New Testament · Book 46 of 66

1 Corinthians

A pastoral letter answering a long list of questions and problems, unity, ethics, worship, and the resurrection, written to a gifted but divided church.

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Gustave Doré (1866) — public domain — "The Crucifixion" (the letter's own center of gravity: "we preach Christ crucified," 1:23)

16
Chapters
7
Church problems
1
Resurrection argument

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. ”
1 Corinthians 13:13

All 16 chapters

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

If you only read a few chapters

Pauline Epistles · 1 Corinthians

Christ Crucified for a Divided Church

Corinth was a church Paul planted, gifted, and now had to correct: factions, tolerated sin, lawsuits, confusion over marriage and idols and worship and gifts. His answer to every one of it is the same: the cross of a crucified Messiah is God's own wisdom and power, and it is the standard against which every Corinthian dysfunction is measured. Chapters 1–6 answer what Paul heard; chapters 7–16 answer what the Corinthians asked, “now concerning” one question after another, until the letter arrives at the one fact none of it survives without: if Christ is not raised, none of it matters (ch. 15).

Summary

1 Corinthians answers a divided, immature church in two halves: chapters 1 through 6 answer what Paul heard reported, chapters 7 through 16 answer what the church asked him directly, marked by the letter's own 'now concerning' formula. Every answer measures the church against one standard: the cross of a crucified Messiah.

The chapter ribbon marks each 'now concerning' question and rings chapter 13 in gold: a hymn to love deliberately sandwiched inside the gifts unit, chapters 12 through 14.
Chapter 15 breaks the letter's own pattern: nobody asked about the resurrection, and Paul answers it anyway because nothing else in the letter stands without it.
Background covers the Gallio inscription that dates Paul's Corinth visit to within months, and a caution against overstating the temple-prostitute numbers behind the sexual-ethics material.
Chapters 12 to 14 are taught as the letter gives them: one Spirit distributing every gift, love set over all of them, and Paul's own order for their use in the assembly.
Contested points are the ones the letter leaves open: how 11:5 and 14:34 to 35 fit together, and what baptism for the dead in 15:29 means.

The Spine

a letter in two halves: what Paul heard, then what the Corinthians asked

Almost every paragraph break in this letter is load-bearing. Chapters 1–6 answer a report that reached Paul by other means: Chloe's household, a delegation, common knowledge. Chapters 7–16 answer questions the Corinthians put to Paul directly in a letter of their own, and the letter marks each new topic with the same formula: “now concerning” (7:1, 7:25, 8:1, 12:1, 16:1, 16:12). Chapter 15 breaks the pattern on purpose: nobody asked about the resurrection, and Paul answers it anyway, because nothing else stands without it.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

The Report: chs 1–6The Letter: chs 7–16The Resurrection: ch 15, unasked“now concerning” marker

Two seams fall inside a chapter rather than at its edge (6:12 and 11:1), which is why the ranges above and the chapter ribbon do not line up exactly. The ribbon assigns each chapter to the section that holds most of it. Chapter 13's outline is ringed gold: it sits inside the gifts unit (12–14) but is a self-contained hymn, sandwiched on purpose.

Structure

1 Corinthians in 6 parts. Each card opens one focused stretch of the book — what it is for, the verse it turns on, and where Christ stands in it. Roughly five minutes each.

What 1 Corinthians Alone Teaches

The word of the cross against the wisdom of Corinth

Corinth prized clever speech. Travelling orators were paid well there, congregations attached themselves to teachers as to patrons, and the quarrel of 1:12 ran along exactly those lines: 'I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas'. Paul answers by naming what he preached and refusing to dress it up. 'For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God' (1:18). A crucified Messiah offended the two audiences in the city for opposite reasons, 'unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness' (1:23). Paul says he made that offense his whole subject: 'For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified' (2:2). He also says his preaching came with something the orators could not manufacture, 'in demonstration of the Spirit and of power' (2:4). The rulers of the age missed what they were doing, 'for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory' (2:8), a title that says who was on the cross.

1 Corinthians 1:18 · 1 Corinthians 1:23 · 1 Corinthians 2:2

The congregation is God's building, and it is holy

Paul changes the picture three times in one chapter and each picture takes authority out of human hands. 'I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase' (3:6). The people themselves are the work: 'ye are God’s husbandry, God’s building' (3:9). Then the building turns out to be a sanctuary. 'Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?' (3:16), and the warning that follows is the sharpest in the letter, 'If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye' (3:17). The temple language is corporate first and personal second, and by chapter 6 it has become both: 'know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price' (6:19-20). Everything the letter says about sexual holiness, lawsuits, and the treatment of the poor at the supper follows from those two sentences.

1 Corinthians 3:9 · 1 Corinthians 3:16 · 1 Corinthians 6:19

Rights laid down for the sake of a weaker brother

The middle of the letter runs one argument across three chapters. The Corinthians had written about meat that had passed through a pagan temple, and their answer was already drafted: 'We know that we all have knowledge' (8:1). Paul agrees with the knowledge and refuses the conclusion, because 'Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth' (8:1). Then he spends a whole chapter on himself as the example. He had every apostolic right, including support, and he cites Deuteronomy for it: 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn' (9:9), and the Lord's own instruction, 'Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel' (9:14). He took none of it, and worked with his hands instead (4:12). Chapter 10 sets the limit on the other side. Freedom stops where a table belongs to something else: 'Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons' (10:21). Inside that limit the rule is plain, 'Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question' (10:25).

1 Corinthians 8:1 · 1 Corinthians 9:14 · 1 Corinthians 10:21

One Spirit, many gifts, and one body

Chapters 12 to 14 are the fullest teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in Scripture, and they were written to a church that had plenty of them and was using them badly. Paul answers the disorder by teaching them how the gifts work and then telling them to want more of them. He begins with the test that sorts the Spirit from every other spirit: 'no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit' (12:3). Then the pattern: 'Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit' (12:4), and the purpose, 'to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal' (12:7). The distribution belongs to God alone, 'dividing to each one severally even as he will' (12:11), which is why no member may be envied and none despised. The body image runs the point home, 'the body is not one member, but many' (12:14), and 'the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee' (12:21). Paul lists what God set in the church at 12:28, apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, and kinds of tongues, and he tells the Corinthians to want more of it: 'desire earnestly the greater gifts' (12:31). This site teaches the gifts as given for the whole interval Paul describes, the interval of a church 'waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1:7), and it teaches the apostle's own closing command as it stands, 'desire earnestly to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues' (14:39).

