Written by Paul the Apostle
Introduction
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is one of the most pastorally direct writings in the New Testament. Written from Ephesus around AD 55, roughly two years after Paul founded the Corinthian church on his second missionary journey, the letter was Paul’s response to a church in serious trouble. Corinth itself was a wealthy, cosmopolitan port city in Greece — a crossroads of trade, philosophy, and cult religion, with a reputation so entrenched for sexual licentiousness that the Greek verb korinthiazesthai, “to Corinthianize,” meant to live immorally. Into this environment Paul had planted a church, and within a few years he was hearing reports that the church had absorbed too much of the city around it.
The letter’s structure follows the problems it addresses. Paul had received both a formal letter from the Corinthians asking him questions and an informal report from Chloe’s household describing what was actually happening. He takes up both in turn: factionalism organized around favorite teachers, a shocking case of sexual immorality, believers suing one another in pagan courts, confusion over marriage and celibacy, disputes about food offered to idols, disorder in worship, abuses at the Lord’s Supper, pride over spiritual gifts, and denial of the bodily resurrection. The letter moves from problem to problem with unusual range, and yet through all of it runs a single diagnosis — the church had been shaped more by Corinth than by Christ, and Paul is calling them back.
What holds the letter together is not the catalogue of issues but the cross. Paul opens by insisting that he preaches Christ crucified, a message that looks foolish by worldly standards but is the very power and wisdom of God. Every subsequent correction comes back to that foundation. Divisions dissolve when the cross is central. Morality is not a matter of performance but of belonging to a body purchased by Christ’s blood. Freedom is bounded by love. Spiritual gifts are measured by their ability to build others up. And the resurrection — the subject of the letter’s climactic fifteenth chapter — is not a peripheral doctrine but the hinge on which every Christian hope turns. The letter that begins with the foolishness of the cross ends with the certainty of the empty tomb, and the chapters in between show what happens to a church that learns to live in the light of both.
Chapters Index
- 1 Corinthians 1 – Christ, Not Personalities
- 1 Corinthians 2 – God’s Wisdom, Spiritually Discerned
- 1 Corinthians 3 – Built on Christ Alone
- 1 Corinthians 4 – Servants, Not Celebrities
- 1 Corinthians 5 – Purity in the Body of Christ
- 1 Corinthians 6 – Lawsuits and the Lord’s Temple
- 1 Corinthians 7 – Faithfulness in Relationships
- 1 Corinthians 8 – Knowledge vs. Love
- 1 Corinthians 9 – The Cost of the Gospel
- 1 Corinthians 10 – Lessons from the Wilderness
- 1 Corinthians 11 – Headship, Honor, and the Lord’s Supper
- 1 Corinthians 12 – One Spirit, Many Gifts
- 1 Corinthians 13 – The More Excellent Way
- 1 Corinthians 14 – Clarity and Edification in the Church
- 1 Corinthians 15 – The Resurrection of Christ and of the Body
- 1 Corinthians 16 – Final Encouragements, Greetings, and Love in Action