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§2 Thanksgiving (1 Cor. 1:4–9)

The second typical normal element of a Greco-Roman letter—after the salutation—is a statement of thanksgiving or a thanksgiving prayer. Usually the lines mean little more than “I hope all is well with you,” although the writer typically makes some reference to “the gods.” Paul again follows the basic pattern of the standard letter of his day, but he modifies the form so that it becomes “Christian” and takes on a dynamic function in the letter. Scholars have long recognized that as a formal element of Paul’s letters the thanksgiving (or thanksgiving prayer) serves several purposes. First, the thanksgiving terminates the opening portion of the letter. Second, it signals the basic theme or themes of the letter that will follow. Third, the thanksgiving can sometimes even outline the major topics to be treated in the epistle. In 1:4–9, Paul acknowledges God’s grace as active among the Corinthians to the end that they are in every way enriched in Christ Jesus, in speech and knowledge of every kind. Among the Corinthians the real gifts of speech and knowledge are at the heart of their problematic thoughts and actions. At once Paul names the genuine strengths and weaknesses of the Corinthian church. The members experience the endowments of grace, but as the remainder of the letter reveals, their concern with and use of these gifts is completely out of hand.

1:4 / Paul reports his giving thanks to God at the outset of this section. He reiterates such thanksgiving later in the letter at 14:18. Paul does not mention prayer per se at this point, but the fact that his thanksgiving is directed to God indicates that he has prayerful activity in mind. The word always in this report emphasizes Paul’s regularity and constancy in remembering and rejoicing over the Corinthians. Paul’s thankfulness, however, is not primarily because of the Corinthians themselves, but rather because of the grace of God that affects the lives of the Corinthians. God as the source of grace and the giver of grace is the object of Paul’s thanksgiving. Grace itself in this statement is the experience of salvation, but not merely as the moment of initial faith. Rather, the following comments show that for Paul grace is the ongoing experience of God’s endowing the Corinthians with spiritual gifts that redefine their lives.

Paul’s references to grace make it clear that the Corinthians experience grace as a gift from God. Grace is given by God; there is no foundation for boasting (a major concern of the rest of the letter) in the Corinthians’ experience of grace. The grace the Corinthians have, the gifts that are manifested among them, are God’s and not their capacities and achievements (cf. 4:7–8). Moreover, Paul locates the experience of God’s grace specifically in relation to Christ Jesus. In the context of Christian faith and life the Corinthians are the recipients of God’s gift of grace, so that the grace is never purely at their disposal. Grace comes in a context and for a purpose, as Paul makes plain throughout the entire letter. God’s endowments are for specific reasons in the context of the Christians’ relationship to Christ and his community of faith.

1:5 / Paul explicates his thanksgiving further by specifying the reason for his gratitude: that in Christ Jesus the Corinthians are enriched in every way. The enrichment, said to be complete, is still not the property or privilege of the Corinthians; it is theirs specifically in the context of Christ Jesus, that is, in the context of the new life God created by working through him. In particular, Paul says the Corinthians have been enriched in all speaking and all knowledge. In the context of this letter all your speaking probably means the more specific phenomenon of spiritual assertions, not merely all the talking that they do. The mention of all your knowledge most likely indicates the Corinthians’ perception of the truth of divine revelation, not merely a set of facts. Paul thinks here of both speaking and knowledge as phenomena of grace, i.e., as divine gifts. Remarkably, as one sees in the rest of the letter, the Corinthians’ practice of making spiritual assertions (6:12–13; 10:23; 12:3; 14:1–40) and their concern with spiritual knowledge or wisdom (1:19–31; 8:1–2, 7–13; 13:2, 8) are serious problems in the life of the church. Thus, interpreters often suggest that here in the thanksgiving Paul is using sarcasm or irony. Yet such an interpretation fails to grasp the range of Paul’s thought. Paul is a genuine charismatic who believes in, practices, and celebrates the reality of God’s spiritual gifts. He can easily distinguish between the use and the abuse of spiritual gifts. He offers thanks for the gracious gifts that the Corinthians received because they came to them from God. Paul emphasizes speaking and knowledge in his thanksgiving because, as major sections of the letter indicate, these gifts are prominent in the life of the Corinthian church. Later, Paul can take up the misuse of these endowments and express his unquestionable distress over the misappropriation of God’s gifts. The gifts themselves, however, are real, and Paul rejoices over them because they are God’s gifts—even in the face of their abuse. Paul’s confidence lies with God, the giver of gifts; his concern lies with the Corinthians.

