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! God’s Holy Calling
* *
In the eleventh century, King Henry III of Bavaria grew tired of court life and the pressures of being a monarch.
He made application to Prior Richard at a local monastery, asking to be accepted as a contemplative and spend the rest of his life in the monastery.
"Your Majesty," said Prior Richard, "do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience?
That will be hard because you have been a king."
"I understand," said Henry.
"The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you."
"Then I will tell you what to do," said Prior Richard.
"Go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you."
When King Henry died, a statement was written: "The King learned to rule by being obedient."
When we tire of our roles and responsibilities, it helps to remember God has planted us in a certain place and told us to be a good accountant or teacher or mother or father.
Christ expects us to be faithful where he puts us, and when he returns, we'll rule together with him.
In many of Paul’s writings, he emphasizes our calling as saints.
In the first chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul talks a great deal about his calling and our calling.
In 1:9 he says, “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ, is faithful.
In 1:23-24 he says, “but we preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Even in the opening couple of verses he mentions his calling to be an apostle, our calling to be holy, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
This morning I am going to talk about Paul’s calling as an apostle and our calling to live obediently under what God has inspired him to write.
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*Context - *
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Whenever Paul planted a church, or was instrumental in its founding, he wrote them letters.
These served as his personal substitute as he could not just hop on a plane or a car or call them up immediately.
He did not write these letters to wish good tidings and joy.
They serve as pastoral words to ensure they stand in their faith.
Paul did not conceive of his mission as successful if his converts initially believed his gospel and then lapsed.
His work was in vain unless his converts persisted in the faith (1 Thess.
3:1-10).
Thus, his letters were part of his missionary work, written to encourage believers to continue in their newfound faith, even through adverse trials and difficulties and doctrinal errors.
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*Structure – *
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When we write letters today, we place our names at the end of it, but ancient Greeks did not write their letters this way.
Almost all letters from the Greco-Roman period begin with a threefold greeting: Name of the writer, to the Addressee (receiver), Greetings.
Paul’s letters follow this standard form; however, he modifies it with a distinctly Christian flavor.
In the letter to First Corinthians, Paul is the writer.
Paul is not your average correspondent.
Paul writes with apostolic authority from God.
You will also notice Paul mentions “Sosthenes our brother.”
It is unclear exactly why Paul mentions him here, perhaps he helped pen the letter with Paul.
Sosthenes, of course, is the same Sosthenes mentioned in Acts 18.
He had been a leader of the synagogue at Corinth, probably replacing Crispus, the former leader who had become a believer (Acts 18:8).
The recipients of Paul’s letter are not ordinary people but a community in Corinth established and set apart by God.
The greetings are not ordinary good wishes but blessings of grace and peace that reflect the spiritual reality brought about through God’s act in the death and resurrection of Christ (Garland, 24).
v Called– Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ
Ø What is an Apostle?
§ broad meaning
· at the outset it must be made clear that the answer to this question depends on what one means by apostle.
Today, some people use the word apostle in a very broad sense , to refer to an effective church planter or missionary.
If we were to use the word in this sense today, everyone would agree that there are still apostles today.
¨ three verses the NT has this broad meaning
Ø Phil.
2:25
Ø 2Cor.
8:23
Ø John 13:16
§ narrow meaning
· There is another sense for the word apostle that is much more specific and frequent in the NT denoting an actual office – apostle of Jesus Christ.
In this narrow sense of the term, there are no more apostles today, and we are to expect no more.
· This is the way we see Paul described – an apostle of Jesus Christ.
§ Qualifications for an apostle
· having seen Jesus after his resurrection with one’s own eyes (an eyewitness of the resurrection)
¨ Acts 1:22 – Peter says the person who is to replace Judas “must become a witness with us of his resurrection…”
· having been specifically commissioned by Christ as his apostle.
¨ Acts 1:23-26
§ To review, the word apostle can be used in a broad or narrow sense.
In a broad sense, it just means messenger.
In a narrow sense, the most common sense in the NT, it refers to a specific office, “apostle of Jesus Christ.”
These apostles had unique authority to found and govern the local church, and they could speak and write words of God.
§ No one can just suddenly decide they are an apostle of Jesus Christ.
They must be eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ and personally sent forth by Christ.
§ In light of all these facts, there have been no apostles since Paul.
There are no apostles today.
Ø Paul is an apostle of Christ called by the will of God
§ Paul meets the qualifications
· Eyewitness
¨ Paul meets this qualification, albeit in an unusual way.
Christ appeared to him in a vision on the road to Damascus and appointed him as an apostle in Acts 9:4-6.
¨ When Paul defends his apostleship to the Corinthians he says in 1 Corinthians 9:1 – “Am I not free?
Am I not an apostle?
Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”
¨ When recounting the people to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection, Paul says, “then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also…” (1 Corinthians 15:7-8).
· Called
¨ 1 Corinthians 1:1 – called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God
¨ He was called while traveling to Damascus
Ø Acts 26:16-18 – “Now get up and stand on your feet.
I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.
I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.
I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”
¨ In fact, Paul speaks of being called or set apart by God as an apostle “at his mothers womb” in Galatians 1:15-24.
Ø What is striking is the emphasis on God’s sovereignty in the calling of Paul.
Serving as an apostle was scarcely Paul’s idea; he was a bright, shining light in Pharisaism, outshining his contemporaries (Gal.
1:14).
His devotion to the oral law, that is, to the ancestral traditions, was well-known, and he was doubtless praised for his insightfulness and sharpness.
Ø How can we explain Paul’s turnaround, his abandonment of Pharisaism and his devotion to Jesus of Nazareth?
His most promising career was to stay where he was, to quickly raise in the ranks of Pharisaism.
The remarkable change of course is ascribed to God himself; his induction into the ministry was due to God’s “good pleasure, God’s separating, God’s calling, and God’s revealing.
In other words, the radical change in Paul’s allegiance can only be attributed to God himself.
Ø Like the prophet Jeremiah, he was arrested by God and summoned into service.
God called him to preach the gospel and he could do no other.
This was his calling.
This was the will of God.
Ø Corinthians doubted and questioned his authority and apostleship
§ An interesting facet about Paul’s letters is you can almost always outline them by the contents of his introduction.
With this introduction, Paul puts a strong emphasis on his calling to be an apostle.
So much so, that he almost sounds redundant in his opening line of “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus” and “by the will of God.”
This is significant because some believers in Corinth doubted and questioned the authority of Paul.
The Corinthians are a church at odds with their founder
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