1 Corinthians 1:2

to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus Literally, to them that have been sanctified. The word here rendered sanctifymeans (1) to consecrate to the service of the Deity, and hence (2) to purify, make holy. The word here partakes of both senses. Those who have become united to Christ by faith have not only been dedicated to Him, but have been made partakers of His holiness by their participation in the Life that is in Him. But such persons were by no means as yet free from actual sin, as Chapter s 5, 6, 8, 11. conclusively prove. "The Church of Christ, abstractedly and invisibly, is a kingdom where no evil is; in the concrete, and actually, it is the Church of Corinth, Rome, or England, tainted with impurity. And yet, just as the mudded Rhone is really the Rhone and not mud and the Rhone, so there are not two churches, the Church of Corinth and the false church within it, but one visible Church, in which the invisible lies concealed." Robertson, On the Corinthians, Lect. ii.

called to be saints Literally, called saints because the faculty of saintliness, if not actual saintliness itself, had been communicated to every member of the Church. The only difference between -saints" and -them that are sanctified" is that the latter expression has reference to a past act of God's mercy, the former to the present condition of those who have benefited from it.

with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord The Epistle, which dealt with so many and such weighty truths, was not to be treasured up as the peculiar heritage of the Corinthian Church, but was to be regarded as the common possession of the universal Church of Christ. Or perhaps it is better, with Olshausen, to regard the Apostle as reminding the Corinthians that they form only a part, and that but a small one, of the whole Church of Christ, a consideration which their self-satisfaction was leading them to forget.