Tuesday, January 14, 2014

1 Corinthians 1:1-9 - Bible Study



 This Bible Study was prepared by the Rev. Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh for the Women's 10am Wednesday Bible Study at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Orlando FL


1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth…

This letter is from Paul.  There is general agreement among scholars that this is true and hardly anyone disputes that Paul wrote this book. 

Paul is writing a church that he founded in the city of Corinth.

The text we are studying today is I Corinthians 1:1-9, but before we read any further, let’s take a look at Acts.

Paul was in the city of Corinth for a year and a half, and Luke reduces this entire time to a mere 17 verses.  Let’s see what Luke recorded for us in Acts

Acts 18:1–17.
18 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.

I’ll stop here and point out that Aquila and Priscilla are important people in the New Testament, very important in the early church – and this is their first appearance.  This is how they met Paul.

When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized. One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; 10 for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.” 11 He stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.


That is how everything began – then we jump to the end and Luke doesn’t tell us much of what happens during these 18 months – but we pick up with verse 12….

12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal. 13 They said, “This man is persuading people to worship God in ways that are contrary to the law.” 14 Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of crime or serious villainy, I would be justified in accepting the complaint of you Jews; 15 but since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves; I do not wish to be a judge of these matters.” 16 And he dismissed them from the tribunal. 17 Then all of them seized Sosthenes, the official of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of these things.
18 After staying there for a considerable time, Paul said farewell to the believers[i] and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had his hair cut, for he was under a vow.

Corinth is a city mentioned many times in the New Testament.  

It is in what we now refer to as Greece and it was not far from Athens.  In Paul’s time it had been rebuilt by the Romans as a major city and had a diverse population of Romans, Greeks and Jews.
The church there is believed to have been founded by Paul.

When the apostle Paul first visited the city (AD 51 or 52), he resided there for eighteen months (see Acts 18:1-18). Here he first became acquainted with Priscilla and Aquila with whom he worked and traveled.

Paul wrote at least two epistles to the Christian community, the I Corinthians (written from Ephesus) and II Corinthians (written from Macedonia). The first Epistle occasionally reflects the conflict between the thriving Christian church and the surrounding community.

Most scholars believe the total number of letters to Corinth was at least four.  I Corinthians implies an earlier letter. 

Paul stayed longer in Corinth than in any other city, with the single exception of Ephesus. He had left Macedonia with his life in peril and had crossed over to Athens. He had had little success there and had gone on to Corinth, where he remained for eighteen months. It would be great to know what he did for a year and a half, but Luke compresses all that time into only 17 verses.



It was when he was in Ephesus in AD 55 that Paul, learning that things were not all well in Corinth, wrote to the church there.

So with that background, let’s pick up again, starting again at verse one chapter one.

1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,



The only two times this fellow is mentioned is in the passage we read from in Acts, and here in the opening of I Corinthians.

Sosthenes is probably a Corinthian who happens to be with Paul at the time of writing (Acts 18:17). If so, Paul’s inclusion of him in the greeting and affectionately calling him a “brother” enlist one of the Corinthians’ own number in support of what he, Paul, is going to write.  

Paul is “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Undoubtedly, Paul is asserting his authority here, his right to address the Corinthians and expect to be heeded. The assertion is subtle, though.

IN the first ten verses of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the name of Jesus Christ occurs no fewer than ten times. This was going to be a difficult letter, for it was going to deal with a difficult situation – and, in such a situation, Paul’s first thought was of Jesus Christ. Paul was going to stay focused on Christ.  He wanted the readers to stay focused on Christ.

Sometimes in the Church, we try to deal with a difficult situation and we lose our focus.  I sometimes deal with church members or committees that are in conflict by reminding them that one thing we agree on is that we want to seek Christ’s will in the committee and do His work, not our work.

1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth,

This tells us something about the Church. Paul speaks of the Church of God which is at Corinth. It was not the church of Corinth; it was the Church of God. To Paul, wherever an individual congregation might be, it was a part of the one Church of God.   When we say the Apostles Creed, we say we believe in the Catholic Church, and Catholic there does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but to the Church Universal.  We as Presbyterians have to acknowledge that the unity of the church has been obscured by denominations, but there is still a spiritual unity that binds us all together.

This is important – now Paul used this type of speech often – “The church of God which is at whatever town,” but it is particularly important here because Paul is very soon going to be addressing one of the many problems in the Corinthian Church, which was division.


 1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus,

Christians are consecrated in Jesus Christ. The verb to consecrate (hagiazo) means to set a place apart for God, to make it holy, by the offering of a sacrifice upon it. Christians have been consecrated to God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to be one for whom Christ died and to know it, and to realize that that sacrifice, in a very special way, makes us belong to God.

1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, 

Called to be saints - Significantly, Paul never uses the singular form of “saint” to refer to the individual Christian
Paul describes all Christians as saints - as those who have been called to be God’s dedicated people. We have translated one single Greek word by this whole phrase. The word is hagios, which the English Bibles translate as saints. Nowadays, that does not paint the right picture for us. Hagios describes a thing or a person that has been devoted to the possession and the service of God. It is the word used to describe a temple or a sacrifice which has been marked out for God. Now, if people have been marked out as specially belonging to God, they must show themselves to be fit in life and in character for that service. That is how hagios comes to mean holy, saintly. But the root idea of the word is separation. People who are hagios are different from others because they have been separated from the ordinary run of things in order specially to belong to God. This was the adjective by which the Jews described themselves; they were the hagios laos, the holy people, the nation which was quite different from other peoples because they, in a special way, belonged to God and were set apart for his service. When Paul uses hagios to describe Christians, he means that they are different from other people because they specially belong to God and to God’s service. And that difference is to be marked not by withdrawal from ordinary life, but by showing there a quality which will mark them.

1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:


Paul addresses his letter to those who have been called in the company of those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord. Christians are called into a community whose boundaries include all earth and all heaven. It would be greatly to our good if sometimes we lifted our eyes beyond our own little circle and thought of ourselves as part of the Church of God which is as wide as the world.

1:3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul used this phrase, or something similar, many many times.  It was his greetings.  It was his way of saying, Hello, how you doing. 

1:4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,

1:5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind

1:6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you

1:7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.



Paul now strikes a complimentary note. The compliment consists in stating his recognition that the Corinthians have a wealth of gifts having to do with speech and knowledge; and this compliment gets added emphasis from his “always thanking [his] God for [the Corinthians],” from his description of their enrichment as having “confirmed” among them “the testimony about the Christ,” from his statement that as a group they “aren’t falling short in any gracious gift,” and from his description of them as “eagerly awaiting the revelation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” The details concerning the gracious gifts will follow in chapters 12–14. Meanwhile the multifaceted compliment has the purpose of winning an acceptance of Paul’s coming responses and replies. Yet to forestall the Corinthians’ taking pride in the compliment, he bases his thanking God for them on “God’s grace [= ill-deserved favor] that was given to [them] in Christ Jesus (not because of what they were or are in themselves]” and describes their enrichment in terms of “gracious gifts.”

1:8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

God is faithful – which is important, because Paul is about to remind the Corinthians that they have NOT been faithful.

 

The faithfulness of God leads Paul to be sure and confident that the Corinthians will act maturely in the faith, rather than as infants.  

No comments:

Post a Comment