Paul's Thanksgiving for Grace - 1 Cor. 1:4-9

INTRODUCTION (Read 1 Corinthians Chapter 1)

In our “Introduction to a Dysfunctional Church” we learned that the ancient city of Corinth was like the Las Vegas of the ancient world. It was a culturally diverse city, one that was absolutely full of different ethnic and social groups. Although technology has changed in the last 20 centuries, man’s nature has not. As a result, the city of Corinth was well known for enjoying many of the same common sins that plague our large modern cities. Just as many evangelical churches today follow the culture they are in, so the church of Corinth mirrored the sinful culture of Corinth. In 1^st Corinthians, Paul the apostle has already received a letter from the Corinthian church telling them about the problems there and what they did in trying to solve those problems. As you read through Corinthians, it is always important to remember that though there was a Christian church in Corinth, it is clear that there was still too much of Corinth in these Christians. Paul knew that these sinful behaviors required radical spiritual amputation. This is an aggressive move taken by a spiritual leader that is designed to remove the root cause of the sin without killing the patient. This sin had to be killed and removed without hurting the church. And so, Paul sets out to solve these problems by dealing with their foundational problem: poor doctrine.

But before doing this, Paul has to do two things: (1) He has to reassert his apostolic authority in a situation where it has been compromised and (2) since he is an apostle, he must convince them that their behavior and doctrine needs to be in line with his own just as he had previously taught them (1 Cor. 4:16-17). In 1^st Corinthians, there are no outside opponents that Paul is fighting, rather, he is fighting internal strife and disagreements with his own teaching that had come from within the church itself (i.e., “some among you” 15:12 cf. 4:18). The rival factions that developed in the Corinthian church were like personality-cults centered around certain teachers such as Apollos, Cephas [Peter], and Paul (cf. 1:10-12), and sadly, those who were against Paul thought that they needed to “examine” Paul because he refused to accept their financial support, which created even more suspicion about his ministry as a legitimate apostle of Christ. They wondered why a man who possessed the message of divine wisdom [i.e., the Greek concept of sophia = Greek concept of “wisdom”] would be performing manual labor with his own hands (cf. 9:1-19; 4:12; Acts 18:3). As a result, these internal tensions within the church combined with those who opposed Paul’s teaching created a bad situation overall and his relationship with the Corinthian church as a whole was deteriorating. But, the good news is that even though their relationship was deteriorating, they were still willing to communicate with him by letter! It’s kind of like continuing to exchange e-mails with somebody you know but really don’t see eye to eye with on everything and so you just put up with their advice and kind of take it with a grain of salt. This is similar to how the Corinthian Christians were treating Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ!

Paul used his opportunity to contradict their practices and doctrine almost every chance he gets because they questioned his apostolic authority. They wonder if he’s really the man he says he is (cf. 1 Cor. 14:37 and all of 2^nd Corinthians). So in sum, the mixture of the secular and pagan influences of ancient Corinth, the lone-ranger individualism and boasting that reared its ugly head in the abuse of the Corinthians’ spiritual gifts, the arrogance the underlies their motives for questioning Paul’s apostolic authority, the cultural accommodation of the gospel to their society and its subsequent compromise, and many other issues addressed in this letter are but mirrors of what occurs in evangelical churches today. Paul begins his letter contradicting all of this by noting that he is an apostle of Jesus and that the grace both he and they experience comes from Jesus and is dispensed by Jesus. With all of that in mind, let’s take a look at how this grace relates to their sin in verses 4-9 under the following points:

I. Saving Grace Is a Giving Grace (vv. 4-6).

II. Saving Grace Calls and Keeps God’s People (vv. 7-9).

TEACHING/APPLICATION

I. Saving Grace Is a Giving Grace (vv. 4-6).

Verse 4: “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus” - Paul tells this problem church that he continually gives thanks to God for the grace given to this problem church. The Corinthians have questioned his apostolic credentials, they have veered from true doctrine, yet Paul still says of them “I thank my God always concerning you . . .”. What a testimony to Paul’s gracious character! Although later, Paul has to be a little sarcastic with them and even shames them; he still never stops thanking God for them. Paul realizes that with all their warts and bumps, every redeemed person will give evidence of the grace of God, and that makes Paul grateful, grateful both to God and for them. When a Christian finds great joy in God because he sees God working in the lives of even those with whom we disagree, this is a sure mark of having received God’s saving grace.