1 Corinthians 12:4 · 1 Corinthians 12:11 · 1 Corinthians 12:31 · 1 Corinthians 14:39

Love, and what happens to knowledge in the end

Chapter 13 sits inside the teaching on the gifts and governs how they are used. Paul puts the most spectacular gifts on one side of a scale and love on the other, and the scale does not move: tongues of men and of angels without love make 'sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal' (13:1), and prophecy with all mysteries and all knowledge and mountain-moving faith without love comes to 'I am nothing' (13:2). Then he compares durations. Prophecies will be done away, tongues will cease, knowledge will be done away, and 'Love never faileth' (13:8). The reason lies in what the gifts were made to be. They are partial by design, 'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part' (13:9), and the partial gives way when the whole arrives. Paul names the moment in the next breath: 'For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known' (13:12). That is sight of Christ, and it is what chapter 13 is measuring everything against.

1 Corinthians 13:1 · 1 Corinthians 13:8 · 1 Corinthians 13:12

The resurrection, and why everything rests on it

Some at Corinth were saying there is no resurrection of the dead, and Paul treats that as a claim about Christ. He hands them the oldest summary of the gospel in the New Testament, then works out what its denial would cost. 'if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain' (15:14), and worse, 'your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins' (15:17), and finally 'we are of all men most pitiable' (15:19). Against that he sets the fact and its consequence: 'But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep' (15:20). Firstfruits is a harvest word and it carries a promise about the rest of the field, which 15:23 spells out by putting the risen Christ first in an order that has a second stage still to come, at his coming. The chapter ends with death itself under sentence, 'The last enemy that shall be abolished is death' (15:26), and with the only practical instruction that could follow: 'always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord' (15:58).

1 Corinthians 15:14 · 1 Corinthians 15:20 · 1 Corinthians 15:26 · 1 Corinthians 15:58

Christ in 1 Corinthians

TypologyOur passover has been sacrificed. Paul is telling the church to deal with sin in its own body, and he reaches for Passover to say why. Leaven had to be cleared out of every Israelite house before the lamb was eaten, so 'Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ' (5:7). The tense matters. The sacrifice is done, the house is already clean in principle, and the sweeping out is the church catching up with what is true of it. Every part of the feast is claimed here at once: the lamb, the blood that turned the destroyer aside, and the week of unleavened bread that followed. 1 Corinthians 5:7
TypologyThe rock was Christ. Chapter 10 takes the wilderness generation as a warning and says who was with them. They passed through the sea, they ate the manna, 'and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ' (10:4). Paul reads Israel's history as history, with Christ himself present in it. The one now preached in Corinth is the one who supplied Israel in the desert, and that is why their fall stands as a real warning to Gentile believers: 'these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come' (10:11). The Scriptures of Israel are addressed to the church without being taken away from Israel. 1 Corinthians 10:4
ProphecyAccording to the scriptures, twice over. The creed Paul hands on at 15:3-8 says two things happened as the prophets had said. 'For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures' (15:3), 'and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures' (15:4). Then it lists the appearances: 'he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve' (15:5), 'then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now' (15:6), 'then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles' (15:7), and last 'as to the child untimely born, he appeared to me also' (15:8). Paul says he received it, which places its wording earlier than the letter and earlier than his own preaching in Corinth. Gary Habermas has built much of his case for the resurrection on that fact, on the strength of the creed's age and its named living witnesses (The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 2003), and Lee Strobel put the same evidence in front of a general readership in The Case for Christ (1998). 1 Corinthians 15:3
TypologyThe last Adam. Paul answers the question about the resurrection body by putting two men side by side, and the second one is a title for Christ that appears nowhere else. 'So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit' (15:45). Adam received life; Christ gives it. The two men explain the two outcomes of 15:22, 'For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'. This is why the resurrection body is described as sown and raised rather than repaired: 'it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body' (15:44). Humanity has a second head, and what happened to him on the third day is the pattern for everyone joined to him. 1 Corinthians 15:45
QuotationDeath swallowed up, in the words of the prophets. At the end of the resurrection chapter Paul quotes two prophets and lets them finish the argument. Isaiah 25:8 says of God, 'He hath swallowed up death for ever'; Paul writes 'then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory' (15:54). Hosea 13:14 taunts the grave, 'O death, where are thy plagues? O Sheol, where is thy destruction?'; Paul writes 'O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?' (15:55). His wording differs from the ASV rendering of the Hebrew at both points, because he is following the Greek text his readers used. The point of the quotations is that the resurrection of Christ is what the prophets of Israel were promised, and the promise is kept to them and to the church together. 1 Corinthians 15:54

The Argument

the whole letter in three sentences

Author: Paul, with Sosthenes as co-sender (1:1)
Date: c. AD 53–56, from Ephesus
Occasion: a divisions report + the Corinthians' own letter of questions
Shape: 16 chapters · 2 halves · 6 “now concerning” markers

1
The cross of a crucified Messiah is God's own wisdom and power, and it is the standard against which every Corinthian dysfunction is measured, not eloquence, not status, not even spiritual gifts rightly exercised.
2
Chapters 1–6 answer what Paul has heard reported: factions built around teachers' names, a tolerated case of incest, and believers dragging each other into pagan courts.
3
Chapters 7–16 answer what the Corinthians themselves asked, question by question, until the letter arrives at the one fact none of it survives without: if Christ is not raised, none of it matters (ch. 15).

Where 1 Corinthians Points to Christ

four lines the letter will not let you skip past

Christ Crucified: the Wisdom and Power of God1 Corinthians 1:23–24, 30

The letter's Christological center of gravity: not a triumphalist Christ but a crucified one, and that scandal is the wisdom that saves. Every later Corinthian problem, factions, pride in knowledge, abuse of gifts, is a symptom of measuring maturity by worldly categories instead of by a crucified Messiah.

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Our Passover, Sacrificed1 Corinthians 5:6–8

“Purge out the old leaven… for our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.” Paul reads Exodus 12's unleavened-bread ritual directly onto congregational holiness, the Corinthians' toleration of gross sin becomes a Passover-calendar violation, not merely a disciplinary lapse.

The Rock That Followed Them1 Corinthians 10:4

“They drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.” One of the most striking pre-existence claims in Paul. The wilderness-era rock of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 was Christ, present and active in Israel's history centuries before the incarnation.

The Last Adam1 Corinthians 15:45–47

Adam brought “a living soul”; Christ, “a life-giving spirit.” The Adam-Christ contrast Paul develops fully in Romans 5 is compressed here into the resurrection-body argument, the same last-Adam vocabulary that grounds “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” three verses earlier.

Open the door →

Themes

six load-bearing lines through the letter

The cross overturning worldly wisdom

1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16

“The word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God.” Paul deliberately rejects eloquence and status as the measure of spiritual maturity, the interpretive key for the whole letter.

One body, many members

1 Corinthians 12:12–27

Paul's most developed body metaphor in the corpus, grounding both the diversity and interdependence of gifts and the impossibility of factionalism: “the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee.”

Love as the frame for every gift

1 Corinthians 13:1–13

Not sentiment but the defining how of every exercise of charisma. Nine occurrences of agapē in thirteen verses; gifts without it profit nothing.

