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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 1:1-9
In 1:6 Paul says, “Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.” The testimony of Christ here is different from the testimony of Jesus in Revelation 1. Here Paul means the preaching of Christ. Paul’s preaching of Christ was a testimony of Christ. Some may wonder why Paul did not use the word preaching, but instead spoke of a testimony. Preaching may be regarded simply as a matter of words conveying thoughts. A testimony is quite different from this. A testimony must be a living, not merely a preaching.
Many of today’s Christian ministers only preach; they do not testify. In their preaching they express certain thoughts in words. However, they do not have a life to testify what they preach.
In order to help the Corinthians not only to understand his expression but also to have the reality, Paul told them that the testimony of Christ was confirmed in them. Here Paul seems to be saying, “I did much more than merely preach Christ to you. What I preached was my living. This is my testimony concerning Christ. You have been enriched in all expression and all knowledge. You have been enriched in the understanding of what I preached to you.” Paul’s preaching to the Corinthians was his testifying to them.
Paul’s testimony of Christ was confirmed in, or among, the believers in Corinth. Paul was very careful in composing his Epistle. By saying that the testimony of Christ was confirmed in the Corinthians, Paul meant something like this: “When I preached Christ to you, I testified to you of Christ. When you believed in Him and received Him, something happened in you. Eternal life was given to you, and the Holy Spirit came into you. These are the initial gifts which are in you. These initial gifts confirm what I testified to you.”
All the matters that Paul covers here are related to being saints. A saint is a person who has been called by God and who is now calling on the name of the Lord Jesus. A saint is also a person who has the confirmation within him. Do you not have within you the confirmation Paul speaks of in verse 6? As believers in Christ, you surely have the divine life and the Holy Spirit in you. Therefore, you are confirmed with respect to your salvation. If a person does not have this confirmation within him, I would have doubts about his salvation. A saint not only has been called by God and calls on the name of the Lord, but he also has a certain inner confirmation. Something within him confirms that he belongs to the Lord and that he has the divine life and the Holy Spirit.
Early in their Christian life, some saints may lose the feeling that they are saved. They may not feel that they have the divine life or the Holy Spirit. When I was young, I also sometimes lost this feeling. Not long after I was saved, I read John Bunyan’s book Pilgrim’s Progress. At one point, the pilgrim in that book loses his certificate. When I read this, I asked myself where my certificate was. It seemed that I was not able to find it. For several days I was troubled about this, and I was unable to eat well or sleep well. Then I read a book published by Brother Nee, The Assurance of Salvation. In this book Brother Nee says that in the Bible God clearly tells us that as long as we believe in Christ, we are saved. When I read this, I opened my Bible to John 3:16, knelt down, and said, “I want to testify to the heavens and the earth that I believe this verse. According to this verse in the Bible, I know that I have eternal life.” Although I still had some doubts after that, eventually the strong feeling returned in me that I was in fact a child of God. This is what I mean by inward confirmation.
As believers in Christ, we all have this confirmation. We are confirmed that we are children of God with the divine life and the Holy Spirit. As Paul says, we are not lacking in any gifts. We have seen that this means we possess the initial gifts — the divine life and the Holy Spirit.
Having considered the various matters related to being a saint, we all should be clear that we are truly saints. Can you deny the fact that you are a saint? You have been called by God, you are calling on the name of the Lord Jesus, and you have the inner confirmation that you possess the divine life and the Holy Spirit.
In verse 9 Paul says, “God is faithful, through Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” This word is a continuation of verse 8, strengthening the thought with the assurance of God’s faithfulness. In His faithfulness He will confirm the believers till the end, making them unreprovable in the day of the Lord’s return.
Verse 9 tells us that God has called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Fellowship denotes the partaking of, the participation in, God’s Son. It is to partake of, participate in, the all-inclusive Christ. God has called us into such a fellowship that we may partake of Christ, participate in Him, and enjoy Him as our God-given portion. This word, like the word concerning Christ’s being theirs and ours in verse 2, stresses again the crucial fact of Christ’s being the unique center of the believers for the solving of the problems among them, especially that of division.
This book unveils to us that the very Christ, who is the portion of all believers, and into whose fellowship we have been called, is all-inclusive. He is God’s power and God’s wisdom as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to us (1:24, 30). He is our glory for our glorification (2:7; Rom. 8:30), hence, the Lord of glory (2:8). He is the depths of God, the deep things of God (2:10). He is the unique foundation of God’s building (3:11). He is our Passover (5:7), the unleavened bread (5:8), the spiritual food, the spiritual drink, and the spiritual rock (10:3-4). He is the Head (11:3) and the Body (12:12). He is the firstfruit (15:20, 23), the second Man (15:47), and the last Adam (15:45); as such, He became the life-giving Spirit (15:45). This all-inclusive One, with the riches of at least nineteen items, God has given to us as our portion for our enjoyment. We should concentrate on Him, not on any persons, things, or matters other than Him. We should focus on Him as our unique center appointed by God that all the problems among the believers may be solved. It is into the fellowship of such a One that we have been called by God. This fellowship of Him becomes the fellowship the apostles shared with the believers (Acts 2:42; 1 John 1:3) in His Body, the church, and should be the fellowship we enjoy in the partaking of His blood and His body at His table (10:16, 21). Such a fellowship must be unique, because He is unique. It forbids any division among the members of His unique Body.
