When people become Christians, they don’t at the same moment become nice. I’m not sure why this is so surprising but salvation doesn’t automatically download Christian Manners 101. 1 Corinthians reveals how Jesus conquers sin when we cooperate with his Word.
The Corinthian people loved to party. They were unruly and sexually promiscuous. Paul won many of them to Christ. Now their messy lifestyles moved into the church where the Holy Spirit would begin the gradual but steady process of making them more like Jesus.
Paul spent 18 months pastoring these new converts. I’m sure he asked, “Do you believe?” To which they probably responded, “Yes we believe!” In response he surely asked, “Will you behave?” As aspiring disciples of Jesus their response would have been a hearty, “Yes! We’ll behave!” However we can all relate to the fact that is much easier to believe than it is to behave.
Paul moved on to continue to establish the work of Jesus in other cities. In his absence the church in Corinth began unraveling. The church was full of selfish pursuits, division, immorality and lawsuits among divided believers. Worship had become self-serving and self-promoting. In many ways the church of Corinth was a lot like the church of our day.
1 Cor 1:22-23 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified… NIV
Some demand signs and wonders! Some demand clever teaching! Over the years I’ve had people demand that we devote ourselves to the glory. In most instances these people call it the “glow+ree” with a strong two-syllable sound for greater religious effect. On the other side of what people want there have been requests for less ambiguous singing and more focused talking points. This pursuit is looking for practical tips on how to have an awesome life. Both describe what they want and then exclaim, “Now that’s true church!”
This is not about our preferences. Jesus died so we could experience and express God’s presence and God’s power in wonderful ways. Stop making it about you. We make church about ourselves when we view ministry as an avenue of self-fulfillment rather than kingdom advancement.
Paul addresses these issues with these Corinthian believers but doesn’t disown them or condemn them. He takes them by the hand and rehearses the foundational truths of Christ over and over again. He probably started the conversation from the beginning, “So do you believe? Will you behave?” His writing does reveal an interesting progression of maturity.
1 Cor 3:1-3 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly…. acting like mere men?
Infants live a selfish and demanding existence. Paul was correcting these infantile attitudes. An infant’s needs are the only needs the infant is aware of in life. Infants participate in ministry as long as you keep them happy. Once you maneuver them away from what they want they quickly become disciples with dirty diapers and the attitude really begins to stink! We really must all learn to stop bickering over petty things that won’t amount to anything eternally.
1 Cor 4:15-16 Even though you have ten thousand teachers in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. (NIV)
Parents live a sacrificial and loving existence for the sake of others. When our two girls were young I would be needing sleep in middle of night. There were times they would be needing to throw up at the same time. I would wake up to catch the throw up lessening the mess I’d be cleaning up later after putting them back to bed.
This beautiful progression of spiritual maturity from infancy to fathering flows beautifully into the famous love chapter 1 Corinthians 13. Love really is patient and kind as we consider the needs of others. Our greatest problem is that we have to get our focus of the needs of ourselves to get our focus on the needs of others. This is why Jesus taught us to die to ourselves and deny ourselves.
John 12:24 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. NIV
There is no question that there is life in seed. The question is will it die? When we look at an apple we see an apple. God sees an orchard. God sees beyond the now realizing the potential of the seed. What’s seeded in your life is beyond what you’re looking at right now. But the seed in you only comes to life if you die.
There are two kinds of Christians who have the life of Jesus in them. There are those who have confined and imprisoned this life refusing to allow it to escape our self absorbed lives. Then there are those who have through willing death allow the life of Christ to be released making the world a better place.
God asks us to do something he himself cannot do. Jesus clearly says we are to deny ourselves if we are to effectively follow him.
Matt 16:24 Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. (NAS)
Paul clearly reveals that God cannot deny himself.
2 Tim 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. NAS
Purpose to be inconvenienced to get into God’s Word, spend time in prayer and be involved in the lives of others.
GP4RL:
#TurnThePage, spend time listening to God and make a daily difference for others this week.
DISCUSSION GUIDE FOR COMMUNITY GROUP LEADERS
Click here for a downloadable pdf file of this guide.
Ice Breaker: When choosing up sides for teams in school, were you chosen first, last, or somewhere in the middle? How did this make you feel?
Paul’s letter to the Corinthian believers addressed various problems in the church:
• Problems with unity (chapters 1-4)
• Problems with sin (5-6)
• Problems with divorce (7)
• Problems with disputes over doctrine (8-10)
• Problems with spirituality (12-14)
• Problems with resurrection (15)
When people become Christians, they don’t at the same moment become nice. For some reason this seems to be surprising but salvation doesn’t automatically download Christian Manners 101.
The Corinthian people loved to party. They were unruly and sexually promiscuous. Paul won many of them to Christ. Now their messy lifestyles moved into the church where the Holy Spirit would begin the gradual but steady process of making them more like Jesus.
Discussion Questions:
1. Ask those who are willing to share briefly their salvation story.
2. Share a time when you were spiritually immature about a situation and how you made progress through it.
Paul addresses issues with the Corinthian believers but doesn’t disown them or condemn them. He takes them by the hand and rehearses the foundational truths of Christ over and over again. He probably started the conversation from the beginning, “So do you believe? Will you behave?” His writing does reveal an interesting progression of maturity from infants to fathers.
