Transcription
[Music] the Lord be with you. Also you.
If you have a Bible, and I hope that you do, would you turn with me? We are going to be looking at 1 Corinthians this morning, chapter 1, verses 10 to 17. In which we began the series last week. And what we saw at the very beginning is that this is a letter written, written to these Corinthian Christians by the Apostle Paul. And once again, Paul, not always being a Christ follower, but was once a, a persecutor of the church. And then after encountering the Risen Christ, he became one of the most prominent proclaimers of the faith. And of course, majority of the New Testament is written by Paul. And this is one of his early letters to the church.
And Paul, going on multiple missionary journeys, on his second one specifically, he founded this church. And now, while being on his third missionary journey, while in Ephesus, he is writing this letter after hearing that though he began this church and it was seemed to be going very smoothly and well in the beginning, where they received the gospel, he's been getting reports now and getting some letters and questions from some of the individuals, a part of this church in Corinth, um, with some concerns. Because, because what we start to find in this church is that they actually have a lot of problems. This is a, a messed up church in a variety of ways. And so through this letter, we're going to see how they have issues with, um, factions forming. We see that there are going to be issues of, of lawsuits of one Christian suing another Christian within the same local congregation. We're going to see instances of sexual immorality, of theological confusion, of the issues with, um, the Lord's Supper, and with even the resurrection of Christ. And so many different issues that are going to be addressed in this letter.
But what we see at the very beginning, though Paul could have just immediately started to address these issues, he started off actually with kind of a, a thought of encouragement for them, where he wants them first to see how God sees them. He wanted them to recognize who they were in Christ, specifically. And so, if you remember at the very beginning, he says, "This is to the Church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." And I mentioned something about this is that every church has two addresses. They have, um, a geographical address, that is the, the town or the, the state they live in, as well as a spiritual address. And that is being rooted in Christ. And I think that it was important that he was making these category distinctions for these Corinthians to call them out of their geographical address and to remind them of their spiritual address in Christ. That is, he was calling them out of the culture of Corinth, because they were allowing all of this culture to infiltrate their faith and their body, and it was allowing them to have all of these different problems. But he wanted to encourage them and saying, "Remember who you are." That you're not just a Corinthian, you're not just some, someone that is buying into this philosophy, you're not just someone that is wealthy, but rather you are saints, set apart by Christ. Christ has now called you holy and made you new, setting you apart for the purposes of God. And so he gives them this thoughtful encouragement, calling every single one of these believers in this church, they are saints, holy in Christ. And God is going to build, build them up with the graces and the gifts that he is providing them. And so it's actually somewhat of a positive note to, to start the letter, wanting them to understand that he views them as, as brothers, as saints, as people that have been given gifts by the grace of God.
And now, as he's, he's given them this kind of, um, encouragement at the beginning and, and a prayer of Thanksgiving to God, he now is going to start to address some of the issues. And so in verse 10, when we start to look at some of the issues, he goes to really, I think, the heart of it very early on. And he reminds us that the church is called to unity. In verse 10, it says, "Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment."
So what we see here is that Paul starts this section. And just notice once again how he does it. He says, "I plead with you, brethren." See, he doesn't just immediately say, "You know, I'm an apostle, do what I say." But rather, he comes actually very humbly before them in this, as he starts to address some of these issues. And he says, "I plead with you, I, I, I beseech you." He, he's wanting to reason with them and implore their hearts and, and engage them in this discussion. And then he calls them brethren. So he's making this very clear that he's coming to them as someone who is a part of the family of God. But then after he does that, he also makes it very clear that he is making an authoritative declaration here, because then he says, "by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, that's like the full title there. What we get is actually a lot of information about Jesus, because what we see is, first, he's called the Lord. That in the Greek is *kyrios*, which is a Greek form of what would have been translated from the Hebrew that they typically use for the name of God. So when they would typically talk about Yahweh, they wouldn't write his name or, or say his name out loud. Rather, they would call him *Adon*, which literally means Lord. And so whenever they would attribute the name Lord in the New Testament to Jesus, that was claiming divinity. And so what we see here is he says the Lord, or God. Then it says Jesus, that is the name of the, the human being that was born of Mary. So that's the name of the Savior. And then it says Christ, which is the Messiah, or the king. And so what he is now saying to them is that though he is coming humbly before them, he's pleading with them as a, as a fellow brother in the, in the family of God, but he is also coming by the name, or the authority, of God, the Savior, and the King.