The bodily resurrection as the gospel's center

1 Corinthians 15:1–58

“If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain” (15:14). Paul roots this in eyewitness testimony, including “above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now.”

Liberty bounded by love, not license

1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient.” Widely read as a Corinthian slogan Paul quotes back and qualifies, not an unqualified claim of his own.

The holiness of the body

1 Corinthians 6:13–20; 15:35–49

Against a spiritualizing dualism that treated the body as morally irrelevant, Paul insists the body itself is bought, indwelt, and destined for resurrection.

The Gifts of the Spirit

chapters 12 to 14, and what the letter does with them

Paul spends three chapters on the gifts. He lists them (ch. 12), sets love over them (ch. 13), and gives the assembly a working order for them (ch. 14). He regulates them because they are in use, and he closes the argument with a command: “forbid not to speak with tongues” (14:39).

The body needs every gift1 Corinthians 12:4–31

One Spirit distributes wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues and interpretation, “dividing to each one severally even as he will” (12:11). The body figure carries the argument: a church that silences a gift is a body telling a member it has no need of it (12:21).

Paul dates the end himself1 Corinthians 13:8–12

Prophecy, tongues and knowledge end when “that which is perfect is come.” Paul defines that three verses later: “then face to face; then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known” (13:12). No reader knows as he is known this side of the resurrection. The letter opens the same way, with a church that comes behind in no gift while it waits “for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:7).

The order Paul gives the meeting1 Corinthians 14:1–40

The disorder at Corinth was real, and Paul answers it with a chapter of regulation: two or three at most, each in turn, tongues interpreted, prophets judged, everything measured by whether the church is built up. The chapter ends with “let all things be done decently and in order” (14:40) standing beside “forbid not to speak with tongues.”

This site's tradition: Wesleyan-Pentecostal, teaching the gifts of ch. 12 as the church's present possession. Wesley's Explanatory Notes read them as ongoing. Derek Prince taught tongues as the initial evidence of Spirit-baptism and as a lasting practice of prayer and edification (14:4), and Kenneth Hagin taught the same evidence with his own emphasis. Smith Wigglesworth's healing ministry is a modern instance of the “gifts of healings” named in 12:9. John Piper holds that no New Testament text puts an end date on any of them.

Author: Paul, with Sosthenes (1:1)
Date: c. AD 55, from Ephesus
Audience: The church at Corinth: a gifted, factious, morally compromised congregation

As the earliest witnesses report them; positions and holders under Who Wrote It.

The world behind this book

The book of 1 Corinthians

Where

Written from Ephesus near the end of Paul's three years there, and carried about 250 miles across the Aegean to be read aloud in the house churches of Corinth.

The history, and what it meant to them

The history

Corinth was a brand-new old city. Rome burned the Greek town to the ground in 146 BC and left the site mostly empty for a hundred years. Julius Caesar refounded it in 44 BC and filled it with freed slaves and retired soldiers - people with no family name to trade on, building status from scratch.

Its money came from its geography. Corinth sat on the narrow neck of land joining southern Greece to the mainland, with a harbor on each side, and crews hauled smaller ships overland on a paved trackway rather than risk the storms around the cape. Cargo, cash, and travelers from all over the Mediterranean passed through. Every second year the city hosted the Isthmian Games, second in fame only to the Olympics - which is why Paul writes to these people about runners, boxers, and a wreath that withers.

The city's name was a byword. Greeks had a verb, 'to Corinthianize,' that simply meant to live loosely, and the temple of Aphrodite stood on the mountain above the town. Ancient reports of a thousand temple prostitutes there describe the older Greek city and may well overstate the Roman one Paul knew - but a wealthy port with shrines on every street was still the world these believers had only just walked out of.

The dates here are unusually firm. A stone found at Delphi names Gallio as Rome's governor of Achaia in about AD 51-52 - the same Gallio who threw the charges against Paul out of court in Acts 18. That single inscription anchors the timeline for nearly all of Paul's letters.

What it meant to them

For the people who first heard this read out loud, the letter was a mirror. They were proud of being spiritual - proud of their favorite teachers, their knowledge, their tongues - and Paul answered by pointing at a Messiah Rome had executed and telling them that was their wisdom. Every item on their complaint list got measured against that.

It also told them their bodies mattered. In a port city that treated the body as disposable, Paul said theirs had been bought, were now God's own sanctuary, and would one day be raised. And he told a gifted, quarreling church that without love the most impressive gift in the room is only noise.

Sources cited

F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Strabo, Geography
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Whole Bible

Every work MannaFest builds on →

Who Wrote It, and When

Author: Paul names himself in the first line and signs the last page in his own handwriting. The letter opens 'Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother' (1:1), and near the close he writes 'The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand' (16:21). The body of the letter is full of things only the founder of that church could say, and it argues with people he knows by name. No serious question about the authorship of 1 Corinthians has ever gained a following, and the external evidence is unusually early.
Date: This letter can be dated more tightly than almost anything else Paul wrote, because a stone found at Delphi fixes one point in Acts. Paul writes from Ephesus: 'But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost' (16:8), and he sends greetings from that province, 'The churches of Asia salute you' (16:19). Acts places that Ephesian stay after the eighteen months at Corinth that ended under the proconsul Gallio. The Delphi inscription puts Gallio in office in AD 51 to 52, which sets Paul in Corinth around AD 50 to 52 and this letter in the middle of the Ephesian years that followed.
Audience: The letter is addressed 'unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints' (1:2). Corinth was a Roman colony refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC on the ruins of the Greek city Rome had destroyed a century before, and by Paul's day it was the capital of the province of Achaia, sitting on the neck of land that carried the traffic of two seas. The congregation was mixed in every direction. Paul reminds them 'that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called' (1:26), which concedes that some were. The names in the letters cover the range: Crispus the synagogue ruler (Acts 18:8), Gaius who hosted the whole church, Erastus the city treasurer (Romans 16:23), Stephanas whose household was 'the firstfruits of Achaia' (16:15), and the slaves and freedmen assumed throughout chapter 7.
Occasion: Two streams of news reached Paul in Ephesus and the letter answers both. The first was spoken. 'For it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, that there are contentions among you' (1:11), and the same channel carried the report of 5:1, 'It is actually reported that there is fornication among you'. The second was written. Five times Paul takes up a heading with the words 'Now concerning', at 7:1, 7:25, 8:1, 12:1, and 16:1, each one turning to a question the Corinthians had put to him in a letter of their own. He had already written to them once before this, 'I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators' (5:9), and that earlier letter has not survived. So 1 Corinthians is the second letter of at least four that passed between Paul and this church, answering a report about how they were behaving and a list of questions about what they should do.

