Called Higher: 1st Corinthians 1:1-3

Introduction

We are about to take a journey through my favorite book of the New Testament. We aren't going through it because its my favorite, but that certainly helps. We are going to the coastal city of Corinth where Paul had established a church. In Acts 18. After Paul had preached in Athens, he ventured to Corinth. Paul spent 18 months of his life labouring among the Corinthian people, both Jew and Gentile. He worked as a tent maker and laboured in the gospel, winning souls to the Lord Jesus. After he left, Paul received word from the house of Chloe in Corinth about some of the things that were going on there, as well as some of the issues they faced, and both of those things needed to be handled with grace, compassion, exhortation, and rebuke. By way of introduction, I want to share with you just a little background about Corinth and about what this church faced in their day to day life. Corinth was a Greek city, and also a Roman territory. It was a trade port that connected the mainland with the rest of the world, and like most all Greek and Roman cities, they had a patron god, or in this case goddess, in the Greek goddess Aphrodite. There was a temple dedicated to her worship that employed over 1000 temple prostitutes that engaged in all manner of sexual perversion, and it was in this city that God led Paul to plant a church. Imagine that with me for just a moment. We are a church plant. What would all of you have said if we had opened up a church right next to a flop house? But not only that the church was right next to it, but that we all lived in a location where the majority of the population glorified every sort of sexual perversion you could ever imagine. That’s the scenario we find the Corinthian church in. They lived in a city that was given over to worshipping a demon, and Paul decides its time to set up house keeping and start a church! I want you to think about the diffculties and hardships this church faced not only in starting out, but in maintaining a holy life in the face of the godlessness going on all around them. We’re talking about saved people that had been redeemed out of the world, but struggled with living out their faith in the world. I don’t know how long it will take to preach through this book, but I do know that the sermons God will birth in the study are what we need in these days. God has granted me a little bit of insight into the theme throughout this book, and the sermons preached from it will focus on the theme of "Called Higher". I want you to keep that in your mind. We say a lot about how we are meant for more, that we are a royal priesthood and a chosen generation, but no one ever really mentions how that plays out in the real world. How do I keep myself focused on being called higher when I feel like I’m down in the gutter? It is my prayer that as we go through this book together, we will see how we as Christians can live a life that is higher than we could possibly imagine.

If you have a Bible, turn to 1st Corinthians Chapter 1. The Bible says

1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm going to focus on 2 words this morning. The word call(ed) and the word sanctified. You may think 'well what can be had in two words?' I'm glad you asked, because I get to tell you.

CALLED:

We find in our text Paul introducing himself as an apostle, and there’s a reason he does this. There were some in the Corinthian church that had come to doubt the veracity of Paul’s claim as an apostle, and he starts the letter by correcting them. He says he is an apostle by the will of God. He doesn’t require any affirmation, he doesn’t require there acceptance as an apostle, he is giving them a statement of fact that says " Whether you accept it or not, I am an apostle by the will of God. You didn’t call me, you didn’t hire me, and your doubts aren’t going to sway me in what God has appointed for me to do. He then tells who the letter is addressed to. Its addressed to those in Corinth that make up the church. He's writing to saved people. Somebody look at your neighbor and tell them 'he's talking to you'! We are the church, church! And while this letter wasn't written to us, it is written for us, and we need to take heed to what it says.

Paul begins his letter by using the word 'called' to designate his apostleship. The word called has multiple meanings, and each meaning ties to Christianity. It means to summon, call by name, call out, call to oneself, or divinely select and appoint. Paul is reminding the Corinthian church right off the bat that they have been called. They have been, as Paul would later say to Timothy,

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,

Those who have been saved by the grace of God have been called! We have been summoned by God through the effectual call of the gospel, and that this morning church is a high and holy calling, and might i tell you this morning that this summons wasn’t random, but that God called you by name!

We didn’t have to wonder who it was that issued the summons, because he didn’t just say 'hey you, come here', he called you by your name! Not only did he call you by name, he called you out! Out of the darkness and filth of sin, he called you to himself, and that calling was a divine appointment with the Lord of Heaven to live a life that is higher than you or I could have ever dreamed! You and I this morning, saints, have been called! and heres the thing. Every bit of this happened at the same time. You were summoned, called by name, called out, called to the Lord, and divinely appointed the moment you heard the gospel and believed on Jesus! We have been called higher!

