The Church of God – 1 Corinthians 1:1-3

I live in Memphis, Tennessee, a big city with hundreds of churches.  If the President of the United States wrote a letter to the church of Memphis, who would it come to and how would it be communicated to every congregation in town?  Would every congregation who received it consider every other congregation who got it to be a true church?  We certainly don’t think of Memphis as having one church.  Yet that is how Paul conceived of the congregations in the city of Corinth.

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.  (1 Corinthians 1:1-3 ESV)

Paul came to Corinth on his second missionary journey after successfully planting churches in Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea with, however, much persecution.  Persecution greeted him in Corinth as well, mostly from the Jews, but God gave him a vision telling him He would protect him and Paul stayed there a year.  Acts 18 recounts this.

Paul opens this letter in his characteristic way, identifying himself, as he does most frequently, by his title of apostle, only adding here that he was called by God’s will to this position.  He mentions Sosthenes, about whom little is known, but who is perhaps a ministry companion of Paul’s whom the Corinthians know, or who perhaps is Paul’s secretary writing this dictated letter from Paul.

He writes to the one church at Corinth, the church that belongs to God, which undoubtedly had many congregations meeting in homes.  We don’t know how they maintained unity organizationally as one church in this sprawling community.  In fact, we will see that though they saw themselves as one organizationally, they were not in unity but had several factions within them.  Paul is already challenging that disunity by identifying them as one church. 

And he identifies them as sanctified saints, holy ones set apart by God and part of the larger, world wide church of those who call on Jesus’ name.  As Paul was called to be an apostle, they are called to be set apart by God as holy, to be members of Jesus’ community of believers.  But we will see that they are not all living holy lives, lives befitting being part of Jesus’ community.

We are part of a bigger body of Christ that extends to every part of the globe now in our day.  Jesus is our Lord above all others.  We must obey him and long to be obedient to him out of love for his rescuing us.  We must also receive his grace and peace.  And we must see ourselves as part of the one church of God.