The Years of 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians timeline

146 BC
Rome destroys Greek Corinth under Lucius Mummius; the site lies largely empty for a century.
44 BC
Julius Caesar refounds Corinth as a Roman colony; it becomes the capital of the province of Achaia and one of the busiest ports in the empire.
c. AD 49
Claudius orders the Jews out of Rome, which sends Aquila and Priscilla to Corinth, where Paul finds them (Acts 18:2).
c. AD 50-52
Paul spends a year and six months in Corinth founding the church (Acts 18:11); Crispus the synagogue ruler believes.
AD 51-52
Gallio serves as proconsul of Achaia and refuses to hear the case against Paul; the Delphi inscription fixes the date.
1 Corinthians 1:2
c. AD 52-55
Paul works at Ephesus for more than two years (Acts 19:10); the Corinthian correspondence runs across the sea between them.
before this letter
Paul writes an earlier letter to Corinth about keeping no company with fornicators; it has not survived.
1 Corinthians 5:9
c. AD 54-55
1 Corinthians is written from Ephesus, answering the report from Chloe's household and the church's own written questions.
1 Corinthians 16:8
c. AD 56
2 Corinthians follows after a further exchange, including a painful visit and a severe letter.
c. AD 96
Clement of Rome writes to Corinth and tells the church to take up Paul's letter, recalling the parties of 1:12.
c. AD 200
Papyrus 46 is copied, carrying 1 Corinthians nearly complete and in the order it still has.

Original Language

ten words that carry the letter's argument

σοφία

sophia

wisdom: the organizing polarity of chs. 1–3

χάρισμα

charisma

grace-gift: the Spirit's distributed enablements (ch. 12)

γλῶσσα

glōssa

tongue: affirmed (14:5, 18, 39) yet subordinated to intelligibility and love

ἀγάπη

agapē

love: the interpretive frame for every gift (ch. 13)

ἀνάστασις

anastasis

resurrection: ch. 15's keyword; bodily rising, never mere survival of the soul

σῶμα

sōma

body: the church-as-body metaphor and the literal resurrection body, never merely figurative

ναός

naos

sanctuary, the inner shrine: “ye are a temple of God” (3:16), “your body is a temple” (6:19)

πάσχα

pascha

Passover: “Christ our passover… hath been sacrificed” (5:7)

πέτρα

petra

rock: “the rock was Christ” (10:4)

κεφαλή

kephalē

head: the contested word behind the headship chain (11:3)

Further Reading on 1 Corinthianswith the work named

John Calvinpublic domain

Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians

Covers the full letter; strongest on the wisdom-versus-cross polarity of chs. 1–2, and on the election-language of 1:26–29, where God's deliberate choice of the unimpressive is read as of a piece with the cross itself.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brownpublic domain

Commentary on the Whole Bible

Concise, citation-dense, cross-reference-heavy: a strong second public-domain voice on nearly every verse, especially the headship material of 11:2–16.

Matthew Henrypublic domain

Commentary on the Whole Bible

Devotional-expository strength on the practical sections: the body as temple (6:19–20), the Table and head coverings (ch. 11), the hymn to love (ch. 13).

John Wesleypublic domain

Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament

Brief, practical notes; a useful Arminian-holiness counterweight on the disciplined-athlete passage of ch. 9 and on the ongoing-gifts reading of ch. 12.

Charles Spurgeonpublic domain

the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit sermons on 1 Corinthians

Preached repeatedly on “Christ crucified… the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1:23–24), on love, and above all on the resurrection, a text he returned to often.

Chuck Missler (the founder's formative teacher)brief quote

the Koinonia House teaching catalog

His integrated-design, structural-marker method fits the letter's “now concerning” topic-markers directly, and his Christ-typology lens fits the Passover (5:7) and Rock (10:4) connections especially well.

John Piperbrief quote

Desiring God essays and the Look at the Book series

Reformed continuationism on chs. 12–14: he holds that no New Testament text puts an end date on the gifts, and teaches prophecy and tongues as gifts the church still has.

Derek Princebrief quote

his teaching on the gifts of the Spirit

Classical-Pentecostal articulation of tongues as both initial evidence and an ongoing personal-edification and intercession practice (14:4).

Kenneth Haginbrief quote

his Word-of-Faith teaching on the gifts

Tongues-as-initial-evidence, a contrasting emphasis alongside Prince within the same continuationist camp.

Smith Wigglesworthbrief quote

his documented healing ministry

One of the most extraordinary bearers of healing-gift anointing in the 20th century, a historical instance of 12:9's “gifts of healings.”

John Beverebrief quote

The Fear of the Lord (1997)

The honor and reverence framework applies directly to the Corinthians' casual treatment of church discipline (ch. 5) and of the Lord's Table (11:27–30, “eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself”).

Lee Strobelbrief quote

The Case for Christ (1998)

The “minimal facts” resurrection apologetic: crucifixion, empty tomb, post-resurrection appearances, rise of belief, the natural modern companion to Paul's own eyewitness list in 15:5–8.

C. S. Lewisbrief quote

Mere Christianity (1952)

The “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” trilemma: a philosophical complement to the forensic case, useful for ch. 15's resurrection-and-identity-of-Christ thread.

Eric Metaxasbrief quote

Miracles (2014)

A testimonial and philosophical case for the supernatural, including resurrection-historicity.

Within a tier, All voices are equal: Missler and Spurgeon are through-lines but never elevated above their tier.

Contested Points

the positions, and who holds each

Head coverings (11:2–16): a permanent command or a first-century cultural sign?

The permanent-command reading

Some conservative traditions (portions of the Reformed Presbyterian and Anabaptist/Mennonite/Amish streams) retain literal head-covering practice as a transcultural apostolic ordinance, grounded in the creation order Paul cites (11:8–9).

The cultural-application reading (the modern-evangelical majority)

The underlying principle: a divinely ordered relationship expressed as headship (kephalē) between God, Christ, man, and woman, is permanent, but the specific sign of that order (a veil marking a married Corinthian woman's respectability) was time- and culture-bound, not binding in the same form today.

Where the readings meet: Two cruxes keep this genuinely unresolved rather than adjudicated: whether kephalē in Koine usage primarily means “authority over” or “source of” drives much of the disagreement, and 11:10's “because of the angels” is among the most difficult interpretive puzzles in the New Testament, proposed readings run from angels as witnesses of proper order, to angels as onlookers echoing a Genesis 6 Watchers frame, to a symbol of the woman's own delegated authority. Presented here as open, not settled.

Women speaking in the assembly (14:34–35), held together with 11:5

The tension the text itself creates

Three chapters earlier, 11:5 plainly assumes that women do pray and prophesy in the gathered assembly, Paul regulates how they do it rather than whether. That makes a flat “total silence” reading of 14:34 internally inconsistent with the same letter, unless the two passages are addressing two different situations. Any responsible reading has to account for both verses, not just the one it prefers.

