Title: Those who are called to be saints
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Those who are called to be saints 2002/10/9 (Wednesday)
(1 Corinthians 1:2-3) The church of God in Corinth, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, and in every place all those who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both them and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Thursday evening Bible tour ended our tour of the Roman church and now we moved to the Corinthian church. Our Bible study, which started from the first week of September 2000 with a tour of the Gospel of Mark, has reached the book of Corinth, and I am deeply moved. I don't know how many of the young people who participated in the Thursday worship service were listening to God's word, but my belief is only in discovering God's will for us in this age by examining the heart that understands the scriptures. .
Jeremiah Bible exposition at the Sunday morning worship service, Gospel study in the afternoon, and the preparation of the biblical counseling course on Tuesday. I pray that the same grace will be with those who read this article as a column through the homepage.
1 Corinthians 1, which we are going to study together today, corresponds to the introduction to the book of Corinth, and can be said to be the key to understanding the book of Corinth. The most important discovery of the principle in our study of Paul's epistles is to find out why Paul wrote letters to each church. Therefore, as we saw in Romans 1, in 1 Corinthians 1, it is important to first look at Paul's motive for writing this letter to the church in Corinth. But before that, it would be more important for us to first look at the historical situation at that time and the regional situation of Corinth. This letter is written after Paul planted the church in Corinth and then went to Ephesus and stayed there for 3 years after hearing the news of the church in Corinth delivered from Chloe.
Corinth is a city located 2km south of the narrow strait connecting the Peloponnesian Peninsula and the Greek mainland. It became a passageway for merchants from Italy and Spain to the west, and Egypt and the East to the east.
After the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), Corinth became the center of the Greek League led by Alexander the Great of Greece and was conquered by Roman General Lucius Mummius in 14 B.C. After that, many anti-Roman movements occurred, but in 44 BC, it became the capital of the Roman government's Achaia region by Julius Caesar and settled Roman citizens. , became the center of transportation between Judea, Egypt, and Syria,
After that, Corinth became a metropolis of 600,000 with slaves 1.3 times as many as the population of 250.000 as the slave system, the evil of the aristocratic society, was rampant. It didn't work, and it became the axis of evil. The biggest cause of Corinth's degeneration into an immoral and evil city is the religious influence of the "Aphrodite" temple, which is called the goddess of love, built in the highest area of Corinth and the luxurious conduct of the ladies. The lives of these sexually depraved people are strongly addressed in Paul's letters even to the church in Corinth. As a result, the Greek word for Corinth was “corindiazomai” (the cradle of immorality).
Thousands of prostitutes were devoted to priests in the temple of Aphrodite at that time, and at night they went out at night to sell themselves and build the temple with the money they got. Ordinary Corinthian women at that time wore a veil over their heads to distinguish them from the prostitutes. Paul applied this custom to the church and commanded women to wear their heads in the church. However, this did not apply to all churches, but it was a measure taken to prevent misunderstanding and attacks from outside by the Corinthian goddesses because of the supremacy of the Corinthian region.
Also, the meat of animals sacrificed at the temple was introduced into the market, and the people of Corinth made it a pleasure to eat the sacrifices. This problem was also raised as a serious problem among the church members. Corinth, infested with slavery, prostitutes, and pagan religious practices and sexual promiscuity, therefore, demanded true freedom from sin in the human heart. In the end, these screams of creation appear in Paul's vision during Paul's second missionary journey, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is spread throughout Micedonia. (Paul wrote this letter between A.D. 52-56.)
Paul is referring to "the church of God in Corinth" in verse 2, and he defines "the church of God" as "those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints." Here we first discover that the church of God is in a different position from the fallen world. The phrase "to be sanctified in Christ Jesus" is very significant, for there was a prevailing trend in Corinth to be sanctified in other ways. One of them was the way of worshiping foreign gods and the trend to participate in the Greek philosophy gnosis that was prevalent at that time. Paul emphasizes the holiness that comes from God by using the word holiness, the Greek word "hagios."
Paul is praying for grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ to the church of God, which is sanctified in Jesus Christ and is in His name, that is, the saints of Christ. Grace and peace are Paul's unique greetings that adorn the opening of Paul's epistles, including Jews and Gentiles. “Peace” in Hebrew is “Shalom”, which is divine peace that comes from God, and includes Messianic thought. At that time, the people of Corinth were very interested in the prevailing Greek philosophical ideas and the wisdom from the divine world that fascinated the minds of the Romans.
In the book of Acts, concerning the mental thoughts of the people around Athens and Corinth at that time, Paul said, "All the Athenians and the strangers there spend no time running except to speak and listen to the newest things" (Acts 17:21). Referring to them, he said, "Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all things" (Acts 17:22). Perhaps the passion for the divine world in their hearts was not the cause of the added grace of God. Now, in the next section, we will look at the reasons that led Paul to write a letter to the church in Corinth in a constructive way, and the characteristics of the church in Corinth. Let's dig into the problems and problems we have today.