PORTRAIT OF THE CHURCH
Some of you may ask why I titled this study on Corinthians “Preserving the Church in a Pagan World”. You may even object to the word “preserving” as sounding too much like maintaining or holding out against the world when the Church should be boldly invading our world. Maybe it matters very little to you. Why “preserving”?
It bothered me too until I thought of the metaphors Jesus used of the Church. He said we are to be salt and light in the world. Salt is invasive and penetrates the flesh of our meat so that it can be preserved, that it can remain useful. Salt can lose its effectiveness though and become good for nothing. The question I wrote in the margin of my Bible is “How can salt lose its saltiness?” I’m not really sure but I know that salt that remains in the shaker doesn’t do anybody any good. It can clump and become difficult to shake out of those tiny holes. Humidity, the climate surrounding the salt causes this clumping, especially if the salt is not used for its purposes. That’s why restaurants put rice in the shakers – to keep things loose.
The Church is to be light in the world. That too is invasive, especially in dark places. But just as salt needs to be guarded against its climate, a lamp needs to be protected against the winds and gusts so that its flame does not go out. It needs to be preserved against the influences of common nature. Sometimes we have to cup our hand over the flame.
How does that sound now? Preserving the Church in a Pagan world! How much have the negative aspects of our culture seeped into the Church so that they appear normal? How often have we questioned a practice as unChristlike only to see a fellow believer doing it and then conclude that it’s okay? What makes us different from unbelievers? How has the influence of our world made us less salty and close to snuffing out our lamp?
A certain preacher read from 6:9-11 where it says, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were…”
Then he said, “This was the makeup of the church at Corinth. These people had come out of this sordid background. Many of them, perhaps, still were struggling with much of the aftermath in their lives of these evil things. I am curious as to how many of you here have some of these things in your background.” Then he went further, he said, “If any of you have anything like this in your background I’d like to ask you to stand where you are…that we might know how much we’re like the church at Corinth.” (Stedman) Eventually two thirds of the church stood up and a new Christian said to himself, “These are my kind of people.”
That is how we should feel when we read Corinthians. There is no other NT church that is more like the church in Canada today. It was a city of multiculturalism, of wealth and beauty, with potential for great things. But it was also a city dedicated to the worship of sex. Let us turn then to 1st Canadians and allow me to lead you into this letter.
“Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes.”
If you read Acts 18 about Paul’s time in Corinth you will find that Paul leads Crispus, the synagogue ruler to faith in Jesus. Then Sosthenes, the new synagogue ruler leads a mob to arrest Paul. They turn on Sosthenes and beat him to a pulp. The next thing we read about Sosthenes is that he is a believer in Christ. Strange how the Lord works.
“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul writes this letter from Ephesus to the church he planted in Corinth five years earlier. It is a reply to a letter he received from the church with questions about faith and life. We don’t know what the questions were but it would be nice to know. Some College profs ask their students to write the letter that might have made it into Paul’s hands.
Obviously there are troubles in this church. And in a slightly cryptic way Paul tells us what those troubles were in these first 9 verses.
Paul slips in this phrase: to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy. When Paul wrote to the Galatians he addressed a people that were very legalistic. The Corinthians were on the other side of the spectrum. They were very into “grace” and knew they were forgiven, but they abused grace and became permissive. Since we are under grace, they thought, we can live how we please.
Barna reports that evangelical Christians are just as likely if not more so to divorce as pre-Christians. One wonders if that is not because we have emphasized grace so much that we Christians rely on God’s forgiveness to excuse our actions.
Paul reminds the Corinthians that we are called to be holy. He uses the word “sanctified” which means “set apart.” But it’s more than that.
Consider another big word: Justification. This describes the change that God makes in us when we believe in Jesus. Some call it being “born again.” It is the inward change of our natures from a selfish way of living to a selfless, Christlike way of living. It is a new attitude. This is what the Corinthians understood.
What they did not understand was sanctification. This is the visible result of being saved so that people can see that we are different. Our behavior changes or ought to change when we believe in Jesus. Some people are content though, to believe in Jesus, and don’t know that they need to follow him too. To follow is to imitate and to be like him.
Corinthian behavior was what was in question. As we study this letter over the next year we will see that they had problems with each other, divisive problems, sexual immorality, marriage problems, and so much more. They were saved but they didn’t know how to act saved. Sounds familiar.
We are called by God to be his holy people. Not to be “holier than thou” in attitude that others resent. But to be different in how we approach life and practice – what we do and how we do it. Charles Colson said, “Holiness is the everyday business of every Christian. It evidences itself in the decisions we make and the things we do, hour by hour, day by day.” It is God’s church as Paul says, the church of God in Corinth, and so it should act like God’s church.
“I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Despite the rebukes that will be coming their way, Paul is able to say he is thankful for this church. Any church, our church included, may be filled with sin, division, problems and heresy, but Paul would still be thankful for us. Why?
Whatever problems we have we are still in Christ. That is how Paul sees Corinth: before looking at the mess, he looks at them the way Christ looks at them. They belong to Jesus. And this is something we can be thankful for too – we are in Christ.
