Greetings and Thanksgiving

I'll ask you to remain standing for the reading of God's Word tonight, and if you would turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 1 through 9, as we begin a new series tonight on the letter to Christians at Corinth, Paul's first letter, 1 Corinthians.

We'll look at the first nine verses tonight. Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray. Lord, our sin makes us blind to the depths of our depravity and often makes us blind to the heights of your grace to us. As we walk through this ancient letter that you have preserved for us over the months ahead, may we come to see both our own sinfulness and your grace with greater clarity. And Lord, may that clarity drive us to strive for holiness in our actions, to adore you with sincere gratitude in our worship. Pray that you would send forth your word now, oh Lord, to accomplish what you intended to accomplish for our edification and for your glory. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

We can be seated. Well, having recently finished preaching through the book of James, I've been spending a great deal of time these last several weeks praying and thinking about what to preach next. It's always a difficult decision for me to make. I mean, after all, all of the Bible is important. All of it is crucial and relevant and profitable, and so there's no wrong decision when it comes to picking a book or a topic from Scripture to preach through. For me, the decision really comes down to what portions of Scripture, what topics haven't been addressed, or at least not addressed recently in the life of our church, because a preacher's goal, of course, is to preach the whole counsel of God. So as I processed all of this, I eventually settled down on the book of 1 Corinthians, primarily because it hasn't been exposited from start to finish, at least in recent years here at Grace.

But as I began doing some initial preparatory work on it, I began to get enthusiastic, quite excited, about how relevant, how pertinent the subject matter really is. Paul addresses topics in this letter that come up sometimes on a weekly basis at Grace Church, so I'm anxious to discover what God would have us learn and how God would have us grow as we spend time in this book of 1 Corinthians. The next question in terms of preparing a lengthy sermon series is deciding how to divide it up, how to divide, in this case, 16 chapters into meaningful, accessible sermons. And the temptation, I think, when it comes to preaching through New Testament letters is to sometimes overlook or ignore or at least rush through the opening verses in order to get to the good stuff, right, the body, the meat of the letter. The greeting with which Paul begins most of his letters sometimes seems perfunctory.

It kind of seems peripheral. It doesn't always seem like these opening verses are worthy of a sermon in and of themselves because it's not always readily apparent that these opening verses really add much to the logical argument of the letter as a whole. However, these openings often contain important clues regarding the intention and the emphasis of the main argument of the letter, the main body of the letter. This is particularly true of Paul's epistles. It's as if the opening statement of a letter preps and primes us to receive all the details that will be spread out over the course of the next several chapters. So in the case of this epistle, 1 Corinthians, there is a noticeable point of emphasis in the opening greeting. And that point of emphasis is the grace of God towards his church. I don't like that there's a deadline for us to turn in our sermon titles because the sermon title is kind of the last thing I do when I'm writing a sermon.

And yet the greetings is due on Wednesday and the sign and all these things that need a title. And so I usually just make something up and hope that it's somewhat close to what I'll actually be preaching when it's time to preach. If I had it to do over again, I would name this sermon Grace, ironically, because that was the same sermon that Doug preached this morning. Unfortunately, the Lord wants us thinking about grace today. The point of emphasis in these opening verses of 1 Corinthians is the grace of God towards his church. Paul, through his missionary endeavors, established many congregations all around the Mediterranean Sea. And some of those congregations were the apple of Paul's eye. I mean, they were full of godly, selfless Christians. The church at Corinth was not one of these.

They were a dysfunctional church, if ever there were one. And yet Paul loved them because God loved them. So this letter of Paul is going to contain some pointed and direct words of correction. Paul's going to say some hard things, which is why this opening statement with its emphasis on the grace of God to his church is so important.

Paul is not excommunicating Corinth. He's not writing to them as if they have no part in Christ. On the contrary, he's affirming them in Christ so that he can say the difficult things that need to be said. The starting point of his letter is an attempt to frame everything that is to come in the light of the grace of God to an undeserving people.