And so the purpose of him then saying this is he is showing us that what he's pleading with them is that this call for unity for the church, it's not just an ideal. Rather, unity is a command from God. Unity is not just an ideal for the church. It's not just something that we would like to have and it would be kind of nice to have. But rather, it's what God expects of his church. And Paul is writing to them, calling the church to unity. And once again, as we think about unity, and we're going to unpack some of these things this morning, unity does not necessarily mean uniformity. Sometimes we get confused with that. And we think that when we say that the church needs to be unified, that means that we have to all dress the same and, and always talk the same and have the same profession, and we all have to be kind of like clones of one another. That's not what unity means. Unity is not uniformity. There will be differences of personality type and preference within a local congregation. In fact, as we'll look later in this book, he'll talk about the body of Christ and how there are meant to be differences with difference of gifts, and that it's actually meant to help encourage and build and edify the congregation. But rather, when we should view and think about unity, it's not as much about uniformity as it is harmony. That's what he's wanting in a congregation. That's what he wants for the Church of God. That the church, when seeking unity, is ultimately seeking harmony with one another. And that's why, if you notice in verse 10, he says, "Let there be no divisions among you." That word division comes from the Greek *schisma*, which is another word that we would use for schism. So literally, if you can just imagine if you were to have a, a garment, and if you were to have it unified or harmony, in harmony, it would just be flowing and it would be built very firmly and strong. But if you were to schism or, or to divide it, you would to rip it into pieces. He says, "That's what's going on in this church." He says, "You are tearing one another apart. You are dividing yourselves. You are building up barriers, walls, in these different people groups." And he says, "But that's not what the church is meant to be. You are meant to be whole. You are meant to be together, United, firm, perfect." That's what he's desiring, that there would be no divisions among them.
I think that this is just a helpful reminder for us as the church, as the body of Christ, is that when we look around this morning at those who we are gathered here with, is that we're not each other's enemies. The church is not your enemy. Christians ultimately are not your enemies. Now, once again, we know that Paul says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Our ultimate enemy is the devil, his demons, the forces of darkness. Those are the ones that we are warring against. And so if we ever allow ourselves to start to have these infighting quarrels, unnecessary divisions within the church, what we're actually doing is we're letting the enemy have a seat at our table. We're letting the enemy get a foothold in our local congregation. And so he is wanting to call this church to be United. The body of Christ is meant to be one. And Paul says it great, I think, in Ephesians chapter 4. Once, once again, this is probably where he's at in Ephesus as he's writing to the Corinthians. But in Ephesians 4, chapter, uh, uh, verses 1 to 6, it says, "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all." Do you just hear how Paul just describes what the church is meant to be and how we are to endeavor? He says, "or to strive to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace." We are to strive for this in our relationships, that we would strive to keep the unity of the Spirit of God in this bond of peace, or *shalom*, that is harmony. That's what we are called to. Because, and then he gives all of these one statements, right? That we are a part of one body. There's not multiple bodies in Christ, ultimately. There's one universal church. And then he gives all of these other things to remind us that we are all a part of the same family unit.
And so what we need to do then, as Paul says in this letter to the Corinthians, is we need to then join together and be of the same mind and of the same judgment. That is, we need to have the same ultimate goal focus. That our eyes would be fixed on something specific. And I think Paul addresses this in Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 to 5. What is our mind supposed to be fixed on? It says, "Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interest, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." So he says here, once again, encouraging another church, that they are called to, to love one another, to think of one another. And so, just as earlier he was calling them to be saints, he's calling them to unity. And the way that he does this, he says, "Let them have the mind which was also of Christ Jesus." Do you get that? How do we strive for unity? How do we accomplish harmony within our church? He says that you need to cultivate the mind of Christ. And that's what I think the Corinthians had stopped doing. See, they had stopped thinking like Jesus. They stopped viewing themselves in light of Jesus. They stopped viewing others in light of Jesus.
