Welcome
If you haven’t been with us before we pray, sing the Word of God set to music, and then sit in silence for each individual to commune with God according to how they are lead.
We then come back and read our text for the day together and then go through and study what we have read verse by verse.
Milk
1st Corinthians 1.1-9
November 12th 2017
Alright we left off last week reading and covering the first three verses of chapter one.
Let’s continue on at verse four through nine where after his salutation he says:
4 I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;
5 That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
6 Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:
7 So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:
8 Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
So back to verse 4.
4 I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;
So before giving correction and directions on matter he has heard about Paul makes sure to offer the believers there some commendations.
And he commends them by telling them that “he always gives thanks to His God” (“my God” he says here) “for the Grace of God which is given them by Jesus Christ.”
I love the layout of these words – that Paul gives thanks to his God for the grace (that can only come from God and be given to human beings ) by Jesus Christ.
That is the lay of the Christian land, folks. That God so loved the world He gave us His only human Son to do for all of humanity that we could not do ourselves and by and through Him – our looking to Him, our having faith in Him and His complete works, God bestows His grace.
Pretty wonderful news – especially to those who choose to believe on Him in this life.
I add especially to those who believe on Him because that is what the scripture says in 1st Timothy 4:10
“For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe.”
Paul rejoices first in the fact that this letter that he is writing is going to those who have received His God’s grace by faith in His Son.
That is primary in the Christian life and the rest of the letter flows out from this fact. Then speaking of the grace or gifts these believers receive from God as a result of their faith in His Son, Paul adds, perhaps alluding to the benefits of being recipients of God’s grace . . . (verse 5)
5 That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
Of course, God sends the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, and cares for all of His creations. But Paul is speaking to something else here – the spiritual fortifications that come to those who have placed their faith on God’s Son.
So though he writes “in everything ye are enriched by Him” I think the clarification that comes by him adding:
“In all utterance and in all knowledge” helps us to understand what he means by everything . . . everything that has to do with things of the Spirit.
What amazing gifts God graces those who receive His Son with –
All utterance and in all knowledge.
The Greek words translated here to utterance and knowledge in the Greek are all logos and all ginosko.
We are talking about some powerful gifts from God to those who are His by faith.
All logos and all ginosko – do we understand what this means? It means that God has turned the faucet on that is tapped into His information base and enriches those who have relationship with Him by faith in His Son with the contents.
I am of the personal opinion that this endless source of enlightenment and wisdom is never ending and perhaps aside from being saved from sin that these are some of the greatest gifts available to all believers – words of knowledge.
One thing we know is that this enrichment does not seem to be available to those who are not his by faith.
Later in chapter 2 of this letter Paul is going to return to this theme and write:
1st Corinthians 2:10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
This mind of Christ, bestowed by God upon those who have looked to Him in faith, enables us to not only know and understand the things of the Spirit as He did but empowers us to tap into the power of Christ to walk by the Spirit and not the flesh – as we are prone to say in our secular world – knowledge is power.
So the enriched knowledge and logos given to believers by God serves to empower us to walk as His Son walked – in spirit and truth.
Paul does not sell the connection short that affords people these gifts from God as He always (always) ties everything beneficial to us to our faith and love and allegiance to Christ Jesus.
When that connection is made and in place in a believers life He, Christ, becomes the conduit to all spiritual nourishment – every drop of it, as He made plain in John 15 to His disciples, saying:
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
Here in 1st Corinthians Paul comes right out of the gate and establishes (or re-establishes) the import of our connection to God through Christ – it is EVERYTHING.
Saying that in everything, in every respect, or in regard to all the favors conferred on any of his people, God enriches His children . . . with the Logos and Ginosko.
The word enriches in Greek is ploo-tid-zo (Where we get the word plutocracy which means the rule of the wealthy) and its translation in the King James to “enriches” is a good one because it means to make wealthy.
Those who are His through Christ God makes wealthy in logos and ginosko – heavenly communications and revelations and characteristics of all kinds as well as heavenly knowledge.
There is a set of absolutely wonderful passages provided us by Paul in Ephesians 3 where he touches on the gifts and spiritual abilities people have in Christ, saying at verse 14:
14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Getting back to 1st Corinthians, most believe that when Paul says that God has enriched them with all logos, translated “utterance” in the King James, that he was specifically talking about the ability to communicate, speak – most likely with heavenly tongues or foreign languages.
Because Paul will spend some time addressing the speaking of tongues in this epistle there is some support for this view.
I would have thought that Paul would have used the word glossalia here instead of logos if this was what He was referring to but I could be very incorrect here as it may not have mattered to them when writing at the time.
We also note that while Paul admits that God has enriched these believers with all
knowledge – which we’ve touched upon.
Verse 6
6 Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:
The meaning behind this expression seems to be this: “The gospel of Christ was at first established among you by means of the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Ghost and they are continuing to be poured out upon you in the way they were initially made known.
He adds so, or the purpose of God doing this is so . . . (verse 7)
7 So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:
So that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift. The Greek terms translated, to “so that you come behind in no gift” is hoo-ster-eo and it means so that you are not inferior.