The harmonizing options, presented at full strength

Three serious proposals: (a) 14:34 restricts one specific disruptive behavior, wives interrupting mid-service to question their own husbands, which is exactly what 14:35's “let them ask their own husbands at home” addresses, rather than prophecy or prayer as such; (b) 14:34 restricts the authoritative weighing and judging of prophecy in particular, harmonizing with 1 Tim 2:12's teaching-and-authority language while leaving Spirit-led prophetic speech untouched; (c) a minority of critical scholars, notably Gordon Fee, argue these two verses are a later scribal interpolation, pointing to the manuscripts that place them after v. 40 rather than after v. 33, a genuine text-critical dispute, not merely an interpretive one.

Where the readings meet: Held open. The roster's voices on marriage and sexuality lean complementarian in general, but none of them address 14:34–35 by name, so the harmonizing options are presented at full strength here rather than forcing a ruling the sources do not supply. What is not open: 11:5 stands, and any reading that erases it has stopped reading the letter.

Baptism for the dead (15:29)

Literal vicarious baptism (the majority critical-scholarly reading)

Some Corinthians were being baptized on behalf of already-deceased relatives, and Paul cites the practice as an ad hominem argument for the resurrection (“else what shall they do…?”) without necessarily endorsing its theology.

Non-vicarious readings

“For the dead” taken as “for the sake of our own future dead bodies.” Ordinary baptism undertaken in hope of resurrection, or a metaphorical “dying and rising” reading tied to Romans 6. Scholars have catalogued thirty to forty distinct proposed interpretations historically.

Where the readings meet: The verse functions in Paul's argument as evidence that even the letter's addressees implicitly believed in a future resurrection, not as a warrant for any ongoing sacramental practice. A modern appropriation worth naming honestly: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practices literal proxy baptism for deceased ancestors, drawing directly on the literal reading of this verse.

Background

the city under the letter: and the stone that dates it

The Gallio inscription: where Paul's calendar gets nailed down

A fragmentary stone from Delphi, published by Émile Bourguet in 1905, records the emperor Claudius writing about Gallio as proconsul of Achaia, and it dates his proconsulship to AD 51–52. Acts 18:12–17 puts Paul before that same Gallio at Corinth. One inscription therefore fixes a single year in Paul's life to within months, and every other date in the Pauline chronology is measured out from it, including the composition of this letter a few years later from Ephesus. It is the closest thing the New Testament has to a datestamp.

The Isthmian Games: the illustration his readers had watched

The games were held near Corinth, and when Paul writes of running to attain, of disciplining the body, and of a perishable crown against an imperishable one (9:24–27), he is reaching for a spectacle his readers had stood and watched. The image is not a generic athletic metaphor dropped in from a distance; it is audience-local, and it lands harder if you know they had seen the wreath handed out.

A city of freedmen, and the status anxiety it bred

Rome destroyed Greek Corinth in 146 BC and Julius Caesar refounded it a century later, repopulating it largely with freedmen and veterans. That produced an unusually mobile, unusually status-anxious civic culture: a city of people whose rank was recent and therefore worth defending. Read the letter against that backdrop and its obsessions stop looking random. The jockeying behind teachers' names (chs. 1–4), the boasting, and the Lord's Table abuses of 11:17–34 (where wealthier members apparently ate ahead of and apart from poorer ones) are all the same social reflex, carried unexamined into the church.

Acrocorinth, and a caution about the usual story

The temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth is the background most often cited for the letter's sexual-ethics material (chs. 5–7), usually with a striking figure for temple prostitutes attached. That scale is likely overstated for the Roman period, and MannaFest will not lean on it. The wider point does not need it: Corinth's proverbial reputation for sexual license is well attested quite independently of any temple-cult arithmetic.

A related caution: the Erastus pavement inscription near the Corinth theatre is often connected to the city treasurer Paul names in Rom 16:23, written from Corinth. The identification is plausible and widely made, but it is genuinely debated among archaeologists: the inscription's date and Paul's visit are close but contested. Noted here as regional corroboration only, not as a settled datapoint.

Drafted from MannaFest's research brief on 1 Corinthians, public-domain commentators (Calvin, JFB, Henry, Wesley, Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit corpus) and the founder's approved-voices roster, with modern voices briefly quoted.

The Book’s Shape

Love set in the middle of the teaching on the gifts (12:1 to 14:40)

proposed structure

AThe gifts introduced: one Spirit, many manifestations, one body12:1-31
XLove, without which the gifts are noise and their bearer is nothing13:1-13
A'The gifts regulated: prophecy above tongues, everything for edifying, all things in order14:1-40

Mapped by the arrangement noted across commentary on the letter and argued in detail by Gordon D. Fee (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, 1987), who reads chapter 13 as the necessary center rather than an interruption.

Paul's own example set inside the question about idol food (8:1 to 11:1)

proposed structure

AKnowledge about idols, and the brother it can wound8:1-13
XPaul's rights as an apostle, every one of them laid down9:1-27
A'The wilderness warning, the table of the Lord, and how to eat in Corinth10:1-11:1

Mapped by the structure of 8:1-11:1 as read by Gordon D. Fee (1987) and Anthony C. Thiselton (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2000), who take chapter 9 as the worked example rather than a digression.

Key Words, with Doors

The Hard Questions, Honestly

The places a careful reader stops, with the readings named and their holders.

What is 'that which is perfect' in 13:10?

Paul says prophecies will be done away, tongues will cease, and knowledge will be done away, 'but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away' (13:10). He does not leave the reader to guess what the perfect thing is.

The evidence, and the readings

He defines the time two verses later by what will be different about seeing and knowing: 'For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known' (13:12). Nothing available in this age answers that description. A mirror gives way to a face, and partial knowledge gives way to knowing as God knows the knower, so the horizon of the sentence is the sight of Christ himself. The gifts are the equipment of a church that is still 'waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1:7), and the apostle's last word on the subject is a command rather than a countdown: 'desire earnestly to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues' (14:39). This site teaches the gifts of the Spirit as given for today, at full strength, exactly as chapters 12 to 14 describe them. The two readings below both take Paul's own definition in 13:12 and differ only over how finely to distinguish the moment.

The perfect is the return of Christ and the sight of him face to face
held by the plain force of 13:12 read with 1:7 and 15:23; Chrysostom, who took the 'then' of 13:12 as the age to come (Homilies on First Corinthians, 4th century); John Calvin, who held that the perfection in view is not reached in this life (Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 1546, English translation by John Pringle, 1848); and Gordon D. Fee, who argues the case at length from Paul's eschatology (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1987)
The perfect is the completed state after the resurrection of the dead
held by readers who tie 13:10 to the argument of chapter 15 rather than to the moment of Christ's appearing, so that the partial ends when the mortal puts on immortality (15:54)
The two readings sit within hours of each other in Paul's own sequence at 15:23 and 15:52, and neither one gives the church a point in its own history at which the Spirit stops giving what 12:11 says he divides as he wills.

