INTRODUCTION TO 1 Corinthians
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The apostle Paul wrote this letter to the church he planted in Corinth during his second missionary journey, where he spent eighteen months establishing what would become one of the most gifted and most troubled churches in the New Testament (Acts 18:1–18). Written c. A.D. 54–55 from Ephesus, the letter arrives at a church that is pulling itself apart. The Corinthians had the knowledge. They had the gifts. And they were fracturing anyway. Paul writes to a church he loves too much to let drift.
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Factions had formed. Status had crept in. Members were aligning around leaders, leveraging spiritual gifts as social currency, and tolerating sin that even the surrounding culture found shocking (1:11–13; 5:1). The Corinthians had also written to Paul with questions about marriage and sexuality, food sacrificed to idols, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection. He responds to all of it. But his answer to every problem is the same: the cross. The power of the cross levels every hierarchy the Corinthians had worked so hard to build (1:18–25). There is one foundation, and it is Jesus Christ. Everything else will crack under its own weight.
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c. A.D. 54–55
Paul writes 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, three to four years after planting the church in Corinth (Acts 18:1–11). Paul does not write to stabilize them. He writes to reorient them. Underneath every question they asked and every problem they had created, his answer is the same: Christ, and him crucified.
SERMONS
Dive into 1 Timothy with us as we walk verse by verse, exploring church leadership, sound doctrine, and what it means to be an unshaken family of faith.
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