‘The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.   My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.’ (1 Corinthians 16: 23-24).

One of the most difficult things I find in my work of pastoring is the sense of disappointment I can sometimes feel. You’ve been teaching in a Church for a sufficient length of time and yet you still see people making the same mistakes.  I can’t help thinking that Paul must have experienced this with the Church in Corinth.  The letter to the Church deals with many problems.  But these weren’t just problems to do with straightening out the Church when it came to doctrine (although some were), some were major issues to do with immorality within the Church family!

I often feel, when reading through the letter, that Paul feels like tearing his hair out with exasperation at what he’s having to deal with!  After all this wasn’t one of the Churches we encounter in the book of Acts where Paul had to leave town almost as soon as he’d turned up due to Jewish opposition.  No, here he’d had the opportunity to preach for over a year and a half (Acts 18:11 and 18) which must have made the situation doubly disappointing.  So how does Paul close this letter to a Church who, with the amount of teaching they’d had, should have known better?

This short blessing demonstrates two things. Firstly, whatever the difficulties within the Church and its failings morally and doctrinally, Paul realises, and reminds them, that it is only by grace that anyone is saved.  When Paul introduces himself at the start of this letter as an Apostle, he is literally pulling rank, as there was confusion in the Church over what constituted real authority. The Corinthians were so obsessed with eloquence (which was demonstrated by many of the professional speakers in the city) that they were easily led astray.  So Paul adopts an authoritarian tone with them so they might realise his God-given authority and the importance of what he’s writing.  Yet, he realises that unless the Lord intervenes with his grace, anything he wrote to them would have very little effect, if any! As David Prior notes: ‘God’s grace is coveted for all the Corinthians, even or especially those who have caused him (Paul) the greatest problems and put up the fiercest opposition.’[1]  So, this was the Lord’s work and he would bring it to completion. Secondly this blessing demonstrates Paul’s Pastor’s heart.  Paul may have been exasperated with some in the Church due to their factions, pride and, in the worst cases immorality, but if he had been tough with them, it was because he loved them!

But where did that love spring from. The answer is it sprang from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ which demonstrated the love of God for a lost mankind!  Paul was so overwhelmed by God’s love for him, despite his best efforts to reject it, that he felt compelled with the love he felt for the lost to testify to God’s love by becoming an ambassador for the Gospel.  It is a theme that is picked up in a later letter to the Corinthian Church.  ‘For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised’ (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

In the end the Apostle Paul only has two aims in this letter. To restore those in the Church who had fallen into sin and to remind them that it is God’s grace that’s saved them! In the end, Paul’s love for the Church shines through. As Charles Hodge notes: ‘Paul in conclusion assures them all, all the believers in Corinth, even those whom he had been called upon to reprove, of his sincere love.’[2]

[1] David Pryor, The Message of 1 Corinthians, Life in the Local Church, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, Inter-varsity press, 1985) 285.

[2] Charles Hodge, 1 Corinthians, The Geneva Series of Commentaries (London, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1958) 373.