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Historic Pentecost 12
1 Corinthians 15:9-10 August 19, 2012
Dear Friends in Christ,
The text that we have for this morning is one in which the Apostle Paul turns his attention
to the Christians living in the city of Corinth . And if you’re not all the great at world
geography, the city of Corinth is a Greek city located on the Mediterranean Sea about 40
miles from Athens on a small isthmus of land about three miles wide. An isthmus is a piece
of land that connects two larger pieces of land with water on each side. And for the early
sailors, this was a very important place. For instead of having to sail all the way around the
peninsula on their way to or from Rome and all the northern trading posts, the sailors
would dock their ship in Corinth and pay to have it hauled up on land and dragged on
rollers across that narrow three mile strip of land to be put back in the Mediterranean on
the other side. There were no machines or cranes or modern conveniences to do this. It was
labor intensive and took a few days, but it was a far faster and safer endeavor than sailing
around the treacherous rocky waters of the Aegean .
Having this very unique service for merchants of all nations made Corinth a very
important city. Though today it is a relatively small town of only 15 – 20 thousand people,
but during the time of the apostle Paul it had a population of well over 200,000 thousand
people from a wide variety of nationalities. It was easily the most important city of Greece ,
boasting temples and markets and a ceramics manufacturing sector that was world
famous. It is no wonder that Paul, on his second missionary journey, made certain to not
only stop in at Corinth, but to spend 18 months there, the second longest time he spent at
any of the churches he started.
But even with all that time spent teaching and instructing the Corinthian people, there
were still problems galore. The influence of the hundreds of false gods being worshiped in
Corinth , the lavish lifestyle that was afforded by the prosperous traders, and the truly
hedonistic me-first attitude of everyone living in Corinth made the selfless message of the
Gospel a hard sell. These people were used to putting themselves first. In much the same
way we have a society that talks about taking care of Number 1 and doing everything for
yourself because “you deserve it,” the Corinthians were there first. Though they may not
have had the slick marketing and the product placement to encourage a self-centered
attitude, like modern America they were a me-first society that put the needs and concerns
for everyone else in a distant second place.
But if this were not a big enough obstacle for Paul to overcome, there was also another big
problem with the people of Corinth . Again, just like here in the good old U S of A, there
was a growing lack of morality. Sexual sins were so bad in Corinth that in the rest of the
world if someone was immoral or caught in a sexual sin, they were said to have
corinthianized. They simply took the name of Corinth and made it the new name for sexual
immorality. For no matter if you were talking about out of wedlock births, or people living
together or any other kind of sexual sin that could be imagined, the people of Corinth were
willing not only to permit such godless activities but, in what seems like dejavue, they
lauded those immoral acts as being acceptable and even praiseworthy.
This is what Paul was dealing with as he came to preach the Gospel to the people of
Corinth . He had to go against the many false gods and false religions that were there. He
had to convince the people that there were more important things in this life than putting
all of our own needs and desires before the needs and desire of all the people around them,
and he finally had to show them that God’s gift of sexuality was not to be flaunted and
misused. In essence, Paul needed to change these people. He needed to change them a lot.
He needed to turn them around from being people who were the poster children for Satan
to being Christians whose lives and service belonged to God.
Certainly this must have looked like an impossible task. And we can easily understand
Paul’s problem because we see it in our society today. After all, how can we expect the
people of this world who have no regard for God or His word to suddenly want to be like
us? How can we convince them that there is a better life in attending church and giving
first fruits to God and serving those around us before we take care of ourselves? It is hard
enough to convince our own members, how can we convince the rest of society? How was
Paul going to convince the Corinthians to change their lives?
Paul’s answer to them was one of personal experience. He simply pointed to His own life as
an example of how people can and do change. And his point was not just that he had
changed, but that also the Corinthian Christians had changed. It was a point that said
everyone who follows Christ changes, whether they realize it or not.
That is basically our theme for this morning and has the encouragement to “SEE HOW
YOU HAVE CHANGED.” For in the first place, I. LIKE PAUL, WE WERE
UNWORTHY OF CHRIST and secondly, II. LIKE PAUL WE ARE FILLED WITH
GRACE.
Now as we start out the first part of our sermon for this morning, the idea of changing and
being different than we once were might seem a little odd to a lot of us. For many of us
have been Christians our entire lives. We can honestly say that there has never been a time
that we don’t recall the blessed Grace of Christ or the full forgiveness that is found in what
He has done for us. To say that we have changed might very well be something that we
don’t remember.