Why does Paul want to reassure them that God has taken care of them to the point that they would not be inferior in any gift?
He tells us the context of his encouragement to them next, saying:
“waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:”
Let me read this passage to you from another translation to make Paul’s point easier to understand:
The revised version says it this way:
“so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
That word translated revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ is apokaloopsis, where we get the term apocalypse of our Lord or Revelation of Our Lord, or Second Coming of Our Lord.
In fact, the Catholics call Revelation the Apocalypse from this term, Apocaloopsis.
Knowing that this Revelation of the Lord was coming, as promised, Paul in the first seven verses couches this letter in the knowledge of this fact, and speaks to these believers in the framework of:
God has blessed and prepared – enriched you will all manner of spiritual blessings so that you are fully prepared for the promised coming of His Son, the manifestation of the Son of God back to that world to judge and reward it.
Then speaking of Christ, in verse 7, Paul adds this affirmation
8 Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This reiteration to them is telling them that Jesus will not fail to establish them, confirm them, substantiate them unto the end.
What end?
The Greek is telos and it best means the goal or the completion of a period, time, age, generation, or administration.
Throughout the New Testament, teleos is a word that is most frequently used to describe the end of an age and NEVER the end of this world. That concept is NOT taught in scripture, “the end of this world that God created by His Word.”
In fact, just the opposite is posited in scripture that this world will never be destroyed.
But periods, administrations, ages, and generations will end this is the end that Paul is talking about here – the end of the Hebrew Administration of things that was promised would occur at the Revelation of our Lord.
1st Thessalonians is big on discussing the end of the age and there Paul writes in chapter 3:13 something similar as he does here in 1st Corinthians, saying:
“To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”
Four chapters later in the same letter Paul adds at verse 23:
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So here he reminds the believers that it is God through Christ that would sustatin and preserve and confirm them – who would make them firm amidst their trials and efforts to shake them from that foundation of rock upon which they stood.
How long would Jesus be there for them. Paul tells us –
unto the end which again, would be finalized by the apocalypse or revelation of the Lord.
Paul tells them that Christ would do this for them so that they would “be blameless,” taken from a word that does not mean perfect but someone who cannot be charged with a crime.
A person for whom there is no grounds for accusation. See, Jesus was coming back and revealing Himself to them and in that Revelation, as we have been arduously studying in Meat, He will reward and He will punish.
So to be blameless was really important to a people who anticipated this event as happening in their lives.
Just like it should be for us today IF he hasn’t returned. I’m serious folks. Our hearts and eye ought to be on the signs and on our faith – strongly relying on His love and grace to carry us through to this anticipated end.
Beat
But don’t fret.
We are at liberty and have no need to fear as we will learn later in this epistle because He has overcome all things and God is now all in all.
All we do is look to Him in faith, continue to receive God’s abundant word and knowledge and live for the time when we too will meet Him face to face.
At this point Paul adds a tremendous promise to them – and to us, saying:
9 God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Another basis for the Christian faith – the tenant and belief that God is true, faithful, constant, and does NOT fail.
He will not deceive. He will not make promises and then fail to perform them – so long as they aren’t promises predicated on our continuing in faith – which is often the case – and something many people refuse to admit into their views.
It doesn’t mean that He is unfaithful when we are unfaithful – that is not true. In fact the opposite is typically true – that He is faithful even when we are not.
But we do have biblical evidence that strongly suggests that when or if a person steps away ONCE and FOR ALL from faith, they are often worse off in the relationship that they had with Him prior.
I would suggest that this occurs out of love – perhaps even what we might call desperate love on the part of God to do anything to reach a recalcitrant son or daughter.
But these caveats aside, it is when we are weak that He is strong – we we’re not talking about keeping up an end of the bargain. We’re talking about God always coming through to those who are His – this is His promise, and Paul is reiterating it to these believers.
It seems that in this statement Paul is attempting to encourage the saints at Corinth, that amidst everything they are facing, God will see them through to everlasting life – and to cling to His Son by faith.
The same idea he has presented in Philippians 1:6 where he writes: “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you, will also perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Again, verse 9 as Paul writes:
“God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
This passage, whether you see it or not, opens us up to a topic that has been debated for centuries.
What makes winning the argument difficult is that there are passages that support and justify both sides of the debates.
What am I talking about?
Where Paul says:
God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
So first, let’s go to the Greek.
The Word translated to called is Kaleo, and it means exactly that. However, it is used in various applications in the Bible to mean more.
The term is used 138 times in the New Testament and in addition to the term meaning to be “invited” or to have received an offer, it also is used to mean the actual influence that was put forth and inclined a person to believe and receive.
The big verse (and there are others) that illustrate this definition is found in Romans 8:30 where it reads:
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called (Kaleo): and whom he called (kaleo), them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Tied to the notion of predestination, we read that God then called, and the natural response is to say:
“Well, if men and women were predestined by God to do or be something then the call was more than just an invitation – they were predestined and therefore the call was more like an irresistible appointment that when it falls on a predestined person they cannot refuse it.”
And in this verse there is good reason to believe this – which is why so many do.