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus” - The specific basis for Paul’s thanksgiving is the grace of God. This “grace” probably refers to the abundant spiritual gifts that God gave them. They had been boasting in their gifts, but Paul boasted in God, the gracious Giver of the gifts. Because all of these gifts were given by the unmerited favor of God, there is, by definition, no basis for boasting on their part. How are you going to boast about something that you didn’t have anything to do with in the first place? Paul’s challenge (and my challenge) is to show that just as the Corinthians had no grounds for boasting about their many gifts, so we too cannot boast because the gifts we have did not come from us, but from the gracious God who loved us from all eternity and blessed us in real time history! (cf. 4:7).

Verse 5: “that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge . . .” – Paul goes on to speak of the specific gifts that God had given them, gifts of “speech” and “knowledge”. “Speech” has to do with gifts of ecstatic spontaneous utterances such as tongues, prophecy, wisdom, etc. (cf. Chapters 12-14) and “knowledge” consists of prophetic revelations, gifts of knowledge, etc. (cf. 12:8; 13:2; 14:6). Paul emphasizes that they “were enriched” with these gifts by God, showing that the source of these gifts is God and not them. He wants them to see that Christ was made poor by dying on the cross so that they could be made rich by being given the gifts of salvation and its accompanying spiritual gifts (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9).

Verse 6: “. . . even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you” – Again, Paul’s emphasis is to reiterate that Christ and His gospel is the sole source of their salvation and their spiritual gifts. “Testimony” is a word that refers to the gospel, a gospel that Paul preached to them and a gospel that converted them and after that a gospel that gifted them. Paul tells them that Christ has provided plenty of evidence that the Corinthians were indeed God’s people by their obvious spiritual gifting. Pagans are not given genuine spiritual gifts, but only the children of God. Paul knew that the Corinthian Christians possessed many genuine spiritual gifts; therefore, he had solid evidence that they were indeed God’s children and unworthy recipients of His grace.

Questions for reflection: (1) It is clear that some people love to boast about their own spiritual accomplishments [cf. Lk. 18:10-14]. Is this a dangerous thing? If so, why? If not, why? (2) What spiritual issue could possibly cause Christians to see themselves as the source of their own gifting? (3) Should we do anything for these folks? (4) If you think it is wrong for a Christian to boast in their spiritual accomplishments and gifting, how should you lovingly discuss this with them?

II. Saving Grace Calls and Keeps God’s People (vv. 7-9).

Verse 7: “so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” – Paul admits that the Corinthian church has it all when it comes to spiritual gifts. They are not lacking any gift. He then reminds them of their giftedness in light of the revelation of the giver of those gifts. He wants them to understand that contrary to what they may think, they have not yet arrived. Paul was saying something like this, “Yes, you’re now very gifted, but you have not yet achieved perfection. So, you need to keep growing in grace as you patiently wait for Jesus’ revelation.” This is the “now/not yet” theme that is found all throughout Paul’s writings (now – 4:20; not yet – 15:50). He wants them to understand that their gifts are not the final word, but are a means to an end, namely the anticipation of Jesus’ revelation. They had lost that eager anticipation of Jesus’ revelation, and had thought that they had spiritually arrived. Just as Christians grow lethargic and spiritually “comfortable” in our day by forgetting that Jesus will one day return to resurrect the dead, judge mankind, and redeem the creation, so the Corinthians had gotten lazy also by forgetting about the revelation of Jesus.

