1st Corinthians Lesson 1

Introduction, Part 1

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

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Lesson Transcript

Welcome and Context

Well, welcome tonight to starting a new class on First Corinthians. I believe we’ve been studying Matthew for about four years. Is that correct? So you may have been anticipating hearing something other than “please turn in your Bibles to Matthew.” But you’re not. Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 23. We’re going to look at a verse there in just a moment.

If you were to pick up the Bible, having never seen it before, and start reading through the Bible, you’d read through the Old Testament, and suddenly then you’d get to Matthew, where you’re turned to right now. And you’d notice a difference immediately when you got to Matthew. Maybe it’s just the cover page that says New Testament. But you’d see a difference there, and you’d keep on reading.

But when you got to Romans, you’d see a big difference. And you’d see it in 1 Corinthians, you’d see it in 2 Corinthians. Suddenly you’d see letters. You’d see letters, real letters addressed to people from someone to someone. And that would be something you really hadn’t seen before in the Bible, or letters.

Why Letters? Understanding God’s Teaching Method

And in fact, as you read through the New Testament, you’d see letter after letter after letter, and you’d probably ask yourself, why? Why suddenly am I seeing these letters? And in fact, that’s a good way for us to start our study of 1 Corinthians, is to ask the question: why did God give us His Word in this form? In the New Testament, with the epistles.

I mean, there are many other types of books in the Bible, other types of books in the New Testament. But so much of the New Testament is focused with letters. Why did God choose letters as a primary way of teaching us about the law of Christ, which is what we’re taught in the New Testament?

A Law School Analogy

Well, as I was thinking about that question, I thought maybe the best way to answer that question is to think about how we today teach the law of man. And I promise this will be my only law school story in the entire study. But I am going to start with a law school story.

Because I think many of us, including myself before law school, picture law school as the place where you go and you open up the code and the law and you start with the law and you read through it. That’s not the way it works. In fact, the first day of law school, I still remember it really well, even though it was a long time ago, came to class, and the very first thing we looked at was a court decision from the 1700s.

Not even America, it was a UK English decision, had to do with some poor little kid, street urchin, who had found a piece of jewelry. And he ran to a jeweler to find out how much it was worth. And the owner of the jewelry store kept it. Because he said, “I figured he’d stolen it anyway. So I might as well have it rather than he have it, because he must have stolen it.”

And the case was who gets the piece of jewelry? And then we discussed that for like an hour and then on to the next class. But think about why it is that that’s the way law is taught. And the answer is because you can learn so much from actual real life problems, right? I mean, you could read the code all day long, but when it came down to a real life problem like that, it would be very difficult to know how to apply it and what to do. And in fact, that’s the way most law school operates. You read the decisions and you read how real life operates.

Letter and Spirit of the Law

Well, let’s turn back then to our question of why do we have so many letters in the Bible? Particularly in the New Testament. Why is it that God decided to teach us His word, His law, the law of Christ, with letters? And I think the answer is very similar to that.

With letters, you can describe not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, as you see the letter of the law applied in real life situations. If you turn now to Matthew 23, look down at verse 23. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law. Judgment, mercy, faith, these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”

When I’m saying the spirit of the law, I’m talking about those underpinnings that Jesus mentions here: law, it’s judgment, it’s mercy, it’s faith, the things that underpin the law. You know, if we come to the law and we focus just on the letter and we forget the Spirit, then we become a Pharisee. That’s exactly what they were doing.

But if we come to just the Spirit and talk about faith and love and never bother with the letter, then we become a liberal, right? Because then we can just throw the letter out the window as long as we all have love. We have to have both. Isn’t that what Jesus says here?

A lot of people come to this verse and they say, “oh, well, Jesus is telling us it’s just judgment, mercy, and faith,” but keep reading. “These ought ye to have done and not leave the others undone.” It’s letter and spirit of the law.

Letters Apply Law to Real Life

And in teaching the spirit of the law. These letters do such a wonderful job of that because they apply it to real life situations, and we can look back into the city of Corinth. Or Rome, or wherever else we have a letter, and see what was going on there, and see how Paul and the other writers, through inspiration, of course, dealt with those problems.

