What's it like in Sin City?
Few cities have ever had or will ever have such a reputation. A city filled with hundreds of thousands of people. We’re talking about one of the largest, most beautiful, modern, and industrious cities ever known to man. This city has several characteristics.
•An inclusive place, full of ethnic diversity. This isa place where cultures collide.
•A place with a revolving door whose streets are filled with sailors, military men, businessmen, and thrill seekers from all corners of the earth. A place full of people who never stay very long, but only come to fulfill their base desires.
•A place of perpetual vanity, where every imaginable sin and vice is not only indulged, but celebrated openly.
•A place where men are robbed of purpose and where young women and teenagers are exploited for their sexuality.
•A place where the well-to-do come to squander their prosperity. Where commercialized gambling, debauchery, drinking, and prostitution fails to raise a single eyebrow.
•A place where true religion is debased in the name of entertainment. Where sex is practically considered a religion in itself and sexuality is flaunted ad nauseum.
•We are talking about a city without limits, where all inhibition is cast aside. A place unshackled by morality or God’s laws. A place where people feel free!
Corinth, otherwise known as Sin City.
If you think I am describing Las Vegas you are only partially right. However, the place I am really describing is the city of Corinth. This was a city that flourished in New Testament times.
About 146 years before Jesus Christ was born, the city of Corinth was looted and destroyed by the Romans. The men of Corinth were brutally slaughtered and its women and children were sold into slavery. The entire city was torched and it lay in virtual ruin for almost a century.
But then about 46 B.C. the "new" Corinth rose from the ashes. Julius Caesar rebuilt the city and it became a seat of government for a province of Rome.
One can see why Corinth was so important. The city of Corinth had three harbors and was strategically located along a prominent north-south trade route. It was a place of commercial trade, where merchants from all over the world would come.
In Bible times the New Corinth was inhabited by over 400,000 people. Her population was mixed, including Greeks, Jews, Italians, and other foreigners. And get this—her transient population was ever-changing. Corinth was a city without foundationsor moral roots.
The city featured new shops, sprawling marketplaces, restored and greatly enlarged temples, fresh water supplies, numerous public buildings, governmental buildings, and an amphitheater that sat over 14,000 people.
Recent excavations have uncovered overthirty-three wine shops, or bars, located in downtown Corinth. The wine shops featured lofted rooms. Travelers would get plied with wine and then enticed into these lofts for illicit activity with prostitutes and other partygoers.
In the apostle Paul’s day, Corinth had severalnicknames. It was known as Carnal Corinth, Sin City, or Vanity Fair.To "corinthianize" a person was to corrupt a person. It was to takehimbeyondhis moral limits. People went to Corinth to be corinthianized. It was like a rite of passage, just like going to Vegas these days. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Come sin here. Come indulge here. There was no greater insult that could be given a woman than to be called a Corinthian.
Are you ready for this? Smack dab in the middle of Carnal Corinth, Sin City, with the help of missionaries Aquilla and Priscilla,the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostle Paul to establish a church. Read about it in Acts 18. If you were to plant a church would you plant a church in Vegas or somewhere in the Bible belt? The apostle Paul established a church in one of the darkest, most morally corrupt cities in the Roman empire. He placed it ina stronghold of Satan’s kingdom. What was he thinking?
Paul was looking to set people free from the power of sin.
Paul was thinking only of the sheer power and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to truly set men free from the power of sin and death. People went to Corinth andpeople still go to Vegas in order to be set free. But in reality, they were being taken captive by the power of sin and death. They were becoming slaves and instruments of wickedness. What better place was there to set men free by the grace of God than to go to one of the deepest anddarkest dungeons on earth? Sin City, Corinth, or Vegas?
In your Bible, in the New Testament you will find two very important books—the books of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. These books are actually letters that the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth to help them understand their Christian identity in a place that wanted to rob them of their humanity.
