1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, 2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:

In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians we find a very descriptive greeting – descriptive in the sense that Paul theologically described the church to whom he was writing. He was, in a sense, reminding them of who they were even as he said “hello.” But before we see Paul’s description of them we should not miss his description of himself: Paul, the man who was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God (vs.1). This epistle was not written by “the people’s philosopher” or a publicly elected official, it was written by an apostle who had been called and commissioned by God (vs.1b). The Lord Jesus Christ had intersected Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts. 9:3-6) and ordained him to be an apostle to the Gentiles (Acts. 26:16-18). This was important for the Corinthians to remember particularly because so much of what followed in the epistle was corrective.

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