Section I An Apostolic Introduction
The very words with which Paul begins this intensely personal letter to the church at Corinth indicate his central concern. Even as he greets the church (1-2; cf. I Cor. 1:1-9; Phil. 1:1-11) and pauses to give praise to God (3-11), Paul touches that nerve which sensitizes the entire letter—the actuality, integrity, and character of his apostleship.
A. PAUL GREETS THE CHURCH, 1:1-2
Paul … unto the church … grace … and peace follows the prevalent form of ancient letter writing—the writer, those addressed, and the greeting (Acts 15:23; 23:26).1 The apostle expands the salutation in I Cor. 1:1-3 with a distinctly Christian accent.
Paul, the writer, focuses the attention of his readers upon his office as an apostle of Jesus Christ2 by the will of God (1). Timothy our brother (cf. Acts 16:1-3; 17:14-15; 18:5; I Cor. 4:17; 16: 10-11) is mentioned both from courtesy (Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:1; I Thess. 1:1; II Thess. 1:1; Philem. 1) and as a Christian brother3 of the Corinthians. As one who has worked with Paul in Corinth (1:19) he supports the apostle in what he has to say. The apos-tolate originated in the decision of Jesus to select 12 of His disciples and “send them out” (apostellein, Mark 6:7) as bearers of His own authority to preach and heal (Matt. 10:1-7; Mark 6:7-30; Luke 6:13; 9:1-6). These apostles sent out by Jesus were as Jesus himself:4 “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me” (Luke 10:16, NASB). The sense of identity between Jesus and those He commissions in respect to the will and activity of God is such that when they proclaim the gospel in His name they actualize His presence. Following the death and resurrection of Jesus the apostolic office was renewed by the personal commission of the risen Lord. The command is to bear witness to Jesus and the Resurrection in utter reliance upon the Holy Spirit as revealed at Pentecost (Acts 1:6-8, 15-26; 2:4, 32-33; 4:33; 5:29-32).
Paul knew himself to be an apostle by virtue of his personal encounter with the risen Lord. He equated the appearance of the Lord to him with the appearances of the risen Lord to the other apostles (I Cor. 9:1-2; 15:5-8). Paul had been directly commissioned by Jesus to bear witness of Him to the Gentiles (Acts 9: 1-9, 15-16; 22:12-21; 26:15-18, 22-23; I Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:15-16). Munck suggests that Paul viewed God’s call to him as “a renewal of God’s will for the salvation of the Gentiles, giving him a place in the history of salvation”5 in continuity with Isaiah and Jeremiah.6 Although Paul was not a witness of the earthly life of Jesus in exactly the same sense as the Twelve (Acts 1:21-22; Luke 1:2), he entered wholeheartedly into the stream of early Christian tradition concerning Jesus (I Cor. 11:2, 23; 15:1-11).7 He became one with the original apostles in his “inner commitment to the history of Jesus as the only foundation and content of his proclamation.”8 His apostleship was thus somewhat unique in character: “one untimely born … the least of the apostles” (I Cor. 15:8-10, RSV). Paul’s apostolic sense of mission originated for him solely in the will of God (cf. Gal. 1:1). The call came by divine revelation uncorrupted by men (cf. Gal. 1:11-17). If his apostolic authority was questioned, the issue became not his own person but the cause of God, who commissioned him “through Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:1, ASV). Paul as an apostle was the servant of his message—“the word of the cross” (I Cor. 1:18, NASB). So whenever he found it necessary to speak authoritatively to his churches, he stressed his apostolic authorization by Christ9 at the beginning of his letters.
Those addressed include the church of God which is at Corinth, the localized manifestation of the body of Christ (I Cor. 12:13-27), and all the saints in the Roman province of Achaia (Greece), of which Corinth was the capital city (see map 1). All the saints (hagiois, lit., “the holy ones”) indicates simply “all Christians” (Phillips; cf. Acts 9:13; Rom. 8:27; I Cor. 6:1; Heb. 6:10). The background of the term in the OT is cultic. In the NT it designates those who belong to the new covenant community (cf. Dan. 7:18) in virtue of the sacrificial death of Christ (Heb. 13:12). They are a holy people only “in Christ Jesus” (I Cor. 1:2, 30; Phil. 1:1). Their vocation is to belong wholly to God (Rom. 1:7; I Cor. 1:2; Col. 3:12) and to serve Him utterly (Rom. 12:1). The effective Agent is the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:16; I Cor. 3:16-17; I Pet. 1:2).