But this does not mean that our entire existence was one of service to Christ. For all us
were at one point like the Apostle Paul, namely people who were “not worthy” to be called
children of God. For even though Paul speaks of his unworthiness in connection to being
someone who “persecuted the church of God,” we don’t need to have imprisoned and
murdered Christians to be people who were opposed to Christ.
For even though in our eyes we think of ourselves as always being Christians, there was a
time for all us when we were not. From the moment of our conception until the time Christ
called us to be His own, we, like Paul, were against Christ. And whether our pre-Christian
life was spent only in the womb or was spent in years of aimless self-indulgence, we did not
have to take up arms against those who followed our Lord to be His enemies. All who are
not for Him are against Him. All who do not worship Him, are people who are enemies of
the cross of Christ.
And by simply being enemies of Christ, it means that like Paul, we are truly unworthy of
the grace which God has given to us. For the whole idea of being worthy implies some kind
of “worth” on our part. It implies that there is something that we have done or maybe even
will do that will make us worthy of the salvation of Christ. Yet from the very moment of
conception we have brought with us the sins of Adam and Eve. We have brought along
their desire to turn away from God and rebel against His word. We have brought nothing
to help God or to praise Him or to thank Him. All we have by nature is our sins. In God’s
eyes this means we are worthy of nothing but the wages of sin, and that is death; eternal
and everlasting death.
But God found a way to change that. He willingly offered up the life of His Son in our
place. In knowing that we could not change and were never able to make ourselves worthy
of being in His presence, He sent His Son to do it for us. And through the perfect life and
innocent death of Christ, we were changed. All of us were changed. All of us were now seen
by God worthy of the blessings of God because of the working of Christ as our Savior.
Yet such a change is not seen by many. Many people ignore that change which God has
given to them and prefer to be sinners who continually live in the Corinthian lifestyle. They
want nothing different in their lives but the sorrow and short-sightedness which we also
once had. They don’t want to change in the least. And many times we tend to agree with
them. For there are many times even in our Christian lives that we don’t want to thank
God for this change. There are many times that we don’t want to see that we are no longer
as we were before.
But if you take only one thing with you this morning, let it be the simple fact that you are
indeed different. You have indeed changed. But do not think that it is something that you
have worked on your own. Don’t think that somehow you have summoned up the inner
strength or the intestinal fortitude to do what others cannot. Your change, the
transformation from being someone unworthy to being someone worthy of eternal life and
everlasting communion with God is done by grace alone. It is purely a gift from God that
God has seen fit to give to you.
Paul makes mention of that in our text for this morning when he says, “But by the grace of
God I am what I am.” Paul saw that it was not his work that made him a great evangelist
and missionary. It was not his work that made him want to hear more about “God’s
salvation and then to share it with others. It was a gift of God’s grace. It was the working of
God that brought about that change in Paul so that the persecutor of Christians might
become the preacher of the Gospel.
Yet Paul also makes mention that God’s “grace toward me was not in vain.” Though Paul
knew there was nothing that he did or could do to get that grace or to find that grace, it
was a change brought about solely by the work of God, Paul knew he could reject it. He
knew that like so many others he could hear and see that working of God in his life and
choose to go back to a life without God. He could be like the un-converted Corinthians that
surrounded him. He could be like the heathens that never knew Christ. He could be like so
many who take the message of God’s grace and simply ignore it for the very short lived
pleasures of this life.
For if we want to really be like Paul, people who have been changed by God’s grace and
who will enjoy the blessings of life everlasting, let us, like Paul, use that grace to its fullest.
Let’s use our time, talents and treasures to make sure that we always have the Gospel in
our midst. Let’s use the people God has placed in our lives as the opportunity to spread the
Gospel. Let’s use the freedoms of our nation to make certain that we are always
proclaiming God’s truth. Let’s use all that God has given to us to continue to see that we
have indeed changed. We have been changed by God’s grace to be His people. Amen.
9
For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I
persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace
toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the
grace of God which was with me.
In His Service,
Pastor Joseph R. Schlawin
Our Shepherd Ev. Lutheran Church
1515 W. 93rd Ave
Crown Point, IN 46307
219-663-5853