Grace and peace of our loving Lord Jesus Christ to all who love the Lord with an undying love. June 1st this week we have begun our meditation on the book of Corinthians, the first uh Corinthians. And just in case you forgot you've forgotten, I'm following the uh Scripture Union Korea's uh daily reading schedule. Scripture Union Korea has a website and I will link it for you on my homepage. And um let's let's get to it. Today I'm taking a look at uh chapter one of 1 Corinthians and the entire chapter. That is actually a lot. I realize that that is actually a three days worth, but um yeah, sometimes I have to do that. Um so let's see if we can follow. And if you want to read along, uh please go to jubileecoach.com under lifeblogs. That is jubileecoach.com underlifeblogs. Well, let's begin. There's a question underneath every human life that is where do I find my significance? We build our answers carefully out of resumes and reputations, out of the approval of people whose opinions matter to us, out of intellectual credentials, ministry accomplishments, and social standing. Corinth was a city that knew this game really well. It was a prosperous cosmopolitan port city where status was everything and rhetoric was currency. And so Paul's letter lands in that world the way a stone lands in still water. The ripples go everywhere. But here is what makes this letter remarkable. Paul does not begin with the problems, he begins with the gospel and that order. Gospel first, correction second, and this is not accidental, it is the whole method. Um let's take a look at verses one through nine. Before Paul says a single corrective word, he reminds the Corinthians of who they already are, their identity. Verse two, to the Church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He does not open with to the Church of God in Corinth, you people who are divided, filing lawsuits against each other, tolerating gross immorality and turning the Lord's supper into a dinner party. No, he doesn't do that. But first he speaks their identity over them. They are sanctified, set apart, made holy, not because of what they have produced, but because of who Jesus is and what he has done. This is the reformed understanding of grace in its most pastoral form. Justification is a declaration, not a process, and God pronounces us righteous in Christ before we become righteous in practice. Paul is preaching the gospel over broken people before he calls them to change, and then he grounds everything in this verse nine. God is faithful who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. God is faithful. The church at Corinth is a mess, but God's faithfulness does not rise and fall with the church's performance or with yours. This is the ground on which genuine change becomes possible. Not try harder and maybe God will stick with you, but God is faithful, and now let's talk about how you're living. As a Christian life coach, this is the most important thing I want you to hear before we go any further. Transformation that lasts is never driven by shame or fear. It is driven by knowing who you are in Christ, and identity precedes behavior. The gospel is not just how you get into the kingdom, it is how you grow as a Christian. So when you think about the areas of your life where you most want to change, what is driving that desire? Is it fear of consequences or the pressure of other people's expectations? Or is it a deep, settled confidence in who God says you are? Verses ten through seventeen. This is a scandal of divisions section. Now the correction comes, and then it is very direct. Verse ten. I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. The Corinthians were splitting into fan clubs. I follow Paul, some say, I follow Apollos, some others, and even I follow Asiphus, and I follow Christ. Now, even the last group who say who say I follow Christ, who sounded the most spiritual, I suppose, were using Christ's name as a a party badge, a way of feeling superior to the others. And Paul's response cuts right through the root. Verse thirteen, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Now this is a gospel argument, not merely a plea for niceness. Division in the church is not just a relational problem, it is a theological contradiction. If Christ is one and if we are all united to him by the same Spirit through the same cross, then our factions proclaim a lie about who Jesus Christ is. Tim Keller argued consistently that the gospel is the only sufficient basis for genuine, durable unity because every other basis for basis for community, such as shared culture, shared politics, shared aesthetics, and shared personality type will eventually fracture. Only a unity grounded in what Christ has done for us rather than what we have in common with each other can hold over time. And this argument runs throughout Keller's book, Center Church, and his various sermons on 1 Corinthians at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Now here is the coaching question hiding inside this passage, and that is who or what are you actually organized around? What are you organized around? Now we can say we follow Christ while functionally organizing our sense of identity and our sense of superiority around the tribe, ethnic groups, or leader even a theological camp or a ministry brand. The Corinthians weren't doing something foreign to us, they were doing something deeply human. Is there a person, a community or a theological identity that you're holding on to so tightly that it is quietly competing with Christ for your primary loyalty? What would it look like to loosen your grip on that, not to abandon your convictions, but to hold them more humbly? And lastly, let's take a look at verses 18 through 31, and I hope you will have you'll take some time to read the verses on your own. Um and let me just highlight verse 18. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. The word translated, foolishness, is the Greek word from which we get the English word moron. So to the sophisticated Greek mind, the idea that the creator of the universe would redeem the world through public execution was not merely unconvincing, it was moronic, it was beneath consideration. And to the Jewish mind, a crucified Messiah was a a scan a scandal, a stumbling block, um something you trip over and fall. And Paul does not soften this, he leans into it. Verse 25, for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. This is one of the most subversive uh statements in all of Scripture. Paul is not saying God merely seems foolish. No. He is saying that even if you place God's weakest moment, such as a man dying naked on a Roman cross, right next to human humanity's greatest wisdom and power, the cross of Calvary still wins every time, unconditionally. Gerhard's Vos, the one who is often considered a father of reformed biblical theology, understood the cross as the decisive turning point of all redemptive history. The moment when the old age of sin and death was broken at its root and the new creation erupted into the world. The cross is not a problem to be explained away or a tragedy to be redeemed by the resurrection. It is the power and wisdom of God in their most concentrated form. Then Paul makes it intensely personal. Verse 26. Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth. God went looking for the people the world had already passed over. Not because weakness is virtuous, but because God is determined that no human being will have grounds for boasting before God. Verse 29. God chose the foolish to shame the wise, God chose the weak to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly, the things that are not, in verse 28, to nullify the things that are. And then comes the verse that holds everything together, verse 30. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, and that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. So read that slowly. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Righteousness, our standing before God, secured, holiness, our transformation into his like likeness in process, redemption, our rescue from bondage, accomplished. So everything we need is found not in our striving, but in him in Christ Jesus. And that is not passivity. It is the foundation from which all genuine striving flows. John Piper has described this as a difference between try harder Christianity and trust deeper Christianity. The first exhausts itself trying harder, the second is inexhaustible, for it is in Christ. And therefore, the only fitting response is the one Paul lifts from Jeremiah 9 24. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Well, that's it for today. Um, so I hope you are going to read 1 Corinthians on your own because I will be spending some time in the next few weeks uh coming to you from my meditations from the 1 Corinthians based on the Scripture Union Korea. So once again, thank you so much. And to all who love the Lord with an undying love, may the Lord's grace and peace abound in you today and forevermore. Godspeed. Peace to my soul, the Lord is on thy side patiently the cross of grief for pain. Leave to thy God.