Summary: Bible - Book of 1 Corinthians

The GIST

1 Corinthians is a letter from the apostle Paul to a congregation he had founded in the Greek city of Corinth, and it is the most revealing window we have into the daily life of an early Christian community. The picture is not flattering. The Corinthians have split into rival camps. One of them is living with his father's wife. They are suing each other, arguing about marriage and about meat from pagan temples, getting drunk at the Lord's Supper, competing over spiritual gifts, and some doubt that the dead are raised. Paul takes these problems one at a time, and in answering them writes some of the most celebrated passages in the New Testament.

That Paul wrote the letter is not disputed. Most scholars think he sent it from Ephesus, somewhere between AD 53 and 57. It was not really his first letter to Corinth, since in it he refers to an earlier one that has not survived. He writes partly in response to reports brought by members of a household he calls Chloe's, and partly in answer to a letter the Corinthians had sent him, and the result reads like one side of a lively conversation.

What It Says

Factions and the cross (chapters 1 to 4). After a greeting and thanksgiving, Paul goes straight to the first problem. The church has divided around its teachers. "Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ." His response is to pull the ground from under the whole contest. The Corinthians prize eloquence and wisdom, and the Christian message is, by those standards, absurd: a crucified Messiah. "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." God has deliberately chosen what the world thinks weak and low, "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." Look at yourselves, he says: not many of you were wise or powerful or well born.

As for the teachers, they are servants, each with a task. "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." The church is a field, and a building whose only foundation is Christ, and more than that: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" Paul ends the section as a father speaking to his children, not to shame them, he says, but to warn them.

Scandals (chapters 5 and 6). Next come matters Paul has heard about and is appalled by. A man is living with his father's wife, and the church is complacent about it; Paul orders that he be put out of the community. Members are taking one another to court before pagan judges; better to be wronged, he says, than to do this. And some are defending visits to prostitutes with a slogan about freedom. Paul replies that the body matters. It belongs to the Lord and will be raised. "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?"

Marriage and singleness (chapter 7). Here Paul begins answering the Corinthians' own questions. Some of them evidently thought married couples should abstain from sex. Paul disagrees, and what stands out in his answer is its evenhandedness: husband and wife owe each other the same things, and each has a claim on the other's body. He would personally prefer that everyone were unmarried as he is, given the pressures of the time, but he calls that his opinion and allows that each has a different gift, and "it is better to marry than to burn." Believers married to unbelievers should not seek divorce. In general, people should remain in the situation in which they were called.

Food, freedom and love (chapters 8 to 10). The next question concerns meat that had been offered in pagan temples. Some Corinthians reason, correctly, that idols are nothing and so the food is harmless. Paul grants the point and then changes the question. "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." If exercising your freedom wounds a fellow believer with a more tender conscience, your knowledge has destroyed someone for whom Christ died. He offers himself as an example. As an apostle he has every right to be supported by the churches, and he has refused that right so as to put no obstacle in anyone's way. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." He compares the Christian life to an athlete's training: "So run, that ye may obtain." He also warns against overconfidence, recalling how Israel fell in the wilderness, and adds a promise: "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." Taking part in feasts at pagan shrines is ruled out. Food from the market or a neighbor's table may be eaten without fuss. The rule that covers every case: "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

Worship (chapter 11). Two issues arise about the church's gatherings. The first, about head coverings for women who pray and prophesy, is hard for modern readers to follow, though it shows in passing that women did both in the assembly. The second is the Lord's Supper. At Corinth the common meal had become a display of inequality, with some going hungry while others drank too much. Paul recalls them to what the meal is by handing on the tradition he received about the night Jesus was betrayed: Jesus took bread, "And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me."

Gifts, the body and love (chapters 12 to 14). The Corinthians were proud of their spiritual gifts, especially speaking in tongues. Paul insists that every gift comes from the one Spirit and is given for the common good, and he develops his famous image of the church as a body with many members. "The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee." The parts that seem weaker are indispensable. "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

Then, in the middle of the argument, comes chapter 13. Without love, he says, the most spectacular gifts are noise: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." The King James Version uses charity for the Greek word agape; most other translations say love. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not." Gifts will pass away. Our present knowledge is partial: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." Three things last, "faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

Chapter 14 applies this to worship. Prophecy that others can understand is worth more than tongues that they cannot. Everything should build up the community, and the meeting should not be chaos, "For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace." The chapter ends with a general rule: "Let all things be done decently and in order."

The resurrection (chapter 15). The last great section answers those who say there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul begins with the message he himself was given: "that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures," that he was buried, that he rose on the third day, and that he was seen by Cephas, by the twelve, by more than five hundred at once, by James, and last of all by Paul himself. Everything depends on it. "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." But Christ has been raised, the first of a harvest, and in the end all enemies will be overcome: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." As to how the dead are raised, he compares the body to a seed that is sown one thing and comes up another, a spiritual body. The chapter rises to a shout of triumph: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Closing (chapter 16). Paul ends with practical matters: a collection for the believers in Jerusalem, his travel plans, a word about Timothy and Apollos, greetings from the churches of Asia and from Aquila and Priscilla, and a line in his own handwriting. One instruction sums up the letter: "Let all your things be done with charity."

Why It Matters

1 Corinthians shows that the early church was never a golden age without problems, and it shows how its most important thinker reasoned through them. Paul does not simply issue rulings. Again and again he takes a practical dispute back to first principles: the cross, which overturns human ideas of status; the body, which makes every member necessary; and love, which limits freedom for the sake of others.

Its phrases have passed into the language: all things to all men, through a glass darkly, putting away childish things. The summary of the gospel at the start of chapter 15 is thought to be among the earliest statements of Christian belief, a tradition Paul says he received from others.

Some passages are contested. The letter says more about women than any other attributed to Paul, and its statements pull in different directions, from the mutuality of chapter 7 and the women who pray and prophesy in chapter 11 to the instruction in chapter 14 that women keep silent. Many scholars think that last passage was added by a later hand; others defend it as Paul's and read it narrowly. A verse about baptism on behalf of the dead has also puzzled interpreters and is read very differently by different churches.

Who Should Read It

Read 1 Corinthians if you want to see Christian ethics being worked out in real time, in a community that sounds remarkably modern. It is useful for anyone involved in the life of a church, and anyone who knows only the love chapter will find it far richer in its setting.