1:1-17 Here Paul identified three issues that dominate1 Co: (1) With his reference to the church as "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (v. 2), he anticipated the Corinthians' ongoing involvement with cult prostitutes. (2) His thanks to God for their gifts of "speaking" and "knowledge" sent an early signal for an issue to be addressed later (vv. 4-9). (3) His rebuke over divisions—both amongst them and against him—introduced a theme repeated throughout the letter (vv. 10-17).
The items mentioned—being desensitized in sexual matters, preoccupied with their gifts of knowing and speaking, and myopically focused on their favored leaders—were symptoms of a deep malaise among the Corinthian Christians. They were fascinated with themselves to the exclusion of one another and, more importantly, of God and His rule in their lives.
1:14-17 That Paul baptized only a few in Corinth does not imply that he had a low view of baptism or that he was somehow disobedient to the Great Commission—"Make disciples . . . baptizing them" (Mt 28:19). The gospel was Paul's priority, without which there can be no baptism; the "sign" depends on the "word." Paul did not say the Corinthians were not baptized, only that he himself did not baptize many. Presumably local elders baptized new converts.
1:18-25 Paul's theological response to the Corinthians' self-absorption (vv. 1-17) was as offensive to religious people ("Jews") and to intellectuals ("Greeks") then as it is now. The former seek miraculous "signs" in the heavens, and the latter demand "proof." God accommodates neither expression of self-centeredness. Rather, God has displayed His wisdom and power in the most unlikely place—the terrible crucifixion of the Messiah. In the message of the cross, God has reached down and dirtied His hands, revealing His inner character of love, mercy, and forgiveness and in the process humbling the proud and overturning human opinion about greatness. Ironically, God's greatness is evidenced by the depths to which He is willing to go to rescue humans from sin. To use John's language, the "lifting up" of Jesus (Jn 3:14; 12:32) in the literal sense (on the cross—a place of public shame and God's curse) is also the exaltation or "glorifying" of Jesus (Jn 12:23) in a spiritual sense (the cross magnificently displaying God's love).
1:26-27 God's unimaginable humility in identifying Himself with a crucified outcast Jew was reflected in the generally "ordinary" character of those who received this message and who assembled in the name of Jesus. "Not many [were] wise . . . powerful . . . ofnoble birth." Yet in the Lord they boasted due to their "righteousness, sanctification, and redemption" in Him (v. 30).
2:1-5 The slick, impressive style of speaking that dazzled some Corinthians was inappropriate to the message of Christ crucified. In repudiating "brilliance of speech or wisdom" (v. 1), Paul was not condemning effective speech or rigorous thinking per se. After all, elsewhere he exhorted his audience to be mature in their thinking (14:20; Eph 4:14). But rather he was saying that the flowery, pretentious rhetoric so much loved by the Greeks was inconsistent with the God whose word it was that men like Paul spoke. Paul was far more concerned with the message than with the medium.
If the "wisdom" of God for human history is the message of the crucified Messiah, then the hope for humanity arising from it is, by contrast, indescribably glorious (vv. 6-13). Paul knew firsthand what it was like to be blinded to the glory of Jesus Christ. Although there is no record he was part of those who called for Jesus' death, he was of the same mind in the early days of the church. God had been merciful to him and by the Spirit's special illumination, Paul had glimpsed—but only just glimpsed—the glory of Jesus Christ that far surpassed what humans are able to see apart from the Spirit's illumination.
3:1 Paul commented on three responses to the message of glory following crucifixion (2:14–3:4). First, there are those called "unspiritual"; the Greek term (psychikos) means "devoid of the Spirit" or "merely natural" (Jd 19). These are the typical citizens of the fallen age, the children of Adam blinded to God by Satan, the "god of this age" (2 Co 4:4), who fail completely to grasp the message of the cross. Second, at the opposite extreme, are those Paul called "spiritual" people; that is, they have the Spirit of God and should be expected to live lives submitted to the Spirit. Because they have the Spirit, they are "spiritual." Sadly, Paul could not address the Corinthians as "spiritual" since they were operating on a purely human level (v. 4). They were immature believers, "babies in Christ"—ready only for milk, not solids. Despite having gifts of the Spirit, they were troublingly like the outsiders, the rank unbelievers, in their values and behavior. This is evident in their preoccupation with the personalities who had preached to them (v. 4).
