Week 30: Church Problems

The Big Picture

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is the most pastorally urgent document in the New Testament. Written from Ephesus around 53-55 AD, it responds to a series of crises that threatened to tear apart one of Paul’s most promising yet most troubled congregations. Corinth was no ordinary city. Destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC and refounded by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony in 44 BC, it had grown in a single century into one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the empire. Straddling the narrow isthmus connecting mainland Greece with the Peloponnese, Corinth controlled two harbors and profited from the trade flowing between Rome and the East. Its population was a volatile mixture of Roman veterans, Greek freedmen, Jewish merchants, and immigrants from across the Mediterranean. The city was famous for its temple of Aphrodite, its biennial Isthmian Games (second only to the Olympics), and its reputation for sexual license – the Greek verb korinthiazomai, “to act like a Corinthian,” was slang for sexual immorality.

Into this environment Paul had planted a church during his second missionary journey, spending eighteen months in the city (Acts 18:1-18). The Corinthian believers came predominantly from the lower social strata, though a few wealthy patrons like Gaius, Crispus, and Erastus provided homes for house-church gatherings. After Paul’s departure, the church had been influenced by other teachers – Apollos, and possibly followers claiming allegiance to Peter – and had splintered into rival factions. Worse, the Corinthians had absorbed the values of their surrounding culture far more readily than the values of the gospel. Sexual immorality, litigation among believers, disputes about marriage and food offered to idols, and chaotic worship all testified to a community that was spiritually gifted but spiritually immature.

This week we encounter Paul at his most direct and his most pastoral. In chapters 5-9, he addresses a cascade of problems: a man living in sexual immorality that would shock even the pagans, believers suing each other in Roman courts, confusion about marriage and celibacy, and the thorny question of whether Christians could eat meat that had been offered to pagan gods. Through it all, Paul articulates a revolutionary ethic grounded not in rules but in relationships – the believer’s relationship to Christ’s body, to the community of faith, and to the weaker brother or sister. His famous declaration that the body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (6:19) and his pastoral principle of becoming “all things to all people” (9:22) remain among the most influential ethical teachings in Christian history. Paul does not simply lay down laws; he models how to think theologically about the messy realities of life in a pluralistic, morally confused culture – which is precisely why these chapters speak with such directness to the twenty-first century church.

This Week’s Readings

Key Characters

• Paul – Apostle and church planter writing from Ephesus to address urgent pastoral crises
• The immoral brother – Unnamed man living in sexual immorality with his father’s wife
• Chloe’s people – Members of Chloe’s household who reported the Corinthian problems to Paul
• Apollos – Alexandrian teacher whose eloquence attracted a faction in Corinth
• Barnabas – Mentioned alongside Paul as an apostle who worked for a living

Key Locations

• Corinth – Wealthy, cosmopolitan port city on the isthmus between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese
• Ephesus – City in Asia Minor from which Paul writes this letter
• Pagan temples – Sites where meat was sacrificed to idols before being sold in the marketplace
• Roman courts – The judicial system before which Corinthian believers were suing one another

Key Themes

• Church discipline and holiness – Paul insists that the community must address blatant sin rather than ignoring it in the name of tolerance
• The body as temple – Individual believers and the corporate body are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit
• Freedom and responsibility – Christian liberty must be exercised in love, with consideration for the weaker brother or sister
• Marriage and singleness – Both are gifts from God; neither is spiritually superior to the other
• Apostolic example – Paul models the sacrificial love he preaches by forgoing his apostolic rights
• Cultural engagement – Believers must navigate pagan culture without either withdrawing from it or being absorbed by it

Memory Verse

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20