God is faithful
1 Corinthians 1:9 - How do we jointly participate in the life of Jesus? By emphasizing and emulating Him in all we do.
Image generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI) using the DALL·E model.
“God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:9 NIV
God is working on me today. Through our pastor, who preached a powerful message today, I learned of the “literal translations” of the Bible (also called “word-for-word translations”) that try to follow the wording and structure of the original language and maintain the original meaning. Why I never knew of this tool for in-depth study of Scripture is beyond me, but fortunately I now have it in my toolkit.
God also happened to select this particular verse of 1 Corinthians for me to dissect and try to understand. While looking for commentaries on Precept Austin, I found this paragraph written about the verse by 20th Century evangelical pastor Ray Stedman:
This is the key verse of First Corinthians. The rest of the letter centers around it. It is a statement that God had called them to a very important relationship, and, by implication, here at the very beginning of this letter we learn that this is the reason for all of the problems in the Corinthian church. They had not understood the implications of their calling, and the relationship they personally and individually had with Jesus Christ himself.
I chose to emphasize that first sentence — God not only chose this verse for my study today, but it happens to be the key to 1 Corinthians! Looking at a literal translation (I bet you were wondering why I brought that up at the start of this devotional…), this verse can also have the meaning “Faithful is God, through who you were called to fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord”. God’s faithfulness to His people takes precedence in this verse, as in the original Greek it begins with the Greek word for faithful, πιστός (pistos).
19th century theologian Charles Hodge’s commentary on this verse expands on God’s faithfulness towards His chosen:
God is faithful, one in whom we may confide; one who will fulfil all his promises. The apostle’s confidence in the steadfastness and final perseverance of believers was founded neither on the strength of their purpose to persevere, nor on any assumption that the principle of religion in their hearts was indestructible, but simply on the fidelity of God. If God has promised to give certain persons to his Son as his inheritance, to deliver them from sin and condemnation and to make them partakers of eternal life, it is certain he will not allow them to perish.1
Going to the next phrase, God called His people to fellowship with Jesus. This is a very important part of the verse. John MacArthur (who went to the Lord in 2025) shined the following spotlight onto the meaning of God calling us:
We are saved because God wanted us saved, and we stay saved because God does not change His mind about that desire. We had no part in God’s original desire to call us, and we can do nothing to change it. If He called us when we were lost and wretched, He surely will not cease to be faithful to that call now that we have come into fellowship with His Son.
Bruce Hurt, the hardworking soul behind Precept Austin, makes an even more powerful statement about God calling us into fellowship with Christ:
Through Whom you were called - Through Whom indicates God was the "intermediate Agent," the causative Agent if you will. In other words, it was God's sovereign pleasure and will which moved Him call us out of darkness into His marvelous light, ultimately into covenant oneness with the Light of the world (aka "fellowship" in this passage). Were called is the divine passive indicating God's power and grace called us (He initiated the call and He completed the call) and we did nothing to merit His calling! Are you humbled yet? Are you thankful you were called? Note also that were called (past tense - at the time of their salvation) is a truth which includes the assurance of what God began, He will complete.
What about this “fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”? If you’ve been reading Heaven On Wheels for any length of time, you probably know that the Greek word translated here as “fellowship” is κοινωνία (koinōnia). It means more than just a friendly relationship, with perhaps the closest definition being “joint participation”. So we are called to participate in the life of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord by being one with Him!
How do we — the called, the chosen — do this? We emphasize and emulate Jesus in our daily lives. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 1, David Guzik of Enduring Word noted that
In these first 10 verses, Paul refers to Jesus in every verse, for a total of 11 times. In this emphasis on Jesus, Paul promotes the sure cure for the problems of the Corinthians: getting your eyes off self and on Jesus.
The problems of the Corinthians were not unlike what we see today: divisions within the church, sexual immorality, disorder during worship gatherings, and the misuse (or lack of use) of the spiritual gifts God gives each of us. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians addresses all of these issues by advising all Christians to get their “eyes off his and on Jesus”, following Him toward unity and proper conduct.
Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:
Today’s prayer comes from Knowing Jesus:
Heavenly Father, thank You that You are a faithful God, Who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thank You that I have been called into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. May I live to His praise and glory, day by day. In Jesus’ name I pray, AMEN.
Scripture quotations taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica US, Inc.®. Used by permission.
Precept Austin was accessed on January 25 2026 for commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:9
Commentary quotations from Enduring Word are used with the written permission of the author and reproduced here in their original format. © 1996-present The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik – enduringword.com
Hodge, Charles. “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 1”. Hodge’s Commentary on Romans, Ephesians and First Corinthians. Studylight.org.