The Christian’s True Identity

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Opening of 1 Corinthians and the Purpose of the Introduction

All right, if you haven't already, please turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 1. Probably already there because Jason read it. But as you know by now, we're commencing our study in the book of 1 Corinthians.

And when we consulted with this church plant core group, you guys, a few months ago, this was one of the books that emerged as one of the clear favorites. And so after we had made the formal decision to study this book, I thought it was quite interesting, exciting even, that in a completely different context, I heard from a brother who I count as being far more wise than me.

He said, the book of 1 Corinthians is the perfect book for a new church to study. And so I thought, praise the Lord, what confirmation, what encouragement. And if you know anything about the book of 1 Corinthians, it's easy to see why this is the perfect book for a new church.

This book, I hope to share my contagious, I hope it to be in contagious enthusiasm about this book. This book was written to a new church. It was written to a church plant of Paul's. It was written to a struggling church, a church that was straining, as it were, to live faithfully as they were challenged with separating themselves from their surrounding culture, a strong culture, a pervasive culture that we're going to talk about a little later.

And this book, 1 Corinthians, is a practical book. It's down to earth, and it gives us practical details that are relevant, that are helpful, that are essential to the health and the vitality of the local church.

So it covers issues like unity and division. You can see how that would be important for a new church. It covers ethical matters, Christian ethics, like sexual morality and immorality, lawsuits, marriage, singleness, idolatry.

This book deals with orderly worship, something that's at the forefront of our minds as we begin worshiping as a corporate body. It deals with the practice of spiritual gifts, the necessity of Christian love, which we spoke about a few weeks ago, and a host of other things.

It deals with theological concepts as well. And so we're going to learn about the gospel, about the nature of the church, and about the resurrection and other eschatological matters. So I can say with honesty, I've been steeping myself in this book of 1 Corinthians over the last month, and I can say with all honesty that I'm so glad that we're starting with 1 Corinthians.

I really am, and I trust that this is exactly what the Lord has for us at this time in our life as a new local church. So this afternoon, as Jason already has told us, has shared with us, we're going to hone in on the first nine verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

And if you glance there, even for a moment, as you have your Bibles open, you'll see that we're going to look at two particular sections. We're going to look at Paul's greeting, if you have headings in your Bible.

If it's the ESV, it says greeting. And then the second heading is thanksgiving. And those are the two sections that we're going to look at today. And some people might look at this, and immediately it comes to their mind, they think, why are we focusing just on this introductory section?

You know, what can we really glean from this? This is almost like getting a letter in the mail and examining the address envelope on the envelope rather than opening the letter. But I really do want to assure you at the onset, assure all of us at the onset, that this brief introduction is absolutely important, absolutely important to us here and now, and it's indispensable to us understanding the main thrust of this whole book of 1 Corinthians.

So in this brief introduction, this is kind of the big thought, if you want a summary thought of this particular passage, that in this brief introduction, the Apostle Paul is going to introduce us to himself, he's going to introduce us to the Corinthian church, and then he's going to introduce us to the central themes of the letter.

And in doing so, as he does that, he is going to reveal the true calling, or what some people might want to say, the true identity of every Christian, whether that be in Corinth in the first century, or in Edmonton, here and now, or beyond.

And so in this section, Paul is almost going to lay out, and I hope to show this to you, a table of contents for the entire letter. If you want to go back in ten years and ask yourself, what was 1 Corinthians about again?

You can go to this section, and if you look carefully, you can see many of the main themes of this book emerge just in these first nine verses. And then he is going to remind the Corinthians, he's going to remind us of who we really are in Christ, of what our true spiritual identity is, and that is that we are men and women.

Us in this room who have been called to be saints, and that in Christ, that is exactly who we are, and that's exactly who we must be, saints of God. So we're going to look, for the sake of simplicity, I've broken it up into three different areas.

We're going to look at the Apostle Paul, God's messenger. These are the three big points. We're going to look at God's church in Corinth, and then we're going to look at God's saints. So God's messenger, God's church in Corinth, and God's saints.