And you know, church, any interaction that we have with the word of God is just like that, isn't it? It is grace being given to the undeserving. We, like Corinth, have our own issues, our stumbling blocks, our blind spots, our areas of faithlessness. And we, like Corinth, are recipients of undeserved, unlimited, divine grace. So what we see sprinkled through these opening nine verses then are several glimpses of that divine grace. In fact, there are at least seven glimpses of grace that I'd like for us to consider tonight. And in considering these, Paul wants us to learn to think less of ourselves and to think more of God's grace.

So let's look at these seven glimpses of grace. The first one is seen in the fact that we have received an authoritative declaration of the gospel. An authoritative declaration of the gospel. Verse one says, Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Paul begins his letter by declaring his status as an apostle.

Now this isn't Paul trying to brag. He's simply saying, you must listen to what I have to say because God has made me a witness and a messenger of Jesus Christ. If Paul is an apostle, then we must listen to him as if we're listening to Jesus. This is not because Paul is great or preeminent or the head of the church.

It is because the truly preeminent one, the true head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, chose 12 men to be his eyewitnesses, his spokesman after his earthly ministry was completed. The Holy Spirit inspired these men to speak and to write words that carry with them the full authority of the triune God. And that authoritative declaration of the gospel is very much an act of grace on God's part towards us. I was disputing with the lady a few months ago about a particular moral issue that Paul addresses in one of his letters, but that isn't explicitly dealt with in the four gospels. And she didn't really like what Paul was asserting, so she said to me, well, I believe Jesus, not Paul.

I hope you realize that for the believer, that's not an option. Aside from the fact that there's no discrepancy in scripture between the gospels and the rest of the Bible, the apostolic witness to Christ in the Bible is just as authoritative as Christ's witness of himself. And not only is it authoritative, it is gracious. It's gracious because it's God's means of revealing the gospel message to us. And we must listen to Paul because he's an apostle, and he's an apostle because God in his grace has chosen to give and preserve for the church an authoritative, inerrant witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul's very calling as an apostle is an indication of God's grace to his people. But there's another glimpse of grace.

We see it in verse two. Paul is called to be an apostle. We, the church, are called to be saints.

And here's the grace in that. Not only are we called to be saints, to be holy, we are also called saints. God attributes to us the status of sanctified even before we've achieved sanctification.

Look at verse two. To those sanctified, past tense, in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. What we need to notice is that verse two conveys something we are and something we're supposed to be becoming. The words sanctified and saints share the same root. They both refer to holiness, set-apartness. Paul says we are holy and that we are to be holy. This communicates both a status that we already enjoy as well as a behavior that we're expected to be pursuing. It simultaneously makes a theological statement about us while making an ethical demand of us.

It's kind of like in the Old Testament when Joshua was told from the other side of the Jordan that he already possessed the land of Canaan and at the same time he was told to go and take possession of the land of Canaan. We are called saints, but we are also called to be saints, to act like who we are. And both this calling and this status are the consequences of the grace of God. God doesn't call anyone outside of Christ a saint. He doesn't call anyone outside of Christ a holy one. He reserves that designation for those whom he loves with an everlasting love.

The church, the bride of Christ, the saints who are made holy in Christ. This call to holiness is going to come up a lot in Paul's letter to the Corinthian Christians. And so he begins by establishing the fact that their call to pursue a sanctified life is grounded in the fact that God already calls them saints.

It's yet another glimpse of divine grace. A third reality in which Paul highlights the grace of God to his saints is in the fact that as followers of Christ we have fellowship with the church universal. We have fellowship with the church universal. Those who have been designated by God as saints are not some isolated insignificant ragtag band of Christ followers. No, we are numbered among those who, verse 2, in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Having received saving grace, we now belong to the assembly of the upright, to the body of Christ, to the family of God, to the household of faith, to the pillar and ground of truth, to the temple of God, to the very bride of Christ.

And this noble gathering of saved sinners extends all the way to the ends of the earth and all the way to the beginning of time. Theologians refer to this as the catholicity of the church. We often confess our faith corporately here at Grace Church using the Apostles Creed, which says, I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints. And I'll often in the worship guide put an explanatory asterisk on that word catholic because I'm afraid we have come to associate that word too much with the Roman catholic church than with the biblical concept of catholicity of the true church. The word catholic, with a little c, simply means whole or complete or universal. It describes the reality that followers of Christ are united in Christ despite their cultural or geographical or historical differences. So to say that I believe in the holy catholic church is another way of saying I believe that the local church, of which I am a part, Grace Church in Harrisburg, North Carolina, in the PCA in the year 2021, is not fully representative of the whole body for whom Christ died. It's bigger than that.

