“Now, brethren, I want to remind you of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this Gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:1-2

As a church, Corinth wasn’t anyone’s idea of a model congregation.

It was a mess – fractured by division, stained by immorality, abusing spiritual gifts, and drifting dangerously toward the idolatry of the city around it.

By any measure, frankly, these were not people I would rush to call family.

Yet, Paul opens his heart and his letter with a single word that changes everything: brethren.

The Greek word Paul uses is adelphoi — a compound of a (together) and delphys (womb). Literally: “from the same womb.”

It is a rare moment where biology becomes the perfect vessel for theology.

The New Testament makes an audacious claim: those born of the Spirit share the same spiritual origin. It’s a family.

Now here is what you must not miss about Paul’s use of this word.

Paul was a devout Jewish scholar – rigorously trained, theologically sophisticated, a man who once considered Gentiles ‘unclean.’

The Corinthians, by contrast, were a diverse, imperfect crowd of Greeks, Romans, slaves, freedmen, the wealthy and the struggling.

Paul and the Corinthians came from worlds that simply didn’t mix.

Yet Paul looks across every cultural, ethnic, and social divide, and calls them adelphoi.

He pulls up a chair at the family table and makes room for all of them.

That is the scandal of it. Paul didn’t wait for them to get their act together.

He didn’t say, “Once you stop fighting over spiritual gifts and clean up your moral life, I’ll call you brother.”

No. He stood in the middle of their mess and said: you are my adelphoi.

Because the womb that births us isn’t flesh; it is Spirit.

This is the heartbeat of the Gospel: you do not have to be perfect to be embraced as a brother or sister.

The church was never designed to be a gallery of the spiritually polished.

It is a household of grace — a family table where the struggling, the broken, the culturally different, and the quietly failing all have a seat.

We don’t choose our brethren; they are chosen by Christ! Our role is to embrace them all, like He did.

If Paul could look at the fractured, flawed Corinthian church and call them family, then we have no excuse for building walls around our fellowship.

Jesus Himself made this non-negotiable. “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40).

John is even sharper: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates his brother is a liar” (1 John 4:20).

This is not a gentle suggestion; it is the family rule.

When we recognize our shared spiritual birth, rivalry dissolves into responsibility.

We stop competing and start caring. We stop gatekeeping and start welcoming.

We stop building and start building bridges.

In a world that fractures along every conceivable fault line – race, class, background, past mistakes – the church is called to be something different.

We are called to be adelphoi: people who look at the person across from them and see, not a stranger, not a project, not a problem to manage, but a sibling.

Someone who shares our spiritual DNA. Someone drawn from the same womb of grace.

So today, I want to issue a challenge—and a call.

Look around you. See the immigrant.

The recently restored. The one whose past is complicated and whose present is still fragile.

See the person who doesn’t quite look like your crowd or worship like your tradition.

Now, call them what Paul called the Corinthians – brethren.

Not because they have earned it. Not because they are perfect.  No one is.

Yet, we’ve all been claimed by the same Christ, born of the same Spirit, and seated at the same table of grace that welcomed you – on a day when you yourself were anything but perfect.

“For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,” says Hebrews 2:11).

We don’t choose our brethren; they are chosen by Christ!

Our role is to embrace them all, like He did.