Think of all the Corinthian church was faced with day in and day out.They saw hundreds if not thousands of people participating in pagan worship every day. They saw their city infested and almost completely over taken by sin, and they started slipping. The whole reason Paul had to write this letter was because they started slipping. They started to ignore the calling they were called with.

Paul begins this letter reminding the Corinthian church and us this morning calling us to remember our calling, not because of who we are, but because of who our calling comes from and is sustained by! Hebrews 3 says

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus

The calling that those who are saved have on their lives is a heavenly calling. It was heaven who summoned, heaven who called your name, heaven who called us out, and heaven that was responsible for the divine appointment! John said “and to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. Who were born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God”

This calling did not originate at an altar, it didn’t come from a song, it came from and is sustained by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and it is that calling, that divine appointment, that makes us saints!

Can somebody help me jab the devil in the eye this morning? I know that I have mentioned this several times in the past weeks, but since its here in the text I’m mentioning it again. I want you to notice something in your bible. Do you notice the italic words? The words that are slanted sideways? Those are words that were added by the translators to make the passage easier to understand. However, in this particular place, I think they hurt the intended meaning. Someone who doesn’t know about the italics could read this and say ‘I’m called to be a saint. I just haven’t gotten there yet’ But that isnt what the text really says. I want to very quickly read this passage and leave out the italics.

Verse 2 says ‘to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints.’

The Bible says that we are called saints. Not called ‘to be’ saints, but that we are saints. You aren’t working towards being one. You are, right now, a saint. The word saints means ‘consecrated, a holy thing’

Notice what Paul didn’t say. He didn’t say were ‘called sinners saved by grace’, or ‘called to be carnal Christians’ he said we are called saints! How are we saints? How are we consecrated? Because of what verse 2 says. Look at it again.

Sanctified:

Here we come across another phrase that people use but that many don’t know what it means. Paul says this letter is to those who are sanctified in Christ. This word sanctified means ‘set apart, made holy, to separate from profane things and dedicate to God’

What we are seeing here is a two-fold holiness. We are not only called with a holy calling, but in that calling we are set apart and made holy. Sanctification is both instantaneous in the heavenlies and progressive on earth. Sanctification as a process is God working in us, through the person of the Holy Ghost to make us more like Jesus. From the view of Christ’s active reign, we are already just as sanctified right now as we will be for all eternity, but we aren’t in eternity yet. While we are here on this earth it is a process we are walking out in our day to day lives. The little inconveniences, the big problems, the people we have disagreements and all out fights with, are the sandpaper for our sanctification. God uses our struggles, our trials, our heartaches, and hardships to shape us and fashion us into something that is more and more like Jesus with each passing day. There is a divine exchange being made in our lives with every waking moment, and we don’t realize it. Every day we are on this earth God is working in us and through us, chipping away at our flesh and our sinful desires through the things we go through to make us more and more like Jesus. As Paul said in Romans 8:29, we are being conformed to the image of Christ! Eventually, the part of our calling that is God calling us to himself will be complete, and sanctification will have worked in us until we have so much of our Lord in us that the mortal body we are in cannot bear it, and we will answer the final call to come home! But while we are here, we must keep out eyes on the prize. Paul said in Philippians 3:14 that we are to press towards the mark of the high calling of God that is in Christ Jesus! We have been called higher! There is a reason truly saved people are distinct and different from the rest of the world. It isn’t through the power of positive thinking, it isn’t through others telling us that were doing a good job, and it isn’t because we turned over a new leaf. look at verse 2 again. Paul says this. ‘with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours’

I’ve spent the last several minutes telling about the part of calling that God does, and make no mistake he does it all, including this last part. He gives us the ability to call on the name that is above every name. I’m reminded of what David said in Psalm 40. He said I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. When you were lost without God and without hope in this world, and the light of the glorious gospel shined into your life, when that effectual gracious call of ‘come to me all that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest’ rang out in your heart and life, you and I called out to a merciful, gracious, loving God. Go to Ephesians 2 very quickly.

The New King James Version Chapter 2

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Conclusion:

The calling that you and I have received is a call to be a separate, holy people. It is a calling that makes us saints, setting us apart and making us holy before God. It is a call to a higher life. A life filled with the mercies and wonders of God. A life that no longer seeks fulfillment in the dregs and emptiness of sin and shame, but finds its fulfillment in Christ. We have been sanctified in Christ, are called saints, and we have been called higher.