Good weekend to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
When you hear news of distant family or friends embroiled in disagreements how do you respond? Join me again with the apostle Paul in the great city of Ephesus in 55ad. As we saw yesterday Paul was experiencing both a wonderful response to his proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus in Ephesus, as well as great opposition from many people who rejected what Paul presented and they wanted Paul silenced! I explained to you yesterday that Ephesus was experiencing a great spiritual war as both Satan and Jesus battled for the soul of that city, one person at a time.
Across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus was another great city, Corinth, caught up in the same spiritual, moral, cultural war. Paul had spent 18 months in Corinth (Acts 18:11) and he had seen a good response to the Gospel, and the start of a church of Christians in busy, booming, bad reputation Corinth. Paul had been in Ephesus for nearly 2 years, and he experienced a similar response of a thriving church of new Christians. Recently Ephesus had experienced a spiritual revival of sorts as a large number of occultists had abandoned their occult practices and even destroyed their occult books & amulets. (Acts 19:19)
The Holy Spirit led Paul to open his letter, to these Corinthian Christians, with a radical call to two specific, counter-culture actions: UNITY among the Christians in a city well known for brawls and violent disagreements; and HOLINESS in a Corinth with a worldwide reputation for decadence and debauchery. Paul gets right to it by writing: “I appeal to you brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.” (1 Cor. 1:10) Both agreement and disagreement, unity and division, are rooted in our mind and heart, right? How we think and how we feel drives what we say and how we relate with others.
While they may have disagreed on many things Paul focuses on allegiance. He writes: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’, another ‘I follow Apollos’, another ‘I follow Cephas [Peter]; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:12,13) Pause. My friends, over and over we’re going to find this remarkable letter is so very pertinent to our world in 2026.
Part of the reason there is such a wide array of similar yet distinctively different churches and even denominations, within the “Christian world”, is this matter of personal preference. Millions of Christians world-wide choose the local church they join on the basis of what they LIKE or how they FEEL, rather than Jesus Himself, as Head of His Church, leading His people to the local church Jesus wants them to invest themselves in! Very often it’s the appeal of the preaching, or the style of music, or something as selfish as the comfort of the building, which leads people to select a church to be their spiritual home.
Do you remember Jesus often spoke about Himself as a shepherd and we His followers are His sheep? In John 10 Jesus explained that He, the good Shepherd, knows each of us, hundreds of millions of us, His sheep, individually by name, and He wants all of us, His sheep, to recognize and follow His voice, as He leads His sheep in every aspect of living God honoring lives. Remember Jesus said “I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me…and I lay down My life for the sheep… I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen…They too shall listen to My voice and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.“ (John 10:14-16) In Corinth the flock, the Christians, were divided and in disagreement as they argued about who they were following.
Have you learned that one of Satan’s tactics is division, disagreement, discord, disunity of the people of God, so that rather than unity with our focus on Jesus, our Savior and Lord, we focus on our preferences which prioritize our differences rather than drawing us to unity around Jesus?! Can you discern when something or someone is distracting your attention away from Jesus? Can you recognize THAT as a potential scheme of division and discord of the dark kingdom?
Paul understood division and discord was only one of many great dangers in the city of Corinth. Another was debauchery! Paul addressed this in his letter: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be His holy people…” (1 Cor. 1:2) Oh my this was a bold wake-up call! These Corinthians, who had trusted Jesus Christ to save them from their sin, were living under constant, blatant temptation to return back to the immoral lifestyle for which Corinth was so famous. Holiness was the exact opposite of Corinthian life.
Corinth had more than a dozen pagan temples with more than 1000 temple prostitutes available for the gross combination of worship and sexual immorality. Lust was a major battlefield for Corinthian Christians, as it is for Christians in most parts of the world in 2026. Pornography, adultery, and every form of sexual immorality is widespread among Christians in our day, as was the debauchery among the Corinthian Christians. So, Paul didn’t waste any words, he called them out with his opening salvo of attack on the dark kingdom schemes terrorizing the Corinthian Church! Pause.
What does holiness look like among the Christians in your city? What about your church? Why are Christians in 2026 so vulnerable to sexual temptation?
With one verse in this opening salvo, Paul brings encouragement along with chastisement: “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:9) There is the answer Jesus offers, both to discord and lust! A strong, unwavering relationship of trust and love with Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, ready to BE our Savior, saving us from these temptations; and our Lord, guiding us to live victoriously in His power! It’s a daily, hourly choice isn’t it my friends?
Oh my, we have only scratched the surface of this powerful letter! The ‘lessons learned’ study notes below will be very helpful to you as will the wonderful worship song, and I hope you’ll join me on Monday, as we keep digging for spiritual gold in this, Paul’s first letter to Christians in Corinth and everywhere!
Today’s Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:1-17.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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