And when we think then about what is Jesus's thoughts towards the church and for his people, I think we can find this in his high priestly prayer in John 17:20 to 23. What you're going to see here is that when we allow divisions to occur in the church, we see that divisions break the heart of Christ. Christ mourns over the church when it's divided. In John 17:20-23, it says, "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they they may be one, as You Father are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have have sent Me, I and have loved them as You have loved Me." See, Jesus, when he is praying right before he is taken to the cross. So this is that late Thursday evening, early Friday morning, where he is praying this prayer. And one of the, the main things that he has on his mind for the church is that we would be United. That we would be there for one another. In fact, what did Jesus just teach them whenever he was instituting the Lord's Supper? He says, "There's a new command that I give to you, that you would love one another as I have loved you." And that all will know that you are my disciples, not by your love just generically, but what is the love? It's your love for one another. And then Jesus is praying, not just for the 12, but for all who would believe in him, that they would experience this reality, that they would be one, that they would be United, just as Christ and his Father are United. Isn't that crazy to think about? This is a supernatural unity that Christ is praying and desiring for us, that we actually can take part in. And there are many that are taking part in that right now. When we come together to love and pray for and serve and minister to one another, that is us experiencing this supernatural unity that Christ prays for. And the Spirit does within our congregations. But when we allow us to hinder the work of the Spirit, and whenever we disobey the commands of Christ, we are breaking Christ's heart and we're missing out on what it means to be the church. You can't be the church and be divided.
Once again, it's implied in, in the term of what church literally is, right? Church means, or, or the Greek word for church is *ekklesia*, and of course, it means the assembly. And it means more than just people happen to be in the same place at the same time, right? Because technically, you can go out to lunch later, or you can go to a movie, or you can be in a public place, and you're gathered, assembled with lots of other bodies. But we know that that's not the church, is it? Rather, the church is where you have these individuals coming together, unified in spirit and in purpose. And that is what Christ desires for us. And that is what he says he will build and that he will protect and preserve until the end.
So we see that Paul comes to these Corinthians and he addresses a very specific issue. He calls the church to unity. But I think this also then points to the fact that whenever we are calling and desire for the church to be United, that this requires sometimes that divisions be dealt with. In verse 11, it says, "For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you." Paul shows us here that divisions must be dealt with. He, he desires that the church would be unified, but first he says, "We have to look at the divisions, the contentions within the church, because a divided church will never be an effective church for the kingdom." Let me say it again, a, a divided church will not be effective for the kingdom. Now, you might think, "Well, wait a second. I know a lot of churches that have a lot of different divisions and problems, but they still have a lot of people coming into their services, or they might have a lot of money coming in, or, or though there's a lot of scandals and infighting within these churches, I know that that pastor's name is well, you know, uh, way more well-known than other pastors in our local communities here." But the problem is, it's not that a divided church could not still be well-known. A divided church could still make a lot of money. A divided church could have a lot of people attending their congregations. That's not what makes up an effective church for the kingdom. See, and that's what was going on here. Is they still had a lot of people coming to their services. They probably had a lot of wealth. Once again, one of the issues that's in the church is the fact that there's so many of high status and prominence and, and they're schooled in all of these different philosophies that they're viewing themselves as higher than many. And so the issue is not that they had money or people or status, but rather they weren't being effective for the kingdom. They weren't loving and serving and ministering those in their congregation, and they were not advancing the gospel to the nations. And so you can't expect this church to be effective when they are fighting a battle that they should never even be dealing with.