Prophecy as a Gift Today →

What does 14:34-35 mean, when 11:5 has women prophesying?

Three chapters earlier Paul regulates the dress of 'every woman praying or prophesying' (11:5) in the assembly, which assumes she is doing both out loud where the church can hear her. Then at 14:34 he writes 'let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law', and at 14:35, 'let them ask their own husbands at home'. The passage sits in the middle of instructions about the orderly weighing of prophecy, where 14:29 has already told the prophets to speak by turns 'and let the others discern', and it is followed immediately by a sharp question aimed at Corinth: 'What? was it from you that the word of God went forth? or came it unto you alone?' (14:36). Honored teachers read the passage differently and each reading is set out below on its own terms. This site's own tradition has for two centuries recognized women in public ministry, from John Wesley authorizing women preachers, through the twelve elders at Azusa Street of whom six were women, to the Assemblies of God lifting its restrictions in 1935, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Kenneth Hagin's The Woman Question (1975).

The instruction addresses a specific disruption in that congregation
held by Ben Witherington III (Conflict and Community in Corinth, 1995) and Craig S. Keener (Paul, Women and Wives, 1992), who read the silence as directed at questions interrupting the weighing of prophecy, consistent with 11:5 and with the rebuke of 14:36
On this reading 'speak' at 14:34 carries the sense the surrounding paragraph gives it, speech that cuts across the order Paul is establishing, which is the same restraint he lays on tongues-speakers at 14:28 and on prophets at 14:30.
The two verses entered the text from a marginal note
held by Philip B. Payne (Man and Woman, One in Christ, 2009) and Gordon D. Fee (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1987), arguing from the Western manuscripts that carry the verses after 14:40 and from marks in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Fuldensis
No surviving Greek manuscript omits the verses altogether, which is the weight on the other side of this argument and is why it has not carried the field.
The instruction is a standing rule about order and authority in the assembly
held by D. A. Carson ('Silent in the Churches', in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 1991) and Wayne Grudem, reading 14:34-35 alongside 1 Timothy 2:11-12; Derek Prince treats the question at length in Women In The Church (Derek Prince Ministries teaching series), which is where a reader should go for his teaching in his own words

Women in Ministry→

When Paul says 'not the Lord' at 7:12, is that part uninspired?

In chapter 7 Paul marks his sources. On divorce between two believers he says 'I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord' (7:10), because Jesus had taught on it. On the marriage of a believer to an unbeliever he says 'But to the rest say I, not the Lord' (7:12), because Jesus had not addressed that case. On unmarried women he says 'I have no commandment of the Lord: but I give my judgment' (7:25). The distinction is about whether a saying of Jesus already covers the question, and Paul closes the chapter claiming the Spirit for his own ruling anyway: 'I think that I also have the Spirit of God' (7:40). He states the standing of the whole letter without qualification at 14:37, telling anyone who claims to be a prophet or spiritual to recognize that what he writes are 'the commandment of the Lord'.

Paul is distinguishing a saying of Jesus from an apostolic ruling, and both are inspired
held by the reading of 7:40 and 14:37 taken together, held across the Christian tradition from the early commentators onward
Paul is marking a lower level of authority for his own opinion
held by commentators who press 7:25 as a personal judgment offered rather than commanded
The difficulty for this reading is 14:37, where Paul places what he writes in the category of the Lord's commandment without exempting chapter 7, and 7:40, where he claims the Spirit for the very ruling he had introduced as his own judgment.

All Scripture Is God-Breathed→

What is baptism for the dead in 15:29?

In the middle of arguing that the dead are raised, Paul makes a passing appeal to a practice he does not explain: 'Else what shall they do that are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?' (15:29). It is the only mention in Scripture. Two features of the sentence are worth holding steady. Paul writes about 'they' rather than 'we' or 'you', so he is describing somebody's practice without endorsing it, and his point is an argument from inconsistency: whatever these people are doing assumes a future for the dead. The verse defines no rite and commands nothing, and the honest position is that the practice behind it is unrecovered.

Some at Corinth were being baptized on behalf of dead relatives, and Paul argues from the inconsistency without approving it
held by the plain sense of the Greek preposition and the third person 'they', held by many commentators ancient and modern
The phrase means baptism with the dead in view, that is, converts taking the place of believers who have died
held by readers who take the preposition in the sense of 'for the sake of' and point to the ordinary practice of a church burying its own and gaining new members
The phrase describes baptism undertaken because of the witness of Christians who died
held by commentators who read the preposition causally, connecting it to the deathbed testimony of believers

The Resurrection Chapter→

Are the head-covering instructions of 11:2-16 binding today?

Paul grounds the practice in an order he traces upward, 'the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God' (11:3), then in creation, then in a reason nobody has fully explained: 'for this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels' (11:10). Michael S. Heiser has argued that the reference is to watching spiritual beings rather than to human messengers or to church officers (The Unseen Realm, 2015), and the phrase is the strongest evidence that more is happening in a Christian assembly than the people present can see. Paul ends the paragraph without a rule for the whole world: 'if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God' (11:16). What that sentence concedes is where the disagreement lies.

The covering was the local sign of a permanent order, and the order binds rather than the cloth
held by the majority reading across the tradition, taking 11:3 and the creation argument as the substance and the veil as the first-century form of it
The covering itself is commanded and should be practiced
held by churches that have kept the practice unbroken, including much of the Eastern tradition and the plain-dress Anabaptist churches, reading 11:16 as closing debate rather than relaxing the rule
The passage concerns hair rather than a fabric veil
held by interpreters who read 11:15 as supplying the covering itself, 'if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her', so that the instruction is about how hair was worn in public

Head Coverings→

Is 1 Corinthians one letter?

Paul mentions a previous letter of his own at 5:9, and it has not survived, so the correspondence with Corinth was larger than the two letters in the canon. That fact has led some to ask whether pieces of the lost letter, or of others, were later stitched into what we now read, with 6:12-20 and 10:1-22 the passages most often named. The manuscripts give the theory nothing to work with. Every witness that carries 1 Corinthians carries it in this order and this shape, back to a copy made around AD 200, and the letter's own seams are visible and explainable: the report from Chloe's household governs chapters 1 to 6, and the five headings beginning 'Now concerning' govern chapters 7 to 16.

One letter, written at one time
held by the unanimous manuscript tradition, the letter's traceable structure, and the great majority of commentators including Gordon D. Fee (1987) and Anthony C. Thiselton (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2000)
A compilation of two or more letters
held by a stream of twentieth-century criticism, most often assigning 6:12-20 or 10:1-22 to the letter named at 5:9
The proposals have never agreed with one another on where the seams fall, and none of them can point to a manuscript that shows the letter in any other arrangement.