It's more glorious than that. The true catholic church extends across denominational barriers, across language and cultural distinctions, across geographical borders, even across eras of time. The catholicity of the church acknowledges that Christ's bride is bigger and broader than my personal and limited experience of it. Now does that mean that there are no limits to the bride of Christ?

No. There are people, even whole religious sects, that are outside of the true catholic church by virtue of the fact that they lack the biblical marks of a true church. So we don't mean that everyone who claims to be a part of the church is a part of the church. What we mean is that Christ's bride extends beyond my local church, my local culture, my time in history.

So what does all that matter? What practical difference does it make that the church is universal? Well, folks, it means that the Christians in Afghanistan who are suffering are part of our suffering.

We share in their suffering. It means that when our Methodist brothers and sisters are fighting for the purity of their church at the denominational level, it matters to us. It means that when a sister church in our own presbytery is disunified and crumbling, we desire and pray for their preservation and restoration.

Why? Because the church of Jesus Christ isn't just a grace church thing, it's a universal and eternal and catholic thing. We are together in this, right alongside all of those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord. Now, Paul is going to address the importance of unity in the church in this letter.

In fact, our very next sermon will take up that very topic. So he begins laying the groundwork for that unity in these opening verses by reminding the Corinthians that one of the implications of divine grace is that it makes us a part of something that reaches far beyond our little provincial neighborhood. It's part of the grace that God gives. Verse 3 gives us yet another glimpse of grace. Paul tells us in that little phrase, grace to you and peace from God, tells us that grace leads to peace.

We receive the grace of God, which leads to peace with God. Now, grace and peace is the standard greeting in Paul's letters, as well as in the letters of Peter and John. What's interesting is that the apostles invented this phrase by taking the conventional Greek greeting of the day, and it was a word in Greek that sounded a whole lot like grace does in Greek, and combining that with the conventional Jewish greeting of the day, which was the word peace.

And so they essentially co-opted these two customary greetings, a Gentile one and a Jewish one, to make an entirely new Christian greeting. And what I want us not to miss is how this new Christian greeting, grace and peace, conveys a very simple and explicit theological point. Notice how this new greeting contains the message of the gospel in just three words, grace and peace. Grace, by the way, in all of Paul's letters, comes first. Peace always comes after grace.

That makes the theological point, doesn't it? God sovereignly pours out his favor on sinners like us, and this favor, this grace, leads to peace. But understand, though, that the word peace here doesn't refer to some kind of generic inner feeling of tranquility.

No, it describes a much more profound sort of peace. It's the equivalent of the Hebrew word shalom, a word that refers to a restored relationship between God and man as a result of righteousness being imparted. So to say, peace be with you, in this sense, is to say, may you be right with God, and may you enjoy the fruit of that right relationship. So notice how the gospel is conveyed in this simple greeting.

May God give you grace that leads to peace with him. It's shorthand for the gospel, and it's Paul's prayer of blessing over his church. It's just another glimpse of the grace of God in these opening verses. In verses four through eight, then, Paul transitions from his greeting of the Christians at Corinth to a statement of thanksgiving in which he lists several reasons for being thankful regarding the Corinthian church. And even in this thanksgiving section, we continue to see glimpses of divine grace that have been shown to God's people. Paul begins his thanksgiving in verse four by saying, I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Now, before we look at the specifics of Paul's words of thanks, we might just pause here and ask a question because we've already read the letter. We know what's in 1 Corinthians.

We know what's coming. We know that Paul doesn't commend much regarding the practices and attitudes of the Christians at Corinth, so we might be wondering when Paul says here he always thanks God concerning them, is he being facetious? I mean, is he really genuinely thankful for this group of carnal-minded believers and their foolish choices and their idolatrous values? But notice how Paul frames his thankfulness.

