1 Corinthians 1:4-8

Introduction

1 Corinthians 1:4 “I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;”

We are entering the fourth and final aspect of the introduction to 1 Corinthians. I am dividing this aspect of the introduction into 2 parts. The first part my focus is on the thanking God and the second part I will examine the reasons Paul thanks God on behalf of the Corinthian church. There are four points to highlight in the first part: Paul thanks God, Paul thanks his God, Paul’s consistency in thanking God, and Paul thanks God for others.

God loves when His people are thankful. Thanking God is a form of praising God. Case in point: In the Old Testament the Hebrew word translated as “thanks” thirty-two times, “thank” four times, and “thanksgiving” two times, is translated as praise fifty-two times. To thank God is to praise God.

As this sermon is being preached, I want you to ask yourself a question: How often do I thank God and by association praise God?

Paul Thanks God

Paul views God as indispensable. The correct way in understanding Paul thanking God is everything he thanked God, Paul understood would not have happened without God. In this context, he thanks God for grace given to the Corinthians by Jesus Christ, God enriching them by Jesus, and the testimony of Christ being confirmed in them. None of this would have happened without God working in their lives.

Sadly, we like to take credit for what God has done in our lives. I attended a youth conferences where the leaders had the assembly clap whenever a person trusted Jesus Christ. They were clapping because the person made a good decision for Jesus. The issue is not did they make a good decision for Jesus. They did make a good decision for Jesus but a decision that could not have been made without God’s effectual grace working in their lives. No where in scripture do you find the Apostles congratulating people for making a good decision about Jesus Christ. By congratulating people, we rob God the glory in saving them.

In Acts 10, Peter and his Jewish Christian friends visited a Gentile named Cornelius. As Peter preached the Gospel to Cornelius and those in his house, the Holy Spirit regenerated and redeemed them. He made them alive in Christ Jesus. Peter and his friends response was not how in awe they were that the Gentiles would choose a Jewish Messiah. Luke gives us their response in Acts 10:45 “And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.” They were astonished or utterly amazed that God would save them. In Acts 11, Peter reports back to the church in Jerusalem what had happened in Cornelius’ house. Their response to the Gentiles being saved is vastly different then many groups today. Acts 11:18 “When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.” Like Peter and his Jewish comrades, they did not clap because the Gentiles made a wise decision to be included into the family of God. No! They glorified God for giving them repentance unto life. Did Cornelius and those in his house have to repent and believe? Yes! However, God was the only reason their repentance was unto eternal life.

I know a missionary who believes his evangelist friend preaches in a manner that causes conversions every time he proclaims the Gospel in an evangelistic service. Yet, Paul rejects the notion that one person can carry that much evangelistic weight. 1 Corinthians 3:6–7 “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” The declarers of the Gospel are nothing in the work of salvation compared to God’s saving activity. It does not matter how charismatic or broken or knowledgeable or current a preacher is without God moving there is no fruit. The lesson is not seeing we are insignificant compared to God in saving others, we should not declare the Gospel; rather, declare the Gospel because God can use these words to convert a person. God empowers the message.

Adding to what has already been said: Philippians 1:15–18 “Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” Paul is not condoning a preacher that preaches with a wrong motive; instead, he is highlighting truth being preached. God uses truth regardless of who the speaker is to do unimaginably impossible things. God does not need us; He chooses to uses us!

We need to be in a good habit of praising, lifting up, and thanking God rather congratulate men for a work that only God could do. In my first pastorate there was a young man that had converted to Christ. He said that he sat under a couple pastors but I was the only one who got through. It was not me that got through to him. My sermons were not different than my predecessors, the difference was God’s word through the power of the Holy Spirit became a hammer that broke his hard heart.

