This Bible Study was prepared by the Rev. Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh for the Women's 10am Wednesday Bible Study at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Orlando FL
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth…
This letter is from Paul. There is general agreement among scholars that this is true and hardly anyone disputes that Paul wrote this book.
Paul is writing a church that he founded in the city of Corinth.
The text we are studying today is I Corinthians 1:1-9, but before we read any further, let’s take a look at Acts.
Paul was in the city of Corinth for a year and a half, and Luke reduces this entire time to a mere 17 verses. Let’s see what Luke recorded for us in Acts
Acts 18:1–17.
18 After this Paul left Athens
and went to Corinth.
2 There he found a Jew named
Aquila, a native of Pontus,
who had recently come from Italy
with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and, because he was of the same trade, he
stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. 4 Every sabbath he would argue in the
synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.
I’ll stop here and point out that Aquila and Priscilla are important people in the New
Testament, very important in the early church – and this is their first
appearance. This is how they met Paul.
That is how everything began – then we jump to the end and Luke doesn’t tell us much of what happens during these 18 months – but we pick up with verse 12….
12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal. 13 They said, “This man is persuading people to worship God in ways that are contrary to the law.” 14 Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of crime or serious villainy, I would be justified in accepting the complaint of you Jews; 15 but since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves; I do not wish to be a judge of these matters.” 16 And he dismissed them from the tribunal. 17 Then all of them seized Sosthenes, the official of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of these things.
18 After staying there for a considerable time, Paul said farewell to the believers[i] and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had his hair cut, for he was under a vow.
Corinth is a city mentioned many times in the New Testament.
It is in what we now refer to as Greece and it was not far from Athens. In Paul’s time it had been rebuilt by the Romans as a major city and had a diverse population of Romans, Greeks and Jews.
The church there is believed to have been founded by Paul.
When the apostle Paul first visited the city (AD 51 or 52), he resided there for eighteen months (see Acts 18:1-18). Here he first became acquainted with Priscilla and Aquila with whom he worked and traveled.
Paul wrote at least two epistles to the Christian community, the I Corinthians (written from Ephesus) and II Corinthians (written from Macedonia). The first Epistle occasionally reflects the conflict between the thriving Christian church and the surrounding community.
Most scholars believe the total number of letters to Corinth was at least four. I Corinthians implies an earlier letter.
Paul stayed longer in Corinth
than in any other city, with the single exception of Ephesus. He had left Macedonia with his life in peril and had crossed
over to Athens.
He had had little success there and had gone on to Corinth, where he remained for eighteen
months. It would be great to know what he did for a year and a half, but Luke
compresses all that time into only 17 verses.
It was when he was in Ephesus
in AD 55 that Paul, learning that things were not all well in Corinth, wrote to the church there.
So with that background, let’s pick up again, starting again
at verse one chapter one.
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
The only two times this fellow is mentioned is in the
passage we read from in Acts, and here in the opening of I Corinthians.
Sosthenes is probably a Corinthian who happens to be with
Paul at the time of writing (Acts 18:17). If so, Paul’s inclusion of him in the
greeting and affectionately calling him a “brother” enlist one of the Corinthians’
own number in support of what he, Paul, is going to write.
Paul is “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will
of God.” Undoubtedly, Paul is asserting his authority here, his right to
address the Corinthians and expect to be heeded. The assertion is subtle,
though.
IN the first ten verses of Paul’s First Letter to the
Corinthians, the name of Jesus Christ occurs no fewer than ten times. This was
going to be a difficult letter, for it was going to deal with a difficult
situation – and, in such a situation, Paul’s first thought was of Jesus Christ.
Paul was going to stay focused on Christ.
He wanted the readers to stay focused on Christ.
Sometimes in the Church, we try to deal with a difficult
situation and we lose our focus. I
sometimes deal with church members or committees that are in conflict by
reminding them that one thing we agree on is that we want to seek Christ’s will
in the committee and do His work, not our work.
