New Testament · Paul's Letters
A messy church, patiently loved, factions, food, gifts, the love chapter, resurrection hope.
A letter to a gifted, wealthy, badly behaved church, and the most practical thing Paul wrote. Corinth had factions, a lawsuit between members, a man sleeping with his stepmother, arguments about food offered to idols, a communion service where the rich ate first and the poor got nothing, and a fascination with the showier spiritual gifts. Paul addresses each in turn, and the famous chapter about love is not a wedding reading in its native habitat: it lands in the middle of the argument about gifts, as a rebuke to people who thought tongues made them advanced. Chapter fifteen is the earliest written account of the resurrection we possess, quoting a creed already old when Paul passed it on.
If you remember one thing
The love chapter is not a wedding reading in context. It sits in the middle of an argument about spiritual gifts, aimed at people who were using their gifts to compete.
“But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three. The greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13
1 Corinthians 11:2-16
Head coverings and headship, where nearly every phrase is contested and the cultural setting is doing work that is hard to recover.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Women silent in the churches, which sits awkwardly beside chapter 11 assuming women pray and prophesy. Some manuscripts place these verses elsewhere, which is part of the discussion.
1 Corinthians 15:29
Baptism for the dead, mentioned in passing and explained nowhere. Dozens of proposals exist and none commands agreement.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, teaching accurately about Jesus but knowing only John's baptism. Priscilla and Aquila took him aside privately and filled in what he was missing, and he became a formidable public advocate.
A Pharisee trained under Gamaliel who persecuted the church until he was stopped on the road to Damascus. He then spent thirty years planting churches across the Roman world and writing the letters that make up roughly a third of the New Testament. He was a Roman citizen by birth, which is why he could appeal to Caesar.
A quiz for 1 Corinthians is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
