1 Corinthians 1:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"God is faithful, by Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son" (1 Cor 1:9). Oh, how much he said by this! What greatness of the gift he showed! You have been called into fellowship with the Only-begotten, and do you cling to men?

What is worse than this folly? And by Whom were you called? By the Father. Since, when speaking of the Son, he often used the expressions "through Him" and "in Him," he ascribes this to the Father so that they might not think he mentions the Father as lesser.

You were called and enriched, he says, not by this or that man, but by the Father. Again, you were called, and did not come by yourselves.

That is, God is true. If He is true, and has called us into the communion of His Son, that is, to glorify us together with the Son in His Kingdom, then He will plainly fulfill what He promised. You were called, he says, and did not come of your own impulse. How, then, do you boast, as though by your own works? Notice here that the word "through whom" refers directly to the Father.

"God is faithful, by Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son." The Apostle presents a third proof for strengthening Christian hope in this sense: God has so loved you and shows you such mercy as a child-loving father shows his children. Therefore He will not permit anyone to snatch you from His hands.

The Apostle takes a fourth proof from the gracious calling and saving conversion to the Christian faith. By His grace God has called you into communion with His Son, so that He may make you participants in all His benefits in the kingdom of grace.

In eternity He will also glorify you together with Him. Therefore He will bring this calling and your conversion to the intended end, but only on these conditions: if you yourselves do not provoke Him by your voluntary sins.

And if by your own will you not only do not reject the good work begun, but do not renounce continuing the struggles of your faith and your confession until the end of your life.

Who will doubt the promise and faithfulness of God, when it will be no otherwise than He said, after He called us to Himself into communion, as believers in Christ? For He gives us what we believe. And since we believe in Christ, the Son of God, we ourselves abide in the same dignity as Christ Himself, in whom we believe as the Son of God. Communion is brotherhood. As God’s faithfulness toward our salvation is inexhaustible, so we, in our calling into communion, must not defile ourselves with unbelief and treachery.

He who granted you the gift of adoption will also accomplish this, for the Apostle called adoption "the communion of His Son." The word "faithful" means: not false, but true. Here also he used the expression δι’ οὗ of the Father, thereby stopping the shameless mouths of heretics and teaching that it does not imply inferiority. Thus, after first softening their hearing with praises and blessings, he begins the accusation. He does not set it forth openly, but joins exhortation to it.

When the Apostle says of God, "God is faithful," he commands us to believe what God has proclaimed. But knowledge of this faithful God is communicated to us by His Word.

In the opening words of his epistle, speaking both in his own person and in that of Sosthenes the brother, St. Paul gives to "the Church of God which is in Corinth" the usual "grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

First, he bears witness to his continual thanksgiving to God "for the grace of God given to the members of the Corinthian Church in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor 1:4), so that they "are not lacking in any gift."

Then he expresses the hope that the Lord will so "confirm them to the end, that they may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:8). For "God is faithful, by Whom they were called into the fellowship of His Son" (1 Cor 1:9).

In giving thanks to God for granting grace to the Corinthians, the Apostle on the one hand praises them as those counted worthy of this greatest divine gift. On the other hand, in this very thing he lays the foundation for his further judgment concerning their condition.

From the great multitude of gracious gifts, the Apostle Paul first points to their enrichment with verbal and intellectual knowledge concerning all the subjects of Christ's teaching.

From this he then concludes that the Lord, having so enriched them, will not leave them without His gracious help in the future. Thus they may calmly await even the dread day of the Lord's judgment. But to deserve this, they must correct themselves.

This is what St. Paul bases his hope on: the faithfulness of God to Himself, to His promises, and to His ordinances.

The very fact that someone receives being is already a sign of God's great good pleasure, His desire to bless man. For God cannot give being for suffering.

But for someone to be called into the fellowship of the Son of God is such an ordinance as if one took another by the hand and led him into halls of joy.

You have been called, he says, into the fellowship of the Son of God. And the Son of God said that where He is, there His servant will be also. He is at the right hand of God in glory and majesty. Therefore the same awaits you.