He says, I give thanks to my God for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Paul's gratitude is a gratitude that is directed to God for the grace of God that's been shown even to the likes of these Corinthians. Notice how he doesn't focus on some innate virtue within the Corinthians church, but rather incessantly makes references to God's graciousness. Grace is mentioned in verse 3. Grace is mentioned again in verse 4. Verse 7 mentions the gifts that the Corinthians have received, and that word gift there in verse 7 is a derivative of the word grace.

Even the word thanks itself in verse 4 is a compound word that means good grace. Paul's expression of gratitude is not primarily extolling the Corinthian believers. They are certainly the recipients, the beneficiaries of good things, but Paul's gratitude over and over again is directed toward God for the rich grace that he has poured out on his people at Corinth. His aim here is not to make the believers in Corinth feel good about themselves.

It's to make them aware of and grateful for the divine grace that they've already been shown. The gist of Paul's thanksgiving is that the gospel has proven to be effectual to the church here in Corinth, and this is particularly amazing in light of the sins that Paul will deal with in the letter. In spite of these sins, in spite of these blind spots and failures, the redemption in Christ that belongs to these Corinthians is so certain to Paul that he is able to describe even them as sanctified saints and enriched in all speech and all knowledge and not lacking in any gift and guiltless and called into fellowship with Jesus Christ our Lord.

It's amazing that he can speak of this church that way. One theologian said not only the churches which bring him unmixed joy such as the Philippians invite regular thanksgiving on Paul's part, but even troublesome Corinth, for the very existence of their faith as Christians outweighs any personal inconvenience, disappointment, or anguish which their less than appropriate attitudes and at times lifestyles also bring. And so Paul continues giving us glimpses of divine grace even in the thanksgiving section here. In verses 4 through 7, God's grace to his people is demonstrated in the giving of various spiritual gifts. The church, including the church at Corinth, is enriched or equipped with gifts, verse 5, that confirm its union and communion. In other words, these gifts from God make it abundantly clear that believers are united to Christ and united to each other through Christ. Paul will address the matter of spiritual gifts at length later in the letter, but he does give an example here of the kind of gifts or the kind of enrichment the Corinthians had received. He says in verse 5, they were enriched in all speech and all knowledge. In other words, they were given an ability to understand the gospel very thoroughly and to articulate it extremely well to other people. They were given a clear knowledge of the gospel through Paul's witness to them, and they were in turn able to clearly and eloquently bear verbal witness to that same gospel to others. Now, once again, I think we're tempted, if we know the rest of the letter, to ask whether Paul was being sincere at this point, knowing that in the very next chapter, he's going to be dealing with the particularly Greek idol of sophistry and lofty speech. The Corinthians loved human knowledge, human wisdom, and rhetoric, and he's encouraging them now with the fact that they've been given this gift of enriched speech and knowledge, but at the beginning of chapter 2, he's going to challenge their love of rhetoric and human logic. Well, Paul is not being insincere. Remember, he's an apostle. He's speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When he criticizes the Corinthians later in the letter, he's not criticizing the gifts they've been given, but rather their misuse of the gifts.

The gifts themselves are actually commendable in that they're expressions of God's grace to his people. It is interesting, on a bit of a side note, someone has pointed out that it's fascinating to compare Paul's words of thanksgiving here with his thanksgiving in other epistles and discover what he leaves out in his letter to Corinth. In the opening, for example, to the Roman church, he gives thanks that their faithful witness to the gospel went out like a beacon and was proclaimed in all the world. In his opening to the Christians in Thessalonica, he gives thanks that their faith sounded forth like a trumpet blast everywhere.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul gives thanks that the church there had shared an effective partnership with Paul in proclaiming the gospel to the lost. But in Corinth, he merely gives thanks for their knowledge and eloquence, not for their effectiveness or humility in using that knowledge and eloquence. The Corinthians may have been squandering the gift, but they had the gift. Nevertheless, it had been given. Church, God has blessed us with faith and abilities that are intended to magnify his grace in us. We don't always use those gifts as we should, and when we don't, we need correction.

But the gifts are ours nonetheless. And this then is yet another glimpse of the graciousness of God, even to the most undeserving. The next glimpse of grace is seen in the fact that we have a new attitude toward Judgment Day, a new attitude toward Judgment Day.

The latter part of verse 7 says, As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are different kinds of waiting. My kids were talking to me last week about how dreadful it is to wait for discipline when they know it's coming.