1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth,
This tells us something
about the Church. Paul speaks of the Church
of God which is at Corinth. It was not the church
of Corinth; it was the Church of God. To Paul, wherever an individual
congregation might be, it was a part of the one Church of God.
When we say the Apostles Creed, we say
we believe in the Catholic Church, and Catholic there does not refer to the
Roman Catholic Church, but to the Church Universal. We as Presbyterians have to acknowledge that
the unity of the church has been obscured by denominations, but there is still
a spiritual unity that binds us all together.
This is important – now Paul used this type of speech often
– “The church of God
which is at whatever town,” but it is particularly important here because Paul
is very soon going to be addressing one of the many problems in the Corinthian Church, which was division.
1:2 To the church of God
that is in Corinth,
to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
Christians are
consecrated in Jesus Christ. The verb to consecrate (hagiazo) means to set
a place apart for God, to make it holy, by the offering of a sacrifice upon it.
Christians have been consecrated to God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. To be
a Christian is to be one for whom Christ died and to know it, and to realize
that that sacrifice, in a very special way, makes us belong to God.
1:2 To the church
of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in
Christ Jesus, called to be saints,
Called to be saints - Significantly, Paul never
uses the singular form of “saint” to refer to the individual Christian
Paul describes all Christians as saints - as those who have been called
to be God’s dedicated people. We have translated one single Greek word by
this whole phrase. The word is hagios, which the English Bibles translate as
saints. Nowadays, that does not paint the right picture for us. Hagios
describes a thing or a person that has been devoted to the possession and the
service of God. It is the word used to describe a temple or a sacrifice which
has been marked out for God. Now, if people have been marked out as specially
belonging to God, they must show themselves to be fit in life and in character
for that service. That is how hagios comes to mean holy, saintly. But the root
idea of the word is separation. People who are hagios are different from others
because they have been separated from the ordinary run of things in order
specially to belong to God. This was the adjective by which the Jews described
themselves; they were the hagios laos, the holy people, the nation
which was quite different from other peoples because they, in a special way,
belonged to God and were set apart for his service. When Paul uses hagios to
describe Christians, he means that they are different from other people because
they specially belong to God and to God’s service. And that difference is to be
marked not by withdrawal from ordinary life, but by showing there a quality
which will mark them.
1:2 To the church
of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in
Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place
call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Paul addresses his
letter to those who have been called in the company of those who in every place
call upon the name of the Lord. Christians are called into a community
whose boundaries include all earth and all heaven. It would be greatly to our
good if sometimes we lifted our eyes beyond our own little circle and thought
of ourselves as part of the Church of God which is as wide as the world.
1:3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul used this phrase, or something similar, many
many times. It was his greetings. It was his way of saying, Hello, how you
doing.
1:4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,
1:5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind
1:4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,
1:5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind
1:6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you
1:7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul now strikes a complimentary note. The
compliment consists in stating his recognition that the Corinthians have a
wealth of gifts having to do with speech and knowledge; and this compliment
gets added emphasis from his “always thanking [his] God for [the Corinthians],”
from his description of their enrichment as having “confirmed” among them “the
testimony about the Christ,” from his statement that as a group they “aren’t
falling short in any gracious gift,” and from his description of them as
“eagerly awaiting the revelation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” The details
concerning the gracious gifts will follow in chapters 12–14. Meanwhile the
multifaceted compliment has the purpose of winning an acceptance of Paul’s
coming responses and replies. Yet to forestall the Corinthians’ taking pride in
the compliment, he bases his thanking God for them on “God’s grace [=
ill-deserved favor] that was given to [them] in Christ Jesus (not because of
what they were or are in themselves]” and describes their enrichment in terms
of “gracious gifts.”
1:8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that
you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1:9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
God is faithful – which is important, because Paul
is about to remind the Corinthians that they have NOT been faithful.
The faithfulness of God leads Paul to be sure and confident that the Corinthians will act maturely in the faith, rather than as infants.
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