Text: 1 Corinthians
Topic: Why does the church exist, and what does that mean for the way we live?

• What's the use of the church?
• The biblical answer to that question deals not with what the church does for you, but with what it does for God.
• When we begin to understand this, we turn the corner from a compromised, self-centered involvement in the church to the God-centered, communal life that God calls and uses for his own purposes.
• In order to help you see this, we need to turn to the letter of 1 Corinthians.
• The point of Paul's letter is to teach the Corinthians what a church is supposed to be like and why it's supposed to be that way.

• Paul greets the church in Corinth as those called to be holy—that's how he defines them.
• An inevitable part of holiness is to possess a certain kind of strangeness, because we have been set apart and made special by God.
• Because the church is called to holiness, discipline is needed.
  • 1 Corinthians 5
• Far worse than a church in which someone commits adultery is a church that says nothing about people committing adultery.
• God preserves his witness in the purity of the church.
• The church practices discipline to bring an unrepentant person to repentance.
• We cannot allow others to see a bunch of self-righteous, prudish people, but rather a community whose conduct holds out hope of a better, more humane, more God-honoring way of living than the world offers.

• When you read 1 Corinthians, it's apparent that the church was having a problem with unity.
• Once you begin to tolerate sin, you begin to have a problem with unity.
• Some of the Christians in Corinth had taken each other to secular courts to settle matters.
• Christians need to be careful not to imbibe the litigious, self-concerned nature of our culture around us and baptize it into the church.
• Unity is supposed to be one of the hallmarks of the church.

• Only love will enable us to have the kind of unity that is to mark the body of Christ.
• God's character is best seen when two conflicting parties who disagree on something work together, placing the other person above themselves.
• Love is the dynamic fuel of the church; it will motivate, continue, and contribute to all the other things God wants to see in his church.
• Paul is calling for more than just loving actions; according to the Bible, love is a disposition of the heart for God and others, which then shows itself in our actions.

• Paul stresses the characteristics of holiness, unity, and love, because the character of the church is supposed to reflect the character of God.
• We must maintain a holiness found in Christ as a part of our task of reflecting him.
• We must also be united, because God is one.
• We are to be a loving people, because God is a loving God.
• The church is supposed to manifest the character of God to the world; that's what makes her useful!
• The Christian life is never about me or about you or about each other. It's about God.

• Are we doing what we do for the sake of the gospel and for the glory of God?
• If we cultivate a sub-Christian holiness that tolerates sin, we're deceiving people about what God is like.
• If we cultivate a sub-Christian unity that ignores real divisions and unites around smaller, secondary things, we're confusing people about what God is really like.
• If we cultivate a sub-Christian love that is nothing more than mere sentiment and family feeling, we deceive the world about what God is like.
• We display God's glory by living a life of holiness, unity, and love for him.