1 Corinthians
Author: Paul
Addressing divisions, sexual ethics, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection in a fractious urban church.
Summary of the Book of 1 Corinthians
Written: c. AD 53–55
Corinth was a wealthy, competitive, morally loose Roman port, and its young church carried the city's culture in through the front door. Writing from Ephesus around AD 54, Paul responds to two streams of information: a troubling report from "those of Chloe's household," and a letter of questions from the church itself, which he answers point by point with the recurring formula "now concerning..."
The report exposed factions — "I follow Paul," "I follow Apollos," "I follow Cephas" — which Paul answers not with diplomacy but with the cross: foolishness to the perishing, the power of God to those being saved. He then confronts a case of incest the church was proud to tolerate, believers suing one another before pagan judges, and visits to prostitutes, grounding sexual ethics in a striking claim: the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, "you were bought with a price." The church's questions follow: marriage and singleness (ch. 7), food offered to idols and the limits of liberty (8–10), order in worship and a Lord's Supper the rich were turning into a private dinner (11), and spiritual gifts — one body with many members (12–14), with the hymn to love in chapter 13 placed deliberately at the center of the gifts discussion.
Chapter 15 is the letter's summit and the New Testament's fullest treatment of resurrection: the gospel Paul received "first of all," the list of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ, the logic that if Christ is not raised faith is futile, and the promise of the resurrection body — in Christ all will be made alive. For every church since, 1 Corinthians has served as the working manual for staying holy and united inside an unholy, divided culture.
Written to correct a divided, compromised church and to answer its questions by applying the message of the cross to every area of common life.