Have you ever noticed how much theology can hide inside a single verse? Not in some contested passage with disputed grammar or debated punctuation, but in a simple sentence of greeting that most readers pass right over.
Today I want to look at one of those verses with you. It comes from the opening of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
"God is faithful, by whom you were called into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:9)
One sentence. Yet it quietly answers a question that Christendom has been arguing about for seventeen centuries.
Look at what Paul actually says. God is the one who calls. Jesus is his Son, the one with whom we are called into partnership. Two parties, plainly distinguished. God on one side, doing the calling. His Son on the other, into whose partnership we are brought.
Now notice what Paul does not say. He does not say that "God the Son" calls us into partnership with himself. And here is something worth pausing on: the expression "God the Son" never occurs anywhere in Scripture. Not once. Search for it. You will find "the Son of God" dozens of times. You will never find "God the Son." Those two phrases may sound similar, but they express two very different theologies. One is the language of the apostles. The other is the language of the councils that centuries later created the Trinity doctrine.
Paul's language is simple and consistent. In verse three of this same chapter, he writes:
"Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:3)
Later in this same letter, he writes:
"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came... and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came." (1 Corinthians 8:6)
The Father is God. Jesus Christ is God's Son and our Lord. That is Paul's theology, stated in his own words, over and over again.
Now let's look more closely at that word "partnership," because it deserves our attention.
The Greek word here is koinōnia. Most translations render it "fellowship," but I would suggest that "partnership" expresses it far better, because "fellowship" has become a religiously loaded word. Say "fellowship" today, and people picture a church basement, coffee and cookies after the service, people assembling around a common belief, a religious organization, perhaps a church fund. That is not what Paul is describing.
Paul is describing participation in the life of God's Son. A shared enterprise. A joint venture, if you will, between the Son of God and the children of God. And notice something crucial: this partnership cannot be manufactured by human beings. It cannot be conferred by membership in a religious body. No organization can enroll you in it, and no organization can expel you from it. Why? Because the calling comes from God himself.
Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." (John 6:44)
Do you see the order? The Father draws us to the Son. The Father calls us into partnership with the Son. The Father gives us the life that he has placed in the Son. At every step, the initiative belongs to God, and the Son is the one through whom God's gift reaches us.
At this point, someone may say: "Fine, the Bible never says 'God the Son.' But surely Jesus is divine. Surely Scripture presents him as the Divine One."
Well, let's test that. Let's look at how Scripture actually uses the word "divine."
The Greek adjective theios occurs exactly three times in the entire New Testament. In Acts 17:29, Paul uses it for the Divine Being, speaking of God to the Athenians. In 2 Peter 1:3, it describes God's divine power. And in 2 Peter 1:4, remarkably, it describes the divine nature in which God's children are permitted to share. Think about that. We, the sons and daughters of God, are the one group the New Testament explicitly says will partake of the divine nature.
But we are not children of Jesus. Instead, he calls us his siblings.
Jesus told her, "Don't hold on to me. I have not yet gone to the Father. But go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:17, God’s Word Translation)
There is a related noun, theiotēs, which appears once, in Romans 1:20, and it refers unmistakably to God's divine nature as revealed through creation.
And that's it. That is the complete New Testament vocabulary of "divine." Not one of these occurrences is used as a title or description of Jesus. Scripture calls him the Son of God. The image of God. The Christ or anointed one of God. The one whom God raised and exalted. It never calls him "God the Son," and it never calls him "the Divine One."
So when someone calls Jesus "divine" as though that were his essential identity, we need to recognize what is happening. That is not scriptural language. It is later theological language, and it serves a purpose: to move Jesus from being the Son of God to being a second divine person within God. But an image of God is not the God whose image he bears. And the Son of God is not the God whose Son he is.
Consider the direction in which everything flows. God gave the Son life in himself (John 5:26). God placed his fullness in him. God raised him from the dead. God made him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). The direction never changes. Everything comes from God, is given to the Son, and reaches us through the Son.
And that is exactly the order Paul preserves in our verse. God is faithful. God calls. And what he calls us into is partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. One sentence, and the entire relationship between God, his Son, and us is laid out in perfect order.
The apostles never needed the vocabulary of Nicaea to describe that relationship. They had something better. They had the words the holy spirit gave them. Perhaps we should be content with those words too.
Thank you for watching. If this has been helpful, you'll find the rest of this series on the channel, and as always, the comment section is open. I read what you write, and I look forward to the conversation.