3:5 The way forward for the "babies" in Corinth was to grow up by adopting sensible, godly attitudes toward their ministers, who were merely "servants through whom [not in whom] you believed," according to the role God had assigned to them. Paul called the congregation "God's field" in which he and Apollos had their important functions co-working with God while being utterly dependent upon God for the growth.
Changing the imagery (vv. 10-15), Paul called the congregation a "building" for which he had laid the foundation. He implied that some builders who had come after him had not built with materials of the quality of the foundation. Paul had preached Christ as the only foundation of a church, implying that the superstructure must be of the same material. What is built on the foundation will be tested by fire, and that test will reveal the quality of the work. There is no contradiction here with Jesus' words to Peter as the "rock" on which He would build His church (Mt 16:18). Jesus was observing that Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ would prove to be the "foundation" of the church. Historically, Peter was the first to identify Jesus as the Christ, the first to preach that message soon after the first Easter and to lay the foundations of Christianity in Israel. Paul's words are in complete agreement with those of Jesus.
3:16-17 Paul's reference to the church as a "building" prompted him to call it the "sanctuary" with a severe warning to the divisive Corinthians about destroying it by their factions. This is not to contradict the biblical teaching of "the endurance of the saints" (Rv 14:12). God causes His children to "persevere" by giving warnings, as here, but also by giving encouragements.
3:18-23 Paul rebuked those who were wise in their own eyes and were fascinated by various leaders. Let them understand God's good purposes for them, providing such ministers as Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter). This called for humility and maturity, that the Corinthians might become the "spiritual" believers God intended them to be and not act like outsiders.
4:1-7 Continuing to address the nature of true Christian ministry, Paul directed attention to himself. This he did to save face for the local preachers in Corinth, who were clearly at fault in cultivating partisan support. Let them be like Paul—a "servant of Christ" and a "manager of God's mysteries" (that is, the gospel).
4:8-13 The Corinthians arrogantly believed their wisdom of speech was of such an order that (somehow) the kingdom of God had come already. They assumed no further need for Paul whose gifts and strength seemed to pale beside theirs. Paul had to return to the theme of Christ crucified, and applied that theme to himself as one who was suffering for the word of God. God's servant represented his God in faithfulness and humility, not with showy bravado. Let them—his children—be like him, their only father in the gospel. When he came, their big talk would melt away.
5:1 Corinth straddled a narrow isthmus between two waterways, with ports on each side bustling with seafarers. Aphrodite, the sexual goddess, was the city's patron deity. Inevitably, the promiscuity of the city shaped the minds and hearts of its citizens. So pervasive and deep was this influence that even when a person became a Christian, it did not easily go away. In chapters 5–7 Paul urged sexual purity in a city of low moral standards. Here a form of incest that caused even pagans to blush had to be confronted. A man was living with his father's wife—apparently his step-mother.
5:5 What did turning over the sexual offender "to Satan" mean? It was Paul's code for the exclusion of an unrepentant offender from the circle of redemption (the congregation) to the sphere where Satan dominated the children of Adam (the outside world), where this man indicated he really belonged. This exclusion, however, was redemptive in intent. Let the bitterness and darkness of the world outside bring its own impact on the man so that he might repent and be restored (cp. especially 2 Th 3:6,14-15).
6:1-11 Apparently Corinthian believers were quick to rush to the courts. They could not simply fall in with the litigious practices of their city but needed to sort out their differences among themselves.
6:12-20 While it was customary for Corinthian men to have sex with prostitutes at local temples, Paul argued that this should not be the practice of the followers of Christ.
