Be Wise about the Christian’s Calling

Scripture

Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 1:2–3 KJV

Big idea

Summary

Paul opens a letter to a congregation in crisis — a young church in a notoriously permissive port city, split into rival camps behind Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, and increasingly indistinguishable from the culture around it. Rather than starting with rebuke, he starts with identity: he reminds them that God has called them to be saints, set them apart, enriched them with spiritual gifts, and is himself faithful to keep them to the end. The point is understated but pointed — people who have been given so much have no excuse for behaving as though they have been given nothing.

He then turns to the specific wound of factionalism. Asking bluntly whether Christ can be divided, Paul traces the Corinthians’ loyalty to preachers rather than to the message itself, and locates the real fault line beneath their arguments: a taste for the kind of polished, “wise” rhetoric that made local philosophers famous, set against the plain, almost embarrassing announcement of a crucified Savior. To Jewish hearers looking for power and to Greek hearers looking for eloquence, a condemned man’s execution looked like weakness or nonsense. Paul insists that this apparent foolishness is where God’s actual wisdom and power are located, and that no other foundation will do.

The chapter’s last movement is almost surgical: Paul reminds the Corinthians who they were before God called them — not the elite of the city, but ordinary and often disreputable people — precisely so that no one could credit the transformation to anything but grace. If everything a believer has, from standing before God to the hope of final redemption, is a gift found only “in Christ,” then boasting about a favorite preacher, or about oneself, misses the point of the gospel entirely.

Key points

• Every believer’s calling carries three dimensions at once: set apart for holiness, gathered into a shared fellowship, and aimed at God’s glory rather than anyone’s own.
• Loyalty to a particular teacher, however gifted, becomes sinful the moment it divides believers who belong to one Lord.
• Corinth’s taste for polished rhetoric led some members to prize eloquence over the substance of the gospel itself.
• To two very different audiences the cross looked like defeat — weakness to those wanting power, nonsense to those wanting wisdom — yet Paul insists it is exactly where God’s power and wisdom are found.
• Because God deliberately chose ordinary, unimpressive people to build this church, no one in it has grounds to boast in anything but the Lord.

Illustrations & analogies

• Paul notices that the arguments running through the church sound like rival “fan clubs,” with members proud to be identified as followers of Paul, Apollos, or Cephas rather than of Christ.
• He points to his own decision not to baptize many people personally, precisely so no one could claim a special status from having been baptized “by Paul.”
• He contrasts the itinerant philosophers who filled Corinth’s public squares, trading in clever argument, with his own plain announcement of a crucified Messiah.
• He reminds the church of the kind of people God actually gathered into it — not the impressive, but the ordinary — as evidence that the transformation was God’s work and not a credit to anyone’s background or standing.

Notable lines

They were a defiled church, a divided church, a disgraced church!

Warren W. Wiersbe Be Wise, ch. 1

Are we living up to this calling?

Warren W. Wiersbe Be Wise, ch. 1

For reflection and discussion

1. Have you ever watched a church’s loyalty to a particular leader turn into rivalry with another part of the same church? What did it cost the church’s witness?
2. Why do you think a “wise-sounding” version of the gospel can be more tempting to some hearers than the plain announcement of a crucified Savior?
3. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the ordinary, unimpressive background many of them shared before their conversion. How does remembering your own “before” guard against pride now?