God’s Purpose – The Church
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Cor. 1:22-31
Three weeks ago, we began our study of the book of 1 Corinthians. This book is actually a letter from the Apostle Paul to the believers (church) in Corinth. Paul planted this church (Acts 18), and had received some concerns from church members and a letter with questions. So 1 Corinthians is a response from Paul to those questions and concerns. And we’ve seen the big challenge unfold in chapter one, the church had divisions, rivalries, and quarrels. Paul tells them that this should not be, that they were looking more like Corinth than Christ. In 1:22-31, he tells them that their “calling” as the church is to preach Christ crucified and the power of the gospel not by wise words or signs, but by the substance of their everyday lives. He reorients their understanding of the purpose of the church in this section, just as he has done for their identities in the previous sections. As we consider Paul’s words together, it is also helpful to ask what some of the convictions of the EFCA on the church are. Below is an excerpt from Evangelical Convictions on the church and its responsibility to declare (preach) the gospel.
“God’s gospel is now embodied in the new community called the church. This means not only that the gospel creates the church, but also that the church proclaims the gospel. And the church proclaims the gospel not simply in what the church is called to do, but in what the church is.
The church is the centerpiece of God’s purposes for humanity. For the promise of the gospel is that God will redeem a people composed of those from every nation, tribe, people, and language who will find their unity solely in their common relationship with Jesus Christ as they are united to him by the Spirit (cf. Rev. 5:9; 7:9). And it is in the church that this people-to-come is now being made visible to the world.
In a sense, in the church the gospel message finds its initial realization. In Ephesians (Eph. 2:11-3:13) Paul describes the creation of the one new humanity united in Christ as the purpose of God in all ages now revealed: “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:10-11).
In this way, the church is the “first fruits” of what is to come. As one writer put it, “The church does communicate to the world what God plans to do, because it shows that God is beginning to do it.” In Christ a new age has dawned, and the church is to be an anticipatory presence of that new age and an initial signpost of its coming.
The church is not just the bearer of the message of reconciliation, the church is a part of the message itself. The church’s existence as a community reconciled to God and to one another is what gives the message its credibility, for such a community is itself the manifestation of the gospel it proclaims. Jesus said as much. In speaking to the Father of his disciples in John 17, Jesus prayed, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23). One way the gospel is to be declared to the world is through the loving unity of Christians.
The church is to be a provisional expression of that new humanity united in Christ which God has graciously purposed to create for his own glory. So the church is missional in its very nature—who we are is an important part of our proclamation of the gospel to the world. For God’s gospel is embodied in this new community called the church. If this is so, then shouldn’t every Christian be a committed member of a church? If you believe, then you must belong. Many still persist in church-hopping, always searching for something that might satisfy their desires. Evidently this is not a new problem, for a colleague of Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, Philip Melanchthon, made this remark: “Let us not praise those tramps who wander around and unite with no church, because they nowhere find their ideals realized [because] something is always lacking.” We must not be church dabblers. We must dig in and discover the riches that can be had as we live out God’s purpose in real fellowship in the life of a local church. For without a commitment to the local church, we haven’t rightly understood God’s gospel.” [1]
[1] EFCA. Evangelical Convictions, 2nd Edition (pp. 219-221). – Emphasis added.