And we’re going to see that, I think, in 1 Corinthians, you know, when it comes to the chapter on marriage. We’re seeing the letter of the law. When it comes to how to deal with the man living with his father’s wife, we’re seeing the letter of the law. But then we come to that beautiful chapter on love, don’t we? And we’re seeing that underpinning. Spirit of law. And we see how he dealt with the problem of meat offered to idols and how he applied the letter to that real-life problem.

The epistles are such a wonderful way of doing that. And it’s part of God’s plan, of course, to have given us His Word in that form.

Similarities to Ordinary Letters

Now, in some ways, the New Testament epistles are like ordinary letters, in some ways. They share the same format as ordinary letters. Particularly letters of that time. We have other letters on papyri and things, and we can compare the format, have a lot of similar format. One difference there is that the epistles tend to be longer than a lot of letters we have, but the format’s about the same.

Also, they’re often very personal, like you would think of an ordinary letter. You know, we have Paul’s travel plans in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians. He mentions people by name: Crispus, Gaius, Stephanus, Fortunatus. He refers to specific events, specific baptisms that occurred in chapter 1, or a specific visit that he mentions in chapter 2. So we see personal elements like we would with an ordinary letter.

Also, like ordinary letters, letters are sometimes difficult to understand when they’re ripped out of their context. And in fact, that’s not just me saying that, that’s Peter saying that, in 2 Peter 3:16, talking about Paul’s epistles, “some of which have hard to be understood when the unstable wrests them from their context.”

So in many ways, the New Testament epistles are like ordinary letters.

Complete Difference from Ordinary Letters

But in many other ways, they are completely unlike any other letter in the world, has ever been in the world. These letters are the inspired Word of God. These letters have eternal significance as opposed to just their immediate application, in addition to just their immediate application.

Did Paul Know He Was Writing Scripture?

Did Paul know he was penning the word of God? You know, if you read some commentaries, they say no. They say, “oh, he was not in the least thinking of us when he wrote, but solely to the people to whom he was writing.” And another one of them says, “Paul had no presentiment of the place his words would occupy in universal history. Not so much that they would be in existence the next generation, far less that one day people would look on them as Holy Scripture.”

Have they read them? Have they read them? I mean, what does the Bible say? In fact, what did Paul himself say in his letters? Look at the letter we’re about to study, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 13. “Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual with spiritual.”

Look in chapter 14, verse 37 of 1 Corinthians. “If any man thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, Let him acknowledge the things I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.” You know, if I wrote you a letter tomorrow and I put in there, “oh, by the way, the things I’m writing to you are the commandments of the Lord,” you’d think I was nuts. Right? But not Paul, because they were the commandments of the Lord, and he knew it.

He knew he was writing the word of God. He wasn’t just writing some letter that people later turned into the word of God. Paul knew he was writing the very words of the living God.

Additional Biblical Evidence

You can see in other letters too, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, “for this cause also we thank God without ceasing. Because when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man. But as it is in truth, the word of God.” He knew he was writing the word of God.

2 Peter 3:16, another example we just mentioned. In that verse, Peter refers to Paul’s letters as what? Scripture, right? Scripture. And Paul himself tells us about scripture in Second Timothy 3:16. And Jesus told us that, “for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,” speaking to the apostles and those inspired writers.

He knew, of course, he knew, and Paul knew, and Peter knew, they all knew they were writing the Word of God.

Letters Written for Broader Audience

Now, another way that these letters are different from ordinary letters. Is that these letters were addressed more than just to the initial recipient? Now, the initial recipient was the initial congregation that got it, for the most part. But these letters were addressed to a broader audience than that.

Colossians 4:16, for example, “when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be also read in the church of Laodiceans. And that likewise you read the epistle from Laodicea.” So it was shared among the congregations at the time. You see that also in 1 Thessalonians 5:27.

A Question About Lost Books

Let me stop and ask a question about the epistle to the Laodiceans. Is that a lost book of the Bible? No, absolutely not. Because to say that there’s a lost book in the Bible means that our Bible is incomplete. There’s something missing. There’s something that’s lost. It’s not there.

All the Epistle to the Laodiceans is, is an epistle to the Laodiceans. That’s all it was. That’s all it ever was. It’s not a part of the Holy Word of God. It’s not in the Bible, and it’s not an accident. God’s providence has given us the Bible that we have.