Paul mentioned same-sex eroticism among the vices that bar the practitioners from the kingdom of God (vv. 9-11). The Greek words malakos ("soft [one]") and arsenokoites ("one who has coitus with a man") make clear that Paul was not talking about sexual inclination or orientation, but sodomy—the act of sexual penetration between men. Elsewhere Paul cited the homosexual/lesbian way of life as symptomatic of humanity's rejection of God and His design at creation (Rm 1:24-27). Unholy sexual practice easily becomes entrenched behavior; disengaging from it is difficult. Nonetheless, in Paul's words "some of you were like this" (italics ours), we see that such disengagement is both possible and necessary (v. 11). (See the article, "What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality?" p. 1716.)
7:8-16 The issue here relates to Paul's teaching about remarriage. In giving his own teaching, was he contradicting Jesus? Jesus' general teaching on lifelong marriage (Mt 5:31-32; 19:1-9) inevitably did not address the specific situations Paul encountered in Corinth, where a husband or wife had been converted to Christ out of paganism. Thus, if the unbelieving spouse abandoned the believer, then the believer should let that person go. If an unbelieving spouse wanted to continue with the believer in the marriage, the believer was not to send the unbeliever away. So Paul was not contradicting or adding to Jesus' teaching; he was applying it in a particular context.
Scripture presents two clear violations of the marriage covenant (Gn 2:24; Mt 19:5): desertion (which violates the command to "bond") and adultery (which violates the command to be "one flesh"); breaking of these are legitimate grounds for divorce (and thus remarriage). Where there has been no such rupture, remarriage after divorce is not an option. When possible, however, reconciliation is the ideal.
7:21-23 Are Paul's encouragements to slaves to seek freedom in contradiction to his (apparent) acceptance of slavery (e.g., Eph 6:5-8)? While Paul valued freedom (and here encouraged slaves to obtain freedom if they had opportunity), he knew any attempt by slaves to abolish slavery would mean certain death. The Romans were ruthless at suppressing slave revolts like the uprising led by Spartacus in 73 b.c. (see note on Phm 16).
8:5 Paul's comment that there were "many 'gods' and many 'lords' " in Corinth is confirmed by the travel writer Pausanias, who visited Corinth soon after Paul. Temples and shrines were everywhere. Pagan priests offered sacrificial animals to the gods; leftover meat was sold in shops. Family dinners were held in rooms attached to the temples in the presence of the statues of deities. The religious culture of Corinth was simultaneously the city's civic culture. To disengage from the one was to disengage from the other, with serious social and financial consequences.
8:6 In a remarkable affirmation, Paul called Jesus Christ the "one Lord." Paul the Jew was echoing but reconfiguring the thrice-daily prayer known as theShema: "Listen, Israel . . . the Lord is One" (Dt 6:4-6). He added later, "If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him" (1 Co 16:22). The "Lord Jesus" is being identified with Yahweh, the God of Israel. Other Jewish NT writers routinely made this astonishing identification (e.g., 1 Pt 3:15; see Is 8:13). It is important to keep in mind that Paul, the monotheist, wrote this a mere 20 years after Jesus' crucifixion, indicating a high view of Jesus very early on in the church. This high view of Jesus is taken for granted and beyond dispute in the NT.
Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians, who sit between Judaism and Christianity but belong to neither, must take seriously Christ's divine lordship based on such passages. Similarly, Mormons, by taking the words "for us" (1 Co 8:6) and thus allowing for the recognition of other gods, misunderstand Paul's intent. By saying "even if there are so-called gods" (v. 5), he meant they existed only in the minds of Corinthian idolaters. However, the words "for us there is one God, the Father . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ" point to the new reality these readers have come to know through the gospel. Corinthian believers had acknowledged and appropriated this reality ("for us").
