Hope and Help for the Struggling Church—a study through 1 Corinthians

Can This Church Be Saved?

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

I am going to describe a church to you and then you can decide if it sounds like a healthy church or not. Let me start with the worship service. This church has very lively worship services with a tremendous amount of participation from the congregation. From our perspective we would say they lean a bit charismatic, but you cannot argue that their worship is active and vibrant. Also, as part of their worship they regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. The outreach program at this church is very successful. They are a young church and have experienced an amazing number of conversions. You could say that their church is experiencing a type of revival as they routinely baptize new believers. Obviously this church is using the spiritual gift of evangelism, but they are doing much more than that. Every spiritual gift is being expressed in this body of believers. If you went down the entire list of spiritual gifts listed in the N.T., you would be able to check off every gift. Last but not least, they report a healthy church budget. Not only are they able to meet their own needs, but they have enough surplus to send money to other young churches.

So what do you think—would you classify this church as a healthy church? If you performed a church health survey, much like the one I just described, the average church consultant would probably conclude that this is a healthy church. But not every church consultant would agree. I just happen to have a summary quote about this church from one experienced church consultant: “When I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to mature Christians. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life.  I had to feed you with milk and not with solid food, because you couldn’t handle anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your own sinful desires.” According to this church consultant, this particular church does not sound very healthy. He actually called them a bunch of babies!! The church I just described to you is none other than the first church in Corinth that was founded by and commented on by the apostle Paul.

The church in Corinth was a struggling church. Actually, out of all the churches that Paul started, none struggled nearly as much as the Corinthian church. This chart is a brief summary of Paul’s visits and correspondence with the church in Corinth.

Summary

·    Paul planted the church in Corinth; spent a total of nearly two years with them—only Ephesus hosted Paul longer

·    He made 2-3 visits to them

·    He received at least 3 reports/letters from them

·    He wrote four letters to them (2 are now lost)

By studying the content of 1 & 2 Corinthians and by understanding how much time and effort he expended on this church, the obvious conclusion is that the church in Corinth was a struggling church. No church that Paul planted was more troubled or received more ongoing correspondence from Paul than Corinth. This morning we are beginning a new series through the book of 1 Corinthians that I am calling Hope and Help for the Struggling Church. We can already identify with this church, because we are a struggling church, but then again, almost every church has struggles. Paul intended for these two letters to be read by Christians in this church in southern Greece two-thousand years ago, but the warning, encouragement and instruction are no less applicable to us today. Paul’s message is precisely the kind of message we need—we need hope and help for the struggling church. Let me read how Paul opens up the book of 1 Corinthians, which was his second letter to this struggling church.

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, ^2 To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: ^3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

^4 I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. ^5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— ^6 because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. ^7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. ^8 He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ^9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

This church struggled mightily, but in all fairness, the city of Corinth was not an easy place to live out a vibrant Christian life. Here is a description of Corinth written by an historian about 30 years before Paul visited the city. “The city is called "Wealthy Corinth" on account of its trade. Situated on an isthmus it is master of two harbors, one leading to Asia and the other to Italy. In earlier times, the Temple of Aphrodite acquired such wealth that it owned over one thousand slaves, women dedicated to the goddess for sex and entertainment. And so the city was crowded and enriched because of these women, as ship masters easily spent everything they had.”[i] In Paul’s day, Corinth had a population of about 100,000 freemen and 200,000 slaves. The most stunning view of the city is what is called the Acrocorinth. This was a military outpost set atop this massive rock. It was the highest point in the city and also home to the Temple of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love. The Roman equivalent would be Venus, also the goddess of love. But “love” in the traditional sense was not what took place at the Temple with its 1000 prostitutes. Even though the Temple of Aphrodite was no longer functioning in Paul’s day, the culture of sex continued. Corinth was known throughout the world for its sexual immorality. Corinth was so closely associated with sexual immorality that a new word was created—corinthiazo. “To corinthiazo” meant to commit sexual immorality. How would you like to have the name of your town be an action verb for sexual immorality?