The same Bible tells us it’s complete. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 tells us that we will be complete by having it. And 1 Corinthians 13, 10 tells us that it is complete. So there are no lost books of the Bible.

Later, as we get into our study of 1 Corinthians, we’re going to talk about some other letters that Paul wrote to Corinth. There are at least two that we know of from reading the two that we have, 1 and 2 Corinthians. But these other letters are not lost letters of the Bible. I mean, I guess they’re lost letters. We don’t have them, but they’re not lost books of the Bible.

Letters Written for Us

Another way these letters are different from other letters of the time is that these letters are addressed to us. As well as to the church in Corinth and the other congregations there in the first century. You know, I’ve mentioned before that some would argue that the New Testament writers never dreamed their works would have eternal significance if they’d still be studying them two thousand years later.

Then, how could Peter call them Scripture? If that were the case, Peter called Paul’s letters scripture. And we know from Matthew 24:35, “heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” And if they’re scripture, as they are. They are the words of God, they will not pass away.

Paul knew that, Peter knew that, the writers of the New Testament knew that. They knew what they were writing, would have eternal significance and that we would be studying it 2,000 years later if there were still people around 2,000 years later to study it.

And Jesus, of course, in the prayer in the garden, John 17:20. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.” That’s Jesus praying for us. Right? Because we’ve believed on him through their word. And for that to be true, Jesus had to know and had to make sure through God’s providence, through his providence, that that word would be here for us today to believe on him through that word.

Why Were Letters Preserved?

And just as a more practical reason, why did they keep these letters? If they didn’t know they would have eternal significance, if they thought they were just had an immediate application, why did they still keep them? And going back to my law school example, why is it that going to law school, I could still pick up a book that had a 1700 English court decision in it because they knew it would have future significance.

They kept it. They bound it. They put it together in a book. Why? Because they knew it had more than immediate significance. It had future significance. That’s another way we can see that Paul’s letters.

Letters Address Our Problems

You know, we just said they’re addressed to us. They deal with the same sorts of problems that we face. And we’ll see that as we study this beautiful letter of 1 Corinthians. He’s going to warn the Corinthians about dangers that they don’t see. He’s going to warn the Corinthians about dangers to which they think they’re immune.

He’s going to warn them about the problems of cliques in the church and power factions and what that does to the church’s unity and its ability to carry out its mission. He’s going to warn them against sexual immorality. He’s going to warn them against idolatry. He’s going to warn them about the dangers of letting worldly culture into the church.

He’s going to warn them about problems that can arise in the worship assembly, in the worship of the church. He’s going to warn about those who would deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he’s going to focus them on the cross of Christ. And he’s going to focus them on the preaching of the gospel and on their mission. And he’s going to tell them about the all-importance of love.

Now you tell me which item on that list we don’t need to hear today. We need all of that. And these letters were written for us. They were written for us as well as for the initial recipients.

Unique Challenges of Studying Letters

Now, with that said, we do have to face the fact that letters present some unique difficulties that we don’t see in other types of books in the Bible. Difficulties that we might not see in Matthew or Mark, Luke, or John. Sometimes a letter seems to us like one side of a telephone conversation, doesn’t it?

We need to know something about the recipients to understand what’s going on. And much that we can learn about the recipients comes from the letter itself. The Bible is its best interpreter. The Bible is the best commentary on the Bible, and we’ll find so much about them in the Bible. But we can also look at some histories and what we can find about Corinth.

You know, a good introduction is important in studying any book of the Bible, but it is, I think, even more important when studying the epistles because of the nature of an epistle. Again, it is kind of like we’re getting one side of the conversation sometimes, which may be why Peter said sometimes they’re hard to understand.

Questions We Need to Ask

We need to look at who wrote this. We need to look at to whom was it written? Who was the initial audience? We need to ask the question: why was it written? You know, if the epistle is responding to something, we need to ask that question too. Is it responding to another letter? Is it responding to something someone said? We’re going to find both of those true in 1 Corinthians.

We’re also going to look at the city of Corinth. We’re going to look at the people of Corinth. What were they like? We’re going to look at Paul. What was he like? And we’re going to look at Paul’s interactions with Corinth, which for the most part we’ll find in Acts chapter 18. And then briefly, we’re going to look at the structure of the letter, and then we’ll start with chapter one.