What is true of Corinth is true for us. Paul, in this huge chunk of scripture (which is really one sentence), is thankful that they have every spiritual gift. This church has every gift! Can you imagine what a church service would be like in Corinth? There are 21 different gifts mentioned in the NT and every one of them was expressed in Corinth. They had miracles, healings, teaching, tongues, knowledge, leadership and more. You wouldn’t want to miss church because something amazing was bound to happen every service.
You may not believe this but Kleefeld possesses every gift that the Spirit wants to give us. The problem is, some of you are evangelists and don’t know it; some of you have the gift of tongues but are afraid of the Holy Spirit; some of you are just plain afraid. But even if every gift was manifested in our church we could still be in trouble. Corinth had every gift and lifted one gift higher than another. That’s one of the problems Paul foreshadows here – the gift of tongues was held up as the highest spiritual experience – much to their error. We can possess every gift and still miss God’s calling for us.
And yet Paul is thankful that some of the gifts are being used because it confirmed in his mind that what he had preached to them had taken root. They could not claim a single gift of the Spirit if the message of Jesus was not believed. They did believe in him, that was not the problem. These were very smart people; they debated very intellectual and theological issues; they knew their Bibles; if there was a question about what happens to people who never hear the gospel and die, they probably had a very good answer.
As for expecting Jesus to return the Corinthians were very aware of how Christ would set things right. They eagerly waited for Jesus to come again. When we speak of the Second Coming most of us roll our eyes and think “here it comes.” Whacky prophecy gurus have dulled our interest in End Times truth; the Left Behind series has made ‘profits’ of its writers and fictionalized (badly) the events of Revelation. We put off as sensationalist gospel what the Corinthians very seriously regarded – the Second Coming of Jesus.
Despite their great knowledge of the Bible and their amazing ability to share their teaching, their theological ability and their eschatological awareness, they still had this problem…with all their knowledge of Jesus they failed to grasp that the grace of God ought to change how you behave. Consider this verse…
“God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”
Very cryptic, I know. It’s like DaVinci Code or something. Read between the lines.
Take out a pen and circle how many times Christ is mentioned in these 9 verses. Nine times! Paul shouts from the page that Christ is the “everything” of the Church. He later writes that “…no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
Paul could not be an apostle unless Christ called him…
We could not be sanctified unless Jesus modeled that life for us…
We could not know grace except for Jesus…
We would not be gifted if not for Jesus…
We would have no hope of the Second Coming if not for Jesus…
Had they forgotten that? Apparently they did. Have we?
We have been called into fellowship with Jesus Christ our Lord. What does that mean?
Fellowship has come to mean grabbing a cup of coffee and a brownie after a service. “Let’s go down and have fellowship,” we say after the ‘amen.’ We think fellowship means talking about the new truck you bought, or the fishing trip you were just on. Fellowship has come to mean talking about your kids with other mothers who are just as frazzled as you.
Bill Hybels wrote, “But the Bible says true fellowship has the power to revolutionize lives. Masks come off, conversations get deep, hearts get vulnerable, lives are shared, accountability is invited, and tenderness flows. People really do become like brothers and sisters. They shoulder each other’s burdens - and unfortunately, that’s something that few of the people in (our) audience have experienced while growing up in church.”
We have come to understand that church is not a place to share your problems. When your life is unraveling you go to specialists instead of standing up right where you are and saying “we need prayer; our marriage is in trouble.” Christians shouldn’t have problems, so we hide them.
Hybels said he didn’t talk about his problems because he felt that a good Christian just didn’t admit to having those kind of real-life difficulties. And in many churches that’s called fellowship…It shouldn’t be.
Real fellowship is this: Sharing Jesus. We are called to share Jesus with each other. What we fail to understand is that Jesus lives among us. Jesus is among us and we have individual responsibilities to nurture a relationship with him. But we do not live our lives as though we are partners with Jesus in everything we do. We don’t believe that Jesus is here. If we did we would live and worship far differently.
Paul writes this letter to the Corinthians to call these people back to true fellowship with Jesus. They were suffering division because Jesus was not Lord of their church. They were immoral because they forgot that their bodies belonged to Christ and should not be joined to prostitutes. They were suing each other because they forgot that they were family in Christ. They forgot that they were members of one body – Christ’s.
And this letter was written to call us back as well, to have our consciences pricked to the reality of Christ’s presence. If we say that our church is wounded and hurting, that we are divided and at odds with certain members, Paul’s answer is to call us back to an awareness of true fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the portrait of the Corinthian church and it will not be pretty. They are called to holiness because their behavior is not becoming of people who claim Jesus as Lord. They are equipped with every gift they need by a gracious God who knows their needs. But they have forgotten that fellowship is not found in a coffee cup but in relationship with Jesus and Christ’s people.
If we painted a portrait of our church what would it look like? I don’t think we are Corinth. They had the ability to do all kinds of mighty things in the Spirit, but not much was happening in the city. Instead of making an impact on Corinth, Corinth was making an impact on the church. Culture does not dictate who we are as a church, Jesus does. Yet the power of God is stifled if we allow ungodly influences to infiltrate our church. So I call you to fellowship with Jesus Christ, the source of all our blessings. Let us not forget who is Lord of this Church and of your life.
AMEN