8:7-9 Paul addressed a pastoral problem related to food sacrificed to idols. Some believers felt there was nothing wrong with eating this meat that, following the sacrifice, was sold in shops near the temple. Such believers knew that the gods to whom the meat had been offered were nonexistent. God had created this food and there was no problem with purchasing and eating it. On the other hand, some believers who had believed in these gods prior to their coming to Christ, would have a bad conscience about eating meat offered to idols. Paul's primary concern was that believers look to the good of fellow believers, the brothers or sisters with weaker consciences. Paul himself was willing to relinquish personal rights (9:1-27) to encourage the stronger Christians to make concessions for the weaker believers. In 10:14-22 he wrote that one should not attend temples where sacrifices to pagan deities were being made since this would mean being in spiritual fellowship with demons.
9:1-18 Chapters 8–10 raise important questions. Paul's primary test in dealing with these issues was, "What is best for the church? What is best for other believers?" He subordinated a number of legitimate possibilities—all good in themselves—in order to do what was best for the church and for his fellow believers. This was a reversal of attitudes prevalent in the Corinthian church where members were looking to their own good and not asking about the good of others or the good of the body of Christ.
9:19-24 Paul was no chameleon, changing colors to adapt to different environments. His message in all contexts was the same but his manner of communication differed according to the understandings of his audience.
10:8 Why is there an apparent discrepancy between the 23,000 who died arising from sexual sin and the 24,000 mentioned in Nm 25:9? The most likely explanation is that Paul was relying on a version of the Greek Bible not known to us.
11:1 Was Paul being arrogant when he called for others to imitate him? Not at all. Living in a preliterary age, he was adopting a deliberate teaching strategy—calling on new converts to imitate the patterns of behavior he modeled for them. Working to support oneself was one such pattern, and relinquishing liberties for the sake of others was another. In fact, 1 Th 2:14 speaks of persecuted Thessalonian believers being imitators of suffering Judean churches—just as they had imitated both Paul and Christ in how they received the gospel (1 Th 1:6).
11:3 Does calling God the Father the "head" of Christ suggest the Son's subordination to the Father and deny the doctrine of the Trinity? Indeed not! Rather, Paul was echoing Jesus' own words, that though the Son is equal in "substance" with the Father (and the Spirit), the Son is (eternally) submissive to the will of the Father (see Jn 5:17-24).
Jesus' apostles taught that a husband is the family's "head" and that wives are to acknowledge this (Eph 5:22-33; 1 Pt 3:1-7). For their part, Christian men are to love their wives sacrificially as Christ loved the church. Earlier, in the context of sexual purity and conjugal obligations, Paul pointed out that wives have authority over their husbands' bodies and that husbands and wives should not deprive one another sexually (1 Co 7:3-5).
11:5 Paul admonished women prophets for speaking in church without their marriage veil (or neatly arranged hair). Also in this chapter, Paul taught that masculinity and femininity should be clearly visible in the self-presentation of men and women. This, however, merely updates the concerns to differentiate the sexes along the lines reflected in the OT. In public worship, women's voices were heard in both "praying" and "prophesying," although the nature of the latter is somewhat uncertain (see 14:34).
12:1 As Paul began this letter, he gave thanks for God's grace evident among the Corinthians in the fact that they did "not lack any spiritual gift" (1:7). And yet, they were not handling this spiritual endowment well. Some wisdom and instruction were needed in the exercise of spiritual gifts and in recognizing the spiritual gifts of others of the body.
12:3 The evidence of having God's Spirit is confessing (at baptism), "Jesus is Lord."
12:4-7 Speaking in tongues and prophesying are just some gifts among others in the multi-gifted membership of the body of Christ. Gifts are not evidence of spirituality or superiority. In fact, gifts not employed in other-centered, self-forgetting love are useless. Gifts are God's provision for this present age only; love is what matters in the end (12:31–13:13). In fact, the displays of some of the believers were contributing to chaotic noisy meetings that failed to build up believers and scandalized visiting unbelievers (14:20-36).
