Over these next few weeks, we’ll be listening to what Paul is saying in the early part of his letter.  There are a few things to keep in mind about Corinth.  The population was nearly two hundred thousand.  It was one of the major cosmopolitan ports of the empire.  Corinth was a highly civilized, highly cultured place.  A port brings together people from all over: great wealth and staggering poverty—just think New York, Los Angeles, Houston.  The editors of the Jerusalem Bible remind us that big, cosmopolitan Corinth was also “a magnet to every sort of philosophy and religion.”  All kinds of ideas are in the air in Corinth.  You could try anything you liked, mix and match.  The longer that ideas are in contact with one other, the more they begin to mix, hybridize.  Red and blue blend into many hues of purple.  One religion and another start mixing into Coexist.  It’s all right, good, and fine in its own way.  It’s true if it’s true for you.  If anything and everything is right, in its own way, can any of it be wrong, just wrong, plain wrong?  No, of course not.  How could anyone say so?  How could anyone know?  Corinth.

A bustling, populous port—commerce, money, ideas all mingling, mixing.  I’ve been to New York City several times.  I’ve always enjoyed it.  There’s something exciting about the place.  There’s also something intimidating, and not just the crime or the subway system.  You can become part of New York, but New York is never going to become you.  You go there to become like it.

Finally, Corinth, “was also a notorious center of immorality.”  The chief deity of the city was Aphrodite, goddess of (sexual) love, so you can guess how that devotion was going to be honored.  If it feels good, it can’t be bad, right?  If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.  The Romans in the days of the empire had different notions about morality than we have: Christianity truly has had an impact on society.  Things that would shock even us in our time were not shocking to those living in Corinth.  Whatever morally disturbs you in these times was just another flavor at the buffet in Corinth.  Want to live on the wild side?  Corinth offered whatever wild you wanted.

And church planters had come and established a congregation for Jesus Christ in Corinth.  Those who came into the church came in from Corinth, but not always out of Corinth, not completely, perfectly.  Corinth remained with those who came into the church, still leaning Corinth’s way.  We are in the world, yet we are no longer to be of the world.  We are in Corinth, but we are no longer to be of Corinth.  Sure.  Simple.  No.  Our walk, as you and I know, is never whole-hearted or impeccable.  Problems come when we start thinking  our walk is more righteous than it actually is.  But how could we ever know it wasn’t, really?  Who could show us, tell us?   How could we hear that and agree?

Paul had spent time in Corinth before; the believers knew him.  He begins by reminding them why he does what he does, and why it’s good to bother listening to him.  “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (1:1).  One whom God willed to be an apostle.  Paul did not seize this authority and responsibility.  God gave these.  That’s quite a claim.  Paul shares it in all humility: I’m not writing to you as if I myself were anything or anyone.  God pulled me out of the sadly, badly mistaken life I was living and set me on a new way.  I’m writing to tell you, remind you about this new way.  It’s not like the old way.  It can’t be.  Whatever looks like the old way, whatever keeps leaning toward the old way or still wants to hold on to parts of it—that’s not the new way.  Jesus had helped Paul to see his blindness; Jesus had given Paul sight.

This apostle addresses “the church of God in Corinth” (1:2).  Yes, God has a church in Corinth.  That’s saying something.  A church?  In Corinth?  Not likely!  Even in Corinth.  God has established a beachhead.  It must be defended.  The offensive must continue; the momentum must continue.  And there’s the problem.  Who wants to be offensive?  Who wants to be a living offense in their society, their culture, their shop, office, classroom, their family?  Isn’t that just to call down upon yourself condemnation?  Isn’t that just stupidity, the height of foolishness?  No, don’t be offensive; don’t go on the offensive.  Just get along.  You’ve got to go along to get along, right?  “When in Corinth,” ha ha.

Now, God has established a church in Corinth.  Paul writes of the church as “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” (1:2).  We’re part of something much bigger.  We don’t see it very clearly.  We tend to see what’s next to us and near—that shapes our view of the world.  But Christians are connected in ways we don’t always easily discern.  The church is the gathering of the sanctified.  The saints.

Corinth knew about sanctification.  People were sanctifying themselves left and right: you could go to Aphrodite’s temple and see them sanctifying themselves any which way.  But the church wasn’t the gathering of those who sanctified themselves, just as the apostle, in and as himself, was nothing.  The church, as Paul wrote, was the gathering of “those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people.”  Not self-sanctified but Christ-sanctified.  Sanctified—that means being changed for life on God’s terms.  Christ changes his sanctified ones, us.  We are “called to be his holy people.”  We know love looks like something.  Holiness, righteousness —life on God’s terms—looks like something, too.

