The Church of God
—1Corinthians 1
This lesson studies 1Corinthians chapter 1 a few verses at a time. There are five ideals in this chapter that should characterise a church or congregation of God. They are grace, unity, truth, wisdom, and glory. Let's see what Paul said about them as they applied to the Corinthian church.
1 GRACE
1Cor 1: Verses 1-9
It was by God’s grace that Paul was called to be an apostle and Sosthenes became a brother in Christ. It was by grace that the Corinthian Christians were called to be saints (sanctified people), called to peace and into the fellowship of Jesus Christ God’s Son. It was by grace that they themselves called upon the name of Jesus their Lord, and found God faithful.
It was by grace that they were enriched and confirmed in knowledge, by the testimony of Christ in spiritual gifts of revelation. It was by grace that they were made blameless for the judgment.
God is kind and gracious to people today just as he was to the people of Paul’s day. The churches of God today should reflect this grace and bless those who do not deserve to be blessed.
2 UNITY
1Cor 1: Verses 10-13
The Christians at Corinth were blessed by several men who visited and taught them faithfully. Instead of treating these leaders as equal authorities under Christ, the church members were dividing into factions each claiming a different prominent brother as its head —such as Paul, Apollos, Peter, and even Christ himself. There were divisions, contentions, conflicting doctrines, even though they had all been taught the exact same thing by the men they claimed as heads of their factions.
Paul wrote, "I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." (1 Corinthians 1:10 NKJV)
Paul emphatically stated that there was one name authorising one gospel. The church of God was to unite in that authority, and conform to it with exactitude. Do not say that the church was not capable of that. Paul said that they were "enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge" (1 Corinthians 1:5). Surely they could manage no divisions with that degree of understanding.
3 TRUTH
1Cor 1: Verses 14-17
Paul said that he did not preach with "the wisdom of words", meaning the wisdom of men spoken in words dressed up with oratory. Instead Paul preached the gospel as authorised by Jesus Christ. It was the true wisdom revealed by the Holy Spirit. That was truth, and that truth is what Paul preached when he was at Corinth. Error soon crept in because people were not careful enough about the truth.
Paul was so dedicated to the integrity and truth of the gospel that he delegated to others the task of baptizing his converts. He did not want anyone to say that he baptized in his own name —an accusation that was quite untrue. The truth was that baptism is "in the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 2:38; 19:5). Note: Those verses show Peter and Paul in agreement and were written by Luke a companion of Paul.
4 WISDOM
1Cor 1: Verses 18-25
Paul compared two wisdoms —the human wisdom of this world and the heavenly wisdom of God.
- The message of the cross was foolishness to the unsaved but to those being saved it was the power of God.
- The world through its wisdom did not know God; but God, through his message of Christ crucified, saved those who believed.
- God has made foolish and destroyed the wisdom of this world, and provided instead the gospel message, the wisdom of God, which many treat as foolishness and thus make fools of themselves.
- The Jews wanted signs and the Gentiles wanted wisdom, but many would disbelieve the signs and wisdom they were given.
Paul said that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. He did not mean that God is foolish and weak. But some might think that he was foolish to have Jesus Christ his only Son killed on the cross. It turned out, when Christ was raised, to be wiser than anything foolish man could devise, thinking he could save himself.
5 GLORY
1Cor 1: Verses 26-31
Paul thought that man should not put his own wisdom in place of God’s wisdom. The reason was that man gloried in his own wisdom, and congratulated himself, casting God aside.
God seemed weak and unwise by the things he chose for calling people to himself. These things seemed weak, foolish, base, and despised. Paul mainly had in mind the crucifixion of Christ, but there are other examples. Jesus chose fishermen and a tax collector for his apostles. He rode to Jerusalem on a donkey. He saw value in the widow’s mite.
Paul taught the church at Corinth not to glorify (boast about) themselves but to humble themselves in God’s presence. Yet Paul several times said that he "boasted". This is a boasting that attributes everything to God’s grace, not human achievement.
At times Paul did boast of his own self, but only in irony, and to argue on a human level that the Corinthians understood. However, Paul himself thought it was "foolishness". He gave the church this precious principle, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord" and that is something any church of God should take to heart and practice (Jeremiah 9:23-24).