Paul, Called by the Will of God

So let's look at chapter 1 and verse 1, and we'll read this together. It says, Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother, Sosthenes. So here we find God's messenger.

Paul opens the letter with a traditional introduction that you would expect to find in almost any letter written in the Greco-Roman world. So an introduction in the Greco-Roman world would usually be threefold.

It would consist of, first, the name of the writer. We see that in verse 1, the first word, Paul. It would include the addressee or the recipient of the letter, and then it's going to include some form of greeting and thanksgiving.

And so in the Greco-Roman world, that was usually a prayer that was offered up to some Roman or Greek deity. And so Paul is going to follow that same path or pattern, if you want to say, if you're interested in literature.

That's where he's going. And so Paul begins this letter by introducing himself. And maybe kids, I'm going to pick on you guys for a little bit. Both kids and adults should be thoroughly interested in memorizing the Bible.

But if you want to memorize the first word in every letter that has ever been written by Paul, you only have to memorize one word or one name. Can you guys think of what that might be? Not quite. It's Paul.

If you want to memorize the first word in every letter that Paul has ever written, all the canon of Scripture, you just memorize Paul. And what I challenge you guys to do is this week, go home, open your Bibles, and look.

And if there's a book that doesn't start with Paul, that was written by him, you let me know, okay? So Paul introduces us to himself. And this is probably, might be as good a time as any to ask ourselves, who is this man named the Apostle Paul?

Who is Paul? Many of us know, but some of us don't. From the Apostle Paul's letters, if we look at the book of Acts and any number of his letters, we can learn a lot about Paul. For instance, we know that Paul was born in Tarsus.

And biblical historian scholars figure that it was probably about 5 AD. So about five years after Christ was born, give or take, Paul was born in Cilicia. So Tarsus was the capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia.

And if you're looking for that on a map, just look for modern-day Turkey. It was in modern-day Turkey, just north of the Mediterranean Sea. And at birth, Paul was given the name Saul. And just like the king, the first king of Israel with the same name, he came from the tribe of Benjamin.

And Paul grew up enjoying all the benefits of Roman citizenship from birth. So he was born a Roman citizen. We read about that in Acts 16 when they're in Philippi. And despite that, however, in his own words, Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews.

And so what he means when he says that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews means that he was educated at the feet of Gamaliel, who was one of the famous Jewish rabbis at the time. He was a zealous member of the strict Pharisee party.

He was likely from a wealthy family, a family of prominent social status, where he was afforded the best possible education. So Paul had a lot of good things happening for him. But as we know, Paul was not always a Christian.

In fact, the very first time that we lay eyes on him, we find him in Acts 7 violently opposing Christ's followers. So let's turn there to Acts 7 for a second. We're going to introduce ourselves here. So in Acts 7, in verse 58, it says this about the apostle Paul.

This is the first time we hear about him. In verse 58, it says this,. They cast him, that's Stephen, the first martyr of the church, out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. We read about Paul a little bit more in the next chapter, in chapter 8 and verse 1. It says this,. And Saul, that's Paul, approved of his execution.

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria. So Paul was so zealous, so murderous in his persecution of the church that he went to the Sanhedrin and he got special approval from the chief priests, not only to persecute the church in Jerusalem, but to follow the Christians out of Jerusalem and to persecute even in Damascus.

But we know, and we praise God for this, that what Paul and the Sanhedrin meant for evil, God planned for good. And so in Acts chapter 9, we're not going to read it, but we find Paul and the story of his miraculous conversion.

Paul was going from Jerusalem to Damascus. That's about 240 kilometers. If you're traveling on foot like Paul, it's about a two-week journey. And at some point on this two-week journey to Damascus, the Lord Jesus gloriously, unmistakably, appears to Paul and he's struck blind.

And we know how this works. He was struck blind. Ananias came to Damascus. He regained his sight. And Acts tells us there that not only did Paul regain his sight, but there was a miraculous transformation in his heart.

God not only removed the scales from his eyes, but he softened Paul's heart to receive Christ. And Acts chapter 9 and verse 20 reads this. Read these words with me. Acts 9 and verse 20, it says,. Immediately he, that's Paul, proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God.