Paul thanks his God

Paul’s praying to God is intensely personal. Within the first three words Paul uses two personal pronouns: “I” and “my.” Paul is thanking his God in prayer. Paul did not view God as so infinite that He is absolutely disconnected from His creation. Just the opposite is true. Even though God is infinitely better and superior than us in every way, we can have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

One theologian wrote: “MY GOD shows us the intensely personal relationship Paul had with God. God was not at a distance for Paul; He was close, He was his Father and his Friend. Not only does the believer have a right to offer prayers to God because of Jesus Christ, but also he has a right to claim God as "MY GOD" because of Jesus Christ.”

Paul wrote: Romans 5:10–11 “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” We can “joy in God (Within the sphere of God) through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christians can be in the very presence of God “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Inside of this presence, we can engage in a personal and meaningful relationship with God. Therefore, when Paul says: “I thank my God,” he gives actions that prove he is in the presence of God and engaging in a personal relationship with Almighty God.

Christians speak of having a personal relationship with God. It is one of the selling points of Christianity - we can have an up-close and intimate relationship with the creator of the universe. This intimate and personal relationship with God behaves in three ways: hearing from God (His word), doing what He says (Evidence that we love Him), and praying (talking to Him). You do not have an intimate relationship with people if you do not listen, love or speak to them. Paul thanking God is proof that he hears from God (Paul could not thank God if he did not know what He was capable of doing), loves God (Paul could not have thanked God for reconciling people to Him if he did not love God), and spoke to God.

Do we view God as “my God” or simply “He is God.” In other words, do we view God that causes us to interact within Him? Or, do we view God from an intellectual but not intimate point of view?

A. W. Pink comments that the phrase “my God” has a practical relational value as well. A. W. Pink wrote: “All of Paul’s talents and energies were devoted to the glory of God who had shown him such abundant mercy, who would keep that which Paul had committed to Him, who would supply all Paul’s needs.” By Paul asserting that God was his, he was confessing without God he could do nothing. God being his was the only reason he could accomplish great things for the Lord’s churches. Paul wrote: 1 Corinthians 15:10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” What is God doing in your life that says you have a personal relationship with Him?

Paul saying “my God” does not mean that Paul owns God. John MacArthur points out that the phrase speaks of Paul’s commitment to God. He said: “The expression simply indicates Paul’s deeply personal devotion” to God. “We may say: this is my wife; these are my kids; this is my job.” In each instance, our point is not that we own them but that we are committed and devoted to them.

Paul did not have an easy Christian life. “In 2 Cor. 11:23-28 Paul reluctantly recounts his resume of suffering, which included imprisonments, countless beatings, and near-death experiences:

Whipped with 39 lashes (5 different times)

Beaten with rods (3 different times)

Pummeled with stones (1 time)

Shipwrecked (3 times)

Adrift at sea (one night, one day)

Journeys (frequent)

Danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from his own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers

Toil and hardship

Sleepless nights (many)

Hungry and thirsty (often)

Cold and exposed

The pressure of anxiety for all the churches (daily)

Yet, in spite of all these painful experiences Paul could say: 2 Corinthians 4:8–12 “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.”

How could pay say this? What was his secret in maintaining a fruitful relationship with Jesus as his body was wasting away? 2 Corinthians 4:16 “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” Each day Paul renewed his personal and intimate relationship with Jesus. In general what does renewed mean? To borrow the words of another pastor: the renewal of our minds and hearts occurs by the word of God, the Spirit of God and the revealed nature of God in scripture. Regardless of how his day was yesterday, Paul craved God today.

As it relates to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:16 what does renewal mean? John Piper wrote: "The apostle Paul wrestled as much as anybody with the temptation to lose heart because of the wasting away of his body. He strengthened his heart with truth about the future grace of dying. And he wrote it down so that we might follow him… The first part of his answer is in 2 Corinthians 4:16… He doesn’t lose heart because his inner man is being renewed. How? The renewing of his heart comes from something very strange: it comes from looking at what he can’t see (2 Corinthians 4:17–18 ‘For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal’) … This is Paul’s way of not losing heart: looking at what you can’t see.”

