Christ's Work in the Church: The Calling of God
The Church of Corinth; Struggling to be in the world but not of the world • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 40:53
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Paul begins his letter by introducing himself as a good letter writer would. His letter would be read to the church group that was addressed in the letter but it was also circulated to other churches as well. Imagine a association of churches publishing articles of doctrinal importance from the associational leader. Paul was a church planter and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he spoke, the churches listened because they knew that God called him to such an office and therefore his direction was heaven sent.
As we have learned previously, Paul’s introductions were never bland. They were full of doctrinal spice and intention. Paul usually identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact he does so in every letter he writes, except his letters to the Philippians, the Thessalonians, and to Philemon.
He does this for a particular purpose. He is usually reminding these churches of his authority that was given to him by God in order that he might teach them and correct them in particular matters. He doles out his spiritual resume because in many of these letters that he writes, his authority and his apostleship is being called into question.
But with this introduction to this letter and his opening address, Paul expresses his thankfulness for the Corinthians. His thankfulness is because of God’s work through Christ in his church. Therefore, in our time today, we are going to look at a few ways Paul is thankful for the work of Christ in the church.
He writes in v 4,
4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus,
His thankfulness shows his leadership qualities because regardless of the situation at hand in Corinth, with division, immorality, and abuse running rampant, he still is able to show thankfulness for Christ’s work among those believers there. He is not ignorant of the faithful followers of Christ who are there fighting for holiness and faithfulness among the believers.
This should challenge us in our leadership in our homes, workplaces, schools, nation to prioritize seeing the good that God is doing even among the evil around us. If we cannot look out into the existence that we live in and recognize God’s good hand at work, then we are blinded by the devil. He is faithful and at work and no matter how distraught we might be, church we must ask the Lord for a refreshing gaze at his goodness in all of life.
So Paul says he is thankful to God always because of the grace given to the Corinthians in Christ Jesus. This gracious gift he refers to is the work of Christ, a mulit-faceted work of redemption and love that needs our attention today. Let us see these gifts from God’s grace and like Paul be thankful!
The Gift of Divine Calling
The Gift of Divine Calling
How did you come to Christ?
If someone asks you this question, you might say, “I walked an aisle… or I prayed with my granny, or my pastor.” It is a common question about the salvation of a believer, but I am not asking it in that way others might. I am not asking you to describe the day, time, events that you trusted in Christ. Many people do not remember the exact time or day. Instead, I am asking
His doctrinal richness will led us as well to be thankful for the work of Christ in our hearts and the hearts of our brothers and sisters of the faith. There are 4 of these ways He is thankful
First of all, Paul teaches that we are called by God until salvation.
The word calling (KALEO) is used throughout the NT. It has a few meanings:
1. to name or refer to someone by name. We named our children when they were born and therefore these are the names that we call them. In Matthew 1:23
23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
2. to invite, summon someone
In Mark 3:31, Jesus’ mothers and brothers visited him while he was ministering to the people. The text reads they “sent for him and called him” meaning they summoned him to come to meet and visit with them.
3. overwhelming usage: (passive voice) calling from God to someone else in regards to accomplishing a spiritual work in them
(Paul)Rom 8:30
(Paul) Rom 9:24
(Paul)Gal 1:6
(Peter) 1 Peter 2:9
(Matt) Matt 4:21
This calling by God is described in different ways with different words being used. For example, the word drawing to God is sometimes used,
In John 6:44
John 6:44 (ESV)
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
But the Scripture actually teaches that the call of God that leads to salvation is a two-part call. In other words, there is both an external call of the gospel and an internal call unto salvation.
Notice these verses with me:
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
These are examples of the external public call of God that is communicated through the preaching of the gospel on a global scale by faithful believers in Christ. No follower of Jesus has ever come to Christ without experiencing the external call of God through the gospel.
In other words, you can’t get saved by look at the trees in your deer stand, or looking at the stars in your telescope. God draws his people to himself by the proclaimed external call of God in his word. We hear that word and we respond in faith to it by God’s grace.
Sadly, the reality is that many people reject the external call of God. They hear the gospel message preached or taught and they reject Christ’s message of hope and love. These are the people in our neighborhoods and across the nations that will face the great judgment of God for rejecting him as King. They will be held accountable for their sinful living but their greatest sin is rejecting the one for whom they were made to praise.
Special (divine) call
But on 1 Cor 1:9, Paul uses the term differently. The GK language is a passive voice verb meaning that the call of God is initiated by some outside person upon the recipient of the action. It is referred to as the divine passive because it is God acting upon human beings with effect.
9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul is thankful because of the divine call of God in the lives of the Corinthians that not only did they hear the gospel proclaimed but that the divine call to salvation had its effect on them and they were saved. One of my favorite stories of the divine call of God unto salvation is the story of Lydia in Acts 16:14. Now while Paul was on his missionary journey, was not intending at that moment to go to the region of Macedonia but the Lord by His Spirit directed Paul there. In his providence, He led him to Phillipi and in Philippi, out to a riverside area to pray. There at the riverside, Paul met some women and shared the gospel with them.