Purity of relationship with God in Christ is the emphasis. Procksch concludes that the basic reference of hagios is to “the static morality of innocence rather than to ethical action.”10 But these go together in the actual lives of those who belong to God, for the ethical quality of their relationship to Him must answer to what God is (I Pet. 1:14-16). This is nothing less than Christ-likeness (I John 2:6; 3:2-3). Paul, however, does not address his readers as saints11 because they have realized in life the full implications of the name, but simply because they authentically belong to Christ as a body of believers.
The greeting proper, Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ (2),12 is Paul’s favorite. It unites the usual Greek (Acts 15:23) and Hebrew (Dan. 4:1) forms of greeting. But Paul has immersed them in Jesus Christ. “Grace is the first and last word of the Gospel” (cf. II Cor. 8:9), writes Denney, and “peace—perfect spiritual soundness—is the finished work of grace in the soul”13 (cf. Col. 3:15). The order is first grace, then peace.
These two opening verses afford us an authentic insight into the essential character of (1) God’s messenger, (2) God’s people, and (3) God’s message.
B. PAUL PRAISES GOD FOR HIS COMFORT, 1:3-11
The thanksgiving which normally follows the greeting in Paul’s letters is here quite different from that of the first letter (I Cor. 1:4-9). There he speaks of the Corinthians’ rich experience of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Here his thoughts flow from a perilous personal experience in Asia (8-11) to the role of such affliction14 in his ministry to them as an apostle (3-7). Paul’s words evidence the depth of his devotion to the Corinthians and suggest the place of suffering in the life of a genuine apostle.15 Implicit even in his expression of praise is the problem of Paul’s personal relation to the church at Corinth.
1. Comfort Through Christ (1:3-7)
Typical of Paul (cf. Rom. 15:1-7; I Cor. 1:18-31; 4:9-10; Phil. 2:5-11) and particularly characteristic of this letter (4:7-12; 6:4-10; 7:5-7; 11:30; 12:5-10; 13:2-9) is the interchange of opposite experiences in Christ.16 Here it is the interchange of comfort17 and affliction that permeates Paul’s words of praise. The thought which links the two opposites is the sufferings of Christ (5), for Paul describes his own sufferings in relation to those of our Lord.
The One whom he praises as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”18 (NASB) he has experienced also as the Father of mercies (Ps. 103:13; Rom. 12:1), and the God of all comfort (3). The continuity which Paul emphasizes by his inverted repetition of God and Father is at the heart of his concept of Deity. The Father of mercies, as the God of all19 comfort, comforts Paul and thus enables him to comfort others (4). He is the “God and Father” of that One whose sufferings abound in (eis) us (5). The Father20 is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ (3), for the consequence of Jesus’ becoming genuinely human (John 1:14; Heb. 2:14) was that it became necessary for Him to live in complete dependence upon God for spiritual strength (Mark 15:34; John 20:17; Heb. 10:7). God is the Father of Jesus Christ, for Jesus was also the divine Son, who lived in perfect obedience to His Father (John 5:30). The key to Paul’s perspective is the Son of God’s actual obedience as man even to suffering and death for mankind (Phil. 2:8; Heb. 5:8).
It is because Paul’s afflictions are so vitally related to the sufferings of Christ that his “comfort also aboundeth through [dia] Christ” (5, ASV) to the Corinthians. Paul’s thought is well-expressed by Phillips’ translation: “Indeed, experience shows that the more we share Christ’s suffering the more we are able to give of his encouragement.” So both Paul’s afflictions and his experiences of comfort are for the sake of the Corinthians (4:15; 12:15), whose sufferings are of the same kind as his (6).21 Just as they share in the sufferings which are Paul’s lot as a servant of Christ, in the same measure they will be able to partake of the comfort (7) which finds its source in Christ (4-5). This comfort, as Filson interprets it, “is more than consolation in sorrow or trial; it includes encouragement, and implies the divine gift of strength to meet and master life’s crises.”22
Paul finds the source of mutual comfort in the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. He does this by uniting the sufferings of the Church—apostle and people—with the sufferings of Christ. But upon what basis can Paul make this identification? What precisely does he mean by it? This identification of the sufferings of Christ and the Church arises out of the redemptive participation in the life and death of Christ (6:5) which Paul finds at the heart of being “in Christ.” Involved in the earthly ministry of Jesus which culminated in the Cross were the Messianic afflictions (Mark 13:19, 24) which Paul links with the life of the Christian in Rom. 8:17-18. The sufferings of the Christian can partake of the nature of Christ’s sufferings because the Christian is redemptively united with Christ in both His death and life (Rom. 5:10). For Paul, participation in the afflictions of this age, which may in a sense be styled the Messianic sufferings, is an indispensable part of the ongoing life of the Church (Acts 14:22; Phil. 1:29-30).