So you had this Apostle Paul, Saul, who was going to kill Christians. And within a couple days, he's now preaching Christ in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God. And listen to the verbiage here.

He stupefied the Jews by proving that Jesus was the Christ. From there, Galatians 1 tells us that Paul spent about three years in Damascus with a little journey or a visit at some point across the Jordan River to Arabia.

And during that time in Paul's ministry, he was so bold and he was so effective in his witness of Christ that the Jews began a plot, hatching a plot to kill him. So he had to escape. He was lowered from a basket through a crack in the walls of Damascus.

And from there, we're told that he spent time in Jerusalem and then in his hometown of Tarsus, and then eventually in Antioch, where he ministered there. And he was sent out to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, including those who are at Corinth.

And so over the course of Paul's missionary journeys, his three missionary journeys that are recounted in the book of Acts, and then his journey to a Roman jail cell, Paul traveled, scholars figure, about 16 ,000 kilometers.

To put that into perspective, without modern transportation, Noah, without planes or trains or cars, he traveled from Victoria, B .C., all the way to St. John's, Newfoundland, and then all the way back, just in the accounts that we read about in the book of Acts.

So Paul went a long way and he was moved by one great cause. And we're going to read about that in this letter in the coming weeks. And that was that he might preach Christ. That he might preach Christ and Him crucified.

So this is the Apostle Paul that is writing this letter. And he says, if we look back into our passage in 1 Corinthians, he says, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Paul did not volunteer for this office.

He was not convinced of the truth of the gospel as he was on his way to Damascus by an evangelist on the road. No, it was Christ who appeared to him and brought about his conversion. He was, when Paul says that he is called by the will of God, Paul was effectually called.

And what that means is that not only did God, not only did Christ extend the invitation, but He effected the response. It was an effectual calling. And this is a theme that we're going to find over and over and over again.

Like I said, it reads like a table of contents. If you look in our passage, we're going to find some iteration of call. At least three times, perhaps four, and if you include the word church, five times.

Because we know that the church are those who are called out ones. The called out assembly of God. And so Paul was called to this ministry. And I praise God that Paul was actually predestined. Paul was predestined for this office of apostle.

It's by God's sovereign grace that Paul was saved. It's by God's sovereign grace that Paul was sent out and that he wrote this letter and many of the other ones that comprise much of the New Testament.

Now someone might say if you're a little bit reluctant to accept words like predestined. Shane, isn't that a bit of a stretch to say that Paul was predestined to this? But if we look in passages like Galatians chapter 1, in verse 13, Paul talks about his life and he talks about what God did in spite of that life.

He said, For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it, and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own among my people. So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

But, verse 15, but when he, that's God, when he who had set me apart before I was born and who had called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me. I was on the road to Damascus that God revealed his son to Paul.

I'm going to insert this word. He did this in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. So God was called to be an apostle. That word apostle comes from the Greek word apostolos, which means messenger, a sent one.

And it comes with apostolic authority. I can't get into, we're going to study apostles in the coming weeks and months, so I'm not going to get into all of it, but it is a special, it's a limited time office that God called the apostle Paul to.

And why does Paul tell us all this? Why do you think Paul begins his letter with this? Could Paul not have just started the letter by saying, Paul and Sosthenes? Why does he say Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle?

Is he trying to pump his own tires? Is he trying to flex his biblical authority before the Corinthians? As we become more acquainted with this book, as we work our way through it, we're going to find that Paul does not make reference to this for his own glory, but to establish his biblical authority before the Corinthian church.

He is going to address tough topics in this letter. He's going to address issues where people are actually beginning to question his leadership, his apostleship. He's going to confront critics to his ministry, something that's going to emerge many times.

People that are questioning Paul's, both his apostleship and his ministerial credentials. And what Paul wants his readers to know is that he is not coming with his own opinions. He's not coming as some Greek philosopher, as an orator, with philosophical rhetoric, which was apparently a big deal to the Corinthians.

No.

The apostle Paul is writing a letter that ought to be received for what it is. It is the authoritative word of God. It's the authoritative word of God. Paul is a messenger, and this letter of 1 Corinthians that he has written is none other than a message from God himself.