13 And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. 14 One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.
Here you see the work of both the external gospel call and the divine call of God to salvation. Lydia heard Paul’s words proclaimed to the women and then the Lord opened her heart to heed Paul’s words. To open her heart means that her heart was previously closed to the gospel message. What closes our heart to gospel truth? blindness to truth because of sin. God has to remove that blindness in order for us to even hear or understand the gospel being proclaimed.
Now each of our salvation stories are different and yet the same. All of us were at different stages of life, different locations and yet the same saving transformative work of salvation happens to us all when God calls us out of darkness into marvelous light.
Paul uses the same verbiage in v 1, to describe his calling as an apostle,
1 Corinthians 1:1 (ESV)
1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus,
Paul is not saying that God invited him to be an apostle, he is not using that word call as a way in which God named him, like when we he changed his name from Saul to Paul. Instead, the apostle is stating that a divine calling upon his life led him to undeniably repent of his sin, surrender his life to Christ and ultimately serve the Lord as an apostle. This is why Paul states in almost every NT letter he wrote that his calling as an apostle is by “the will of God.”
Remember church that God’s will and plan will come to pass. WIth human eyes, we can now see the course of Paul’s life that led him to hate Christ and Christians, but then radically love Christ, become a follower of Jesus and serve the church until his death. Folks, that was the plan of God from eternity past for our dear brother Paul.
This is the divine call of God for Paul and for all who trust in Jesus.
The divine call of God, which is distinct from the external call of the gospel proclamation is the process whereby God draws sinners to himself, giving them open eyes of faith to believe in him and turn from their sins as they respond to the gospel being proclaimed
Application: What this means for us is that it leads us to thankfulness, in the great sovereign work of God that he would look upon with grace and send his Son to rescue us. He didn’t have to save anyone, but He chose to save His people and sadly not all people are saved. Therefore, some hear the call of the external gospel message and sadly reject Him as their lord and King. These are the ones we pray that God would save and draw to himself.
It also leads us to thankfulness because without the power of Christ work on the cross and his resurrection, we would be dead and lost in our sins. Eph 2:1-3
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
The divine call of God awakens our hearts and minds to Christ Jesus in such a way that we respond in faith and trust in Him alone for our salvation. Without his divine calling, we would all simply be those who reject his external calling and who will be punished by the judge for such insolence.
2. The Gift of the Church
2. The Gift of the Church
2 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:
Notice verse 2, where our calling leads us. Our Calling to Christ does not only bless us with the gift of salvation but it gifts us with the blessing of a spiritual community. Paul writes to the Corinthians to address certain sin issues in the church. Ephesians 5, Paul makes the connection that marriage between a husband and wife is a reflection of the church and Jesus Christ. The church is the bride and Jesus is the groom.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Now all the married couples here today, understand, or they better understand that their spouse is a gift to them from God. It is a gift of grace that God would unite you to another human for the rest of our days. My sweet wife of 21 years is a gift to me and Paul wants the church to understand that we are the bride of Christ, and as His bride, we are a gift to Him and a gift to each other.
A Gift to Son from the Father
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Jesus is speaking about his sheep and his sheep are those who follow him. We know the sheep who follow Jesus are his Church. Therefore the sheep given to the Son, the church, are his bride. The bride was a gift from the Father to the Son. The church as the Bride exists to glorify the Son, the Groom for all eternity.
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
A Gift to each other
In Corinthians 1:2 Paul is thankful because the church, who Paul calls the holy ones are “called to be together with all those in every place who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our calling to salvation also includes our calling to the bride of Christ, the church. It is a distinct blessing that not only are we in union with Christ through his redemption, but we are in union with Christ with other believers.
The church is His bride and our community. We are not intended to be people to live for Christ alone, we are part of a people. We are not a nation in this world, but a people belonging to another world. The heavenly kingdom is our home and now, the church exists to reflect that kingdom among the darkness of this universe.
Consider a couple of elements about the church
A. No Isolation: Ekklesia (gathered people, together with all those who call upon the name of Jesus as Lord). For Paul, the language of the GK Ekklesia meant a gathered people. The church gathers together and benefits from that gathering the way that Adam and Eve gathered with the Lord in the garden. Our gathering, with Christ as the center, is food for our spiritual souls.
Sadly, many people don’t see the need to gather with their spiritual community because they see the church as a physical entity and not a spiritual one, like perhaps they also see other spiritual disciplines as merely physical. Some read the Bible as words that are told to read instead of food to nourish their souls. This is why their is dryness and monotony in their spiritual lives.
Similarly, when the church is an event on our calendar or a building we visit during the week to check a box of religious servitude, then we will not value what truly exists among God’s people.
Instead, let us see the community of God’s people as a family of faith, united together in Christ, designed for one another’s good and for God’s supreme glory.
24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Notice the writer of Hebrews states that us(the church) should consider how we might work together to prod each other to spiritual activity of love and good works. Like a sheep dog, other believers help the sheep toward the intended goal in the Christian life.