1 Cor 3:1-3 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly…. acting like mere men?
Infants live a selfish and demanding existence. Paul was correcting these infantile attitudes. An infant’s needs are the only needs the infant is aware of in life. Infants participate in ministry as long as you keep them happy.
1 Cor 4:15-16 Even though you have ten thousand teachers in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. (NIV)
Discussion Questions:
3. What are the different characteristics found in spiritual infancy and spiritual fatherhood?
4. About which characteristics in yourself would you be willing to say to others, “Imitate me”? Why?
Parents live a sacrificial and loving existence for the sake of others. When our two girls were young I would be needing sleep in middle of night. There were times they would be needing to throw up at the same time. I would wake up to catch the throw up lessening the mess I’d be cleaning up later after putting them back to bed.
This beautiful progression of spiritual maturity from infancy to fathering flows beautifully into the famous love chapter 1 Corinthians 13. Love really is patient and kind as we consider the needs of others. Our greatest problem is that we have to get our focus off the needs of ourselves to get our focus on the needs of others. This is why Jesus taught us to die to ourselves and deny ourselves. (see ‘Going Deeper’ for more info)
Discussion Questions:
5. What are some benefits of being consistently in God’s Word?
What of these benefits have you personally experienced?
6. What are the challenges you have faced to being consistently in God’s Word?
How will you more effectively conquer those challenges over this next week?
Purpose to be inconvenienced to get into God’s Word, spend time in prayer and be involved in the lives of others.
GP4RL: #TurnThePage, spend time listening to God and make a daily difference for others this week.
GOING DEEPER:
Going Deeper in further discussion:
John 12:24 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. NIV
There is no question that there is life in seed. The question is will it die? When we look at an apple we see an apple. God sees an orchard. God sees beyond the now realizing the potential of the seed. What’s seeded in your life is beyond what you’re looking at right now. But the seed in you only comes to life if you die.
There are two kinds of Christians who have the life of Jesus in them. There are those who have confined and imprisoned this life refusing to allow it to escape our self absorbed lives. Then there are those who have through willing death allow the life of Christ to be released making the world a better place.
God asks us to do something he himself cannot do. Jesus clearly says we are to deny ourselves if we are to effectively follow him.
Matt 16:24 Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. (NAS)
Paul clearly reveals that God cannot deny himself. 2 Tim 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. NAS
THE MESSAGE BIBLE INTRODUCTION: When people become Christians, they don’t at the same moment become nice. This always comes as something of a surprise. Conversion to Christ and his ways doesn’t automatically furnish a person with impeccable manners and suitable morals. The people of Corinth had a reputation in the ancient world as an unruly, hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous bunch of people. When Paul arrived with the Message and many of them became believers in Jesus, they brought their reputations with them right into the church.
Paul spent a year and a half with them as their pastor, going over the Message of the “good news” in detail, showing them how to live out this new life of salvation and holiness as a community of believers. Then he went on his way to other towns and churches. Sometime later Paul received a report from one of the Corinthian families that in his absence things had more or less fallen apart. He also received a letter from Corinth asking for help. Factions had developed, morals were in disrepair, worship had degenerated into a selfish grabbing for the supernatural. It was the kind of thing that might have been expected from Corinthians!
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is a classic of pastoral response: affectionate, firm, clear, and unswerving in the conviction that God among them, revealed in Jesus and present in his Holy Spirit, continued to be the central issue in their lives, regardless of how much of a mess they had made of things. Paul doesn’t disown them as brother and sister Christians, doesn’t throw them out because of their bad behavior, and doesn’t fly into a tirade over their irresponsible ways. He takes it all more or less in stride, but also takes them by the hand and goes over all the old ground again, directing them in how to work all the glorious details of God’s saving love into their love for one another.
From http://zionpres.org/files/2012/09/Modern-Problems-Session-1-Handout.pdf
The City of Corinth
In the first century, Corinth was the finest city in Greece. A dynamic, cosmopolitan city of some 250,000, Corinth was one of the chief commercial cities of the Roman Empire. Its location made it a natural center of commerce and transportation. It had two ports: Cenchrea, six miles to the east of Corinth on the Aegean Sea, and Lechaeum, a port on the Corinthian Gulf that opened westward to the Adriatic Sea.
Sailing in those days was very hazardous, and rounding the southern tip of Greece was a troublesome voyage. To avoid this detour, eastbound shipping between Rome and Asia used the isthmus at Corinth as a portage, unloading their cargoes and carrying them overland to be reloaded at the opposite port. Corinth was thus called the bridge of the seas. It was also a gateway for north-south routes between the Peloponnesus and mainland Greece. As a commercial center it was famous for arts and crafts.
Ancient Corinth was completely destroyed in 146 B.C. by the Roman General Mummius because it had taken the lead in an attempted revolt by the Greeks against the rising power of the Roman Empire. At that time its art treasures and wealth were said to have equaled those from Athens. For nearly one hundred years the city lay in ruins. In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar sent a colony of soldiers to rebuild it, making it the seat of the Roman province of Achaia. Almost immediately it assumed the former prominence it had as the richest and most powerful city of Greece.
