2 THE CHURCH OF GOD AT CORINTH. d [I. COR. 2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, 'called to d Jude 1. Acts xv. 9. f Rom. i. 7. 2 Tim. i. 9. e known brother. He is supposed by some to have been the Sosthenes of Acts xviii. 17, who was beaten by the mob before the judgmentseat of Gallio; but this is doubtful. He could not well have been an obscure private person, if he was thus associated with St. Paul as a joint sender of the Epistle, but must have been someone well known to the Corinthian Church as a companion and fellow-helper of the Apostle. A more interesting question is, Why did St. Paul thus associate him with himself? Was he a prophet or evangelist? but even if this were the case, still it does not answer the question, for, from beginning to end, the Epistle bears the impress of one mind and one will. We should say without fear of contradiction that Sosthenes, or anyone else, did not add one idea to it, or compose of himself one line; and yet jointly with the great Apostle he is supposed to send the letter. The explanation seems to be that St. Paul had certain brethren of eminence amongst his disciples, whom he associated with himself and invested as far as possible with his own authority, that in his absence or on his removal they should take his place as rulers or presidents of local churches. And this, as I have shown elsewhere,1 was the real foundation of the local Episcopate. He was certainly not the mere amanuensis, whose position appears, from Rom. xvi. 22, to have been very subordinate. 2. "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified," &c. The Church of God is the mystical Body of Christ which exists in its entirety in all parts of the world, and is the Church in each particular place. It consists of those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, that is, those who have been taken out of the first Adam, and grafted in Baptism into Him, the Second Adam. It is quite clear that by "sanctified" here the Apostle cannot mean effectually sanctified in heart and life, for many of the members of this Corinthian Church were not so purified, but needed internal holiness, and by being in Christ's Church were in the sphere, so to speak, of attaining complete sanctification 1 "Church Doctrine Bible Truth," chap. vii. be saints, with all that in every place call name of Jesus Christ h our Lord, both theirs and ours: 3 upon the & Acts ix. 14, 21. & xxii. 16. if they would but seek it. Their sanctification, then, consisted in their dedication to God-their membership in the one mystical Body, their possession of the means of grace. The Word of God and all its promises belonged to them—in the sense recognized by the Saviour when He speaks of those being "gods to whom the Word of God came" (John x. 35). But with all this some of them were unholy, some wilful sinners, especially led away by sins of the flesh, as was natural in a city so given to wickedness as was Corinth. Some had fallen from the faith so far as to say that there was no resurrection, and these all, throughout the Epistle, are warned by the Apostle to repent and separate themselves from sin because of their first sanctification, when they were first brought under the Covenant of Christ. The Apostle never ignores this first sanctification or dedication, but considers it always in force. To cite one instance out of many: "Know ye not," he writes, "that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile [or destroy] the temple of God, him will God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (iii. 16, 17). "Called to be saints." Called to belong to a holy calling, and to make good that calling by constant acts of self-dedication. "With all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." It has been supposed that this "in every place" is to be taken literally, as referring to the whole world, but must it not be rather interpreted by the phrase in the parallel passage in 2 Cor. i. 1: "All the saints which are in all Achaia." The Epistle has now become, in the widest sense, a Catholic Epistle, being part of the Scriptures of the Catholic Church; but it is very improbable that it would be understood in this sense by those to whom it was addressed-indeed, so very general a designation would perhaps have hindered their prompt circulation of it through the neighbouring cities and villages. ་་ Call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Here Christians are described as those who worship Christ. The reader will remember Pliny's description of them as those who sung hymns to 4 k GRACE AND PEACE. [I. COR. 3 Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. k Rom. i. 7. Eph. i. 2. 1 Rom. i. 8. m ch. xii. 8. 2 Cor. viii. 7. 4 'I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; 5 That in every thing ye are enriched by him, m in all utterance, and in all knowledge; Christ as to God. This is a very direct proof of the Godhead of the Lord. To call upon the name of the Lord is an Old Testament phrase, denoting the worship of the one true God, thus Gen. iv. 26, Ps. cxvi. 17, Joel ii. 32; so that if Christ is thus invoked, it must be because He is with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the one true God. "Both theirs and ours." Here we have the common Lordship of Jesus over the whole, and every particular Christian's interest and property in Him. 3. "Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Godet writes: "Grace is the Divine good-will, bending compassionately toward the sinner to pardon him; toward the reconciled child to bless him. Peace is the profound tranquillity with which faith in this Divine love fills the believer's heart.' But this is much short of the truth. Grace is the Holy Spirit of God, given by God, and making the Christian partaker of all life from Christ. Peace is not only inward tranquillity in the heart, but outward tranquillity amongst the members of the Lord's mystical body. If there be not this peace-if there be enmity and divisions-all internal feelings of peace are delusive. That St. Paul meant to include this peace of the Church is evident from all that follows. 