<p>1:2 <i>To the church of God which is at Corinth, those that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints</i><em>- </em>There is a play on words here. By baptism into Christ we are in Him, and are therefore made holy, sanctified; and therefore we are saints, holy or sanctified ones. Paul approaches the various behavioural issues in Corinth by encouraging them to live out in practice what they are by status in Christ, and to make use of the Spirit power potentially available to enable this transformation.</p><p><em>With all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place- </em>The Jerusalem pattern of gathering collectively in the temple and yet also having home groups was repeated in Corinth. 1 Corinthians is addressed to the singular church in Corinth, which he parallels with &ldquo;all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus&rdquo; (1 Cor. 1:2). Those &lsquo;places&rsquo;, I submit, referred to the various house churches in the city. He specifically mentions the house churches of Chloe (1 Cor. 1:11) and Stephanas (1 Cor. 1:16; 16:15). The exhortation that &ldquo;you all speak the same thing&rdquo; (1 Cor. 1:10) would then refer to the need for the various house churches to all &ldquo;be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment&rdquo;. As we know, there was an issue of fellowship in Corinth, concerning a deeply immoral brother. If he avoided church discipline by simply joining another house church, they were not going to be joined together in &ldquo;the same judgment&rdquo;, and inevitably division would arise amongst those Corinthian house churches. There was to be peace rather than confusion &ldquo;in all churches&rdquo; (1 Cor. 14:33)- i.e. all the house churches in Corinth. Paul&rsquo;s complaint that &ldquo;every one of you saith, I am of Paul&hellip; I of Apollos&rdquo; (1 Cor. 1:12) surely makes more sense if read with reference to each of the house churches, rather than every individual member. Paul speaks there as if the believers &lsquo;came together&rsquo; &lsquo;in ekklesia&rsquo; (1 Cor. 5:4), i.e. the various home groups occasionally met together. Hence he speaks of when &ldquo;the whole church be come together into one place&rdquo; (1 Cor. 14:23), i.e. all the house churches gathered together for a special fellowship meeting. He says that when they &lsquo;came together&rsquo;, then they should make a collective decision about disfellowshipping the immoral brother. Paul wrote to the Romans from Corinth, and he describes Gaius as the host of the whole church (Rom. 16:23)- implying that he had premises large enough for all the various house churches to gather together in. The abuses which occurred when the whole church &lsquo;came together&rsquo; presumably therefore occurred on his premises.</p><p><em>Their Lord and ours</em>- Paul could be saying that Jesus Christ is Lord both of &lsquo;us&rsquo; and also of all the congregations of believers. But he could also mean (and the Greek rather suggests this) that the same Jesus <em>understood and interpreted somewhat differently amongst the various believers &ldquo;in every place&rdquo;</em> was in fact Lord of them all. For your interpretation of the Lord Jesus and mine will inevitably differ in some points. Now this must of course be balanced against John&rsquo;s clear teaching that those who deny Jesus came in the flesh are in fact antiChrist. However the idea is more likely that Paul is preparing the way for his repeated appeals for unity- Jesus is Lord of 'they' over there and also of 'us' here. &quot;Theirs and ours&quot; suggests Paul saw himself very much as standing with the Corinthians- which is significant, given his later criticisms and exposure of their behaviour.</p>