To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people . . . (1 Cor. 1:2)
My family has a beagle. He is the sweetest beagle in the world and incredibly loving. I also find him incredibly annoying sometimes. His desires always seem to lead him in the wrong direction. He feels very sorry about wanting to get into the cat food. He feels sorry about wanting to smell everything on a walk when I really need to get to work.
Many individuals in the Corinthian church were a little like my beagle, struggling to resist temptation. At worst, others seemed to resist God’s will intentionally. As we will see later in this passage, many of them continued to struggle with their “flesh,” a part of them that was susceptible to temptation.
It is thus striking that Paul calls the whole church “sanctified” or “having been made holy.” The sense is that God has set them all apart as his own people. They have been brought inside the divine “force field” and the protection of the Holy Spirit. Like a screwdriver that has touched a magnet, they are “magnetized” with the Holy Spirit.
At the same time, they cannot stay where they are. They are “called to be his holy people.” They need to move on and grow. They need to move on from merely being set apart to becoming what they are called to be. They need to become truly spiritual, not merely connected to the spiritual.
Let God make you holy in reality and not just in theory.
Ken Schenck is vice president for university partnerships with Campus EDU. He previously served as vice president for Houghton College (NY) and dean of Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.
© 2022 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