Just imagine this for a second as a couple of examples. You know, if many people have probably played sports at some point in their life, just imagine for a second if you have a quarterback who is calling a play, and then the rest of the, the offense decides, "We don't like that play. We're going to do a different play." And so you have certain linemen that are going to go and block a specific way. You have other linemen that decide, "I don't want to block. I want to be a receiver." And so they go and run down the field. You have the, you know, the receivers that come and try to steal the ball from the quarterback. And then you have the running back that doesn't know what's going on, so he just stands still. And then the quarterback just gets annihilated by the defense. Now, that might not make a lot of sense to people that don't follow football, but yeah, you, you probably just watched that game pretty recently, right? In the Super Bowl. But the point of this, and most of us can just gather this, if the whole team isn't on the same purpose and same mission, if they're not working together, then it's going to lead to failure. They are not going to succeed. Or maybe an even more practical example, if you have an army or, or a squadron, a unit from the military, that is going to battle, they have to go with a game plan. They have certain roles, certain responsibilities, and they know that if they don't stay true to what they said they would do, what they've been trained to do, it's going to get a lot of people killed. And that's what happens in the church. If we have people in the church that are focusing on themselves, or focusing on on on dividing, or, or, or trying to organize certain people to a certain, um, group and alienate others, what we are actually doing is we are resulting in the death of a church. And that's what they were about to experience if they didn't heed Paul's words.
And so he comes to them with this very clear, um, accusation against them, where he says that there are these contentions that are present among you. And I think that this also reminds us as we're thinking about these things, is that this shows us hard conversations are necessary for church health. People can be tempted to see Paul's words here and never actually apply them, not in the sense of seeking unity, but in the sense of recognizing that to have unity, you must deal with divisions in the church. You have to have hard conversations at times if you want the church to stay healthy. We cannot sweep divisions under the rug or pretend like they don't exist. If we see in the church that there are these different factions forming, if we see that there's these different individuals that are causing and stirring up problems within the congregation, we, as the church, have to address these things. Now, even as I say that, this implies that we, as the members of the church, are actively involved in one another's lives. Because some of you might be thinking, "Well, I don't know any division in the church right now. I don't see any problems. You know, I, I come on Sunday and I, I sing some songs, I hear a message, and then I go out and do my, my thing the rest of the week." Well, of course, if you're not actively engaged and involved in the life and the culture of the people in the congregation, then of course, you probably won't be aware of many problems, because you're not really a part of the family. You have to be actively engaged to know what's going on. Even Paul, who isn't with them all the time, he is actively engaging them. He is actually involved in what's going on in the inner workings of the church. And so for us to deal with division, we also have to be involved in the family. We have to actually know what's going on, who are the people, what are the relationships, what are the, the good things, what are the problems in the church. And so we have to look at these things. And then when we see the problems in the church, we have to have the hard conversations. And sometimes when we come to these divisive people, what you'll find is sometimes you have to rebuke them, and other times you have to remove them.
In Romans 16, verses 17 to 18, it says, "Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple." So we see Paul here saying to the church in Rome that they need to note those who cause divisions, right? You have to be aware of those individuals. And there's different forms of ways they may cause division. And, and one of the examples he gives here is those who are teaching a contrary doctrine. So those who are coming and they're basically teaching a false gospel, or they're teaching something that goes against God's word. And so what he says, "That you need to note these people and actually avoid them." So that's pretty harsh, right? So we see Paul here to the Corinthians, he's rebuking them in a, in a loving, respectful way, that they have these contentions, they need to deal with them. But in another case, he says, "But there's sometimes that you need to just completely avoid them." You avoid certain divisive people. And then in Titus 3, verses 9 to 11, he goes even further and he says, "But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped in sinning, being self-condemned." That's pretty harsh language. That's a hard conversation that some of us as, as Christians are not very comfortable with. But he is saying here that there are these people that are in the church, and eventually, not only do you rebuke them, but sometimes you need to reject them and remove them. If you've tried to, you know, call them to correction, if you try to already address and have the hard conversation, and they continue to stir up controversy, to be divisive, they're still wanting to cause problems, that they're, that person that is not wanting to seek harmony within the congregation, he says, "At that point, you need to separate yourself from, uh, separate yourself from them and separate them from the congregation because they have self-condemned themselves." So that's really important to see here that that Paul is not mixing words here whenever it comes to addressing these serious divisions.