George Whitfield was one of a few men who God use to bring about the first Great Awakening in America. The last thing George Whitfield said, before he died: “Lord Jesus, I am weary in Thy work, but not of Thy work. If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for Thee once more in the fields, seal Thy truth, and come home and die.” George Whitfield could say this because he prayed to his God.

The only way we can maintain a personal relationship with God is by constantly focusing on eternal things and truths. In other words, we need to walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight”, believing God’s promises.

Paul’s consistency in thanking God

Paul’s consistency in thanking God is seen in the word “always.” 1 Corinthians 1:4 “I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;” The word “always” means “every time.” Paul used the phrase “I thank my God” six times in his epistles. All but once the reference is through prayer. The idea is Paul had a set time to pray and during this set time of prayer, he thanked God for the church in Corinth. Even though the letter is mainly a rebuke, and he wrote with a heaviness and broken heart (2 Corinthians 2:4 “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.” ), he was still thankful for what God had done in their lives.

D. A. Carson wrote: “Much praying is not done becasue we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do no drift into discipline prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciously set aside time to do nothing but pray.” I will add, that in this set time of prayer, we must take the time to thank God.

The importance in thanking God is seen in Paul commanding us to thank God. 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” If God commands us to thank Him then does that take away from the authenticity of thanking Him? No! Keeping the commands of God is an act of love. John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Giving thanks to God guards “against covetousness, bitterness, selfishness, anger, and other harmful attitudes.”

Thanking God is a good thing to do. Psalm 92:1 “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, And to sing praises unto thy name, O most High:” The reason it is a good thing to thank God is because He is good: Psalm 136:1 “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever.” I was listening to a Christian apologist answer a question regarding God’s love. “If God is love then why do bad things happen?” He answered the question from a personal tragedy that had struck his family. His niece had died in a car accident while she was safely buckled up in her car seat. The baby sitter did not see the stop sign and the truck that hit that backside of the car was speeding. He said that God could have caused the baby sitter to be more alert while driving or the truck driver to drive the speed limit. If any of those two things happened, his niece would be alive. He concluded by saying that he did not know why God allowed that awful accident that created so much pain within his family to happen, but this did not take away from God being loving. Similarly, we should thank God in the good and bad times of life. Why? It is not because everything that happens measures up to our determination of what good is but He is good; therefore, everything He does is good!

A Christian who regularly thanks God is more likely to recognize present blessings. They see the day differently than those who do not have a habit of thanking God. A Puritan named Thomas Matson wrote: “The necessity of being much and often in thanksgiving will appear by these two considerations: Because God is continually beneficial to us, blessing and delivering His people every day and by new mercies giveth us new matter of praise and thanksgiving: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation’ (Psalms 68:19).”

Paul thanks God for others

1 Corinthians 1:4 “I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;” Paul thanked God on their behalf. Paul could have been consumed by all of his trials or pain they have caused him. Instead, he spends time thanking God for what God did in the lives of others. He was thankful that God interceded on their behalf in saving them. We need to let that truth sink in for a moment. Paul did not say: “I thank God for your faithfulness and your good behavior and that you are such nice people." But he did thank God for delivering them.

Why is this important?

God makes no mistakes. God did not save someone then say later: “Oops, I made a mistake in saving him.” The Corinthian church’s behavior towards Paul was piercing but at no point did Paul believe God saving them was a mistake.

If we believe what we are saying (thanking God for delivering them) then there is meaning and moving.. We are declaring our love for them. To thank God for delivering someone without selflessly loving them is an empty thanksgiving. An area where Christians have flat lined on is loving fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not encouraging or exhorting one another. We live in our own cocoon and only concerned with what happens within.

I have seen this flat line particularly in areas where Christians disagree with one another. How do we find a way to disagree and still love one another? A good first step is to get in the habit of thanking God for saving them.

Thanking God for saving others opens a dialogue between you and God!

Thanking God for saving others puts rebuke in its proper perspective.