1 Corinthians

No. 166 1 Corinthians 9:19-27
Paul is defending his conduct to a divided church in Corinth. He has just argued that he has every right to be paid for his work and has refused to use it. This passage explains the principle behind that...
No. 230 1 Corinthians 11:11-16
Paul is finishing a difficult passage about how men and women should cover their heads when they pray and prophesy in the Corinthian assembly. It is one of the most argued-over sections in all his letters,...
No. 239 1 Corinthians 7:25-31
Paul is answering the Corinthians' practical questions about marriage and staying single, and he is unusually careful to label his answer. On this, he says, he has no command from the Lord, only his own...
No. 303 1 Corinthians 16:15-24
Paul is closing his long, difficult letter to the Corinthians, and the way he ends it says a lot about whom he thinks a church should honor. In the middle of a stream of greetings, he pauses to single out some...
No. 312 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
This is the end of Paul's famous chapter on love, and after all the soaring lines about patience and kindness, he turns to what lasts. Love never ends, he says, and then he lists the things that do end....
No. 371 1 Corinthians 10:13-18
This passage holds one of the most quoted promises in the New Testament, and it is worth reading the fine print. No temptation has overtaken you, Paul says, except what is common to man. That first line...
No. 375 1 Corinthians 10:1-5
Paul is warning the Corinthians against a dangerous presumption, and he does it by pointing back to the exodus generation. Notice how many times he uses the word all. Our fathers, he says, were all under the...
No. 581 1 Corinthians 9:13-18
Paul lays out, carefully, that he has every right to be financially supported for his ministry. Those who serve in the temple eat from the temple; those who serve at the altar share in the offerings; and in...
No. 621 1 Corinthians 7:1-5
Paul is answering questions the Corinthians had written to him about marriage and the body, and what he says about the marriage relationship would have been striking in his culture and is worth hearing...
No. 674 1 Corinthians 8:1-6
The Corinthians have written to Paul with questions, and this chapter takes up one of them: whether Christians may eat meat that had been offered to idols. In a pagan city most of the meat for sale had passed...
No. 863 1 Corinthians 7:32-40
In a chapter full of practical counsel about marriage and singleness, Paul lays out his real concern, and it is not a rule about who should marry. It is a longing for his people to be free from anxiety and...
No. 921 1 Corinthians 5:6-13
Paul has been confronting the Corinthian church for tolerating flagrant sin in its midst and even being proud of its tolerance. Here he uses the image of yeast: a little yeast leavens the whole lump, so purge...
No. 964 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Paul reminds the Corinthians of the gospel he preached, on which they stand and by which they are saved. He delivers what he first received, as a fixed tradition: that Christ died for our sins according to the...
No. 965 1 Corinthians 8:7-13
The Corinthians are arguing about whether Christians may eat meat that had been offered to idols. Paul grants that an idol is nothing, so the food itself is neutral, eating neither helps nor harms us before...
No. 1056 1 Corinthians 4:6-13
Paul is confronting the pride of the Corinthians, who have been puffed up, playing favorites among their teachers and imagining themselves rich, wise, and reigning like kings. He punctures it with a question:...
No. 1063 1 Corinthians 7:17-24
Paul lays down a principle he says he teaches in all the churches: let each person live the life the Lord assigned, in the condition in which God called them. He applies it to the big dividing lines of his...
No. 1201 1 Corinthians 13:1-7
Paul interrupts his teaching on spiritual gifts to write the most famous passage on love. He piles up the greatest gifts and achievements, speaking in tongues of angels, prophecy, all knowledge,...
No. 1232 1 Corinthians 15:51-58
Paul reaches the climax of his great chapter on resurrection with a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The dead will be...
No. 1297 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Paul asks the Corinthians to regard him and his fellow workers rightly: as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries, of whom the one thing required is faithfulness. Then he says something freeing...
No. 1375 1 Corinthians 1:10-19
Paul has heard that the church in Corinth is splitting into factions, and he appeals to them urgently to be united in mind and judgment, with no divisions among them. The quarrels have formed around leaders:...
No. 1402 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
Paul continues to address the divisions at Corinth, where people were aligning themselves with rival leaders. He reminds them that they are God's temple, that the Spirit dwells in them, and that God's temple...
No. 1408 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Paul teaches about spiritual gifts. There are varieties of gifts, he says, but the same Spirit; varieties of service, but the same Lord; varieties of working, but the same God who works all in all. To each one...
No. 1511 1 Corinthians 6:9-20
Paul reminds the Corinthians that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom, and lists the kinds of wrongdoing that, unrepented, shut a person out. But then he turns, with one of the great turns of hope...
No. 1681 1 Corinthians 7:12-16
Paul turns to marriages where only one partner believes. If a believer has an unbelieving spouse who is willing to remain, he says, let the believer not divorce them; for the unbelieving partner is made holy...
No. 1747 1 Corinthians 16:10-14
As Paul closes his letter to Corinth, he gives practical instructions, then a burst of short commands. He asks that Timothy, coming to them, be received without fear and not looked down on for his youth, for...
No. 1755 1 Corinthians 16:1-9
Paul turns to practical matters at the close of his letter: the collection for the poor believers in Jerusalem, to be gathered steadily, each setting aside a sum on the first day of every week; and his own...
No. 1790 1 Corinthians 15:42-50
Paul describes the resurrection of the body using the image of sowing and harvest. What is sown is not what is raised. The body is sown perishable and raised imperishable; sown in dishonor, raised in glory;...
