Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians, chapter 1.
I’m very excited that we are starting our new series through 1 Corinthians this morning.
To give you a little insight into how we plan our sermon series, we look out 5 years at a time, to try and make sure we’re preaching through a variety of the books of the Bible. We’re currently on year three of the plan we developed in 2022. If you’ve been around the past couple of years, we’ve been through Revelation, Exodus, Hebrews, Mark, Judges, and Ecclesiastes. Now we’re coming back to the New Testament Epistles for the next couple of series.
One of the great things about studying the Epistles is that they give us an opportunity to examine the nuts and bolts of the Christian life. What does it mean to live a distinctly Christian life in our world?
This series will take us through the spring and into the summer. And today, before we dive into the specifics of the letter, I want to give you a little background—so you have a sense of where this letter came from and why it exists.
This letter was written to the church in Corinth, Greece. But before we talk about Corinth specifically, I actually want to start all the way at the top. Where did this church come from? Why does this letter exist at all?
First Corinthians isn’t just some random, accidental letter that we happen to have and then included in the Bible. It was written and preserved by God for a very specific reason that applies all the way down through history to us today. It’s part of God’s long story of redemption. It was written to a real group of people—a real church—who already belonged to God.
And that story begins all the way back at creation.
God created the universe. God created the world good.
He made man and woman, and He placed them in the middle of His creation to reflect His character, to guard it, to care for it, and to expand His rule and reign over the earth. As humanity does what humanity was designed to do—being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and relating to one another the way God designed—the world is filled with the image of God’s glory.
That’s why we were created. We were created to live in relationship with God and with one another, to enjoy His creation and His presence.
But we rebelled. We wanted to do our own thing instead of the thing God wanted us to do. And that fractured our relationship with everything—with creation, with one another, and most importantly, with God.
God’s response to that sin was not abandonment. It was promise.
That promise begins to take shape when God calls a man named Abram, later called Abraham. God tells him, “I’m going to do something with you and with your descendants, and through you every nation, every tribe, every tongue is going to be blessed.”
From Abraham’s descendants—Isaac, and then Jacob, whose name becomes Israel—God forms a people. He redeems them from slavery in Egypt through the Exodus. He gives them His law, His instruction for how to live as a people and how to worship Him. That’s what we see in the first books of the Old Testament.
But the rest of the Old Testament shows us that Israel, just like Adam and Eve in the garden, rebels against God’s design. And as a result, they are driven from the land—the land God had given them—and scattered among the nations in exile.
But God is not finished with this story.
He preserves a remnant. He preserves the lineage He promised—through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, and down the line of David—until that promise comes to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Jesus comes as God incarnate. He lives as the perfect Israelite. He obeys God’s law. He uniquely bears God’s image. He shows us what it looks like to live fully under the rule and worship of God.
And then He does something remarkable. He is arrested, tortured, and crucified—put to death for claiming to be God. And that sacrifice is counted by God as the final sacrifice for sin. He rises from the dead, and then He gives His followers a mission: You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.
That mission unfolds in the book of Acts. We see the gospel moving from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and then out into the wider world.
And in the middle of that movement, God calls an Israelite, a Pharisee—someone who was trying to obey the law but completely missing Jesus. He had rejected Jesus. He opposed the church. His name was Saul, also called Paul.
Paul was a persecutor of Christians, and Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus. That encounter changed his life, his mind, and his heart. God transformed him into the apostle Paul, who would carry the gospel throughout the Mediterranean world.
One of the cities Paul goes to is Corinth.
Corinth was wealthy and diverse. It was a major trade center—cosmopolitan, strategically located, and deeply shaped by its economic success. Corinthians were proud. They loved self-promotion. They loved impressive speakers, material power, and social status. This was a city that was not inclined toward humility or self-denial.
And yet God sends Paul there.
Paul doesn’t show up like the professional speakers of the Greco-Roman world—the Sophists—who were paid to persuade people and move them emotionally, whether they believed what they were saying or not.
Paul shows up without impressive credentials, social status, or polished rhetoric. He comes with what seems like an unimpressive message: the cross.
Paul goes to the Jewish synagogue in Corinth and says, “This Old Testament you know—it points forward to a promised Messiah. That Messiah is Jesus.” He works with his hands. He teaches. He stays. And through Paul’s ministry, God brings a church in Corinth into existence.
Paul eventually moves on to Ephesus, where he spends several years. And while he is there, he receives reports that the church in Corinth is in trouble.
There is division. There is pride and self-promotion. There is moral compromise. They are suing one another. There is confusion about sexuality and marriage. Confusion about individual rights and how to use freedom. Confusion about worship and spiritual gifts.
This is a deeply troubled church.
And Paul writes to help.
But it’s important to understand how Paul helps. Paul does not write this letter by jumping from problem to problem, offering disconnected advice. This is not a grab-bag of hot topics. There is a unifying concern that runs through the entire letter.
Over and over again, Paul is confronting the way the Corinthians are thinking, evaluating, and measuring their Christian life. They have believed the gospel, but they are still using the world’s categories—power, status, wisdom, rights, and self-promotion—to decide what maturity looks like.