The Corinthians were bombarded by the temptations of money, sex and power. Sounds quite a bit like our culture, doesn’t it? But there were far more problems in this church than these three. If you are familiar with the struggles in this church, you can see many of them highlighted in Paul’s greeting and introduction to the letter. Let’s take these one line at a time.

In v. 5 he wrote, You have been enriched in every way. Paul believed that the church in Corinth was spiritually rich, but in their pride they thought they were superior to Paul. At every turn they questioned Paul’s authority. They did not like to be confronted by their sin, so instead of facing their sin, they accused Paul of having no right to confront them. In 4:8 Paul mocked their pride by writing, Already you have become rich! They thought they were rich but were missing out on true riches.

Paul listed a specific way they had been enriched—in all your speaking. He was probably referring to their displeasure with Paul’s preaching. In 2:4 he wrote, My message and preaching were not with persuasive words. They accused him of being a poor preacher, but meanwhile he was thanking God for their verbal testimony.

He listed another spiritual privilege in v. 5—in all your knowledge. This was probably a link to his rebuke in 8:11, So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. The Corinthians boasted of their knowledge, but in reality their so-called knowledge was destroying their brothers and sisters in Christ.

One of the most amazing things he said in his introduction is in v. 7, You do not lack any spiritual gift. If Paul wrote that about our church I would have considered to be a great compliment. Every spiritual gift was being manifest in this church. Nevertheless, Paul also said this about them, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. Did you catch that? They were not lacking in any spiritual gift, but they were not spiritually mature people. In other words, it is possible to have strong gifts but a weak character. Here is an application question for us—would you rather have a lot of gifts of the Spirit of a lot of fruits of the Spirit? It is clear from the famous passage in chapter 13 that it is possible, perhaps even likely that believers can wonderfully express their spiritual gifts but be seriously lacking in love. Paul makes it clear that fruits of the Spirit are more important that gifts of the Spirit. Another way of saying this is that character always trumps giftedness. Give me a man or woman of character over a gifted person any day.

This has powerful application to our daily lives. As parents we want our children to excel in various skills like academics and sports. We send them to piano lessons, trumpet lessons, soccer camps and give them the best academic training possible, but what is all of this for? This kind of training is serving to increase their gifts and skills. But how much time are we spending on the training of their character. It’s true that character formation often accompanies these other skills, but not always. Why is it that some of the most talented actors and actresses have the most deplorable character? Because it is possible to develop talents and skills and forget all about character. To be a CEO of a large company requires a tremendous amount of skill, talent and brains, but many of these multi-talented executives cannot keep their families together. They either work themselves to death or else run off with another man or woman. They can successfully run a prosperous, multi-national company, but they cannot keep their small family intact. Why?—because they developed their gifts but not their character. This was the situation with the Corinthian Christians—they had all the spiritual gifts but lacked spiritual maturity. Ultimately you want to develop both, but whether it is training your children or serving in the church—character always trumps giftedness.

Paul introduced several problems in vv. 5-9, but did you notice the context of these problems? Look at v. 4 again, I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. The introduction of many problems in the church is set firmly in a context of thanksgiving for this same church. Paul wasn’t offering a generic thankfulness for the Corinthian church, he was thanking God for each problem in the church. This spoke to me this past week as I was reminded to thank God for my problems as well as my blessings. Every so often a dark cloud of discontent hovers above my head. Does that cloud ever visit you as well? Sometimes it is a cloud of discontent or disappointment or mild depression. Last week this cloud visited me for a few days and I said to Karen, “I need to keep fighting for contentment.” What I meant was that the enemy wants to use discontent, disappointment and depression to ruin our Christian walk, but we need to fight it off. And one way to do just that is to be thankful for everything—including our problems. Paul was a pastor and church planter and the Corinthian church was his greatest challenge. He gave his life for them, and they stabbed him in the back. Despite all of that, one by one, he thanked God for the church and their problems. If all things work together good, then we can be thankful for all things, right? This week I realized that I usually waste my eight minute drive to work by listening to talking heads on the radio. I decided to use that time for prayers of thankfulness and preparation. Please ask me in a few months if I am staying active with my plan. We have personal struggles and we have church struggles, so we need to constantly fight for contentment—and contentment always starts with thankfulness.

Rich Maurer

July 2, 2006