1 Corinthians, argued in full→

The Text and the Spade

Papyrus 46 (Chester Beatty II)c. AD 200
The oldest substantial copy of Paul's letters and the earliest witness to this one, carrying 1 Corinthians almost entire. Its text is close to the later great codices, which is the plainest evidence that the letter was not rearranged in the second century. It carries 14:34-35 in the position the printed text gives them.
Codex Sinaiticus4th century
A complete New Testament on parchment, giving 1 Corinthians in full and agreeing with P46 in every part of the letter that bears on its structure. Where it differs from Vaticanus the differences are the ordinary small ones of spelling and word order.
Codex Vaticanus4th century
The other great fourth-century witness, and the manuscript at the center of one modern argument. Philip B. Payne drew attention to a pair of marginal dots beside 14:34 and read them as a scribe's note of a textual variant (New Testament Studies 41, 1995); Curt Niccum answered that the marks cannot bear that weight and that the external evidence favors the verses (New Testament Studies 43, 1997). The manuscript itself contains the verses.
Codex Claromontanus and the bilingual Western copies6th century and later
Claromontanus, together with the Greek-Latin copies F and G and the Old Latin tradition, places 14:34-35 after 14:40 instead of after 14:33. The verses are present in all of them. A block of text that moves as a unit is the kind of thing that happens to a paragraph copied from a margin, which is the argument built on this evidence, and it is also the kind of thing that happens when a scribe finds an interruption awkward.
The citation in 1 Clementc. AD 96, from Rome to Corinth
A witness to the letter from outside the manuscript tradition, and an unusually good one, because it was sent to the same city about forty years later. Clement tells the Corinthians to 'Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle' and reminds them what he had written about their parties, which is the quarrel of 1:12. The letter was in Corinth, was known to be Paul's, and was still being read there within living memory of its arrival.

The Gallio inscription at Delphia letter of the emperor Claudius, dated by his imperial acclamations to AD 51 or 52
Fragments of a stone letter set up at Delphi name Lucius Junius Gallio as proconsul of Achaia, and the emperor's acclamation number dates it. This is the same Gallio before whom Paul was brought at Corinth in Acts 18:12, 'the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment-seat'. Proconsuls held office for a year, so the stone anchors Paul's eighteen months in Corinth to about AD 50 to 52 and this letter, written later from Ephesus, to the middle of that decade. It is the single most useful date in Pauline chronology.
The bema in the Corinthian forumbuilt in the mid-first century AD; excavated by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1896 onward
A monumental stone platform faced with marble stands in the middle of the forum, flanked by waiting rooms, where the Roman governor heard cases in the open air. The Greek word for it is the word Acts uses twice in the Gallio scene, rendered 'judgment-seat' at 18:12 and again at 18:17. The structure is still standing, and it is the place where the charge against Paul was thrown out.
The Erastus pavement inscriptionfound in 1929 near the theatre at Corinth; the paving is mid-first century AD
Large letters cut into a paving block record that Erastus laid the pavement at his own expense in return for his aedileship, a Roman city magistracy. Paul, writing to Rome from Corinth, sends greetings from 'Erastus the treasurer of the city' (Romans 16:23), and 1 Corinthians assumes members of that social level in the congregation (1:26). Whether the two are the same man is genuinely disputed, because the Greek title in Romans is not the ordinary equivalent of aedile; Justin Meggitt argued against the identification (Novum Testamentum, 1996) and others accept it on the grounds that Corinthian titles moved between Latin and Greek loosely. The stone proves at least that a man of that name and rank was paying for public works in Corinth in the right decade.
The macellum inscription from Corinth1st century AD; published by Henry J. Cadbury, 'The Macellum of Corinth' (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1934)
A Latin inscription from the excavations preserves the word macellum, the term for a Roman provision market, and the excavators identified a market building near the forum. The word behind the ASV's 'shambles' at 10:25 is the Greek form of that same Latin word: 'Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question'. The instruction is about a specific building in the city Paul was writing to, where meat from temple sacrifices was sold alongside every other kind, and the find puts the reader in the doorway of it.
The sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia and the biennial gamesthe sanctuary in use from the archaic period; the games administered by Roman Corinth in the 1st century AD
Corinth ran the Isthmian games, second in prestige only to Olympia, a few miles from the city. The athletic language of 9:24-27 is drawn straight from them: 'they that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize' (9:24), the training that 'exerciseth self-control in all things' (9:25), and above all the prize itself, 'a corruptible crown', because the Isthmian victor was crowned with a wreath of greenery that withered within days. Paul sets an incorruptible crown against a wreath his readers had watched go brown.
The temple of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth and the city's reputationStrabo's report (Geography 8.6.20) written c. AD 7 to 23, describing the Greek city destroyed in 146 BC; excavation of the summit sanctuary from 1926
Strabo reports that the temple of Aphrodite on the mountain above old Corinth owned more than a thousand temple slaves who served as prostitutes, and that their trade filled the city. The report is real and it is ancient, and it is the origin of Corinth's byword reputation, which stands behind the vice list of 6:9-11 and the warning of 6:15-16. Two things have to be said honestly beside it. Strabo is describing the Greek city Rome destroyed a century before Paul, and the sanctuary excavated on the Roman summit is small. Sarah Pomeroy and others have questioned how much institutional temple prostitution the sources really establish anywhere in the Greek world. What is not in question is the Roman colony's own character as a port city with two harbors, or the plain reading of what Paul says some of his readers had been: 'And such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified' (6:11).

The fable of the belly and the members, told by Menenius Agrippa

Romanthe story set in 494 BC, written down by Livy c. 27 to 9 BC (History of Rome 2.32) and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

The parallel

A senator ends a plebeian strike by telling a story: the parts of the body once resented the belly and refused to feed it, and then starved along with it. The moral is that the members of a community depend on one another and cannot dismiss the parts they resent. Paul uses the same picture at 12:14-26, 'the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee'.

Read honestly

A genuine parallel in imagery, and Corinth was a Roman colony where a Latin political fable would be at home. The use is turned around. Menenius told the story to keep the lower orders in their place and feeding the belly. Paul tells it to protect the members the congregation thought least honorable, insisting that God tempered the body together, 'giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked' (12:24), and that 'whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it' (12:26). The shared image makes the reversal visible rather than hiding it.

Invitations to dine at the table of a god, on papyrus from Oxyrhynchus

Greco-Roman Egypt2nd century AD (P.Oxy. I 110 and others of the same type)

The parallel

Short written invitations survive asking a guest to dine at the table of the lord Sarapis, in the god's precinct, on a named day at a named hour. They show that eating in a temple dining room was an ordinary social occasion with written invitations, exactly the situation behind the question the Corinthians asked about food sacrificed to idols in chapters 8 to 10.

Read honestly

Background rather than a literary source, and it is the background that makes the pastoral problem intelligible. Refusing such invitations cost a man his standing among friends and patrons, which is why the Corinthians wanted a ruling and why some argued from knowledge that an idol is nothing. Paul grants the argument about the idol and still forbids the temple table on other grounds, 'ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons' (10:21).

