Alba 1-12-2025
GOD IS FAITHFUL
I Corinthians 1:1-9
The New Year is a time for making resolutions. Have any of you made some this year? Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan preacher and theologian who lived in the 1700's took pen in hand and wrote out his resolutions. He wisely started his list with these words:
“Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat Him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to His will, for Christ’s sake.” Then he added the note to himself, “Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.” And what follows is a list of 70 things he felt would be important to his life.
I won't read them to you here, but I think they could be summarized by saying that Jonathan Edwards wanted to be faithful in his love and service to God and mankind. Today we live in a society that looks for loopholes to excuse unfaithful behavior. I understand that there was a greeting card which said, "I can’t promise you forever, but I can promise you today."
I am thankful that God's faithfulness lasts day after day. Jeremiah wrote, “Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23
Indeed, if you want to define faithfulness. it is revealed in the character of the God we serve. God is Faithful. Deuteronomy 7:9 tells us, “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.” And Psalm 119:89-91 says, “Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides. They continue this day according to Your ordinances, For all are Your servants.
Our God who does not change, and cannot fail, is faithful. He is faithful to His own character, He is faithful to His promises, He is faithful to His judgments and His continued care for you and for me. That is what I Corinthians 1:9 in our text for today states clearly. God is faithful.
The apostle Paul was writing to this fairly young church in the city of Corinth, a major city in Greece. Paul first came to this city on his second missionary journey. There in Corinth, he ran into Aquila and Priscilla, two Jewish believers who had recently arrived from Rome. Paul lived with them and joined them in working at their common trade as tent makers so as to support himself. And Paul began preaching the gospel to any and all who would listen. He preached regularly in the synagogue and stayed there about one and a half years, but Jewish opposition increased. Then he left Aquilla and Pricilla in charge. All this is recorded in Acts chapter 18.
But notice here in I Corinthians chapter one that Paul includes a person with the name Sosthenes in his greeting. In Acts 18, a man named Sosthenes led an attack on Paul before the Roman procounsel. After the case against Paul fell apart, Sosthenes was seized and beaten by the crowd there. If this is the same Sosthenes as the man who opposed Paul in Acts 18, it would be yet more evidence of the transforming power of the gospel. Knowing the power of God and the fact that this Sosthenes was known to the people in Corinth, it is certainly a possibility that they are the same man; although it cannot be known for sure. It is clear that this Sosthenes is with Paul, perhaps as his secretary, writing down the words of this letter.
Something else that is important to see in the first verses of this letter. The name of Jesus Christ is mentioned nine times in the first nine verses. The Apostle Paul wanted the minds of the Corinthians, and all who are Christians today, to keep their focus on Jesus Christ.
Look at verse two. The letter is addressed “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Our God is faithful to us, and in His faithfulness He has made us:
1. Sanctified In Christ (vs. 2)
The great blessing is that we are sanctified. That means, we are saints! Saint, sanctified, sanctify, sanctification, purify, consecrate, holy, holiness, all come from the same Greek root word. The words purify, consecrate, dedicate, and perfect are related verbs, and are helpful in understanding the concept. Its meaning is of one being set apart. Simply put, God has made us holy.
The church is made up of people who have been “sanctified,” (hagiazo) set apart for God, people He has made holy because they have accepted Jesus’ sacrificial death for themselves. It is through the cross of Jesus that God sanctifies people. And His people continue to be sanctified through their identity with Christ. God has set us apart for a special use.
You and I are called to be saints, servants of the living God. Servants of our Savior who took on the form of man, who bore our sins on the cross, who died to pay our sin debt and then rose again on the third day. The church in Corinth, and we, no longer belong to this old world. We belong to God. In Christ, He has made us His own people. Hebrews 10:10 says it, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to be different. We are different! It is nothing to be ashamed of, for God has made that difference in our lives.
In Paul’s first word in this letter, he strongly reinforces the true identify of those who call upon the name of the Lord. They are saints in spite of some obvious inconsistencies in their lives. The church at Corinth was full of problems – and its into this situation that the apostle Paul writes what we have here as First Corinthians.
The city of Corinth was known as the “Crossroads of the Roman Empire.” It was prosperous and important; cosmopolitan and multi-cultural. The people there were intellectually alert, materially successful, and morally corrupt. Its population was something near a half-million people. What religion there was at Corinth centered around the polytheistic gods of Greco-Roman mythology.
Corinth was especially known for the temple that sat above the city. It was a temple built for the worshipers of the goddess of love, Aphrodite. The religious tradition of this temple involved a ritual prostitution. The city had gained a well known reputation for corruption. Its very name became synonymous with gross immorality, and evil behavior. In modern terms it was the “Las Vegas” of the time. To behave as a Corinthian was a synonym for leading a low, shameless and immoral life.