I figure this should take us through about 2017, don’t you?

The City of Corinth

Let’s look at the city of Corinth. If you have your map, pull that out and take a look at the map. And if you kind of look at the top there and look right here near the middle, you’ll see Corinth. Right here, right there near the middle.

And if I drew a little circle there and asked you something to tell me some things about Corinth, I think you would be able to tell me a lot about Corinth just from looking at this map, with nothing else. In fact, if you looked at that dot and where that dot’s located, I think you would conclude that Corinth was meant for greatness as a city just from its location.

Strategic Location

That little strip of land where Corinth is located is the only thing connecting the northern part of Greece to the southern part of Greece. If you were traveling from Athens to Sparta, you went through Corinth. If you were trading from Athens to Sparta, you went through Corinth. If you were trading from Sparta to Athens, you went through Corinth If you were going from the south to the north, you went through Corinth.

Think about the U.S. and imagine that it’s got these huge inlets and there’s just this one little strip of land somewhere in Oklahoma. Well, that’d be a pretty important strip of land, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s what we’ve got here.

And it’s even more important than that, because I’ve just been talking about north-south trade. They also got east-west trade. If you look down at the bottom of the map there of Greece, you’ll see Cape Maleas. That was perhaps the most dangerous cape to sail around at the time. They had sayings that said, “Let him who sails around Maleas forget his home.” In other words, “let him who sails around Maleas first make his will.” Very dangerous like Cape Horn today, very dangerous, and they didn’t want to do that.

Trade Route Solution

Okay, well, what do we do then? How do we avoid that if we’re going from the east to the west or the west to the east? The answer was they went in the inlet, there, they got to Corinth. And if it was a small boat, they would just put it on rollers and drag it across about four miles. If it was a larger boat, they would have another boat on the other side and they would get people to carry all the merchandise from boat A to boat B, and that would get it across. And that way, they would avoid going around the bottom of Greece.

So we’re looking at a city that has a tremendous amount of trade through it. All sorts of people coming from all parts of the world and all kinds of items that can be purchased. Anything you needed, you could find in Corinth. Someone was trading it there. It was a great, great commercial city.

One commentator wrote, “Objects of luxury soon found their way to the markets which were visited by every nation in the civilized world. Arabian balsam, Phoenician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, Cilician goat’s hair Lyconian wool, Pergian slaves, every kind of imaginable cargo and merchandise, ended up in Corinth.”

The Isthmian Games

And to add to that, Corinth was where they had the Isthmian Games, which were second only to the Olympics. Huge event every year. This made Corinth rich. This made Corinth powerful. This brought in all kinds of people into Corinth.

The Wickedness of Corinth

And this brings me to my next point: the wickedness of Corinth. We just talked about the greatness of Corinth. You got to talk about the wickedness of Corinth. There was another side to Corinth. She not only commercial prosperity, Corinth was a byword for evil living.

The phrase “live like a Corinthian” was actually a part of the Greek language, and it meant to live in drunken and immoral debauchery. Just to live like Corinthians. One Greek writer of the time says that if a Corinthian was ever shown on the stage in a Greek play, he was always shown drunk. The very name of Corinth was associated with debauchery and evil and wickedness. It was known for that all over the civilized world.

The Temple of Aphrodite

And there was one particular facet of Corinth for which that was particularly true, and that was the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which sat high on a hill of the Acropolis. And to that temple there were attached one thousand priestesses, is what they were called. They were prostitutes. Every evening they would come down into the city and ply their trade, and that led to a Greek proverb that said, “It’s not every man who can afford a journey to Corinth.” We’re talking about the prostitutes of the Temple of Aphrodite.

There are so many other vices. I mean, I apologize to anyone who’s a sailor, but sailors have a reputation for bringing in vice, and that was certainly true in Corinth.

The History of Corinth

Corinth, though, had a very interesting history as well. It was a very ancient city. It had been around a long time, but it had disaster befall it in 146 BC. Rome, at that time, of course, becoming quite powerful. Greece was fighting Rome, and Corinth was leading the opposition. And when Rome defeated them, they wiped Corinth off the map. And for about one hundred years, there was really not much there, but a devastation.