And so what he says specifically in verse 11, though, is he points to Chloe's household. Now, we don't know very much about Chloe or her household. Um, in fact, this is the only time that we really see her being mentioned in Paul's letters. But many think that she's probably a prominent Christian woman, someone that maybe would have been known to the church or to that community. And it says that her household, which could have either included her family members or maybe some of her servants in that household, but they were the ones that actually saw what was going on in the church. And so they go to the Apostle Paul specifically about these issues. They go tell him. And then he goes and he says, "Hey guys, Chloe's household just told me this, and this is what's going on." And so some of us, as we read about Chloe's household here, we might be like, "Are they just being like gossips? Are they going and, you know, being a, you know, tattletale? Are they going and just telling the Apostle on the, the local church here?" I, I think rather, what we should view is that Chloe's household was doing what the Bible commands. Chloe's household was concerned about the well-being of Christ's Church. And so what, what do they do here? They, they went to the right person for the right reasons. They said, "We know that Paul will have some good counsel on this, and we care about God's church. We want the church to, to thrive, to be effective for the kingdom." And so we're going to go to Paul, ask for his advice. And then now Paul is, is weighing in. And what's also important that we notice here is that it doesn't seem that they were afraid to be mentioned. Have you ever noticed someone that they'll come and they'll gossip, they'll tell, "Hey, I heard this about this person," or "Hey, this is going on in the church," but then what you know what they'll say? "But don't, don't tell anyone that I told you this, right?" Have you ever experienced that? "I don't want anyone to know that I said this to you, but I heard this." See, Chloe's household wasn't like that. They cared about the church. They went to the right person with the right reasons, and they weren't afraid of being named. Yes, it was us. We know what's going on in the church, and we're standing for what is right. And I want us to thank God for people like Chloe's household, who speak the truth, but they do it in love. Once again, unity and love, these aren't meant to be divided categories. These are both our commands as the church. We're called to unity, and we are called to truth. And what I love here is that Chloe's household were speaking the truth, both to Paul and to this church, because they loved them and they ultimately wanted this church to survive and to thrive.
And so we see that the church here is being called to unity. We see that divisions must be dealt with. But ultimately, how do we find this unity? I think it's through the gospel. The gospel is what unites us. And I was going back and forth, and I could have just as easily said Christ is what unites us, because the gospel message is the good news of Jesus Christ. But in verses 12 to 17, he gets very practical and gets in detail of what's going on in this church. And what we find here is that there were these different factions forming, and they were all claiming their identity and associating their status with individuals who either they, they followed as like a direct teacher or leader, or of people that they had been baptized by. And what Paul starts to show us here is that our unity cannot be built on personalities, political affiliations, denominations, worship styles, cultural backgrounds, or our social status. So often, we as a church start to utilize these other earthly, temporal things, and we start to divide over them rather than keeping the main things the main things. See, personalities, how often do you see people going to a church because that's where their friends go, or they go because they really like that pastor? He's really entertaining, he's really charismatic, not about what the depth of the, the message actually is. Are they actually teaching the word of God? Or, "I really like that, that, that song," or "that praise team." Once again, we have people dividing over churches. They are literally churches today, and, and I love them, they're still our brothers and sisters, but I have a problem when I see and hear about churches that have an early service that's all hymns, and then a later service that's all contemporary, but they still call themselves the same church. Because what you're really saying is that we can't co-labor, we can't coexist in the same local assembly because we need to have our hymns and we need to have our contemporary music. It's like, "Are we dividing over a music genre right now?" Really? But I'm sure that we know this. This is something that happens in churches all the time. People will go to different churches or leave churches just simply based on the music, not what's in the lyrics, but just the, how fast or slow the song goes. You see how, how just insignificant that really is when it comes to people's souls and eternity. Or you think about political affiliations. There are so many times that I, people I see on people's social media, they post way more about what's going on in the White House or in the news than anything to do with Christ or the gospel. But if you have a platform on social media, I should know that you're a Christian. I should see something about Jesus. Are you glorifying yourself, or are you glorifying God with the platform that he has given you? We divide over these political things regularly. Or denominations. Now, I understand that in some capacity, that it's going to be inevitable when you have different, um, styles and preferences in some