Corinth had two patron deities. Poseidon, god of the sea, was appropriately reflected in the naval power and devotion to the sea. The other deity, Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love, was reflected in the city’s reputation for immorality. The temple was central to the worship of Aphrodite. It boasted one thousand female prostitutes available to the people of the city and to all the visitors. Most of these women were famous for their great beauty. The income of the temple prostitutes provided a major source of the city’s income. This practice, coupled with the looseness often characteristic of a port city of a mixed and transient population, gave Corinth a reputation far beyond the cities of its day. To demonstrate this fact, the Greeks invented a term, to Corinthianize, which meant to live an immoral life. To call a young woman “a Corinthian” meant she was an immoral person.
The Church at Corinth
The church was a picture of converts who had come out of this background (1 Cor 6:11). The church had several areas of difficulty which were causing the church to split, among them:
- A leadership problem producing divisions in the church (1:10-17).
- Immoral practices were not being dealt with (5:1-6:20).
- An enthusiastic group in the church flaunted their spiritual gifts (12:1-14:40).
- A legalistic group was concerned about dietary laws (8:1-10:32).
- Some were abusing the Lord’s Supper (11:17-34),
- Others were offering false teachings regarding the resurrection (15:1-58).
These matters made for a unique and troubled congregation, were complicated by its multiethnic makeup of Greeks, Romans, and Jews and a mixture of social classes including rich, poor, and slave. Paul’s categories of people within the church, listed in 1 Corinthians 12:13 as Jew, Greek, slave and free, reflect the make-up of the city, as do the various Jewish, Roman and Greek names mentioned in the letters (cf. the Jews Aquila, Priscilla, Crispus; the Romans Fortunatus, Quartus, Justus, etc.; the Greeks Stephanus, Achaicus, Erastus). We know from 1 Corinthians 7:20-24 that some of the believers in Corinth were slaves.
Furthermore, since no landed aristocracy now existed in Roman Corinth, an “aristocracy of money” soon developed, accompanied by a fiercely independent spirit (so Fee, 2). This class distinction based on wealth is reflected in the tensions and factions that existed during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-34), since most of the church was apparently from the lower or middle socioeconomic class, with only a few wealthy families represented.
Occasion and Date
Paul had been to Corinth and stayed for eighteen months (see Acts 18). While there Paul met Aquila and Priscilla who had left Rome in 49 AD, when Claudius issued an edict ordering the expulsion of Jews from that city. The couple ran a tent-making business, a trade also practiced by Paul. According to his custom Paul attended the synagogue and took part in its services, seeking to persuade his hearers that Jesus is the Messiah. When the synagogue was closed to Paul, he went next door to the house of a synagogue listener who heard and believed, a Gentile named Titius Justus (Acts 18:7). He was one of many people in Corinth who belonged to the Lord. During this time Paul established the community of believers which would become the Corinthian church.
Paul spent most of the next three years in Ephesus (Acts 19:1-10; 20:31). He probably wrote 1 Corinthians near the end of his time in Ephesus, around 56 AD. The apostle had received information from different sources concerning the conditions in the Corinthian church. Members of Chloe’s household had informed him of the various factions in the church (1:11). Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus came to Paul in Ephesus to bring a contribution to his ministry (16:17), and doubtless reported to him extensively there. Paul’s letter is a response to the problems he heard about from these visitors.
Problems in Corinth
A problem with unity (1-4)
A problem with sin (5-6)
A problem with divorce (7)
A problem with disputes over doctrine (8-10)
Problems with culture and fashion (11)
Problems with worship (11)
Problems with spirituality (12-14)
Problems with resurrection (15)
Purpose and Nature of the Letter
1 Corinthians is pointedly concerned with the local church. If anyone thinks their church has more than its share of riffraff and woe, they need only turn to this letter (and its companion, 2 Cor.) to put their problems in perspective. First Corinthians provides a glimpse of life inside one first-century church, and far from saintly it was. Yet that is the reason Paul wrote this letter—to make sense of the contrast between our standing before God (as forgiven!) and our behaviour (as flawed!). The spirit of the world seemed more influential in the Corinthian church than the Spirit of God, despite the splendidly evident gifts given by the Spirit. Paul wanted to change that. He directed his message along three lines:
1. The first six chapters were an attempt to correct the contentions in the church brought to his attention by Chloe’s servants (1:11) and to bring about unity in perspective and practice.
2. Beginning in chapter 7, Paul addressed himself to certain questions about marital issues (7:1, 25), liberty and responsibility (8:1), spiritual gifts and church order (12:1), money for impoverished saints in Jerusalem (16:1), and the availability of Apollos (16:12).
3. In chapter 15 he reaffirmed and defended the doctrine of the Resurrection, which some denied. It is possible that Paul saw this as a fundamental ill affecting all the preceding discussion, so he placed it at the climax of his letter. Standing above all the issues with which this letter deals is the very existence of a church in Corinth, a testimony to the power of God and the gospel.