4, 5. "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace all knowledge." Why should he thank God always on the behalf of these Christians, that they had received gifts such as utterance and knowledge, which we consider mental rather than moral? Evidently for this reason, that such gifts were open manifestations to the world, both heathen and Christian, that the only true God, the Author of all good gifts, whether of mind or body, was among them and working in them, through that new system of Divine agency which on Pentecost had appeared amongst CHAP. I.] YE COME BEHIND IN NO GIFT. 5 6 Even as "the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: 0 n cho ii. 1. 2 Tim. i. 8. 7 So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting Rev. i. 2. for the † coming of our Lord Jesus Christ : o Phil. iii. 20. 2 Pet. iii. 12. men. When were these Divine Gifts conferred upon them? Not on their conversion, for we never read of these gifts (except in one very special case, Acts x. 44-47) being conferred on conversion, nor at their Baptism (compare Acts viii. 16), but on the laying on of the Apostles' hands (Acts viii. 18, xix. 6; Rom. i. 11). "In all utterance." [λóyw.] "In all word." It may have a more subjective meaning, "the word of truth within us; " but is usually translated as having the same meaning as in our Authorized, 46 In every form of utterance" (Ellicott), “In all discourse, and all knowledge, so that no kind of Christian aptitude of speech, or of Christian intelligence, is wanting among you." (Meyer.) Its con 6. "Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you." The testimony of Christ was the testimony of Paul and those with him to the Person and Redemptive work of Christ. firmation was the supernatural gifts of knowledge, utterance, miracles, tongues, prophecy, &c., which were communicated by the hands of him who preached, thereby confirming the truth of what he preached, that it was from above, from the God of all power and wisdom. that 7. "So that ye come behind in no gift." This does not mean ye come behind in no gift of spiritual and sanctifying grace, ie., in responding to it: but it rather refers to the Church as a whole. No Church excelled them in the variety of their spiritual gifts. "Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." An unnecessary difficulty has been made of this by not remembering that the universal hope of all Christians was fixed by the Apostles and early teachers on the Second Advent, rather than on the day of each Christian's death. If the expectations of the future life entertained by any body of Christians had now to be described, some cold and worldly persons would say that they looked forward to a future state, others that they had bright hopes of eternity, others that they one and all expected to go to heaven at death; whereas 6 UNTO THE END. [I. COR. 8 Who shall also confirm you unto the end, ¶that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ: p 1 Thess. iii. 13. q Col. i. 22. 1 Thess. v. 23. in the first or Apostolic age death was ignored, and the one hope of all Christians who had any hope at all was the Second Advent. Whatever belief we express out of Church, in the Church we are certainly one with the Apostolic Christians in confessing our hopes in the Second Coming. "He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead." "At whose coming, all men shall rise again in their bodies, and shall give account for their own works." "We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge; we therefore pray thee help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood: make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting." 8. "Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day," &c. "Who shall confirm you." No doubt it is Christ Who shall confirm or stablish them. Some suppose that it is God Who will thus confirm, but the Name of the Lord Jesus is the one last mentioned. "To the end," i.e., to His coming to judgment. It does not mean to the day of your death, but to the end of the dispensation, which is always connected with the Second Advent. 66 66 You.... that ye may be blameless." Here he speaks not to individuals so much as to the Church or Body of Christ. Individuals may fall from it as they will be added to it; but the Church is the same, and will be presented at last to Himself as a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish" (Ephes. v. 27). This the Predestinarian may pronounce to be cold comfort; but the Apostle assumes that those to whom he writes will do their best by faith and prayer to continue in a body to which such grace has been assigned. He can give no comfort apart from continuance in faith and prayer. It is God's will, if we are to be guided by the writings of the New Testament, that salvation should belong to a fellowship. In it is acceptance, in it is pardon, in it is grace, in it is growth, in it is the Divine Food and Sustenance. Owing to the declensions, the divisions, the superstitions in the Church, we may have difficulty in realizing this, but in the pages of the New Testament it is so. It is the will |