But that geographic location meant it couldn’t be that way for long, right? And it did come back. It came back. And by the time this letter was written, it was back. It was back and thriving again. In fact, Julius Caesar had rebuilt it from its ruins all the way back in 46 B.C.

Roman Colony

Now it was a Roman colony. And more than that, in fact, it was the capital city of the province here. Very important city. It was the kind of administration area there for the colonial government of the Roman colony.

And in the days when Paul was writing this, the population was very mixed. Yeah, it was a Roman colony, so there were a lot of Romans there. In fact, when a Roman soldier served his time in the army. He would be granted the citizenship and then sent out to some new founded city with a plot of land. And a lot of them ended up in Corinth as colonists.

Mixed Population

Corinth had a large Jewish community and had a large community of Greeks and a large community from other places. I mean, it was again a cosmopolitan city with all sorts of people in it. Interestingly, the museum that’s now there on the side of the Roman Corinth, if you go there, I haven’t been there, but I hear if you go there, there’s a stone lintel that’s inscribed in Greek, “Synagogue of the Hebrews.” And that stone lintel was probably at the synagogue where Paul was preaching, right there. So there was a pretty large Jewish population.

Religious City

And Corinth was a religious city. I’ve mentioned Aphrodite, and you know, but hardly a religion, I guess. Full of prostitutes, but they considered it a religion anyway, and there were others as well. At the foot of the citadel there was a temple to Melicartes, patron of the seafarers. And I’ve already mentioned the famous games that were held there. They were dedicated to the sea god Poseidon.

In fact, it’s interesting, we can kind of see as we study that history Paul talking to them and why he said in 1 Corinthians 8:5, “there are many gods and many lords,” because in fact, people in Corinth saw that all around them, the false gods are all around them.

Modern Parallels

Think for a moment about how we’ve described the city of Corinth. It’s a very wealthy city. It’s a very wicked city. Had a very mixed population from all over the place. It’s a very religious city. Does any of that sound familiar?

Well, you know, I wouldn’t really think of Houston as a wicked city. Want to ask the lesbian mayor about that one?

The Gospel’s Power in Corinth

Remember the background of Corinth. Remember its name for wealth and luxury. Remember its reputation for drunkenness, immorality, debauchery, vice. And then read 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be ye not deceived, neither fornicators nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners. They were all there. None of them shall inherit the kingdom of God, and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified. You’re justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

What a beautiful, beautiful verse. We see the people that are in Corinth, and Paul went there. He found those people living in that filth, that debauchery, that vice, evil. And some of them came out of it. And they were washed through the baptism, through baptism.

Never Write Off Anyone

You know, some might have looked at that and said, “that’s not a very fertile field for the gospel. I think we’re kind of wasting our time in Corinth. They’re not going to listen to us.” Not what Paul said. I love what Barclay said on this. He said, “in this hot bed of vice. In the most unlikely place in all the Greek world, some of Paul’s greatest work was done, and some of the mightiest triumphs of Christianity were won.”

You know, if we ever think like we just can write off a city or country, “oh, we don’t need to try to proclaim the gospel in those Arab nations. They’re not going to listen to us. Right, they’re all following Islam, and they’re just not going to listen to us.” You know, “we don’t need to go and preach in Vegas or somewhere like that. They’re just too entrenched in their evil. They’re not going to listen to us. They’re not going to obey the gospel.”

Our job is to plant the word. Our job is to go and proclaim the word of God to every creature. And if we ever find ourselves saying, “well, not them, they’re just not going to listen.” We need to think back and remember Corinth. And we need to go back to 1 Corinthians 6 and read that list again. And then see what happened.

True, a lot of them stayed fornicators and idolaters and adulterers and so on. A lot of them stayed doing that. But some did not, and they came out of that. And we have this beautiful letter in the next letter, 2 Corinthians 2, addressed to this church. This congregation that came out of that evil and that filth and were washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. It’s a beautiful letter.

Conclusion

And next week, when we pick up again we’re going to look at the context of 1 Corinthians. We’re going to look at what was going on in the city of Corinth at the time. And try to, as we study that, our hope will be that that will help us understand some of the issues that Paul was addressing in this letter.

Thank you very much for your attention. Next week, we’ll pick up again. Thank you.