were never given full acceptance. Many of these people were used to an ornate pattern of speech and were undoubtedly unimpressed with Paul's simple style. God's mes sage was constantly subject to re view and correction by many of the people there, because they thought they were wise enough to challenge anyone. As if these elements were not enough to hinder a life of real growth in Christ, there were moral obstacles. A Greek playwright used the phrase, "To Corinthianize," to indicate any attempt to get people to live a wanton or immoral life. Immorality at Corinth earned the city a poor reputation long before Christian writers began to speak out. Greece, and Corinth with it had imported from Babylon the worship of what was known in Babylon as Astarte, later known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, the god dess of love or the goddess of fertil ity. The debassing rite of Babylon ian worship also came to Greece with the goddess. Herodites writes, "The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land once in her life to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger." One commentator estimates that when Paul was writing to the Cor inthians, there were 3,000 priest esses of Aphrodite of loose charac ter who were ministering at her shrine. With such immorality, intellec tual snobbery, and materialism all surrounding and eroding the fiber of the Christian's life at Corinth, direction and counsel was certainly needed. This book still opens with a glor ious message. Despite the prob lems around them, despite the Page 6
problems in their own life and their lack of consistent Christian living, they are still children of God. In short, we simply want to point out how great the grace of God is to day. Here are Christians who lack discretion, who are living not in harmony with one another, and who are at one another's throats. Here are Christians who are stum bling blocks to others. But notice verse two, "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth." That is a fas cinating phrase to me, "the church of God." What does it mean? In the Greek language you have a word that simply means, "to call," to call someone to come over so that you can talk with them. Now you can add to that a little Creek preposition which turns "to call" into "to call out." You use that word to call a group of people out of a larger body for a special pur pose. But, you can take it one step further in the Creek and end up with our standard Greek word we translate "the church." What is the Church? It is an individual or group of individuals who have been called out from a larger body of people to be uniquely Cod's own people. Now notice, these people at Cor inth, with all their problems, are referred to as the "called out of Cod," or the church of God. Out of all the people who lived in Cor inth, God had still called out this body of individuals and the Spirit had transformed them as they ac cepted the message of salvation in Jesus Christ. Let me add some further thoughts on this idea of being "called out" or of being part of the "church" in this special sense: 1. When you call out a person or group you distinguish or separate them from just the normal mass of
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