Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; I Corinthians 1: 1-9; John 1:29-42
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Corinth was a Greco-Roman city that would have felt strikingly familiar to us. It was cosmopolitan, commercially driven, and deeply shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas. It was a place of opportunity and ambition, where success could be pursued and identities could be reinvented. It was also a city marked by profound moral confusion, social stratification, and competing loyalties—religious, political, and economic. In many ways, Corinth looked a lot like the modern world.
Corinth’s prosperity came largely from its geography. Situated on a narrow isthmus connecting it to mainland Greece, it became a vital trade hub and port city. Merchants, sailors, and travelers passed through constantly. With wealth came opportunity—social advancement, civic participation, theater, and the Isthmian Games, held every two years and drawing large crowds to the area.
Yet Corinth’s story is not without devastation. In 146 BCE, during the Battle of Corinth, Roman forces destroyed the city entirely. All the men were killed, the women and children enslaved, and the city was looted and burned. This marked the last stand of Greek independence and resulted in Greece’s complete annexation into the Roman Empire. Corinth lay in ruins for nearly a century until Julius Caesar reestablished it in 44 BCE as a Roman colony.
By the time of Paul, Corinth had become a bustling, multicultural city. Its population included freedmen, Roman legionary veterans, Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, and a smaller Jewish community. There was a Jewish synagogue, but the city itself was dominated by pagan worship. Chief among these was the goddess Aphrodite, whose sanctuary stood atop the acropolis. She was widely regarded as the protector of prostitutes, and her cult reflected the city’s permissive sexual ethic.
The city was famously notorious. So much so that the Greek word korinthiazomai came to mean “to practice sexual immorality.” If a city is going to be famous for something, I suppose that tells you a great deal about Corinth—and perhaps explains the prominence of Aphrodite in its religious life.
It is into this environment that Paul journeys from Athens, where his efforts to establish a Christian community had met with mixed success. In the eighteenth chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles, we learn that when Paul arrived in Corinth, he met a Jewish couple named Aquila and Priscilla. They had recently moved there after the emperor Claudius had ordered the Jews to leave Rome. Like Paul, they were tentmakers, so he stayed with them, working side by side and selling their goods in the marketplace.
Each Sabbath, Paul would go to the synagogue in an attempt to evangelize both Greeks and Jews. After meeting significant opposition one Sabbath, Paul shook the dust from his sandals and declared that from then on, he would only preach to the Gentiles. He left the synagogue and went to the house next door that was owned by a man named Titius Justus and who had, apparently, been converted by Paul’s teachings. Crispus, the official of the synagogue, also came to believe, along with many other Corinthians.
Paul remained in Corinth for a year and a half. During that time, tensions grew. Some of the Jewish leaders brought Paul before the Roman tribunal, accusing him of unlawful teaching. But Gallio, the Roman proconsul, dismissed the case, judging it to be an internal religious dispute and unworthy of his attention. After this, Paul left Corinth with Aquila and Priscilla and traveled on to Ephesus.
Though Paul left, he did not abandon this fledgling Christian community. His continued pastoral concern is evident in the letters we now know as First and Second Corinthians. These letters address the many challenges faced by new believers who were attempting to follow Christ while still deeply shaped by Greco-Roman culture.
First Corinthians, in particular, offers guidance to people who had grown up with polytheism, rigid social hierarchies, and a culture of excess. Paul writes about marriage, food offered to idols, spiritual gifts, worship, and community life. Having lived among them for eighteen months, he knew their world well. He understood the relentless busyness of a trade hub and the constant flow of strangers through its streets. He knew how difficult it was for this small community to form a shared identity in a society that was largely indifferent—if not hostile—to their faith.
It is against this backdrop of the wiles and wills of humanity, that Paul begins his letter in a surprising way. He greets them not with criticism or warning, but by calling them saints—people who have been set apart and claimed by God. Before addressing their conflicts, their divisions, or their moral failures, Paul tells them who they are and whose they are.
This is a striking pastoral move. Paul will spend much of the letter confronting pettiness, arrogance, and discord within the community. But first, he offers them a vision of themselves that is rooted in God’s grace rather than their shortcomings. They are saints—not because they are perfect, but because they belong to God.
In doing so, Paul demonstrates a form of Christian leadership grounded in hope and inspiration. He could have begun by listing everything they were doing wrong. Instead, he starts with possibility. He names their identity in Christ and invites them to grow into it. His letter could have been framed as judgment; instead, it is framed as gratitude and grace.
This is all the more remarkable when we consider Paul’s own circumstances. He had been pursued by opponents who labeled him a heretic. He had been reviled, opposed, beaten, imprisoned, and dragged before authorities. Corinth itself had proven to be a hostile environment. And yet, though despised, Paul is never discouraged. He continues to proclaim the Good News and to invite others into it with joy.
Paul grounds his letter in gratitude and grace not for what he has received, but for what he has perceived about the Corinthian church. He reminds them that they have been strengthened in Christ and are not lacking in spiritual gifts. Paul says, “just as Christ has been strengthened in you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” The “you” here is the plural. We might hear it a little more clearly if we read it as, “just as Christ has been strengthened in y’all—so that y’all are not lacking in any spiritual gift.”
This matters because one of the conflicts within the church in Corinth involved pride in which spiritual gift some received—as if one person’s spiritual gift was better than another’s. Those who had the gift of prophecy felt superior to those who had the gift of healing. Or those who could speak in tongues thought themselves more faithful than those with the gift of teaching. Paul addresses this at length later in the letter, especially when he describes the church as a body with many members and the importance of each member is to the whole. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”
Paul insists that there is no hierarchy of gifts. The community is whole precisely because its members are different. No single person possesses every gift. Only together do they reflect the fullness of Christ. The only way to not lack in a spiritual gift is to be part of a community in which everyone has been given a different spiritual gift. In that community, when everyone’s gift is recognized and valued for what it brings to the whole, abundant grace is found. And when you realize such grace, the only response is gratitude.
Paul reminds this tiny church in the midst of a bustling metropolis, that they have been made whole through the strength of Christ and their shared life. Each has been given a gift, and each gift matters. It is their differences which make then whole—they are the very means by which God’s grace is made visible.
I wonder if the church today can hear Paul’s invitation to grace and gratitude in the holding up of our differences not as places of division or weakness, but as our greatest strength—as the way in which God makes us whole.
Amen.