Verse 8: “who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” – Paul says that they will be confirmed, or “guaranteed” to persevere in their faith until the end (cf. Col. 2:7). What is amazing is that he says this about a group of professing Christians whose behavior is anything but blameless! How could Paul say this, especially after the Corinthians had questioned his apostolic authority and his teaching? Well, he knew that they were believers because they obviously had been given spiritual gifts by God and only believers can be considered blameless before God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone given to them (Phil. 3:9; Col. 1:22). If Paul’s confidence was that the Corinthians had the power in and of themselves to continue in the faith till the end, then he would have been very mistaken. No, Paul could say what he said because the One who confirms and preserves them to the end is none other than God Himself. Paul understood and taught that God’s prior action of saving, regenerating grace is the ground for their obedience to Jesus and that preserving grace was the ground of his confidence in their faith. Through his own thanksgiving for their faith in Christ, Paul wants to remind this troubled church that they have not yet arrived spiritually and that God’s own preserving action will cause them to make it to the end. As a result, this means that they can’t depend on themselves and their own giftedness to get them to the end of the race, they must depend upon God, the One who is causing them to persevere unto the end in the first place.

Verse 9: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Everything that has come before verse nine in this opening thanksgiving includes both God’s regenerating grace, a grace that is unstoppable and powerfully effective in drawing people to faith in Jesus and also God’s preserving grace, an undefeatable grace that guarantees that Christians will be declared blameless at Judgment Day on the basis of Jesus’ merits clothing, covering, and eternally cleansing them. O’ what a glorious truth! And even better, Paul emphasizes in verse nine that all of this is guaranteed to happen not because of anything in the Corinthians, but because “God is faithful” (Deut. 7:9; Psalm 144:13)! If God is faithful to effectually call His elect people to faith in Jesus and unite them into fellowship with Him and unite individual Christians into community with each other, then He is 100% faithful to bring all of them to the end (John 6:44). This calling to be in fellowship with Jesus is done through the power of the Holy Spirit and is to be understood not only positionally, meaning that not only are believers immediately considered blameless before God, but relationally, meaning that they are now the adopted children of God. This isn’t a six month probationary foster-care adoption plan. No, God picks some of the worst sinners out of humanity to show that He is gracious and loving and He does it by saying something like this to spiritual orphans, “I’m going to yank you out of this mess and I’m going to adopt you, I’m going to clean you up, I’m going to teach you, I’m going to love you, and you’re going to be my precious child, and I’m going to take great joy in spending time with you.” Just like He told the Corinthians through the pen of Paul, God is telling all of us who were former spiritual orphans that He is faithful to call us out of this wicked world into loving fellowship with Jesus and that Jesus will commune with us forever! God gets all the credit for this work and sinful, undeserving man is the passive recipient of these graces.

Questions for reflection: (1) Some Christians forget that Jesus told us to get busy spreading the seed of the Kingdom until the Great Harvester, King Jesus comes to separate the wheat from the tares [Matt. 28:18-20]. Why do you think that many get lazy and seem to easily forget what their purpose is as a Christian? (2) What should be the basis of your confidence in your salvation? (3) For those of you who have been Christians for a while, how do you keep from thinking that you’ve arrived spiritually? (4) What do you do to make yourself depend upon God more? (5) Upon what basis do you think you will be declared blameless on Judgment Day by Christ [cf. Matt. 7:21-23 & Phil. 3:9]? (6) How are believers in Jesus like nasty, filthy orphans that have been adopted by a parent that is committed to loving them unconditionally no matter how messy it gets? (7) How has this new understanding of regenerating and preserving grace transformed your thinking about your own love, work, and passion for Jesus?

CONCLUSION

From Paul’s thanksgiving in verses four through nine, we learn that our focus should be the same as Paul’s, namely, that our effectual calling unto regeneration, our spiritual gifts, and our fellowship with Jesus and His people, all of it is of God, through God, and to God and none of it comes from us. We are the undeserving and eternally grateful recipients of His mercy, grace, and good pleasure and it is our joy to spread this grace everywhere for the supremacy of God and for the joy of all peoples.