14:34 Why did Paul allow women to pray and prophesy (11:5) but here called for women to "be silent"? Apparently, wives were calling out questions to their husbands, perhaps while their husbands were prophesying or speaking in tongues. This contributed further to the noisy chaos of the meetings. Paul's call for silence, therefore, was not absolute but specific; he wanted wives to wait to ask their husbands their questions at home. In both 11:5 and 14:34, the real issue is the wife's recognition of her husband's God-given role of "head" in relation to her. For this reason, she was to wear a marriage veil (or something like that) when prophesying and to keep quiet when her husband was speaking in church.
14:37 Those who prophesied or reported some revelation from God were still subject to the authoritative words of the apostle, who spoke as from the Lord Himself.
15:1 This chapter addresses Corinthian skepticism about the future resurrection (vv. 12,35). At issue was the difference between the Greek (and Corinthian) and Hebrew understandings of the life to come. Greeks who believed in an afterlife tended to speak of the immortality of the soul. They viewed the soul as something different than matter. In the Greek view, the soul is liberated from the body and lives forever in a non-corporeal state. Christians are in the Hebrew tradition regarding the afterlife, believing in the resurrection of the body. The resurrected Christ is Exhibit A and a glimpse of the life to come. (On the intermediate state, the state between the death of a person and their being raised to life everlasting see 2 Co 5:1-9.)
15:3-7 Paul probably received this confessional statement 20 years earlier at his baptism in Damascus and later handed it over to the Corinthians when he established the church there. This vital summary of Christian belief was formed during the period between Christ's resurrection and Paul's Damascus call and baptism. This formula was carried by fugitives from Paul's persecutions to Damascus, where it was handed over to the new convert at his baptism. This statement may be the earliest formulation of NT Christianity, predating Paul's earliest letters by 15 years.
This section raises some questions. First, the "third day" need not imply three complete days; Jews counted partial days as whole days. Jesus was buried on Friday, and the tomb was empty when the women arrived at Sunday's first light. Also, Christ was "raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." Where in the OT is this anticipated? Here it is not clear whether the Scriptures prophesy the fact of His resurrection or the detail of His resurrection on the third day. There are OT passages for both possibilities: Ps 16:10 for the first and Hos 6:2 for the second. Note, too, that help, salvation, or deliverance is frequently associated with the "third day" in the OT (see Gn 22:4; 40:20; 42:18; Ex 15:22-25; 19:11; 2 Kg 20:5; Est 5:1; Jnh 1:17)—all the more appropriate for God delivering His Son from death on the third day!
Second, Paul did not mention the empty tomb (though each of the Gospels does). The word translated "buried" means "entombed, placed horizontally in a [rock] tomb," not "placed down into the ground." Yet Paul strongly implied an empty tomb; what else could the original words "He was buried . . . He was raised" mean? For the first-century Jew, a resurrection that left a body in the tomb was a contradiction in terms. Furthermore, Paul cited a tradition that Peter also articulated in different words: "They killed Him . . . God raised up this man on the third day and permitted Him to be seen . . . by us, witnesses appointed beforehand by God" (Ac 10:39-41); the empty tomb was assumed. Neither Peter nor Paul specifically mentioned the empty tomb in this commonly held "third day" tradition, whereas it was prominent in the "first day" traditions underlying the Gospels. This is no contradiction, however, but merely points to a number of overlapping early traditions of the gospel that were then current.
The specific place or occasion on which the risen Christ appeared to more than 500 brothers at once is not known. Paul added that most of these witnesses were still alive when he wrote. In effect, Paul was inviting the Corinthians to check this out if they wished. Jesus' resurrection was not just His spirit being received in heaven. His body was raised from death and was seen not only by individuals, by small groups, but by a large group.
15:8-9 Christ's appearance to Paul occurred many months after the appearances to the other named witnesses. The original gospel formulation Paul received clearly did not contain references to Christ's appearance to him. Paul added this afterward.
