“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia.” – 2 Corinthians 1:1

The Greeks turned Corinth into a verb.

To ‘Corinthianize’ was to live without brakes.

Now picture someone unrolling Paul’s letter in a Corinthian house church.

In the room sit a man sleeping with his father’s wife, believers suing one another, worshippers who still frequent idol feasts, and members drunk at the Lord’s Table while the poor go hungry.

Well, just name any sin.

Then the reading begins: “To the church of God in Corinth, together with all His holy people throughout Achaia.”

Excuse me apostle; shouldn’t that be corrected to refer to only the morally upright and the repentant?

Paul’s word is hagioi, “holy ones,” the Greek echo of the Hebrew qadash, which carries three connected ideas: set apart from the ordinary, consecrated to God alone, and sacred because of whom someone or something belongs to.

Notice what is missing: moral polish.

When Moses anointed the tabernacle, its altar and its utensils (Numbers 7), the bowls were holy because they were claimed, not because they were spotless.

God then says of people what He said of vessels: “You are a holy people to the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 14:2); “I have severed you from other peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).

Isaiah promises they will be called, “The holy people, the Redeemed of the LORD.”

The New Testament carries the same river.

Peter calls the Church “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession.”

Paul writes to Rome, “called to be saints,” and tells these very Corinthians, “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

Now see Paul’s order.

He had planted this church and given it eighteen months amid a prosperous, corrupt city, and he knew every failure.

Yet, the label comes before any correction.

Even as he rebukes them as infants in Christ, he views them through Christ’s righteousness.

They are “God’s holy people,” belonging to Him, not to Paul, not to their favorite teachers, not to Corinth’s culture.

Holiness is a gift – an identity, a position – before it becomes a lifestyle.

Only after the gift does the command arrive: “As He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”

 The one who treats holiness as a wage despairs at his failures or swells with pride at his own righteousness.

The one who receives it as a gift can repent without backsliding.

Whatever ‘Corinth’ you’re in – work, school, community or wherever –  live in accordance to what you have been named.

Observe, too, that the title covers Corinth and all Achaia, city and countryside alike, dissolving every divide of region and class.

No saint is a second-class saint.

This matters today because a people claimed by God will always look odd to a world that thinks it has lost meaning.

Peter’s “special possession” is the old language of a “peculiar people,” might attract suspicion, caricature and sometimes violence.

We are tempted to answer prejudice by blending in or by retreating into a self-righteous huddle.

Both deny the calling.

We are set apart not from people but for God, and for the sake of people, as priests stand between heaven and a watching world.

So here is what to do.

Read this meditation aloud each morning, inserting your own name, until you believe it.

When you fail, confess quickly and say, “I am sanctified and separated, and I acted against who I am.”

Dear saints, stop sneering at other churches; they are saints beside you.

“Saints” is a plural word and only God has the power to include or exclude.

You were called holy before you were good.

Whatever ‘Corinth’ you’re in – work, school, community or wherever –  live in accordance to what you have been named.