B. No boundary (their Lord and ours) Remember also that the church is both local and universal. Paul reminds the Corinthians that the community of faith consists of all types of peoples and cultures as long as they are people who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that people who look different, spend different, sound different and live different than us should be considered family when they likewise confess Christ as Lord and Savior.
This week I spoke with and prayed with a brother in India that I am partnering with through Catalyst Missions. We were over 7,000 thousands miles away and yet we were showing our love for Christ towards each other. We had commonality in Christ even though our cultures are very different. It is an undeniable spiritual connection because we all belong to one global church that worship Jesus Christ alone.
This doctrine of the unity of the church is so very important as Paul addresses in chapter 1 the factions and divisions among the people. Often times we let our differences divide us in the church. We look at color of skin, athletic gifts, employment, neighborhoods, etc and we always find a way divide ourselves up even among brothers and sisters in Christ. But Christ doesn’t want the homeshool church and the public school church. We doesn’t want the good side of the tracks baptist church and the lesser desirable side of the track baptist. We should be united in the Lord Jesus and celebrate our differences as we come together with our commonalities in the faith.
Application:
Some of you are attending church but you are not here. What I mean is that you are not giving back to the lives of those around you. We must walk into whatever environment we gather in each week ready to worship Christ in a myriad of ways, one of which is stirring up others to love and good works which includes not neglecting the gathering of the church. Who in your local body can you
-serve
-encourage
-pray with
-study with
-call them to repentance?
The local church you are members of is the place God sovereignly placed you and He wants you to serve him by serving people in those ways.
3. The Gift of Purification
3. The Gift of Purification
There is a final aspect of the church that Paul makes the point to make: the church is made up of holy ones… sanctified. V2 he states we are sanctified in Christ Jesus. if you study the original language then you would understand the word sanctified there is layered with deep rich meaning. It is written as a perfect tense, passive verb participle. That means that our sanctification is a past tense action, brought upon us by at outside party, not of ourselves, which has continual results for us into eternity. I have been made holy by Christ and not myself and that sanctification will be lasting into eternity as I stand before a holy God.
We know then that the church, the bride of Christ, is the group of people who Christ _MADE_HOLY by his own perfection and righteousness.
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
There is an aspect where the church has been made holy in a complete sense before God. He says in v 8,
8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the end, we stand before God guiltless and undefiled because of the perfections of Christ and not ourselves. He makes us holy and blameless because he is holy and blameless.
This week I participated in the funeral for my grandmother. Praise the Lord I was able to share the gospel clearly in my 7 minutes I was given because the priest literally got up and fumbled his way through a man-made presentation of works salvation. He applied the parable of virgins who didn't fill up their oil before the Master returned to believers as those who need to make sure they have a sufficient amount of love (the oil) that they have shared with the world in order to be received into heaven.
My friends this is not the gospel and it is not a doctrine dependent on the sufficiency of Christ. Instead, it is based on our good works to prepare a place for us in heaven. This is not what the bible teaches.
Instead, Christ did all that was necessary in redeeming a people for himself, and making them holy and blameless in Him.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
But the other side of the coin, is that while God sees us as perfect and holy because of the work of Christ, we are still called to live holy and are still being sanctified.
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
We live a reality of what Christ has done in us and what Christ is doing in us still. Being sancitifed means that we are living day by day resting in Christ us
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
That renewal is Christ removing the old habits and disciplines by His power with new habits and disciplines that honor him and glorify his name in all the earth. That transformation cannot happen unless the church participates in it. Each of us is tasked with building each other up, making each other holy by the power and plan of Christ. Look with me again at Eph 5
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
This is the end result, that we are the bride and Christ as our groom will one day come again. ladies, remeber the excitment and preparation for your wedding day. You showered, had your hair did, your nails sculpted to perfection, your dress steamed and wrinkle free. You wanted everything perfect for that moment you saw your groom.
In the Biblical times, the groom would come to the home of his bride and receive her to himself, and they would journey together to the wedding feast. This is the imagery here of Christ coming again and receiving a Bride perfectly prepared for him by His own holy perfections. He has sanctified his church and He is sanctifying it so He can receive it to Himself on that great wedding day!
For these reasons and a few more, Paul is thankful for the believers in Corinth. He is thankful to see their faith, to see their transformation and to know that the power of the Cross made that change happen.
Response:
Are you trusting in Christ alone, resting in him to save you? Have you faithfully responded to the external call of the gospel to forsake sin and turn to Christ alone for salvation? Christ lived a perfect life, died upon the cross as a substitute for sin, was buried and rose victoriously from the grave? This is the gift of grace extended to you if you will surrender to Him and forsake your sinful ways.
Are you thankful church, for what Christ has done in you and for you? Do you cherish his bride, the church as a necessary aspect of your spiritual journey or is church something you just do? If you believe so poorly of the bride of Christ, let me encourage you to repent of such lies and begin to cherish the bride of Christ that Christ has joined you to.