Delve Into Luke-Acts & Paul's LettersSample

DAY 5 – 1 CORINTHIANS

The book of Acts describes how Paul, Silas, and Timothy brought the good news about Jesus to Macedonia (northern Greece), and then had to flee to Achaia (southern Greece) for their own safety. From Athens Paul sent two letters of encouragement and instruction to the believers he left behind in Thessalonica. He then traveled to Corinth, a wealthy and cosmopolitan commercial center. Many people became followers of Jesus there, and he stayed for a year and a half to teach them. But Paul understood that his primary mission was to bring the good news about Jesus to places where it had never been heard before. So he reported back to the leaders in Jerusalem and Antioch, then set out again. Beginning around AD 53 he settled for two years in Ephesus. Since that city was right across the Aegean Sea from Corinth, he was able to continue advising the Corinthian believers through letters and visits.

At one point the Corinthians wrote to Paul, in a letter we no longer have, to ask him some questions and to defend some of their practices, which he’d apparently been trying to correct. The Corinthians had deeply imbibed the common Greek idea that matter is bad but spirit is good, and they therefore tried to free the human spirit from the body. One way they did this was to deny the body its pleasures. They were encouraging husbands and wives not to have sexual relations with each other, and even recommended that they separate or divorce, and they were encouraging those who were engaged not to get married. “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman,” they wrote. The desire to free the spirit from the body also led some in the Corinthian church to deny the bodily resurrection. In their letter they apparently challenged Paul to provide details of the resurrection if he really wanted them to believe in it. 

Some of the Corinthians also defended the practice of attending ceremonial meals held in honor of pagan gods, either in temples or in private homes. They may have done this to continue visiting with their former friends, but also as a demonstration that they could “stand firm” even when involved with pagan worship. They argued that their participation in these meals was spiritually harmless because “everybody knows these aren’t real gods.” 

The Corinthians had also learned that God can give the ability to speak a language that hasn’t been acquired naturally or through study, and they were all eager to receive this gift and to use it in their worship. But they were confused when some of their members began saying, in what were supposedly divinely granted languages, such things as “Jesus is cursed.” Such messages could make them wonder whether they really should worship Jesus, and so they asked Paul to explain what was going on. 

PRAYER: You are not the God of disorder but of peace. Guard my heart with Your peace.