1 Corinthians

What 1 Corinthians is about

Corinth was a wealthy port city with a reputation, and the church Paul planted there had absorbed a good deal of the surrounding culture. This letter answers a list of problems, some reported to him and some sent in writing, and the range is remarkable: rival factions forming around favourite preachers, a case of incest the church was proud of tolerating, Christians suing each other, questions about marriage and singleness, whether to eat meat that had been offered to idols, disorder at the Lord’s Supper where the rich ate first and the poor got nothing, and competitive chaos over spiritual gifts.

Paul’s method is more interesting than a list of rulings. He keeps reaching past the immediate question to a principle that reframes it. Against the personality cults he sets the cross — foolishness to the world, and God’s power. Against insistence on personal rights he sets his own decision to forgo them. Against competition over gifts he sets the image of a body where the parts that seem weaker are indispensable.

That last argument runs straight into chapter 13, the passage read at more weddings than any other. In context it is not a wedding poem at all. It is addressed to a church whose gifted members were despising each other, and it says that eloquence, knowledge, faith, and even sacrifice amount to nothing without love.

Chapter 15 closes the letter with the earliest written account of the resurrection — a summary Paul says he received and passed on, naming witnesses — and the argument that if Christ has not been raised, the faith is empty and Christians are to be pitied. But he has been raised, and so bodies matter, and so does work done now.

Where it sits in the story

Paul founded this church during the visit described in Acts 18. The letter is one of the earliest substantial Christian documents we have, and it gives an unusually detailed picture of what a first-century congregation was actually like — gifted, argumentative, socially mixed, and difficult.

Why it is worth reading

Because it is proof that the early church was not golden. Every problem here is recognisable, and Paul addresses them without either despairing of the church or lowering the bar. It is the most practically useful letter in the New Testament for anyone leading a congregation.