Confirmed

1 Corinthians 1:4-6 ⁴ I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. ⁵ For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—⁶ God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 

One of the things I love about the program Celebrate Recovery is that lives are changed. People not only stop their dependence on substances, but they are discipled in Christ. The goal is not simply a clean life, but a life of obedient submission to Jesus. And we can see this happening in people’s lives.

For those with substance abuse issues, the road out of addiction can be a hard and bumpy road with relapses and some failures. But Celebrate Recovery is about loving people even through those relapses. The community rallies around those who stumble and works to bring them back to sobriety.

But freedom substance abuse isn’t the only need of the human heart. If we were honest about our own internal worlds, we each have areas that we struggle with and through. Our relapses might not be as dramatic as those with substance abuse, but we slip up, just like they slip up. Our lives since coming to Jesus hasn’t been a road of uncompromising movement toward holiness in every moment.

Our text comes from the letter written to a church that was full of problem people. They were involved in some things that would make us blush. They were, after all, living in a culture that wasn’t godly. There were more pagan influences weaved into their culture than threads on a Persian rug.

And it takes time to reweave a rug! But Paul could see the reweaving process taking place because of the presence of the grace of God. He mentions two areas where he sees this grace at work. And the presence of the change in them was encouraging to Paul, despite all the areas of concern he had for the church in Corinth.

The things they said and the knowledge they had was changing to such a degree that it signaled to Paul that they were changed by the grace of God at work. Paul could see the change, hear the change, and so could the Corinthians themselves. They knew the Gospel was true because of the changes that had happened in and among themselves.

And this confirmed what Paul had preached to them; the Good News really was good news! Their lives had been, as Paul says it, “enriched in every way.” This is what the Gospel does. It enriches lives, and communities and our world.

So is your life enriching those around you? Do they want to return to your presence to hear what you have to say? Do they go away encouraged or enraged when the conversation is over?

And right now, don’t we need some encouraging conversations!