And then the Corinthians are to understand this. And if I can just translate us into this story, we are to understand this. That as we study this Bible over the next few weeks, over the next several months, that we are not interacting with human philosophy, human wisdom.

We are actually interacting with the authoritative, the sufficient, the inerrant word of God when we read 1 Corinthians. And then Paul mentions here, and our brother, Sosthenes. I find Sosthenes a really interesting character.

We won't get to talk about him at length, but Sosthenes was likely the leader of the synagogue in Corinth. If you remember the story, in Corinth there was a big upheaval and they went before the proconsul, and then someone ended up getting beat up at the end of that account.

That was Sosthenes. And this is likely the Sosthenes from that account. We'll look at that a little bit later. But Sosthenes is a Corinthian. He would be familiar with the church. The church would be familiar with him.

And he's likely acting as an amanuensis. An amanuensis is a secretary or a scribe. And so Paul would dictate this letter. And Sosthenes would write it down as he dictates it. So this is God's messenger.

This is the first section that we said we're going to look at. Next we're going to look at the church of God that is in Corinth. So Paul writes in verse 2, "...to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus.".

The Church of God in Corinth

So a little bit of a backstory. In A .D. 51, scholars think that Paul likely was born in 5 A .D., that he was converted sometime around 34 A .D., and then 51 A .D. as he's traveling on his second missionary journey.

They make contact, first contact, with this pagan city that is in Corinth. And up to this point, this particular missionary trip has not been without its challenges. You'll remember a few weeks ago when we studied Philippians, or sorry, Acts chapter 16 and the establishment of the church in Philippi, it was on this missionary journey that Paul and Silas were beaten and arrested and imprisoned in Philippi.

It was on this particular missionary journey that they were attacked by a mob in Thessalonica. And then when they went to Berea and they found these earnest, eager people in the Bereans who would go and check the scriptures, that same mob from Thessalonica chased them out.

They were separated. Paul ended up stranded in Athens for a period of time. And after that ministry in Athens, when some came to faith and others mocked him in the Areopagus, he proceeded to Corinth. And so we're going to look there together in Acts chapter 18 at this first contact with the Corinthian church.

Acts chapter 18 and verse 1. So it picks up right where Paul leaves Athens. It says, after this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

And he went to see them, and because he was one of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue. This is what Paul did when he would go to a new city.

He reasoned the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade the Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus.

And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads. I am innocent. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshipper of God.

His house was next door to the synagogue. That's the synagogue in Corinth. And Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord together with his entire household. So what an amazing experience.

They go into this place of Corinth. They encounter resistance at the same time. The leader of the synagogue is converted to Christ. I find that encouraging. It says,. And many of the Corinthians, halfway through verse eight, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized.

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you. For I have many in this city who are my people, many who will be called.

And he stayed a year and six months. So that's how long he was after that in Corinth. A year and six months teaching the word of God. I find it so interesting. So Paul goes to Corinth. He has what I would consider good success in Corinth.

Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believes in the Lord. And then if we see Galileo there, the proconsul of Achaia. And then in verse 17, we see Sosthenes. So they replaced Crispus with Sosthenes. Then they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, the new ruler, and beat him in front of the tribunal.

And now in the first chapter of Corinth, we find him acting as the amanuensis for Paul. So neat backstory. I wish we could go into more. But here we find the church of God that is in Corinth. Paul is now writing this letter.

So this is about three years or four years after Paul's initial ministry in Corinth. Corinth was the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. That's in modern-day Greece. We'll talk a little bit about where that is.

And it was strategically located on an isthmus. That's a narrow land bridge that joined mainland Greece with the Peloponnese. That is the southern tip, the peninsula that is the southern tip of Greece.

And so when Paul writes this letter to the Corinthians, if you want to know where that is according to the timeline in Acts, Paul visits Corinth in chapter 18. He returns to Antioch beginning in verse 18.

And then while Paul is in Ephesus, you see there in Acts chapter 19, about three years, four years later, while Paul is in Ephesus, we see that later in 1 Corinthians 16, this is when Paul is writing that letter to the Corinthian church.