So Paul writes to reorient them. He keeps bringing them back to the same truth from different angles: that the Christian life is shaped not by human wisdom or personal ability, but by the cross of Christ and the faithfulness of God.
In other words, the core problem in Corinth is not just bad behavior. It’s a distorted sense of identity. They are acting like people who belong to the world instead of people who belong to Christ.
And everything Paul addresses in this letter—division, immorality, lawsuits, freedom, marriage, worship, spiritual gifts, even the resurrection—flows out of that deeper issue.
That’s what this letter is.
The church in Corinth was in trouble.
Paul wrote to help.
And what’s so striking is where Paul begins. Before he addresses a single problem—before he issues a single command—he reminds them who they are.
So let’s look now at the first nine verses.
1 Corinthians 1:1–9 (CSB)
1 Paul, called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, and Sosthenes our brother:
2 To the church of God at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord—both their Lord and ours.
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I always thank my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus, 5 that you were enriched in him in every way, in all speech and all knowledge.
6 In this way, the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, 7 so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 God is faithful; you were called by him into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul is about to embark on a sixteen-chapter, 7,000-word letter correcting all the errors going on in the Corinthian church.
Some of the errors are pretty common in most churches, while others are jaw-droppingly serious. “They were doing what with who?”
But one remarkable thing about this letter, as with all his letters in the New Testament, is where he starts: with the Gospel declaration of who they are in Christ.
Paul is about to issue literally 100 explicit commands (depending on how you count them) to the church in this letter, correcting some serious misbehavior, but every single one of those commands will be rooted in the truth about Jesus Christ and who they are because of Him.
The Indicative and the Imperative
We call this idea “the indicative and the imperative.”
Imperatives are commands. The “dos and don’ts” of the Bible.
They are always rooted in the “indicatives” - statements that indicate what is true of a Christian because of Jesus Christ. Indicative is a word that shares a root with the word “verdict”. God declares certain things to be true about you when you are in Christ.
To a church that is caught up in remarkable sin and error, the kind that would tempt us to question their faith, Paul declares amazing, hard-to-believe, true statements about them. Let’s take a look at the words he uses for those who call on the name of Jesus. And as we’re doing that, pay attention to the tenses of the words. Most of them are completed in the past, or promised to be true in the future.
The Declarations
Called Saints
The word “called” is doing a lot of work in this passage. It shows up three times as bookends around this wonderful statement of who Christians are because of Jesus. Paul is “called as an apostle.” The word “called” is an adjective. What kind of apostle is he? A self-proclaimed apostle? No, he is a called apostle. A commissioned apostle. God named him “apostle.”
It wasn’t his brilliance, or great track record, or amazing resume, or personal holiness that made him an apostle. It was that God called him to it. If you know Paul’s story from Acts 9, you’ll know that God called him to be an apostle while on his way to persecute followers of Jesus. That was Paul’s spiritual resume when God gave him this role. And that’s why Paul uses the same word when he says we are called as saints. God called us saints. We are labeled “saint” by God.
Saint is a big word, isn’t it? How does one get to be a saint? According to the Bible, you become a saint because God calls you to it. Just like he called Paul the persecutor to be an apostle. God picks you out and sanctifies you. That’s another big word that means “makes you holy.” He “sets you apart” for himself. And God does that with everyone everywhere who calls on the name of Jesus Christ as Lord. How do you become a saint? Bow your knee in allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Repent of your sinful way of trying to figure it out on your own, and follow his way.
Enriched in Every Way
What is true about a saint? Look at verses 4-8: God’s grace was given to you. You were enriched in every way. You don’t lack any spiritual gifts. He will strengthen you to the end. You will be blameless on judgment day (“in the day of our Lord Jesus”). You are going to make it! How do we know? Verse 9, God is faithful, and you were called by Him.
These things are true about those who follow Jesus. Even when they aren’t acting like it.
The Commands in Light of the Declarations
The hundred commands that Paul is going to issue to the church with the apostolic authority given to him by Jesus Christ are all commands to “be who you are.”Saints. Every single Christian, regardless of social status, apparent level of gifting, apparent spirituality, knowledge, wisdom, or power, is chosen by God. Holy. Gifted. Lacking nothing.
The Corinthian Church wasn’t acting like it. But it was true.
That doesn’t make their sin and disobedience any less serious. It makes it tragic. The gospel message doesn’t mean that sin no longer matters. It means it no longer has the last word, but it also makes sin grieving. Why are we wasting our lives playing in mud puddles when we’ve been invited to swim in an ocean of Grace?
Paul’s corrective letter is God’s means of calling them back in line with what He is doing in their life. And that’s true for us as well.
Christian, these indicatives are indicative of you. You are sanctified and because of that, God is at work sanctifying you.You are a saint, together with everyone everywhere throughout time, who has called on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. You have been given grace. You were enriched in every way. You do not lack any spiritual gift. He will strengthen you all the way to the end as you eagerly wait for His return. On judgment day, you will be blameless. God promises. And he is faithful. He will do it. Because he said so.
Pray with me.
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