1 Corinthians Introduction

We are able to say, therefore, that Paul arrived in Corinth sometime in AD 50 and left about the middle of AD 52 (Ac 18:11). Some months later Paul came to Ephesus, where he remained for around three years. Toward the end of his ministry there, he wrote 1 Corinthians, most likely dated AD 54, although it appears that Paul also wrote an earlier letter that has not survived (1Co 5:9).

Many have observed that the powerful pagan culture of the city of Corinth affected the values and behavior of these new Christians and that 1 Corinthians is Paul’s corrective to these pressures. In chapters 1–4 Paul engaged in debate over the “wisdom of this world”; in chapters 5–7 he addressed Corinth’s prevalent sexuality and lawsuits; in chapters 8–10 the issue is the city’s idol worship; in chapters 11–14 he confronted them for allowing worldliness into the church in the rich/poor division and the love of personal display in the church meetings; finally, in chapter 15, Paul responded to Greek skepticism about the resurrection of the body. In a sense, then, 1 Corinthians is about the clash in Greco-Roman Corinth between the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ and the multifaceted pagan culture of that day.

Perhaps not so often noticed is the likely underlying problem in Corinth and the reason Paul needed to write: this was a young church, and Paul had now been absent from them longer than he had been with them. The church appears to have been unsettled by visits from the gifted Apollos and the apostolic Peter—unsettled, that is, in regard to Paul’s role as their “father” in the gospel. It also seems that local leaders had arisen in the past two or three years and were taking pride in their eloquence (“wisdom”) and objecting to Paul’s ongoing apostolic oversight exercised from a distance. Paul wrote to counteract these problems and to provide a clear vision for the direction of the young church.