the Corinthian Church needed to be perfectly united in purpose, restored to proper condition, rearticulating bones out of joint.[4]
And all of this is so that they could follow the teaching of the Savior, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) The Source of true Christian identity is not found in our culture, our politics, or our particular Christian practices. It is found in Jesus Christ! With him as our singular focus, divisions and disputes can melt into forgiveness, understanding, prayer, compassion, and love—real love for our Christian brothers and sisters.
What did the non-believers in Corinth learn about Christianity through the un-Christ-like behavior of some of the people in the Corinthian church? Why would they be attracted to Jesus Christ when they saw this or heard of it? What of our churches today?
We need to return to the fundamental questions of identity as Christians by answering these questions.
• Who am I? Where is my identity grounded?
• What is my place in the world?
• Who do I belong to?
• How can/do I contribute?
Perhaps we can all declare these statements together:
• I am a disciple of Jesus Christ – learning how to be like Him in all ways.
• I find my identity in Him and can effect positive changes through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• I belong to Christ and His Church – becoming who I can be in Him.
• I contribute to the Church and the world by – forgiving, offering grace, being humble and prayerful, and declaring the Gospel which I have gladly received.
Amen
© M.R.Hyde 2024
[1] IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1993, p. 451-452
[2] Illustrated Bible Life, Spring 2024, The Foundry Press, Kansas City, MO.
[3] Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL 1990, p. 1231
[4] Illustrated Bible Life, Spring 2024, The Foundry Press, Kansas City, MO.
