1 Corinthians 1:1-3

All of Paul's letters begin with a salutation, and most of these salutations contain similar elements. Paul identifies himself by name, identifies his profession, sometimes joins others with him in the salutation, addresses the church whom he writes, and wishes them grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

We see all that here. At the beginning we have Paul's identifier—he was Paul and he was called to be an apostle through the will of God. Paul uses this identifier (or some form of it) in seven of his epistles. For Paul, the fact that he had been called and chosen to be an apostle was very important—perhaps it was especially because he was aware of unworthy he was of being chosen for such a role given his previous attacks on the church.

In this salutation, he mentions only one other person: a man named Sosthenes, whom he calls a brother or fellow Christian. We don't know for sure who this man was; however, we do know another man named Sosthenes, who was associated with Corinth.

Near the end of Paul's time in Corinth, the Jews tried to bring accusations against Paul before Gallio, the Roman governor. Gallio refused to interfere in what he saw as a religious issue, not a political one. Acts 18:17 records the fallout of this event: “Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for none of those things.”

It seems that some of the Gentiles of the city were angry with the Jews for bringing frivolous accusations against Paul and so retaliated by beating Sosthenes, who, as leader of the synagogue, was (or was seen as) the leader of this attack.

If the Sosthenes of 1 Corinthians is the same as this figure in Acts, it does suggest an interesting progress—this man went from being a hardened enemy of Christianity, enough that he suffered persecution for it, to being a Christian—something like Paul himself. 

So, in verse 1, we have Paul's self-identification. In verse 3, we have the traditional prayer for grace and peace. But verse 2 is particularly interesting. As usual, Paul identifies the church to which he is writing. However, in this address, Paul also sneaks in some of the ideas that will be important to the rest of the letter.

First, he identifies the church as “the church of God which is at Corinth.” One of the issues plaguing the church was that people were forming sects or parties around specific individuals who were connected to the church. And I think Paul was deliberately giving a counter to this partisan spirit by reminding them that the church did not belong to them, or to him, or to any other man—it was the church of God. 

Sanctus is a Latin word that means holy; it is where we get both our English words sanctified—describing something that is holy—and saint—a person who is holy. Sanctus is Latin, but the same thing is true of the Greek words used in verse 2. This idea of holiness includes the idea of what is pure, free of sin, morally correct, and also the idea of what is separated from common things and dedicated to God. 

So in verse 2, Paul identifies the people of the Corinthian churches as sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints. They were separated from the world and dedicated to God, separated for the purpose of being holy. 

Paul identifies himself as an apostle. When speaking before Agrippa, Paul gives details about how he became such. These were Jesus' words to Paul: “But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee.” (Acts 26:16-17)

So we see that Jesus appeared to him and called him. But this was not a casual call. Jesus didn't just show up to say hello. This meeting had a purpose. Jesus came to give Paul a specific purpose, a specific mission. In our text, when Paul says that he was called to be an apostle, it means that Jesus chose Him and commissioned him for a certain purpose.

And when the text says that the Christians at Corinth were called, it means that Jesus chose them and commissioned them for a certain purpose. They were not (at least not all of them) chosen to be apostles or even preachers, but they were called to be saints—that was the mission or purpose for which God had called them.

As I said in our introduction, this is one of the main themes of the Corinthian letters—the people of this church, in many ways, were not living the way they should; in many ways, they had carried the habits and patterns of their previous life through into the church. And so Paul is reminding them here, at the very beginning, that they were no longer what they had once been. They were fighting in a new army; they were workers for a new cause.

Though this letter is very specifically aimed at the church in Corinth, many of the issues they faced would also have been present in other churches in the first century. (We may find some of them very relevant even to churches in the world today.) And so while this letter was directly addressed to this particular church, Paul seems to have intended that this letter would be shared with other churches. Paul links the Corinthians with all people that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. And once again, in these words, we have a slight rebuke to the partisan spirit within the church.

People in Corinth were divided over which particular preacher they identified with. Paul reminded them that all of them—and all Christians across the world—were united because they identified with Jesus. There is one Lord and, therefore, one family.