They do something wrong. Laura or I tell them to go wait in their room till we come. And so they're sitting there waiting and knowing that the swift sword of justice is on its way. That kind of waiting is radically different from the kind of waiting a child does, say, on their birthday when it's not quite time to open their presents. Verse 7 is describing the act of waiting in this second sense. It implies an eagerness, an anticipation, an excitement, a sense of expectancy for Judgment Day to come.

Now, how can this be? How can sinners wait eagerly, even longingly, for Judgment Day? Well, it's because they've been shown grace. One of our professors at RTS said once that the test of a true or false Christian is his waiting for or dreading the revelation of Christ.

What is your posture? What is your attitude towards Judgment Day? Is it one of longing or is it one of dread? If we've been shown divine grace, we have a new attitude toward Judgment Day. But notice also, if we've been shown grace, we have a new status on Judgment Day. Look at verse 8. Jesus Christ will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The reason we can eagerly wait for Christ's return is because we know that we will be found blameless on that day, guiltless before the throne of God. So in verse 6, grace is demonstrated in that the Gospel is confirmed to the Corinthians, but in verse 8 here, grace is demonstrated in that the Corinthians themselves are confirmed before God on Judgment Day. Brothers and sisters, the message of these opening verses is clear.

God has been gracious to an undeserving people. And that knowledge erupts into praise for Paul in verse 9. He says, God is faithful by whom you were called to the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And the word faithful there in verse 9 is in the emphatic position. A literal translation would be faithful, exclamation point, is God. God has obligated Himself to us by staking the whole covenant of grace on His character, not on ours.

And because of this, He will see it through to the end. He is faithful to keep His word. Therefore, He will faithfully lavish grace on the redeemed. And Paul begins this letter by using that scandalous grace as leverage to motivate the church at Corinth to repent and obey and love and serve with sincerity. The Holy Spirit uses that same grace, the grace we've been shown, to motivate us to repent where we are sinning, to obey what God calls us to do, to love and serve those for whom Christ has died. I think the objective of these opening verses is to put us in the right frame of mind for dealing with our flaws, our blind spots, our sins, as we deal with the imperfections and shortcomings of our own church. We need to not forget who we are in Christ and who is keeping us in Christ.

God is faithful and God is incredibly gracious. I suppose as descendants of Adam, it's one of the lingering effects of the covenant of works hanging over our heads, but I think we have a tendency to fight sin by wallowing in the law's condemnation. And when I say wallow, I mean we do exactly what Romans 6 tells us not to do. We're told in Romans 6 to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, to not let sin reign in our bodies, to make us obey its passions, and that sin will not have dominion over us since we're not under the law but under grace. And we have a tendency to ignore all of that so that we can guilt ourselves into obedience. The problem is that for the sinner, there is no obedience outside of grace.

Flogging ourselves with the law is not the pathway to humility. It's actually the pathway to self-righteousness. It's a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that in you dwells no good thing apart from Christ. God's incomprehensible grace, on the other hand, is the biblical motivation for repentance and obedience and love and service. Paul would have us reform what needs to be reformed in our lives by starting with a long, hard look at the magnitude of God's grace to us, a grace that calls us to sainthood even while treating us as if we're already saints, a grace that surrounds us with fellow pilgrims for the journey, the Catholic Church, like-minded sinners saved by grace, a grace that puts us on speaking terms with our Creator because it imparts a righteousness that leads to peace, a grace that confirms in us that we belong to Christ and will belong to Christ all the way through Judgment Day. If we're going to be able to deal with the things that Paul is going to address in this letter, our starting point must be an acknowledgment of our own inadequacy and of the magnitude and sufficiency of the grace of God. God is gracious, and God is faithful, so we can depend on Him to sanctify the saints.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your grace to us, a grace that we can't come close to comprehending, but a grace that we know will keep us secure and keep us blameless to the end. May the peace that that realization brings spur us on to pursue holiness in the way You intend us to pursue holiness, in a way that depends on You and glorifies You. Lord, forgive us for underestimating Your love and the power of Your grace in us. Thank You, Jesus, for making us saints by giving us Your righteousness. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we look to You to keep us to the end. In Jesus' name, amen.