This word fellowship is profound and very deep. I do not believe that any Christian teacher or expositor of the Bible can exhaust the meaning of this word. Fellowship does not merely mean that there is communication between you and someone else; it also denotes participation in that one. Furthermore, it means that we and Christ have become one. It also means that we enjoy Christ and all He is, and that He enjoys us and what we are. As a result, there is not only a mutual communication, but a mutuality in every way. All that Christ is becomes ours, and all that we are becomes His. We all have been called by God into such a mutuality between us and the Son of God. I do not believe that in any other language there is an adequate equivalent for the Greek word for fellowship. We have been called into the fellowship of God’s Son. We have been called into a mutuality in which we enjoy what the Son of God is, and in which we are one with Him and He is one with us. Elsewhere in this Epistle, in 6:17, Paul says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” We have been called into such a oneness. In this oneness we enjoy what Christ is, and He enjoys what we are.
Even though we are so pitiful, Christ still enjoys us. Perhaps you find this very difficult to believe. You may say, “I certainly believe that we have been called to enjoy Christ. But how can it be true that Christ enjoys us? You may say that this is true, but I find it hard to believe.” Christ, however, would say, “Child, I enjoy you very much. You don’t realize how much I enjoy you. Even when you are weak and low, I still enjoy you, for I am one spirit with you.”
Verse 9 is related to verse 2. In verse 2 Paul says, “With all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, theirs and ours.” Christ is ours, and He is also theirs. He belongs to us and to all the other believers.
Some Bible scholars believe that in verse 2 the words theirs and ours refer to places. I do not agree with this interpretation. Here Paul is not speaking of their place and our place as if to say that they call upon the name of the Lord Jesus in their place and that we call upon His name in our place. This should not be Paul’s thought here. He is saying that the very Lord Jesus Christ upon whose name we are calling in every place is our Lord and their Lord, our portion and their portion. This means that all the saints have the Lord as their unique portion. The reason for this is that we all have been called into the fellowship of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This brings us to a very important matter. All believers in Christ, including us, have their preferences. The Corinthian believers had theirs. As Greeks, they were a philosophical people. Those who are not thoughtful may not have many preferences. For example, if I ask such a person which elder he prefers among those in his local church, he may answer that all are the same, that he does not see any difference among them. But if you ask this question of a person given to the exercise of his mentality, he would immediately respond that he does have a preference for a certain elder.
In a local church there are always at least two or three elders. Do you not have your preference among them? Whenever you need to discuss something concerning the church, do you not prefer to go to the elder of your choice? You may say that you like to go to Brother So-and-so. Actually, this brother is your preference. The fact that you have such a preference indicates that you are a thoughtful person, even a philosophical one. Probably you have thought a good deal about the elders in your locality. Most members of a local church have spent time to consider the elders in their locality. As a result, they have a preference regarding them.
Preferences are fleshly. As long as you hold to your preference, you are in the flesh. Furthermore, having a preference causes you to lose Christ as the unique center. Our unique center is the Lord who is both theirs and ours, the Son of God into whose fellowship we all have been called of God. We have not been called into our preference, either in elders or in local churches. Sometimes saints have said, “I am not happy with the church here, and I don’t want to stay here any longer. I intend to move to another locality.” This is to have a preference, and it is fleshly. To repeat, to have a preference is to lose Christ as the unique center.
I believe that as Paul was writing this Epistle to the Corinthian believers, he was saying, “Dear brothers and sisters, you need to realize that neither Paul, Cephas, Apollos, nor any other person is the unique center among the believers. This center is not even a narrow Christ, the Christ of your preference. The Christ who is the unique center of all believers is the One who is both theirs and ours.” If we see this, we shall not care for persons, localities, or nationalities. Instead, we shall care for Christ as the unique center of all the believers.
Paul addressed this Epistle specifically “to the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints.” These saints, the believers living in Corinth, were the components of the church in Corinth. Nevertheless, this Epistle was written not only to them, but also to “all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, theirs and ours.” There is to be no difference. Furthermore, according to verse 9, God has called us all into the fellowship of Christ. We have been called into the oneness, into a mutuality, between us and Him. Therefore, there should not be any preference with respect to local churches or individual believers. Only Christ — no other one — is the unique center of all Christians.
Again and again I would emphasize the fact that the unique center is Christ and Christ alone. Whether the church in your locality is good or bad, high or low, does not matter. What matters is Christ as the unique center. We all have been called into Him, called into the fellowship, the enjoyment, the participation, in Him. We have been called into a mutuality in which we are one with Him. Only this can swallow up divisions and eliminate all the differences and preferences among the saints.
Consider the situation among Christians today: there is preference after preference. Some prefer to be Presbyterians, whereas others prefer to be Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, or Pentecostals. Some say, “I like this,” and others say, “I like that.” Some declare, “I like this pastor,” and others say, “I like that minister.” “I like…I like,” is commonly uttered by believers today. You may like a certain thing, but God may not like it. God is only pleased with Christ. God has one center — Jesus Christ — and He has called you not into the denomination of your choice, but into the fellowship of His Son. No individual or group must be our preference. Our only preference, our one choice, must be Christ as the unique center, the Christ who is theirs and ours, the Christ into whose mutuality we have been called by God. Oh, we all must see that God has called us into the fellowship of such a Christ!
