1 Corinthians 1:1-9 Commentary

It can be tempting for some Christians to assume that ministers of the Word and sacrament, as well as missionaries are the only people God ever calls. When pastors share that assumption, it can easily get us into some binds. Among them is the question, “Where exactly is God calling me to do ministry?”

At first glance, the Paul who spends much of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson talking about calling may seem to share that assumption about the exclusivity of pastors’ calling. In the very second word of his letter, after all, he refers to himself as “called.” He begins addressing Corinth’s Christians by identifying himself as “called [kletos*] to be an apostle [apostolos] of Christ Jesus by the will [thelematos] of God” (1).

In writing that, Paul shows that he understands that were it up to him, he’d never have been an apostolon Christou Iesou (“apostle of Christ Jesus”). The one formerly known as Saul would have, instead, remained an enemy of Jesus Christ and his followers. Had God not graciously kletos (“called”) him out of his spiritual darkness and into God’s glorious light, Paul would have lived and died not as a proclaimer, but as a hater of Christ Jesus.

This natural state Paul, of course, shares with all of Jesus’ friends. Outside of God’s redeeming grace mediated to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we might not have joined Paul in actively persecuting Jesus’ followers. But we too would have lived and eventually died in perpetual enmity towards God.

Yet, of course, God didn’t just call Paul into God’s glorious kingdom. God also called him to be an apostolos (“apostle”) of Christ Jesus. The root of the Greek word we translate as “called” [klesis] has two possible translations. It can mean “invited” or “appointed.” Taken together those meanings suggest that calling combines a kind of voluntariness with some form of responsibility. The combination of meanings of “called” may at least imply that while God doesn’t impose God’s calling on anyone, once we receive that, God has certain expectations of us.

Paul tells Corinth’s Christians God literally commissioned him to be an ambassador of Christ Jesus to both Jewish and gentile people. So everything, including both the encouragement and warning the apostle goes on to write to Jesus’ friends in Corinth, is what God appointed him to say.

This might offer preachers an opportunity to reflect with our hearers on how all of God’s dearly beloved people share something of Paul’s calling to proclaim the gospel. Since the New Testament standard of apostleship includes having personally met Jesus Christ, no 21^st century Christian meets that standard. Yet God has called us to be ready to do things like “give answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). By God’s grace, we share that “appointment” with the apostle Paul.

This Sunday’s Gospel reading from John 1 suggests that Christians’ call from God also puts us in good company with Jesus’ disciples. It, after all, includes an account of Jesus’ call to Andrew and Simon to follow him. In fact, that call even changes what Jesus calls the one formerly known as Simon. “You will be called Cephas,” Jesus tells him in John 1:42, (“which, when translated, is Peter”).

Yet Paul reminds his Corithian brothers and sisters in Christ that Andrew, Peter and he aren’t the only people God has invited and appointed. God has also called Corinth’s Christians. In verse 2 the apostle, after all, describes “the church [ekklesia] of God in Corinth” as “those sanctified [hegiasmenois] in Christ Jesus and called to his holy [hagios] people.”

We might say that Paul even has his eyes on far more than Corinth. It isn’t just the Christians there whom God sanctifies and calls to be holy. In verse 2 the apostle speaks to them “together with all those everywhere who call on [epikaloumenois] the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.” In other words, God both declares and makes holy all those who have received God’s grace with their faith – even those with whom we may disagree theologically or politically.

Preachers might note the implication of this call. God calls us as individuals to receive God’s grace with our faith. But those God calls God also incorporates into the Body of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures know little of individual Christianity. We live out our calling in community with all those God calls to be God’s adopted children.

Verse 2 remarkably combines a description of the called Church’s holy status before God with Paul’s call to be the holy people God has declared us to be. In it the apostle essentially invites God’s adopted children to “be who we are.” God, after all, doesn’t just graciously view and treat us as holy. God also, by the Holy Spirit, also empowers us to be holy.

So this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson invites pastors to reflect on the holiness to which God calls God’s adopted children. Since the Spirit fully equips us to become more and more like our adopted brother, Jesus Christ, we open ourselves to the transforming power of that Spirit. We confess our failures to live holy lives and beg God to help us live and talk as the perfectly holy Jesus did. After all, as The Message paraphrases verse 2, Jesus’ followers have been “set apart for a God-filled life.”

This “set-apartness,” says Paul, will, in fact, stretch to the end of time. God, he writes in verse 8, “will also keep you firm [bebaiosai] to the end, so that you will be blameless [anenkletous] on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God, in other words, promises to sustain God’s adopted children until our Lord Jesus Christ graciously gathers all his adopted siblings into the glory of the new earth and heaven.

Interestingly enough, the adjective anenkletous (“blameless”) incorporates a form of the word kaleo which we generally translate as some form of “called” (cf. vv. 1, 2). It at least suggests that those whom God calls “holy” will not be called “unholy” when Jesus Christ returns. God will always view and treat God’s dearly beloved people as holy.

So it in some ways doesn’t matter what other people call us to be or do. We always filter those calls through God’s call to Jesus’ friends to be holy. It doesn’t matter whether Satan or his thugs tempt us to be something other than the people God calls us to be. God calls us to be holy.

In verse 9 the apostle brackets this pericope with a reminder of another of Jesus’ friends’ callings. There he insists, “God is faithful [pistos], who has called [eklethete] you into fellowship [koinonian] with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Our faithful God hasn’t just, in other words, called us to be the holy people God views us as. God also calls us to a relationship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

This may offer preachers an opportunity to reflect on the connection that Paul doesn’t explicitly make but perhaps implies between our calling to be holy and to be in fellowship with Jesus Christ. It can be very difficult for even Jesus’ holiest of followers to consistently be the holy people God calls us to be. Those who cultivate a close relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer and the reading and study of Scripture, as well as fellowship with Jesus’ other friends receive strength from the Holy Spirit to be holy.

Of course, even a cursory check of the Corinthians as well as our own lives reveals that we aren’t always as holy as God views and makes us to be. Few people would label Corinth’s Christians as “strong.” They, after all, could hardly stay out of their neighbors’ marriages’ beds or keep from dragging their fellow Christians into court. Jesus’ modern friends struggle to love our neighbors as ourselves, to say nothing of loving God more than anything or anyone.

So were it up to us, we wouldn’t stay strong and holy until the end. If it were, even Jesus’ closest friends would be in eternal danger. If, then, we are to remain faithful, it will be up to our faithful God to keep us faithful. As The Message paraphrases verse 9, “God will never give up on you. Never forget that.”

*I have printed in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his fine autobiography of Robert E. Lee entitled, Robert E. Lee: A Life, Alan Guelzo reflects on Lee’s plea for his wife’s patience with his sanctification. He notes Lee was raised in and adopted a fairly staid Episcopalian faith. But his fiancé, Mary Custis, expected him to embrace the same evangelical Virginia Episcopalianism her family did.

She made Lee promise to read the Scriptures she sent him while in the U.S. Army, especially on Sunday. Lee later reported he “read the New Testament Mary sent, but dutifully rather than piously. [He noted]: ‘I found my eyes were running over verse after verse, while my mind was far otherwise engaged.’ He even followed her ‘wishes exactly & went to church’ Savannah on Christmas Day ‘& listened to the sermon.’

“Still, [Lee told his fiancé] she should ‘not expect miracles in my case,’ and he hoped she would be willing to ‘leave something to time, and more opportunity … and so seek that I should find’.”