No. 1846 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
Paul speaks of a wisdom not of this world, God's hidden wisdom, which none of the rulers of this age understood, for had they understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. And he quotes the...
No. 1875 1 Corinthians 12:27-31
Paul tells the Corinthians plainly: you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. And in the body God has given a variety of roles and gifts, apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles,...
No. 1935 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their immaturity, shown in their jealousy and quarreling and their party spirit, one saying I follow Paul, another I follow Apollos. Such divisions, he says, are the mark of...
No. 2103 1 Corinthians 14:26-40
Paul addresses a Corinthian church whose gatherings had become disorderly, with people speaking over one another and confusion prevailing. His counsel gives two guiding principles. First: when you come...
No. 2219 1 Corinthians 15:29-34
In his argument for the resurrection, Paul pauses to give a plain warning about the company we keep. Do not be deceived, he says: bad company corrupts good morals. Wake up righteously and do not sin. He knew...
No. 2257 1 Corinthians 10:19-33
In a passage about how believers should handle disputed matters like food offered to idols, Paul rises to a principle that governs the whole of life. Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatever you do, he...
No. 2608 1 Corinthians 1:20-25
Paul confronts the world's confidence in its own cleverness. Where is the wise? Where is the debater of this age? God has made the wisdom of the world look foolish. For the world, in all its wisdom, did not...
No. 2668 1 Corinthians 15:35-41
When skeptics ask how the dead can possibly be raised, and with what kind of body, Paul answers with a farmer's image. What you sow, he says, does not come to life unless it dies. You do not plant the plant...
No. 2783 1 Corinthians 3:10-15
Paul calls himself a wise master builder who laid a foundation for others to build on, and he adds a warning: let each one take care how he builds. There is only one foundation that can be laid, Jesus Christ,...
No. 2898 1 Corinthians 14:13-19
Paul is addressing the gift of tongues in the Corinthian church. If I pray in a tongue, he says, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful, so I will pray with both the spirit and the mind. Otherwise, when you...
No. 2958 1 Corinthians 5:1-5
Paul confronts a scandal in the Corinthian church: a man is living in open sexual sin with his father's wife, something even the surrounding pagans would not tolerate, and the church, instead of grieving, is...
No. 2966 1 Corinthians 14:20-25
Paul urges the Corinthians to be mature in their thinking, childlike only when it comes to evil. He points out that if outsiders walk into a gathering where everyone is speaking in tongues, they will conclude...
No. 3077 1 Corinthians 9:1-7
Paul defends his apostleship: am I not free? Have I not seen the Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? And then he lays out his rights: the right to be fed and supported by the churches, to take a believing...
No. 3210 1 Corinthians 6:1-8
Paul is disturbed that believers are dragging one another before pagan courts. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world, even angels? he asks. Surely you can settle small matters among yourselves....
No. 3318 1 Corinthians 4:14-21
Paul writes to the Corinthians not as a scold but as a father: I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. Though they have countless guides in Christ, they have but...
No. 3388 1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Paul teaches that the church is like a body, one body with many different members. And he draws out two lessons that cut in opposite directions. First, against feeling useless: the foot cannot say, because I...
No. 3396 1 Corinthians 10:6-12
Paul says the failures of Israel in the wilderness were written down as examples and warnings for us. Their idolatry, their immorality, their testing of God, their grumbling, all brought disaster, and Paul...
No. 3436 1 Corinthians 15:12-19
Paul presses a stark logical chain to defend the resurrection. If the dead are not raised, then Christ himself is not raised; and if Christ is not raised, then our preaching is empty, our faith is empty, we...
No. 3473 1 Corinthians 15:20-28
Paul unfolds the sweep of Christ's victory. Christ has been raised as the firstfruits, the first of a great harvest; because he rose, those who belong to him will rise too. As in Adam all die, so also in...
No. 3509 1 Corinthians 14:6-12
Paul makes a practical point about worship and speech using everyday images. A flute or harp is useless if its notes are indistinct; a trumpet that gives an uncertain sound will rouse no one to battle. In the...
No. 3514 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Paul recalls that when he came to Corinth he deliberately set aside impressive rhetoric and clever argument: I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He came in weakness, in...
No. 3543 1 Corinthians 9:8-12
Paul argues from the law, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, that those who labor in the gospel have a right to be supported by it; the worker deserves a share of the harvest. He and his...
No. 3590 1 Corinthians 11:23-34
Paul passes on the words of the Lord's Supper: on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, this is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the...
No. 3687 1 Corinthians 11:1-10
This passage addresses a specific custom of head coverings in Corinthian worship, and much of it is bound up with the culture of that time and place. We read it carefully, distinguishing the local, cultural...
No. 3751 1 Corinthians 11:17-22
Paul rebukes the Corinthians for a shameful practice at their gatherings. When they come together for what should be the Lord's Supper, a meal of unity in Christ, the wealthy eat their fill and even get drunk...
No. 4050 1 Corinthians 14:1-5
Paul gives a clear priority for the life of the church: pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, but especially those that build others up. He compares two gifts, tongues and prophecy, and his...
No. 4067 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Paul opens his letter to a troubled and divided church, and before he addresses any of their problems, he begins with thanksgiving and assurance. He thanks God for the grace given them in Christ, notes that...
No. 4137 1 Corinthians 7:6-11
Writing about marriage and singleness, Paul makes a striking observation: each person has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. He does not present marriage and singleness as one being...
No. 4235 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Paul reminds the Corinthians to look at themselves honestly: not many of them were wise, influential, or of noble birth by the world's standards. And this, he says, reveals God's characteristic way of working....