A Subversive Start
Saints Sinners Soldiers
January 6, 2019
Rev. Gabe Sylvia
Paul’s letters to Corinth call the church to remember that it is a strategically placed, God‑called, sanctified community whose identity and mission depend on grace, unity in Christ, and faithful witness amid cultural pressures and internal sin.
Summary
Paul wrote to a culturally pagan, morally compromised Corinth to correct a church that had absorbed too much of its surrounding values; through a deceptively simple greeting and five core questions about what it means to be the church, he reoriented them (and us) toward the truth that the church is founded by God’s calling, defined by being sanctified in Christ, intended to serve together for God’s purposes in its locale, and empowered by grace and the shalom of God rather than by individualism, worldly wisdom, or power. The struggles—conflict, sexual sin, litigation, worship wars—are the context in which God shapes his people, and the remedy is remembering our connectedness to Christ, planning and praying strategically for our town, and letting grace be the engine of our pursuits.
Key Points
- Paul engaged Corinth repeatedly because the church there faced deep cultural and moral pressures.
- Corinth in A.D. 50 was steeped in Greco‑Roman values (wealth, wisdom, power, sexual promiscuity) that infiltrated the church.
- Paul’s plain, subversive greeting serves as an early course correction to reframe their identity.
- He frames the question “What does it mean to be the church?” with five guiding principles (summarized as five questions).
- The church is defined by God’s action: people called from darkness, not by individual self‑definition or autonomy.
- Churches are strategically planted; believers are strategically saved to serve and witness in their communities.
- Being “in Christ” means sanctification (separation/consecration) and full access to what Christ has earned.
- Trials and conflicts (sin, lawsuits, worship disputes) are the soil in which God forms the church’s character.
- The church’s purpose is communal usefulness to God, not merely individual growth.
- Grace and God’s shalom (peace) are foundational—grace must be the engine of all the church’s pursuits.
- The sermon closes with a prayer to cherish our connection to Christ and to rely on grace as we live out God’s purposes.
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