To the church of God in Corinth,

It was vital that there should be a church in Corinth.

It is always essential that our ‘Corinths’ should have local churches.

It is vital that ‘ Corinths’ should have praying churches (and as we saw yesterday, here were people calling on the Name of the Lord).

In the ancient world Corinth was a by-word for immorality. In fact, there was a saying: ‘to Corinthianise’, or ‘to play the Corinthian.’ It referred to having an immoral lifestyle. But a church had been planted in the moral sewer that was Corinth. These believers were not perfect. They were flawed. The truth is they still had a lot of Corinth on them (and in them). But they’d had a good old gospel dousing down (See 1 Cor 6:11), and they were in the process of being changed. They were “called to be…holy” (verse 2).

The common Greek word for the church: ekklesia, refers to a ‘called out’ people. In one sense, the Christians were called out of Corinth even as they still had to live there. But they were God’s people; they belonged to Him, and were called to live out their true identity. Yes, they were still “in Corinth”, but the greater reality is that they were “in Christ Jesus”.

Prayer: Lord, I pray that my life in Christ will shape and inform how I live in my Corinth.