Even discipleship during Jesus’ lifetime appeared to lead to a sharing in His life and ministry, to a participation in His Servant destiny. In Eduard Schweizer’s words, “As Jesus’ own way, by divine necessity leads to rejection, suffering and death, and only so to glory, so also the way of those who follow him”23 (cf. Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31-38; 10:35-45). On the basis of a comparison of Paul’s writings with the Servant Songs of Isaiah, D. M. Stanley suggests that Paul found in the Suffering Servant figure the pattern for his own ministry.24
The verses before us (3-7) indicate that in his own life most specifically Paul experienced those afflictions which he looked upon as a necessary part of God’s redeeming activity. (He uses here the editorial we and us in reference to himself.) By the sufferings of Christ (5), “Paul means not only the endurance of persecution, but all that the struggle with sin cost him, both within and without.”25 For him such sufferings were integral to Christian service in general and an essential element of his apostolic ministry in particular (Acts 9:15-16). When Paul writes to the Colossians that through his sufferings he is completing in his flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions (Col. 1:24), he is viewing his own actual sufferings as a real participation in the sufferings of Christ. This is because they are endured for Christ’s sake and in vital fellowship with Him; the Spirit of Christ is the life-principle of Paul’s service for Christ.
In Phil. 3:10-11 suffering is a part of the perfecting path which leads to the resurrection from the dead. These sufferings, which include the actual afflictions of Paul’s life, comprehend the lifelong state of death (“being made conformable unto his death”—see 4:11-12; Rom. 8:36) inaugurated through the power of the Spirit. Thus through the bond of the resurrection Spirit, Paul can call them “His sufferings” (NASB). At the heart of the sharing in the sufferings of Christ lies the experience of union with Christ in His death and resurrection. For Paul this intimacy with his Lord is so close that he can regard his apostolic career as an inner participation in His sufferings. This is so vital for the apostle that he proclaims to the Corinthians, in the words of Ahern, that “the glorious Savior claims as his own the sufferings which the dynamic presence of his Spirit occasions in his members.”26 Such a view of his afflictions gives to Paul (a) a new revelation of God (3, 5) and (b) a new power to comfort others (4-7).27
2. Affliction and Deliverance (1:8-11)
The thanksgiving continues. Paul accounts for its peculiar nature (cf. I Cor. 1:4-9) by reference to an incident of extreme personal peril which had happened to him in the Roman province of Asia (see map 1). Through this experience of affliction and deliverance, most especially, Paul was able to encourage the Corinthians in the manner that he did (3-7).
The reference to the trouble (8)28 is obscure as to place and kind. Paul was relating it only as an occasion for testifying to the mercies of God. The language fits best a situation due to mob violence, possibly at Ephesus, but hardly the one described in Acts 19:23-41. Other suggestions include Paul’s anxiety concerning the Corinthians (2:13; 7:5), a serious illness, Paul’s thorn in the flesh (12:7), and his fighting with wild beasts in Ephesus (I Cor. 15:32).29
The affliction was so great (10)30 that Paul despaired even of life (8). As far as he could see he, like Isaac (Heb. 11:17-19), had received the sentence of death (9). But the divine purpose (hina) of such deep despair, Paul learned, was “to prove to him his own helplessness”31 and to teach him, like Abraham (Rom. 4:17), to rely utterly on the God which raiseth the dead. Here is a chord which reverberates throughout the entire letter (2:13-14; 4:7-12, 16; 12:7-10; 13:4). The God who delivered Paul and on whom he had set his hope32 for future deliverance (10)33 is the God who raised Jesus from the dead—the God of the Resurrection (Rom. 1:4; 8:11; I Corinthians 15; Eph. 1:19-20). This is his proclamation (Acts 17:18). This is his testimony!
Involved in the gift (charisma) of God’s deliverance are the prayers of the Corinthians for Paul (ll).34 He asks that their prayers continue in order that “thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf” (ASV). Although it is God who freely delivers, Paul values highly the intercessory prayers of other Christians. The function of such prayer is twofold. It emphasizes the utter dependence of man and the absolute sovereignty of God; and it both expresses and promotes the fellowship of the saints.35
In his introduction (1-11) Paul witnesses effectively out of his own experience that “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (NASB) is the God who comforts us (4) and the God which raiseth the dead (9).36 The connection between the two is both real and significant. Thus we see how Paul can set affliction before us as a school of sympathy (4), of encouragement (5), and of hope (10).37