So in Acts chapter 19. Now I really want to share, I find this really interesting. So I hope you do too. But I want to share about the city that was Corinth. So like I said, it was located on a narrow land bridge on the sea.

And because of that, it became an important port city. It was, in fact, for hundreds of years. If you can picture Greece, there's mainland Greece, an isthmus, a little narrow land bridge, and then the Peloponnese, which is a larger peninsula.

And for hundreds of years, this isthmus that was about four miles wide, ships would come from the Saronic Gulf. They would sail from the Saronic Gulf to Corinth. My kids, we learned about this in geography this year.

They would load the ships onto rollers or skids, and then they would push these giant boats the four miles across the isthmus, and then dunk them back in the Gulf of Corinth, and they would continue sailing.

It was said about the waters in the Mediterranean Sea around the Peloponnese that a sailor should always write their will before sailing around the Peloponnese. And so it was much more convenient, much easier, much less costly to take your boat, put it on the skids, take it across the isthmus at Corinth, and then back in the water.

So the city of Corinth became a very prosperous, a very wealthy port town. I've got to find myself here. And actually, if you go there today, you'll find still a canal that runs through that isthmus. But it became a prosperous trade city.

It was home to wealthy aristocrats, to Greek philosophers, to sailors, of course, and then slaves. And it drew large crowds as both an economic and a cultural hub. And it was even home to the Isthmian Games.

Paul's going to talk later about training like an athlete, and he's likely referencing this to the Corinthians because here in Corinth were the Isthmian Games. There were two popular sporting events in that time.

One was the Isthmian Games. The other was the Olympic Games. And so big events that drew big crowds. And like most ancient cities in Greece, it had an Acropolis. Acropolis literally means a high city.

And so that was a city that was placed 2 ,000 feet above Corinth in the mountains. And it was used for military defense. On a clear day, they could stand on the Acropolis and see Athens 70 kilometers away.

And also on this Acropolis, it was used for worship. And if you visit the Acropolis today, if you noticed actually that image that I shared last night and that I've shared on social media, there are pillars in the background.

Those pillars belonged to the temple of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. And so on that Acropolis was this temple to Aphrodite. And every evening, they've said over 1 ,000 priestesses, which really were temple prostitutes, would come down from the Acropolis into the city of Corinth and offer their religious goods and services in the city.

That's a nice way of putting it, both to the citizens and the sailors. And so the land of Corinth, the city of Corinth, became synonymous with debauchery. Even by pagan standards, it was a morally corrupt place.

In fact, Corinth inspired a new verb in the Greek language. And that was the word korinthiazo. It meant to Corinthianize. And to Corinthianize someone was to convert them to gross sexual immorality and debauchery.

So they got their own verb. They could Corinthianize people who had been there long enough. And so not only did the people get into Corinth when they came to visit as sailors or citizens, but if they were long enough, Corinth got into them.

It was a mutual exchange. And we're going to see this again and again as Paul addresses the Corinthian in the Corinthians. I read in one commentary that Corinth was to the Greco-Roman world what Las Vegas or Los Angeles or New York is to the North American context.

Corinth was the sin city of Paul's day. And this is where we find the Church of God that is in Corinth. So when Paul writes to these new believers, I don't know about you, but if you had a new believer, would you recommend that they move to Corinth?

But this is where Paul is writing to these new believers in the city that is Corinth. So we've looked at God's messenger in verse 1. God's church in Corinth in verse 2. And now we're going to spend the rest of our time looking at God's saints.

If I can word it this way, the true identity of every Christian. That is what we're going to see in this third section, the true identity of every Christian. So Paul has already identified himself. He's already identified the recipients of the letter.

And now he's going to describe and he's going to give thanks for the saints that are at Corinth. And I really want us to take note of this. Have you ever read the book of 1 Corinthians? And in chapter 3, looked and thought to yourself, hmm, that's interesting.

God calls them saints. I really want us to take note of this. These Paul, or these Corinthians, excuse me, Paul is going to argue have been made holy. They have been made holy. Let's stop here for a second.