But the change Paul points to isn’t primarily about what we do or don’t do, though it certainly includes that.  No, the nature of the change is clear from what Paul wishes for the disciples: “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3).  That’s what’s new for us, what’s different.  Grace.  Peace.  From God.  Our Father.  Those outside the church don’t have that; yes, some have been seeking it and not finding, and many in Corinth haven’t been seeking such things at all.  Those full-blooded, full-bodied Corinthians of Corinth don’t have peace from God.  They aren’t at peace with God.  Their lives show it.  Their choices, words, and actions, their desires and aims all clearly demonstrate that, whatever they’re living for, it isn’t for God.  The church lives for God.  It can’t live for God if it’s still living for Corinth, according to Corinth.  Not according to Corinth’s ways but according to God’s Word.

God’s grace is evident in the church.  Without that grace there could be no church.  Without Christ there could be no church because there would be no saving grace.  “I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus” (1:4).  Saving grace changes us.  In Christ, you and I now are walking, breathing, thinking, loving instances of the grace of God at work.  Grace, mercy, and justice.  Justice—that’s getting what we have coming to us.  God has a different idea about what people deserve; God has different ideas about justice.  Mercy—that’s not getting what we deserve.  And grace?  Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.  Grace is a gift.  The church is not the church because it deserves to be.  The church does not enjoy the peace of God because we have deserved that peace.  The peace is a gift.

What a staggering, fearful, wonderful thing it is, when people gather for God knowing that gathering is a gift, that God has called and gathered them not because of anything special or particular about them: their worthiness, for example, their brilliance or rectitude.  Thank God I’m not like those people.  Thank God I’m smarter than all of them put together.  Thank God my values are superior to theirs.  No.  That’s not the way.  That’s not grace.  Thank you, God, for wanting me, for no reason other than that You do.  I can’t figure it out.  I can’t understand it.  I don’t even know what to do about it, but I want to.  Teach me?  There it is—there’s grace, the sound of grace, God, and love at work.  God has something to teach, and we—me, you, all of us—have something to learn.  We are lifelong learners, disciples.

Christ is grace for us.  God wants us.  This gift of God is enriching us in the Spirit: “For in [Christ] you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you” (1:5-6).  Paul came among them with signs of power in confirmation of his divine mission, but the point he wants to emphasize is that he came to them in Christ.  Christ is change: have the speech of Christ, the knowledge of Christ.  Christ changes what we say because he changes what we know.  Christ is grace.  Grace is change: not getting what we deserve but what we have not deserved.  It all depends upon what we believe, at heart, we deserve.  Corinth had taught them one thing, ingrained it.  Paul is telling them something else.

Later in his letter, Paul comes back to these gifts of changed speech and changed knowledge.  Believers who had come in from Corinth and remained still too much of Corinth had come to place more value on signs of power—speaking in tongues, for example—than signs of grace: the Word, faith, which is the knowledge of God.  No one can know God without faith.  If you don’t know God, you cannot love God.  The Corinthian Christians were stumbling into the trap of loving the outward rather than the inward things, the feelings rather than the faith.

In the church, the outward things—what can be seen with the eyes, heard with the ears, tasted with the tongue, felt with the hands—the physical—these do not point to themselves.  In the church, the outward points to the inward, the hidden, the mystery—the things of God.  The hidden places in the heart: that’s where God has come to dwell and where He is at work.  Paul wrote to the believers, telling them that they did indeed have spiritual gifts, and that these gifts were there for them as they “eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed” (1:7).  Christians live in expectation, in eagerness—have believers today lost touch with that?

Eager expectation for Jesus to be revealed: what could that mean—the Second Coming, Judgment Day?  That’s part of what he means.  Now, let’s also think this through further.  Waiting for Christ to be revealed.  Where is Christ revealed?  How is Christ revealed?  In the church, through the church.  We’re not gathering here every Sunday solely for our benefit.  We also gather, Sunday after Sunday, so that we can then go and be of some benefit to others, so that we, to whom Christ has been revealed, may then go and reveal Christ to others.  Others are waiting, even longing, for Christ to be revealed, too.  Grace is given to be given.  This helps to flesh out what Paul says when he writes that it’s Jesus Christ who “will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:8).  Firm, not vacillating, neglectful, or wandering off; firm, helping others to encounter Christ.

To be in the church in Corinth is continually to feel the pull of Corinth.  What help?  What hope?  Paul assures us the church is for hope.  Church—here, us—is encounter with Christ, and Christ is hope; he is help!  It’s the encounter with Christ that enables us, equips us to be firm in vacillating, neglectful times.  This opening section of Paul’s letter closes with strong, encouraging words: “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1:9).  God called Paul; God called you.  God calls us into the fellowship of Christ.  That fellowship is the only way through Corinth, the only way out of Corinth.  God doesn’t change Corinth.  In Corinth, He changes one, and another, and another.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.