The Pulpit on 1 Corinthians

Confirming the Witness of Christ
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2875: “Confirming the Witness of Christ” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 1:6
Partnership With Christ
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2580: “Partnership With Christ” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 1:9
The Word of the Cross
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1611: “The Word of the Cross” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 1:18
Christ—The Power and Wisdom of God
The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 132: “Christ—The Power and Wisdom of God” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 1:24
Christ Crucified
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2673: “Christ Crucified” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 2:2
Distinguishing Grace
The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 262: “Distinguishing Grace” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 4:7
Purging Out the Leaven
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 965: “Purging Out the Leaven” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 5:6-8
A Marvelous Change
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2661: “A Marvelous Change” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles Spurgeon1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Where 1 Corinthians leads

The heaviest chapters, the distinctive words, and the studies that cite 1 Corinthians

1,776 cross-references flow out of its 5 heaviest chapters · 8 words are distinctively its own · 6 featured studies cite it.

Counted from this book's own cross-references, its words, and the studies that cite it.

Heaviest chapter

1 Corinthians 15Sends 549 cross-references outward: the most connected chapter in the book.

Distinctive word

μωρία“silliness, i.e. absurdity” (G3472): 5 of its 5 occurrences in all of Scripture fall in this book (100%).

φυσιόωto inflate6 of its 7 uses are in 1 Corinthians
ἈπολλῶςApollos7 of its 10 uses are in 1 Corinthians
μετέχωto share5 of its 8 uses are in 1 Corinthians
ἀνακρίνωto investigate10 of its 16 uses are in 1 Corinthians

Featured study

Second AdamCites 1 Corinthians directly, one of 6 featured studies that walk through this book.

Every study that reaches into 1 Corinthians

57 studies, grouped by shelf

The numeral beside each title is how many passages of 1 Corinthians that study works from.

Who Jesus Isthe whole shelf →

Christ Our Wisdom: Proverbs 8 and the Wisdom of God. MannaFest1×The Lamb — Revelation's Christology1×

Christ Hidden in the Old Testamentthe whole shelf →

The Bronze Serpent1×The Exodus — Redemption's Master-Type1×

The Types of Christ, One by Onethe whole shelf →

Firstfruits1×The Bride & the Jewish Wedding1×The Rock in the Wilderness1×

God, His Name and His Presencethe whole shelf →

The Shema — Hear, O Israel — Deuteronomy 6:4–51×The Trinity1×

The Life of Gracethe whole shelf →

Food Offered to Idols, MannaFest3×Unequally Yoked, MannaFest2×Made Holy1×Marriage, Singleness, and Divorce: 1 Corinthians 7, MannaFest1×

Life in the Spirit & the Churchthe whole shelf →

The Gifts of the Spirit — 1 Corinthians 12–145×Power Made Perfect in Weakness — 2 Corinthians 12:7–102×Baptism in the Holy Spirit — the Acts Evidence1×The Love Chapter — 1 Corinthians 131×

The Holy Spirit, Page by Pagethe whole shelf →

Prophecy as a Gift Today2×Who the Holy Spirit Is2×Speaking in Tongues1×Words of Knowledge & Wisdom1×

The Church and Her Practicethe whole shelf →

Discipline and Lawsuits, MannaFest2×Head Coverings, MannaFest1×Order in Worship, MannaFest1×The Church1×The Lord's Supper1×Women in Ministry, MannaFest1×

Revelation & the Last Thingsthe whole shelf →

The Intermediate State1×The Rapture — the Blessed Hope and the Four Timings1×

The Great Stories: Beginningsthe whole shelf →

Moses Strikes the Rock — Exodus 17 and Numbers 201×The Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), MannaFest1×

The Symbolism of Scripture, What God Madethe whole shelf →

Bread2×Fire1×The Seed1×The Tree1×Water1×

The Symbolism of Scripture, What Men Makethe whole shelf →

Gold, Silver, Bronze & Iron1×The Crown1×The Right Hand1×The Trumpet & the Shofar1×

The Symbolism of Scripture, The World and the People In Itthe whole shelf →

The Door & the Gate1×The Race1×The Stars1×

How We Got the Biblethe whole shelf →

Paul and the Poets1×The Bible and Slavery1×The Ending of Mark — 16:9–201×Wisdom Before Christ1×

Also cited here10 more studies that reach into 1 Corinthians

The Tabernacle4×Irony in Scripture: More Than the Speaker Knows1×Judith, the Widow Who Saved a City | MannaFest1×Passover1×Priscilla: She Explained the Way More Accurately · MannaFest1×Second Adam1×The Golden Rule1×The Judgment Seat of Christ | MannaFest1×The Resurrection Chapter — 1 Corinthians 151×The Seven Brothers and Their Mother1×

People and Places

the letter's cast, and the two cities behind it

PaulFounding apostle (Acts 18:1–18), writing from Ephesus near the close of his three-year ministry there.Peter (Cephas)Another factional banner-name (1:12); also invoked at 9:5 regarding an apostle's right to travel with a believing wife.

ApollosEloquent, Alexandrian-trained, Scripture-mighty teacher (Acts 18:24–28) whose name becomes a factional banner, despite Paul and Apollos being presented as unified fellow-laborers (3:5–9; 16:12).

SosthenesCo-sender (1:1); traditionally identified with the synagogue-ruler beaten before Gallio (Acts 18:17): a common name, so the identification is held loosely.

Stephanas, Fortunatus & AchaicusThe delegation who brought news and/or the Corinthians' letter, called “the firstfruits of Achaia” (16:15, 17–18).

Aquila & PriscillaPaul's tentmaking coworkers (Acts 18:2–3), greeting the Corinthians from Ephesus with “the church that is in their house” (16:19).

The two cities

CorinthRefounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC as a Roman colony on the Isthmus, controlling the overland trade portage between the Aegean and Adriatic, wealthy, cosmopolitan, and proverbially associated with sexual license.EphesusThe letter's place of composition (16:8): near the close of Paul's roughly three-year ministry there (cf. Acts 19).

Where 1 Corinthians Leads

the study this book opens, and the full reader

The Resurrection Chapter1 Corinthians 15: the received creed, the resurrection-order argument, the last Adam, the seed-body analogy, and death swallowed up in victory.The Two AdamsRomans 5 paired with 1 Corinthians 15:45–49: the mirrored ledger of the two federal heads.

1 Cor 1 1 Cor 2 1 Cor 3 1 Cor 4 1 Cor 5 1 Cor 6 1 Cor 7 1 Cor 8 1 Cor 9 1 Cor 10 1 Cor 11 1 Cor 12 1 Cor 13 1 Cor 14 1 Cor 15 1 Cor 16

Open the 1 Corinthians reader: all 16 chapters →