How can it be that we have come to the end of our study on 1 & 2 Corinthians?!! I know I say that about every study we do, but it truly does just seem like yesterday that we began studying these 2 incredible letters that the Apostle Paul sent to the church in Corinth. This church was a tough one to manage because it was formed against the backdrop of an incredibly pagan culture where even the notion of Christianity was foreign. The people at the church in Corinth had to learn the ways of God and in doing so, they had to discard the ways of the world they had known all of their lives up until this point. Let’s recap the outline of 2 Corinthians:

These last few chapters have been so comforting as Paul laid out the hope before us. There are parts of these chapters that I cling to in times of personal distress because I know that these times are momentary in comparison to what we have to look forward to. 

Getting old is for the birds! I tell all my young friends, enjoy being in your young healthy body while you have your youth because if you live very long at all, your body will start failing you and your beauty will fade. Last week, we looked at the temporal body and the spiritual/eternal body. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go back in time with the mind you have now and the body you had then? Most of us have wondered that. That could be dangerous! As believers, our spirits strengthen the longer we live and our bodies wear out the longer we live. My old house that I’m living in now needs a new paint job and new pipes! You see, what we see with our eyes is not what exists eternally. 

Last week, we learned that 2 Corinthians contains a mishmash of issues. It is for this reason that some scholars believe that 2 Corinthians is actually a grouping of a few of Paul’s letters. We know that there was a letter referenced in 1 Cor. 5:9 regarding some instructions Paul gave them regarding certain sins.

We started out this book with Chloe’s household sending word to Paul who was in Ephesus at the time, that there were all kinds of issues in the Corinthian church. This hot mess of a church had a very liberal opinion of God’s view of sin. If you recall, Paul had been in Corinth for 18 months and then he moved on to Ephesus and was there for 3 years. It was while he was there that he sent this letter (1 Corinthians) to the Corinthian church. Paul deals with a lot of stuff in this church, stuff that is important for us to know today. While much of what we have covered deals with 1st century customs, there are underlying principles and doctrine that transcend time and culture. 

We are finally coming to the end of 1 Corinthians. We still have 2 Corinthians to go! Oh what a ride this has been! The past 2 weeks, we’ve been looking at some of the spiritual gifts and how God wants us to use the gifts He has given to us. This week, we’re going to be looking at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that means to us as believers. Chapter 15 is a mammoth chapter in regards to its length. All Scripture is inspired and all is holy, but there are some chapters that stick out to me as being crucial to our understanding of the Christian faith.

What’s love got to do with it?! Turns out, love has a whole lot to do with it! There is a great misunderstanding these days regarding what love is and what it isn’t. The world’s idea of love and God’s idea of love are 2 different things. We have to love the world to Christ in the way that He outlines for us and not in the way our culture dictates. 1 Corinthians 13 is sandwiched in between 2 other chapters on spiritual gifts, and it is the chapter in the Bible frequently referred to as the love chapter. Paul is going to tell us a lot about love, but he never gives a definition. I’m not sure that he can. 

Chapter 11 gets into some controversial territory. It shouldn’t be controversial because it is Scriptural. But in today’s culture where “you have your truth and I have my truth” and where women have gotten deep in the trenches of what used to be called the women’s lib movement, the same old problems that existed in Paul’s day exist in ours. The word submission is often a nasty word because it goes against the cultural bias. There is a principle that Paul works off of in this chapter. He elaborates on it in more depth in the books of Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon. That principle is something referred to as headship. It is also called federal headship.

Chapter 8 deals with the fact that there are limitations to our Christian liberty. While we may have the liberty to do what we want, we should always limit ourselves for the good of the other person. Chapter 9 continues to discuss Christian liberty except in another area. 

So far in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul has covered the topics of disunity in the church, immaturity in the church and other scandalous things that were going on in the Corinthian church. This church was a hot mess! But they wanted to learn. We can be a hot mess too, but if we want to learn and humble ourselves to be taught, then we can glorify God in our bodies. This week, we are going to continue studying about how we need to look at our bodies and how we need to treat them. We have already studied that the church is a place that houses the Spirit of God, but so is the body of the believer. 

Chapter 4 is the last chapter in which the Apostle Paul deals with the divisions within the church. In this chapter, he talks about how we, as believers, should conduct ourselves in order to maintain unity within the body of Christ. Remember, Corinth was the party capital of the Greek world. Every day was a party! Around every corner was licentiousness and debauchery. It was a “sin in your face” kind of culture. Oh my, I think I might also be describing the culture we have here in America. Sin was not only tolerated, it was celebrated! I

I want you to think about something. Since the beginning of time, God’s work in the world has been chronicled. We know what happened at creation. We know what happened when mankind sinned. We know about the lives of the patriarchs. We know about the destruction of the first temple and the exile of God’s people. We know about their coming back to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem. We know about the prophesied Messiah. 

Welcome to the adventure of 1 and 2 Corinthians! Before we get into our study, we need to look at the culture of the 1st Century Church in Corinth. This church was undoubtedly Paul’s problem child. Corinth was the LasVegas of Asia Minor! It was a licentious environment filled with much debauchery. In fact, there was a word that came to be used for those who fell into the worst type of sexual sin. That word was “corinthianize”. If someone was “corinthianized”, then they had sunk to the deepest pits of evil. Even in the pagan world, Corinth was known for its moral corruption. This is the backdrop from which the Apostle Paul writes about in his letter to the Corinthian Church. He first visited this city during his 2nd missionary journey. Paul

Winter 2025