1:6 / Paul continues his thanksgiving with another word of explanation, although the rendering of the Greek word kathōs as because in the NIV (compare the translation in the NRSV, “just as”) gives the mistaken impression that Paul is adding a causal remark to what he has said. Rather, here he forms a comparison between the reality of God’s endowing the Corinthians with spiritual gifts and God’s initial act of grace in bring the Corinthians to faith in Christ. Thus, Paul refers literally to “the testimony of Christ” (NIV: our testimony about Christ) that he says was confirmed in the Corinthians. Paul rarely uses the word “testimony” in his letters, so the meaning of this word is not immediately apparent. He says the testimony of Christ was confirmed without stating explicitly who brought about the confirmation; the verb is in a passive construction that assumes God as the subject of the action. That God confirmed Christ’s testimony most sensibly refers to God’s establishment of faith in Christ in Corinth, so “the testimony of Christ” is another way of referring to the gospel. Paul’s point here, then, is that God gives grace and enriches the Corinthians in the same way that God established faith in the gospel in the lives of the Corinthians.

1:7 / Paul continues the sentence he began in verse 4 with still another elaboration that serves to round out the idea of his thanksgiving. The phrase here begins with the Greek word hōste, which means “so that” or therefore and indicates that Paul means to explain the results of what he has been saying. Thus he says the Corinthians do not lack any spiritual gift, for as he has said, God enriched them “in every way” (1:5). Paul underscores the reality of the spiritual gifts in Corinth in recognition of the magnitude of God’s grace. He continues, however, in a way that qualifies God’s complete enrichment of the Corinthians by saying that they experience these gifts (lit.) “as [they] eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This crucial circumscription gives a clear eschatological cast to the spiritual gifts in Corinth. Already the Corinthians have faith in Christ, but not yet are their hopes in Christ realized. Already the Corinthians are enriched by God’s grace, but not yet has the full reality of divine grace been made real. Rather, Paul says the Corinthians eagerly wait for [the] Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. Thus, Paul affirms the reality of the Corinthians’ experience of grace and the reality of God’s gifts to them, but he emphasizes that their involvement with grace is not as principal actors—they experience the reality of God’s grace, they do not initiate it. Moreover, even as they are enriched by God, they live in expectation, for they enthusiastically look forward to the “revelation” of Christ. Paul certainly means to refer to the return of Christ, but his use here of “revelation” (Gk. apokalypsis) rather than his more usual term “coming” (Gk. parousia) gives further emphasis to God’s priority in Christian life (cf. Gal. 1:15–17). Thus Paul says the Corinthians live their enriched lives looking forward to what God will do in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s purposes and God’s future are greater than the present experience of God’s grace in Corinth, so Paul implies that the Corinthians should not be overly self-satisfied with the richness of God’s gifts to them. The Corinthians live in relation to a promise of the final revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, so the full experience of God’s grace lies beyond the present in God’s future action, and the sole basis of the eager expectation of the Corinthians in God’s future, as Paul will declare, is that “God is faithful” (1:9).

1:8 / The final clause of Paul’s complex Greek sentence functions as a confessional statement. The grammar is ambiguous, however, and interpreters debate whether the remark in this clause is about the “Lord Jesus Christ,” who was named at the end of verse 7, or about God, who has been the unstated subject of a number of passive verbs throughout the preceding lines. The clause begins with a word that may be translated he or “who” (Gk. hos). The NIV translates the verb that follows this subject as “keep strong,” although it is the same verb that was translated “confirm” in verse 6. The passive form of the verb in verse 6 assumed God for a subject, thus God was the one who did the confirming, but Paul could have shifted his point of view so that now in verse 8 he has “the Lord Jesus Christ” in mind as the one who sustains the Corinthians. Even if this is the case, he would still understand that God was the one who was acting in and through Christ in relation to the Corinthians. While the easiest way to read verse 8 would be to translate the subject as “who,” in reference to the immediately preceding Greek words “our Lord Jesus Christ,” the declaration that follows in verse 9, “God is faithful,” may be an indication of Paul’s intended subject in verse 8. The creation of a separate sentence that begins with “He” in the NIV and the NRSV accurately reflects the ambiguity of the Greek (the RSV reads “who” in reference to Christ and does not begin a new sentence at v. 8). Whether Paul means to speak here of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Corinthians should gather that the basis of their security is not with themselves or their endowments, but with the divine action (of God or Christ) on their behalf.