capacity. But I do think that this vast amount of denominations have to break God's heart. As we think about some people that are a part of the same, even denomination, but they're literally just down the street because of the carpet color or something insignificant like that. Or cultural backgrounds. We see so many times that people will go to a specific church because they have the same cultural background, rather than being a plurality, a diverse group of believers. Because, by the way, when we go to heaven, you're going to see that's going to be every nation, every tongue, every tribe is going to be there. And that's what we should ideally see in our church congregations, that we have all different types of people, and we're not viewing just certain individuals, certain cultural backgrounds as being superior to others. And then finally, what I think was going on also in this church was social status. That they were thinking the well-off, you know, wealthy, educated, those who have all of these philosophical schools that they are a part of, they are the ones that are that are higher and more important, more valuable in the church community. And what he's saying is that if you do any of these things, and there's the list goes on and on, you could probably think of other ways that the church divides itself currently. And what we find is none of these will bring true and lasting unity.
And so once again, what they were doing is they were looking at the, some were saying that they were of Paul. Once again, Paul founded the church here in Corinth. So many of them probably thinking, "Paul's pretty awesome because he founded the church, and by the way, I was baptized by him." Or, "You know what? I, I actually got to know him pretty well, and I studied under him while he was here." So there were some probably saying that. There were others that were, Paul, uh, saying that, "I'm of Apollos." Now, Apollos, what we find is he was someone in this Corinthian, uh, region who was well, um, uh, very, um, eloquent and, and educated in the Jewish scriptures. And so many people were thinking, "This guy is awesome. He was like one of the, the best speakers. Probably if you were going to go and hear like a really charismatic speaker, Apollos would be the guy." But then you also have an individuals like Cephas. Now, Cephas, that's the Aramaic form of the name Peter. Peter, you know, one of the, the top apostles, um, maybe the spokesman, even the one that kind of is written about the most in, in the early part of the book of Acts. We're like, "You know, Peter's doing all these miracles, so I want to be of Peter." And then there's another faction that says, "We're of Christ." And now, I think there's two ways, by the way, that you can kind of read that. It could be a positive or a negative in some sense. I would say the positive is they might just be trying to say, "Guys, we should be following Christ," which I think would be the good reading of the text. But there's another reading that you could see that some are trying to almost elevate themselves and being like, "You guys are so foolish. You know that we're the, we're the real Christians because we're following Christ over here. We got the Christ party." Rather than saying, "Is Christ divided?" Which is exactly what Paul asks them here. It shouldn't be a camp, camp, camp. It's, we are all one. We're all part of the same family. We are united in Christ. So, so I think there's a couple ways that you could take that. But either way, we see Paul's heart for these individuals is that they are allowing these, these leaders, these, these prominent teachers to become their identity, and they're associating with them and thinking that if I get my name with this individual, then I'm something important. And once again, I think that we see this in the modern church today. It doesn't always look the exact same way. We might not be trying to call ourselves under Paul or Apollos or Peter, but we certainly still see things like, "Well, I'm of Luther. I'm of Calvin. I'm of Wesley. I'm of Lewis." There are different categories, ways that we do this today. In fact, there was a conversation I was having with a, a young zealous Christian, um, and he's, you know, super excited about the faith, getting more involved in ministry. And I went probably two or three conversations at different times with him where he probably spent 30 minutes each time we spoke talking about how Wesley was just amazing, telling me about his life, his story, some of the things he's accomplished. And I'm not taking that away from John Wesley. I think that he was someone who was a, a mighty man of faith, had had accomplished amazing things. But the thing is, I never once heard him talking about Jesus, Jesus, or talking about what does God's word say here. It was all about, "What did John Wesley do?" And I think that we can get into those theological debates and divisions where we're so focused about, once again, what Calvin or Luther or the Pope said. And ultimately, we need to see, "What does God's word say? Who are we in Christ?" And, and once again, I think so many times it's that fleshly desire that we have to make ourselves seem smarter than other people in the church when we start to claim these other groups, these, these certain things, or we start to associate with a certain denomination or a certain pastor or certain organization because we think that it might move us up this, this corporate ladder. And I think ultimately, this is showing us that the problem for the Corinthians, as well as the problem sometimes in our own churches, is that we have too high a view of self and too low a view of Christ. If Christ is preeminent in our lives, in our minds, in our churches, you're going to see unity in the corporate body.