Paul here wrote of himself as "abnormally born," an unusual expression that may mean "born later than expected." Unlike the Twelve, Paul became an apostle without having had the "gestation period" of knowing Jesus on earth, ministering with Him, listening to His teaching. Rather than being eased into apostleship, Paul was dramatically confronted on the Damascus road. All this, however, only reinforces the proposal that the earlier appearances to Peter and the others were concrete, bodily manifestations on earth. Paul was not in any way implying that he merely "saw" the Lord in his mind or as a subjective vision. Paul saw Christ objectively, outside of himself, raised from the dead and exalted at God's right hand (see Ac 7:56).
15:12 The phrase, "resurrection of the dead" (lit. "the standing up of dead ones") meant just that. The notion of a nonmaterial resurrection—an idea that appeals to so many today—would have been incomprehensible to Jews then.
15:29 Paul's question to the Corinthians about why they were "being baptized for the dead" is puzzling and most unusual, and no parallel reference in the NT exists to clarify this. The context gives some help: Paul spoke of "danger" to him (v. 30) and of being, metaphorically speaking, forced to fight wild animals (v. 32). Life was precarious for the apostle and, we infer, for the local church people also. Our best guess, therefore, is that some believers in Corinth had lost their lives under persecution before an opportunity arose for baptism and that others had been baptized in their place (Gk hyper), by substitution. Presumably this was done for pastoral reasons—to assure surviving believers, including family members, that all that baptism signified was true for the deceased.
Note that Paul did not prescribe this practice but merely referred to it. Mormon baptism for the dead cannot be sustained by this obscure reference. The vicarious baptism for thousands of deceased persons (including tracking and storing genealogical records) grossly distorts Paul's teaching. Paul simply said the practice of being baptized on behalf of deceased members was utterly irrational where the resurrection of the dead was being doubted, as it was by some within the Corinthian church.
15:44 Are the spiritual bodies believers will have at the coming resurrection nonmaterial bodies? If so, it would imply that Christ's risen body was nonmaterial. This, however, was not what Paul meant. Rather, descendants of fallen Adam cannot enter God's kingdom unchanged. The "spiritual body" is a true body—a material body—but a transformed body. The two bodies being contrasted are not "physical" vs. "spiritual" but rather "soul-oriented [psychikon]" vs. "Spirit-oriented [pneumatikon]." (See 2:14-15, where Paul contrasted the psychikos person, or the natural/this-worldly-oriented person, with the pneumatikos, or the believer, who has God's Spirit.) Also, Paul's reference to the spiritual body was not to Christ's risen body but to the risen bodies of the descendants of the first man, Adam, redeemed so as to be fit for the kingdom of God (15:42-50).
16:1-3 Two questions remain from the Corinthians' letter. The first pertains to collection arrangements—Paul's plans to come to Corinth to collect money for the impoverished Jerusalem church. The second refers to Apollos's return to Corinth (v. 12). Apparently, Paul kept these answers until the closing stages of the letter to allow him to raise related matters, in particular Paul's own plans to return to Corinth (vv. 5-9), the need to respect Timothy when he came (vv. 10-11), and the importance of submitting to local leaders—Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (vv. 15-18).
16:21-24 At the letter's end, Paul took the pen from his amanuensis (scribe), concluding the letter with these four sentences written in his own hand. Among these is the original Aramaic prayer Maran atha ("Come back, Lord"). This likely preserves the very words of the Jerusalem church's invocation to the risen and ascendedJesus. This Aramaic prayer indicates a very early tradition known to Gentile Christians, which strongly supports an early belief of Jesus' sharing God's identity.
Paul's curse on those who do not "love the Lord[Jesus]" (v. 22) picks up 8:6, where Paul christologically reconstructed the Shema ("Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God," Dt 6:4-6). With Jesus' resurrection and exaltation, the apostles, though Jews, now understood that the Lord Jesus is to be identified with Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel—something the Corinthian believers had been taught and indeed had publicly confessed at baptism (12:3,13). So to reject that conviction now would bring God's severe condemnation. Paul was not speaking here about the generality of unbelievers but about disbelieving church members.