If you know anything about this book, you know that we immediately run into problems that the Corinthians are called saints, that they are called holy. As we look through the book, we're going to find that every attribute that Paul ascribes to the Corinthian church in this passage, every attribute that he ascribes is almost the exact opposite of how they are behaving.

The exact opposite. As we get to know the Corinthian church better in the weeks to come, we're going to find that the church in Corinth is still Corinthianized. They are not living like saints. They're not living like those who have been made holy in Christ.

In fact, there are factions and infighting among them. The opposite of as Paul uses here, the word called together. They've made a big deal of speech. We're going to hear about this, about wisdom and about knowledge.

Paul says that they've been enriched in every way. And yet they're completely bankrupt and their ideas are completely backwards as it pertains to this knowledge and the speech and these gifts. And they hardly look, if we look at verses eight and nine, who will sustain to the end guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They hardly look like guiltless people that are going to persevere as they await the coming resurrection. That issue that Paul is going to address in 1 Corinthians 15. But what I want us to see here in this passage, so we've looked at Paul, we've looked at the church, and now what I want us to see is that Paul is laying out in this particular section the themes of the letter.

He is laying out a table of contents, if it were, of what he is going to discuss. And he's reminding the Corinthians not only that he is an apostle, but he's reminding them of who they are, who they are as Christians.

Paul thanks God for all that he has given them, for all that he has made them, despite the fact that their behavior is falling pitifully short of their identity. Paul says to the Corinthian church, you have been made holy.

He says, you are saints. God has graciously given you everything that you need for life and godliness. That is what Paul is doing here, and in the coming chapters, we can see it even in verse 10, what Steve is going to preach on next week.

What does he start with? He says, I appeal to you. So in light of all that you are, he's exclaiming, now live like it. Live like it, be who you are. As we see the realities that Paul ascribes to the Corinthians are not only true of them.

What Paul writes in these first verses of Corinthians is not only true of them, but brothers and sisters, it's true of us. And so for the last few minutes that we're here together, I want us to consider this.

What does 1 Corinthians 1 -9 say about you as a Christian? We've heard about Paul. We've heard about the Corinthians. Now let's hear about you. What does God say about you? So in verse 2, Paul says to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.

Paul tells the Corinthians, and he tells us that we have been sanctified. Jason, you have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. Past tense. Now what does that mean? What is Paul getting at when he says that?

Paul uses the Greek term when he says that you have been sanctified. He uses the Greek word hegiadzo. That word hegiadzo comes from the Greek word hegios, which means holy. And so to be hegiadzo, to be sanctified, is to be separate.

It is to be purified. It is to be cleansed. And what Paul is talking about here is not transformed behavior, obviously. The Corinthians, there is no evidence of a significant transformed behavior in their record, in their life, at least what we can read from this book.

But rather what he is talking about, he's making an objective and a theological assertion. He's saying that everyone who God has effectually called, like the Apostle Paul himself, everyone who has been called, he has also consecrated to his service.

He has set you apart to be holy. We find this same word, hegiadzo. You'll hear us from time to time talk about the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And the hegiadzo, this word hegiadzo is used in the book of Leviticus.

And it's used to describe the process by which the utensils, think about the trays and the pans and the furnishings, the tables and the altars, and the tabernacle itself, they were hegiadzo-ed, they were consecrated, they were sanctified for service unto God.

Now does that mean, like the Corinthians, that those tools were never misused? I think we were just talking about some of that Old Testament history a little bit earlier. We know without a doubt, as soon as this tabernacle was consecrated, what did Aaron's sons do?

They burnt strange fire on the altar, right? So it doesn't mean that these things were never misused or that they were never used for an unholy purpose, because we know they were, but these items were set aside from the beginning for God's good purposes.

They were not to be used for any purpose outside of God's design for them. And so the Corinthian church, even though they were used at times for unholy purposes, outside of the design of God, as we're going to read in the weeks to come, and for all of us, brothers and sisters, what Christ has done for us, what has been done for us in Christ, is that when we place our faith in Jesus, and when we are justified, when he justifies us, not only does he make us a new creature in him, but he sets us apart.