But we must take all of scripture into account before cherry picking certain passages to support our preferred views.
And when we do this we are forced to admit to a few other factors that may alter this view of predestination.
Firstly, I do not disagree with God predestining people in this life. Before He created the world, before its foundations He knew all things. I cannot agree with any other assessment of Him like Open Theism.
This fact automatically places Him in the role of a predestinator – even if by simply being aware – after all, He knew all things BEFORE creating us, right?
But predestination to certain things – even to salvation – does not mean others will not be saved. Nor does it mean He does not call to all.
Remember Jesus saying to Jerusalem that he had tried to gather them as a hen would gather her chicks but they were NOT willing!
Was the nation predestined? I think so. But they were not willing. So the idea of predestination may or may not be affected by the willingness of the people or person predestined.
This must be included in the mix.
Taking a lead from this we might also assume – actually more than assume, there are passages that support this – that God has predestined all to certain things, of course knowing all the while who would receive the call and who would not. But the point is even if a people – even if the whole world has been predestined to salvation by God it does not mean all are willing to receive the call.
There is another set of passages that speak strongly to the idea of predestination and being called.
They are one of the other prooftexts used to support the notion that there is no free will, and that only the elect are predestined to be his and the rest are chopped liver headed for hell.
They are found in the first chapter of Ephesians and read, in part, beginning at verse 5
5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;
9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:
10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:
11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
That last line is often ignored in the conversation about all that God has predestined according to the Good Pleasure of His will – that these things are extended to those who FIRST TRUSTED IN CHRIST.
So try and remember these caveats when someone tried to blind you with a single sided view of scripture.
In the final analysis, I am personally prone to believe that God, knowing all things before the foundation of the world, knew who to elect and choose and predestine to carry out things over the span of the ages as a means to work His good will out over time.
In this sense He certainly could be said to have predestined some who are saved, some who do great things in His Kingdom, and even the evil of the world who aid Him in bringing about His desired ends.
So as a means to encourage the believers at Corinth Paul writes
“God is faithful, by whom ye were called (called to what) unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”
You ready for this?
Paul is writing to believers – at Corinth. They were not one whit different from believers in Ephesus, from converted Jews or converted Greeks, they were no different from you or I.
In this we must believe that God is faithful, by whom we were called – again, called to what – unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
That word translated fellowship – into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord – is koinonia.
It is the word where we get coitus (used as a term for sexual intercourse) and it is where we get the term, communion.
Obviously this is a word that describes extreme intimacy. With whom? The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who Paul calls God’s Son.
Miss this and you might as well toss being a Christian out the window and live it up – because the calling to the faith is not only about being saved – that is the initial step – but God’s purposes in saving humans through His Son is so humans would have an intimate fellowship with His Son.
Why? Because in and through such a fellowship with Him, because in and through such communion, because in and through such coitus – that is right, spiritual intercourse with Christ where He is in us and we are in Him –
Something is produced in and through us – fruits of love.
Go back with me quickly to John 15 where Jesus says:
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
Now, to be in communion with God’s only human Son, Our Lord and Savior as God calls Him, we enter into His life, His ways, His Spirit, His approach to things.
With Him as the vine and ourselves as the branches we are in “participation” with Him, we partake of what He partook.
This means we would have His actual spirit in us.
Romans 8:9 says
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Therefore, the feelings and views Christ bears those who are in fellowship with Him will bear the same.
Then equipped with His Spirit those who are in actual fellowship with Him will also be subject to the same trials and sufferings as He was, and to similar temptations.
1st Peter 4:13 says:
“But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings;”
Interestingly, Philippians 3:10 has Paul write, speaking of Christ:
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”
In and through such fellowship and experience and suffering with Christ, we also become heirs with Him.
Isn’t that amazing – followers of Christ become joint heirs with Him. Back to Romans 8 we read:
Romans 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
The Apostle Peter wrote (in 1st Peter 1:4) that those who are in actual literal fellowship with Him have “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,”
This is the purpose of being a Christian folks – that we actually, literally enter into communion with Christ by the Spirit and actually and literally live and operate as a branch extending off of Him the vine.
In this manner we think as He thinks, act as He acts (Lord willing not flesh acting) suffering as He suffered, in preparation of being an actual joint heir of God with Him.
One final thought.
This is the objective of God for those who Love God. For them to literally and actually be His Sons and daughters, joint heirs, in true and actual fellowship – as much as a branch has fellowship with the vine off of which it extends.
Now listen – and this will bug some of you who hate everything about Mormonism.
But when the LDS talk about Jesus being their elder brother, what bugs us is that they are using this literally in a pre-existent spiritual sense.
That is unbiblical and wrong – so our response is understandable.
But in terms of the end result of what God intended for His only human Son Jesus does serve and fit this definition – as supported by the Bible.
If Jesus is the Only Human Son of God, and we are able to become Joint or Co-Heirs to all that the father has, then we are in fact related as believers and followers of Jesus as brethren.
In Romans 8 at verse 29, Paul writes
“For whom he (God) did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he (His Son) might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Let’s stop here and open it up to Q and A