In Colossians 1:18, it says, "And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence." Christ is the head. He is the preeminent one. And so if we would say, "I am in Christ. Our identity is in Christ. That He is the King. He is the Lord. He came to the Earth. He died for our sins. He rose from the dead and now has ascended to the right hand of the Father and has given His Spirit to those who have repented and trusted in Him and faith." And now we are now set apart, sanctified. We are now made holy as saints. When we recognize that that is our identity, you're going to see unity in the church. Whenever I look at other people in the church, and I say, "They're saints. They've been made holy by Christ. We have the same Savior. We have the same Lord." That's how we find true unity in the church.
So a United Church must be a gospel-centered Church. Romans 1, Paul says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek." Paul was not ashamed of the gospel because he knew its transformative power in our lives. Not only does it save us personally as individuals, but the gospel also saves the corporate body. Not only do we experience *shalom*, peace with God in our own lives, but we experience *shalom*-shaped communities when we have the gospel centered in our church. And that's why you see Paul here saying to these Corinthians, he says, "Did I die for you? Is it me that baptized you?" He says, "I did not come to create followers for myself, but I came to proclaim the gospel." See, at the very beginning, we see him calling them to unity. And at the very end, he says, "Therefore, that is what I've been called to, is to preach this gospel." Because he knew that if you got the gospel at the very heart of your community, you're going to see unity take place. A gospel-centered church is a church that believes the gospel, that they live out the gospel, and they proclaim the gospel. That is how you get a gospel-centered church. Are we hearing the gospel regularly being taught and preached in our congregation? And are you believing it? Not just hearing, but are you actually believing it in your heart? And then are you living it out? Are you expressing it? Are you actually demonstrating what we see Christ do, this love, this sacrifice, this selflessness? Are you seeing that? Are you being a servant to others? And then are you also going and proclaiming the gospel? Because, by the way, there's so many people that will come, they'll hear the gospel message, they'll believe it, they're all good with that, but then when it comes out to the world, they never let it go out of their mouths. Is the gospel on your lips when you go to a lost and broken world? That's what it means to be gospel-centered: to believe the gospel, live out the gospel, and proclaim the gospel.
Because the final thing here is that the gospel unites us because it gives us a shared identity and mission. Galatians 3:28 says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." What Paul understood here, and what these Corinthians were missing out on, was that when they understood the gospel and they got the gospel right, it united them because they recognized what he had already taught them in the encouraging part of the first part of the letter, is that who they were, they're saints. They don't have to compete for status anymore, because everyone is equal at the foot of the cross. Every single person, whether you're a slave, right, whether you're free, whether you're Jew, Gentile, whoever you are, no matter what your status is in life, you are on equal footing at the feet of the cross. We are all now one. You are a saint. You're not going to be more loved by Christ, no matter what you do, because because right now you have all of God's love, all of his affirmation, because you are a child of God. You are now sanctified in Him. And now we are all called to the very same mission. We don't have different missions, we have different gifts, but all of our goals is the same. We are, we are all pursuing the same thing, and that is to advance the gospel to the nations, to make disciples of the nations, and that we would see the Kingdom of Heaven being advanced and experienced in all parts of the earth. And so if we just would get this right, if we would get the gospel in our hearts and in our congregations and to the nations, we would see exactly what he offers us here, and that is true unity, harmony, *shalom*-shaped community. When we hear the calling to this and we deal with our divisions and we preach and live out the gospel.