I am not going to pull any punches. We may not live in Corinth. We may not be living in a modern city like Vegas. We live in the middle of cornfields and bean fields, for heaven's sake.And it is for heaven's "sake"! Here is what I want to say. We live in a city that has all the trappings of a Corinth or a Vegas. We live in a city that has all the lure, the seduction, the temptation, the opportunity, and the corruption of a Corinth or a Vegas. The words of scripturepenned intheNew Testamentin 1 Corinthians are every bit as relevant to the Christian today.
Sin City is luring us away from our identity in Christ.
The city is constantly luring us away from our newly found identity in Christ! Do you hear me? The average Christian doesn’t know his or her identity, his or her calling, or his or her sense of purpose in this city.
Are we put in this place to gamble? To be plied by liquor and drugs? To indulge our carnal desires? To be seduced? To succumb to temptation? To be corrupted by our sinful nature? Are we put in this place to be selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, greedy, immoral, idolatrous, adulterous, perverse, coarse, or impure? Are we put in this place to be christianized ourselves and to christianize others? Or are we put in this place to be corinthianized and to corinthianize others?
I’ll tell you why 1 Corinthians was given to us by the very hand of God. It's that we would embrace our Christian identity instead of the Corinthian identity that the world thrusts upon us.Do you think it's an accident that you are sitting here this morning? God himself is calling you to a new life in Christ. God himself wants to set you free.You thought you could be free in your sin, but now God wants to set you free from the power of your sins and from the power of death.
This is going to be quick and I am sorry we have so little time left. In 1 Corinthians 1 the Christian's identity in Christ can be summed up by three key ideas.
First, we are called to be an apostle (to be for Jesus Christ).
1 Corinthians 1:1 (NIV) says, "Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes...."
Now don’t get thrown off by that word apostle. The word apostle means,"one sent into the world." God sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to be a light that illuminates the darkness and helps people find their way back to God.
In Matthew 5:13-16 Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world. We have been sent into the world to let our lights shine before men so that they might glorify God. We have a purpose andan identity. We are apostles. We have been sent into our world. And our purpose is this:to befor Jesus in every possible manner.
Are you a Christian or a Corinthian? Are you in this city because you have been sent by God to glorify God? Or are you only in this city to be enticed and plied and corrupted?
Second, we are called to be holy (to be like Jesus Christ).
1 Corinthians 1:2-3 (NIV) says,"To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, 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."
If you are a Christian, you are called to be holy. Holiness isn’t an accessory to the Christian life. "Oh, this looks nice.I think I will put on some holiness today."Holiness is our core identity. God commands us to, "Be holy, as I am holy.""Be imitators of God." "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed."
Romans 13:14 (NIV) tells us, "...clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature."
To be sanctified is to be made holy like Jesus Christ. Become like Christ, not like a Corinthian. Who or what are you becoming? In the past months and the past year have you become more like Christ or more like a Corinthian? Is holiness your identity?
Third, we are called into fellowship (to be with Jesus Christ).
1 Corinthians 1:4-9 (NIV) says,"I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful."
This is my favorite part of the sermon. On my own I am easy prey for Satan, who could easily take me captive to become like a Corinthian. But I am not on my own and neither are you. We have fellowship with Jesus Christ, God’s one and only Son.
We have been given grace and peace. We have been enriched in every way. We do not lack any spiritual gift. God promises to keep us strong to the end, so that we will be blameless on the day of Christ’s return. God is faithful to keep all his promises. Satan, even with all his lure, is no challenge for God.
Remember what God said to Joshua in Joshua 1:5 (NIV)? "No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you."
We have been called by God and sent into this world as apostles with a purpose. We are to be like Christ, not like Corinthians. We are called to be holy and to be sanctified. And we are not alone. We have been called into fellowship with God himself, with Jesus Christ his Son. There is hope for this city and there is hope for you, if you are in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21(NIV) says,"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sina for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."