First Corinthians 1:2 tells us that the called saints are those who call upon the name of the Lord, and those who call upon the name of the Lord are the saints. The totality of these saints is the church. Therefore, our status and our position are that we are saints, those who call upon the name of the Lord. Paul said that Christ is “theirs and ours.” This means that Christ is the portion of all those who call upon His name. Then in verse 9 he said that God has called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, that is, into the enjoyment of Christ. God has called us that we may participate in the enjoyment of Christ, and the way to enjoy Christ is by calling upon His name.
Again I say that in reading the Bible our problem is that we often read our own concepts into the Bible. Therefore, it is very difficult for us to receive any revelations from the Bible. For example, normally we have some understanding of love. Therefore, when we read 1 Corinthians 13, it is easy for us to grasp what it says about love. Love is this or love is that. But when we read 1 Corinthians 1, it is difficult for us to see that we are the called saints and that we are those who should call upon the name of the Lord. We are called to call upon the name of the Lord. It is also difficult for us to see that Christ is theirs and ours. Furthermore, it is difficult for us to see that God has called us not that we may go to heaven but that we may enter into the fellowship of His Son.
God has called us into the fellowship of His Son. This is equivalent to God’s inviting us to a feast to enjoy His Son, as referred to in Matthew 22. This Christ is God’s wisdom and God’s power. God has made this Christ to be our righteousness for the past, our sanctification for the present, and our redemption for the future. In the past we were full of unrighteousness, and we were a mess, but Christ is our righteousness to deal with our past. Through His death on the cross He satisfied God’s righteous requirement and solved the problems of our past. As to the present we are very weak and have many failures, but Christ is our sanctification. Then in the future He will transfigure our body that we may be redeemed. In other words, He entered into our spirit, He is transforming our soul, and He will transfigure our body. He takes care of all three parts of our being: spirit, soul, and body. Such a Christ is our enjoyment. God has called us that we may enjoy such a Christ.
Up to this point what we have covered is merely doctrine. It is as if I told you that we have a feast here which is truly rich and very good, but you have not as yet tasted a bit of it. Therefore, in 1 Corinthians, after the objective truths are presented in chapters one and two, chapter twelve tells us how to experience such a Christ. First, it tells us that all the believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, were baptized into one Spirit (v. 13). The rich Christ today is the Spirit. Like electricity, the Spirit is hard to describe; thus, God uses water to signify the Spirit. When we were baptized, we were put into the water; this signifies that we were put into the Spirit. Christ is the Spirit; when we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into the Spirit. After we were baptized into the Spirit, we obtained the position to drink this Spirit. This verse in the original language means that we were put in the position for us to drink this Spirit. How do we drink this Spirit? Verse 3 of the same chapter says, “No one can say, Jesus is Lord! except in the Holy Spirit.” In other words, once you say, “Lord Jesus!”, immediately you are in the Holy Spirit, and you are drinking the Spirit.