I am so excited to start our new book study. We are going to be going through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul visited Corinth on his second missionary journey. You can read about it in Acts 18. While he was there, he started a bible school next door to the synagogue, and stayed for about 18 months instructing these new believers and helping them get their church going. However, not long after moving on, Paul receives word about all kinds of problems the new church was having - and they were having some serious problems. They were a divided church. They were divided about leadership. They were divided about morality. They were divided about spiritual gifts. They were divided relationally, weak vs. strong, rich vs. poor. They were a mess! They were even fighting about what you can eat and can’t eat.
Paul writes this letter to them addressing their issues, and there is much to learn from this letter. Faith gets practical as Paul seeks to solve their issues. Issues like, should a Christian take another Christian to court? Or when is it ok to divorce and when is it not ok? How should married people view sex? What about singleness? Or what should our attitudes be towards other religions? How should we view and handle spiritual gifts? What happens after we die?
We are going to take around twenty-eight weeks to walk through the sixteen chapters in this letter, and see how the gospel can apply to our issues and shape all of life. Our hope is we would be a people to whom the gospel is not just a belief detached from our everyday life, but something that informs every decision and action we make. Below is a short video to give you more context as we get ready to dive into this letter. Please be praying for God to shape us as we study His Word in 1 Corinthians.