GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
1 CORINTHIANS 1:2
2 To the church of God in Corinth– those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called as saints together with all those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Paul defines the church here in at least six ways:
1, The church is of God and belongs to God. It is God’s church, not man’s. It is, as our confession states, “mainly an association of faith [in Christ] and of the Holy Spirit in men’s hearts. To make it recognizable, this association has outward marks, the pure teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments in harmony with the Gospel of Christ” (Apology VII and VIII:5).
2, The church can be described as a building or a structure only in a certain sense. Truly the church is made up of believing people, apart from their gathering in a building or house, as Paul says that the church is really those who are “called as saints.” Luther says: “A seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd (John 10:3). So children pray, ‘I believe in one holy Christian Church’” (Smalcald Articles III,12).
3, Individual churches or congregations can be defined by their region (“in Corinth”), but believers are also part of the larger church made up of “all those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Luther explains the term “communion of saints” in the Large Catechism: “It is nothing but a comment or interpretation by which someone wished to explain what the Christian church is. But some among us, who understand neither Latin nor German, have rendered this ‘communion of saints,’ although no German would use or understand such an expression. To speak idiomatically, we ought to say ‘a community of saints,’ that is, a community composed only of saints, or still more clearly, ‘a holy community.’ This is said in order that the expression may be understood; it has become so established in usage that it cannot well be uprooted, and it would be next to heresy to alter a word” (Large Catechism II:49-50).
4, The members of the church are “called as saints.” When the Bible talks of saints, the Holy Spirit never means a select few individuals who have met certain requirements for sainthood according to the beliefs or decrees of certain popes, such as having lived a life of “great merit” and the performance of at least two miracles after the person’s death. No, by saint, the Bible always means anyone and everyone who has faith in Christ. For the dead do not need anyone to guard their feet, which the Lord says he does for the saints (1 Samuel 2:9). The saints are also equated with living priests in the Old Testament (2 Chronicles 6:41), and they are said to live “in the land” (Psalm 16:3). The saints, Daniel says, will be at war with the powers of the devil in the Last Days (Daniel 7:21-22). The saints were a concern for believers such as Ananias, especially when Saul was persecuting the saints in Jerusalem (Acts 9:13). The saints are refreshed by the preaching of the Gospel and by their love for one another (Philemon 1:7). The saints have been gathered together by God into the church, and they are sanctified by God, that is to say, they have been made holy and set apart for a holy purpose, which is (1) to give God glory in all things (Psalm 106:47), (2) to grow in their faith (2 Corinthians 10:15), and (3) to share their faith with the world around them (Jude 1:3).
5, The church is only found where Christ is preached (“their Lord and ours”), and therefore the faith in our Christian Church is not the same as with anyone who believes in any other god by any other name. This distinction is also true of those who say that they believe in Jesus, but don’t look to him for full salvation or the forgiveness of their sins. In some cases, they might believe that he gives them a good start toward perfection, in other cases, they might believe that they are capable of righteousness and perfect on their own. But their faith is not in the Jesus of the Bible. They have separated themselves from the one who said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), for they are seeking a path to the Father on their own. There is a division, then, of those outside the church and those inside the church. “What harmony is there,” says Paul, “between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:15). Those who attempt salvation apart from Christ do not have true faith in Christ, and are outside the true Church.
6, The preaching of Christ means the teaching that Jesus is both “God” and “Lord” and “Christ.” He is truly God according to the testimony of the prophets and apostles and of the Scriptures. “My Lord and my God!” Thomas confessed (John 20:28). “Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:5). And “when Jesus asked, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Christ of God’” (Luke 9:20). We confess this together in our regular creeds:
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, O Lord” (Apostles’ Creed), and that he is “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made” (Nicene Creed).
And again: “He is God, eternally begotten from the nature of the Father, and he is man, born in time from the nature of his mother, fully God, fully man, with rational soul and human flesh, equal to the Father as to his deity; less than the Father as to his humanity; and though he is both God and man, Christ is not two persons but one” (Athanasian Creed).
Now, the Christian faith has more teachings that this, but without this firm conviction and confession, a church cannot truly call itself Christian. For as Paul greets “the church of God in Corinth,” so we should also be able to greet one another who are in our fellowship, knowing that we share the same faith in our “one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6). To greet one another in the name of Jesus Christ is as sweet as greeting one another with a holy kiss. In Jesus alone do we have salvation, and forgiveness, and the blessed promise of everlasting life. Give him praise with your life as well as with your words.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 1 Corinthians 1:2 The Christian Church