Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be His holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ - their Lord and ours: grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank my God for you because of His grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in Him you have been enriched in every way - with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge - God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, Who has called you into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:1-9)

 

 

     In the era of text messaging, the art of letter-writing has been largely lost. For that matter, to keep the text messages short, the art of spelling has been largely lost. Why spell “you” as “Y-O-U” when just plain “u” will do? There are all sorts of conveniences I suppose in the modern world, and fast and easy communication is one of them, but we've also lost a lot. One thing we've lost I think is context. When you're communicating via text message you want to keep it short. So there's no background to the discussion. Nothing that really gives you anything to interpret what's just been texted to you. In some ways – although I rarely write them – that's what I like about actual letters. I like the background; the little hints that come up. There's something about the start of the letter. Sure, you want to see the content, get down to the nitty gritty. What's it all about? Why exactly are you writing? Things like that. But you should never skip over the beginning of a letter. What point does the author feel compelled to make right from the start? 

 

     I may not write a lot of letters, but as a student of the Bible I read a fair number of letters, because so much of the New Testament revolves around the letters, and especially the letters of Paul. You learn a lot about both Paul and the churches he was writing to from the beginning of his letters. What were the issues? For Paul, we know (or at least we strongly suspect) that his authority was being called into question, because every single letter he wrote stresses right off the top that he is an apostle. 1 Corinthians, for example, starts by saying “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” All of his letters start with a similar statement of his authority. It's Paul basically saying to the churches that he writes to “I AM an apostle! No matter what anyone else says!” It's the idea of call. But in 1 Corinthians, Paul is also concerned fundamentally about the call of the Christians who compose the church at Corinth – and presumably all Christians. 1 Corinthians eventually descends into discussions about various and sundry conflicts that have broken out and have caused the congregation to descend into chaos. But in the first couple of sentences we see Paul's diagnosis of why this has happened: the Corinthians have perhaps forgotten that they are “called to be [God's] holy people.”

 

     There are two things we learn right off the top of this letter. First is that each of us has a personal call. God has a role for us to play within the Christian community. We usually think of “call” as something we apply to people in ordered ministry, but it goes far beyond that. People are called to all sorts of roles or ministries within the church. There are pastors, yes, but there are also missionaries and evangelists. There are administrators and choir members. There are ushers and greeters and Scripture readers. Sometimes our call is to work outside the church. People can be called to be teachers or lawyers or plumbers or whatever. Your call is what God has asked you to commit to with your life. There are so many different calls it's impossible to count them all. Sometimes it's hard to discern what our particular call is. Sometimes others have to discern something in us and say – you should do this - whatever it is. There are a whole variety of calls to service of various kinds. We just have to be able to discern what it is that we're being called to – and if we don't think we're being called to anything, then we have to sit back and discern some more, because everyone has some sort of calling in their Christian life; some way in which God wants us to glorify Christ. That's why what you might call the corporate call is important. There's one call that Paul seems to suggest is given to every Christian simply by virtue of the fact that we're Christians. I'm talking about the call to holiness. “...  to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be His holy people ...” is how Paul referred to the Corinthians in the opening of his letter. The point may well be that unless you first understand and accept this calling, you're not going to accomplish anything else.

 

     So what is this call to holiness? It seems, from what Paul says, to be the basis for Christian life. And we've done such a horrible job of speaking of the word, so that people have a warped view of what holiness really means. Most people think of holiness as being of upstanding moral character, which is probably why many shy away from the idea that they are called to holiness. We're all too aware of our own faults and weaknesses to take on a call that seems to imply that we're morally better than other people. Hopefully we're also too humble to want to claim that as well. But that isn't really what a call to holiness means. It's not a call to be better than others. To be called to holiness means simply that we recognize that we have been set apart by God for a purpose. The call to holiness is what opens us to our unique and personal calls, because it teaches us what “call” is all about – and it's not about being better or more important than other people, which was one of the things that caused the problems in Corinth: those who had received certain gifts or calls began to think of their particular gift or call as more important and therefore of themselves as more important than those with other gifts or calls. Recognizing and claiming that we are called to holiness means understanding how we are to engage in the various calls that come to us from God. I want to suggest that a call to holiness has three components that all help us to understand what our personal calls from God are.

 

     A call to holiness focuses on our unity in Christ; it places Christ above all else. Christ is the one Who calls us to be “one.” It's true enough that if we take a good look at modern day Christianity the last thing we might think is that the church is “one.” After all, there are well over 10 churches in Port Colborne alone – so how can we be “one.” But the oneness of the Christian community doesn't necessarily mean that all Christians should worship in the same building or even believe exactly the same things. It does mean, however, that we have a one-ness in our focus on Christ; that for all of our differences, we are committed to serving Christ as best as we can discern Christ's call to us. So a call to holiness reminds us that Christ is the centre of everything for the church. If we place anything else in the centre, we've rejected the call to holiness that God has placed upon us.

 

     A call to holiness focuses on our love for one another and on living by that principle. The best way to live in unity, after all, is to live in love. We can't be one if we're at each other's throats. We can't be one if we won't sit down at the table and talk with each other. We can't be one if we always have to have our way and we just pick up our ball and go home, so to speak, if we don't get our way. We can only be one if we live up to the example of Jesus and put into practice His words: “love one another as I have loved you.” That's not an emotion, which is usually how we think about love. It's actively living with the concern always for the well-being of the other. It's caring about each other and the church; it's giving for each other and the church; it's sacrificing for the sake of each other and the church.

 

     Finally, a call to holiness focuses on humble service – on recognizing that what we do is for God's glory and not ours. We're not called to think of ourselves as more important that anyone else, or to think of our own unique “call” as better than the call given to anyone else. If we start to establish a hierarchy where some are more important than others rather than a fellowship in which each of us has our own equally important gifts to share and ministry to offer then we've missed the point. We serve however and wherever God has called us – and we recognize our call as a blessing simply because however we discerned it, it comes from God, Who sees our potential and our abilities better than we do and Who seeks to use those things in the service of the church and the Kingdom.

 

     There are other things that could perhaps be added to the list – but I would argue that those are the three things that need to be shown in order for us to demonstrate that we understand and respond to the call to holiness God has placed upon us. It's not a burden to be called by God – to holiness, or to whatever role we've been called to; it's a joy. We should embrace it with thanks, and we should be about the business of God.