And as you read this first letter to the Corinthian church, you find that they still had a lot of growing to do to be what God would want in their lives. Someone said that there was a church in Corinth, but also a lot of Corinth in the church.
Still, Paul communicates an attitude of thankfulness as he writes to them because God’s grace is a fact in the church of Corinth. With all of their problems, they were still the people of God. They were still “the church of God in Corinth.” (1:2) Corinth is a church that is very much in trouble, yet Paul recognizes that they are God’s people, not his. And he wants to remind them who they are in Christ. They are saints, set apart for God as His people.
Do you know who you are? Well, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, I can describe you. You are sanctified. You are cleaned up, repaired, and put back into operation. You have been made whole. In practice you may still sin at times but, because of your position in Christ, you are a pure saint. In Christ, our faithful God has made us holy. Therefore we must remember our position, and we need to act as holy people.
And God in His faithfulness has caused us to be:
2. Enriched in Everything (vs. 5)
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In I Corinthians 1:4-5 Paul says, “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge.” Paul uses a word that means to cause someone to become rich, to enrich, to make rich, to cause to have abundance.
God had enriched these believers in everything. We can know that God faithfully provides all that is truly needed. Every aspect of our life is made rich because of our identification with Jesus. In II Corinthians 8:9 Paul writes to these same people telling them, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”
God, in His grace has caused us to be blessed and graced and enriched and sanctified by reason of our being in Christ. It is our identity with Jesus that enables God to open the flood gates of continual spiritual blessings.
This says that God had given the Corinthian believers the ability to learn about the things of God (knowledge) and to speak of eternal truths (utterance). God makes sure we are not deficient in accomplishing His purposes. The Corinthians were not lacking in any spiritual gifts. They were lacking in spiritual maturity. They were lacking in moral purity. Both of which Paul has to deal with later in this letter. But they were not lacking any spiritual gifts. The church in Corinth had more than they needed! They had knowledge of divine truths, ability to teach those biblical truths to others and the ability to live them out. God is faithful, and obedient children of God enjoy all the favors promised in the Bible and walk in the abundant life promised by our Lord.
Also, God in His faithfulness can make us to be:
3. Confirmed to the End (vs.8)
Confirmed is a legal term that refers to a guarantee that settles a transaction. It also means to strengthen and sustain inwardly. In this case it refers to a firmness in Christ-like character. Verse eight says that God, “will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Because God’s work on our behalf stands firm, we are blameless. We are free from accusation. You see, our past is already taken care of, for God set us apart. Our present is provided for, for God gives us the dynamic of His Spirit to work in us now. And, our future is assured, for God will complete the work. Paul declares his complete confidence in the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus when he writes to Timothy in II Timothy 1:12 . He says, “For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.”
God has given us what we need to live as His people in this world. We do continually need God's faithfulness. We need Him to work in our lives through the purifying of the written Word and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to cleanse us from carnal living. No matter how bad it may seem in the world, its condition does not steal our hope. No, we can have the confidence that God will keep us safe until the end.
II Thessalonians 3:3 says, “But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one.” Although, from the rest of the letter we know that Corinth is an imperfect church, notice that the Holy Spirit, through Paul, makes the declaration that from God’s viewpoint these are a people destined by grace to be declared complete and blameless in the day of the Lord. And that gives us hope as well. We do not see as God sees. He sees perfection, because in Christ that is what we are.
The people who gathered to worship in Corinth had heard the message of Christ when it had been preached to them, they had accepted the Lord's free gift of salvation; they had begun the Christian journey and God wasn’t finished with them yet.
I’d like to think that God isn’t finished with me yet. Do you feel the same? God’s grace is more than sufficient to straighten out the messes we find ourselves in. He can perfect His people, no matter how immature and chaotic we may be at times. As Christians we are in the process of “becoming.”
And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. God is always reliable. God is always true to Himself. God is faithful. Let us be faithful to Him.
CLOSE:
Most of us have read the beautiful poem called Footprints In the Sand. It has brought comfort to many. For a long time the author was considered as anonymous. While the authorship is disputed, one lady, Margaret Fishback Powers, has laid a strong claim to being the one who wrote it.
Her story is quite interesting. She went through amazing trials. The person that she loved left her. She caught meningitis and was literally bedridden for many months. She came to the lowest place of her life.
Later, another man fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. But she wouldn’t marry him. She basically said, "I’m out of trust. I’m not sure I trust God. I know I don’t trust men. I’m out of trust."
But one night in her diary as she lay in bed, she began to write that beautiful piece Footprints. And that night she saw the answer. She knew that God had carried her in those dark times. She came to know that God is faithful.
When you know the faithfulness of God you will find the courage and encouragement to do and be what God has called you to do.