Paul continues the eschatological emphasis that was registered in verse 7 as he speaks of the Corinthians’ being kept strong to the end. Here Paul has in mind the endpoint of time as we know it in our earthy existence. Paul thought and taught that he and the Corinthians (and all others) lived at the juncture of two ages (see the Introduction, p. 15, and 10:11)—“the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4) that had started to pass away with the cross of Christ (see 1 Cor. 7:31b) and the new age, the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) or “kingdom” (see 1 Cor. 15:24), that had begun but that would not be fully present until the coming of Christ (Phil. 3:20; 1 Thess. 4:13–18; 5:1–11; see 1 Cor. 15:23–24).

The outcome of the Corinthians’ being kept strong is that they would be blameless on the day of [the] Lord Jesus Christ. The language here is part of a legal metaphor that depicts being without guilt in relation to the law. The implication of this image is that the Day of the Lord would bring judgment at the end. The reference to the Day of the Lord Jesus Christ takes up language and thinking from the OT (Ezek. 30:3; Joel 2:31; Amos 5:18, 20; Zeph. 1:14–16), although in the OT texts the one who executes judgment on the Day of the Lord is the Lord God, whereas here Paul plainly understands that one to be the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul preserves the theological vision of the OT and gives it christological focus that makes the promise of the Day of the Lord all the more specific and real.

Finally, Paul’s unswerving confidence in the Corinthians’ future is remarkable, for from the remainder of the letter one sees that he faced grave problems in the life of the Corinthian congregation. Yet Paul’s remarks in this thanksgiving show that whatever confidence he had for the outcome of the problems in Corinth was based in God and God’s working among the Corinthians through the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the Corinthians themselves. Indeed, Paul’s declaration of confidence in God concerning the Corinthians should have directed the attention of the Corinthians toward God and away from themselves.

1:9 / All Paul’s elaborate thinking and thanksgiving are epitomized in this crisp—but loaded—statement. Paul declares, above all, that God … is faithful. This truth is the foundation of Paul’s confidence concerning the Corinthians. God’s faithfulness is a major theme of the OT, where God is remembered and praised as a faithful God. Yet as we see in Paul’s declaration here, he has in mind God’s faithfulness as he and the Corinthians know it specifically through Jesus Christ. God had begun and was continuing a work among the Corinthians that had an assured outcome because of God’s own character. The declaration of God’s faithfulness will be repeated at 10:13, where Paul recognizes the reality of the temptation that the Corinthians must face and tells them that God’s own faithfulness assures that they will not be tempted beyond what they can bear—indeed, God’s faithfulness guarantees that “he will provide a way so that [they] can stand up under [temptation].” Already in 1 Thessalonians 5:24 Paul had written of God’s faithfulness, coupling the idea with the memory of God’s calling the Thessalonians to faith in a manner quite similar to his statement here. In 2 Corinthians 1:18 Paul again speaks of God’s faithfulness—here in such a way as to reveal that Paul considered God’s faithfulness beyond question.

God’s faithfulness undergirds his calling the Corinthians, and as Paul explains, God’s initiative in calling the Corinthians was related to a specific goal. Through God’s call they were brought into fellowship with … Jesus Christ. Moreover, the Christocentric character of Christian fellowship creates a dynamic relationship between God and humanity, for on the one hand, Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and on the other hand, he is the Lord of those God calls into fellowship with him. With this sketch of relations, Paul directs the attention of the Corinthians away from themselves toward their fellowship with Jesus Christ and through him to God. What God does for humanity, he does through Jesus Christ; and, at the same time, humanity relates to God in and through the divinely created fellowship with Jesus Christ.