BACKGROUND NOTES PAUL'S FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

Author
     According to its salutation, this letter was written by "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God".
     He came to Corinth in AD 50, as part of his second missionary journey, and stayed there for more than 1½ years. The date can be deduced from the reference in Acts 18:12 to Gallio, the proconsul, who governed Corinth in 51-52.
 
Why was it written?
     Paul's letter was a response to a number of issues:
He had written a previous letter (which we do not have today), advising the church not to associate with people claiming to be Christians who lived in immorality. The church misunderstood, thinking that Paul wanted them not to have any contact with unbelievers (5:9-11). Yet at the same time the church openly tolerated sexual immorality by members (5:1)!
     An oral report from "Cloe's household" informed Paul that the church was split into competing factions (1:11-12).
     The church also sent Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaius to Paul, with a list of written questions (7:1 and 16:17).
     Paul's letter was an attempt to deal with all these issues.
 
How and when was it written?
     Paul wrote the letter in AD 55, approximately five years after his initial ministry in Corinth, at the end of his long ministry in Ephesus during his third missionary journey. It seems that Sosthenes assisted with the physical writing of the letter, and Timothy delivered it to the church.
 
First audience and destination:
     According to Acts 18:11 Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, "teaching them the word of God" - first in the synagogue, and then "went next door to the house of Titius Justus". Aquila and Priscilla, Silas, Timothy, and Apollos also assisted in the ministry. When Paul moved on, he left behind a thriving, well-established church, with members from both Jewis and Gentile backgrounds.
     Corinth was a large commercial city, benefitting from both land and sea routes. It was founded by the Greeks and was, at this time, the capital of the Roman Province of Achaia. A number of pagan temples were active in the city, and its population of about 500,000 was very religious, but also very immoral (religious prostitution was central to the worship of Aphrodite). This culture, coupled with the original Greek philosophy still active in Corinth, contributed greatly to the problems in the congregation.
 
Literary style:
1 Corinthians is a typical first century epistle written in careful Koine (common) Greek, and follows Paul's typical writing style. It is also a pastoral letter, written in response to the needs of the recipients and their current situation.
 
Special themes:
The major themes of the letter arise mostly from the reasons for its writing:
· Unity in the church
· Morality — right living based on Sriptural truths
· Women's roles, and leadership in the church
· Spiritual gifts — without chapters 12 and 14 we would have known very little of the early church's teachings on and practise of spiritual gifts
· The resurrection — chapter 15 is the earliest and fullest teaching on the resurrection of Jesus and its implications
 
Special features
The most striking literary feature of 1 Corinthians is Paul's use of the words "now about", a device for working through the list of questions from the church:
Marriage, virgins, food offered to idols, spiritual gifts, the resurrection, the collection for the believers in Jerusalem, and Apollos.
 
General structure:
1. Salutation: Chapter 1:1-3
2. Thanksgiving: Chapter 1:4-9
3. Main body: Chapters 1:10-16:18
3.1 The Report from Chloe's Household [1:10-6:20]
· Dealing with divisions — 1:10-4:21
·· God's solution to problems in the church: Christ and His cross — 1:10-2:5
·· God's wisdom revealed by the Spirit — 2:6-16
·· The church is God's cultivated land and his building; church leaders are his workers and builders — 3:1-23
·· True apostleship is being stewards of God's mystery — 4:1-21
· Dealing with an immoral believer — 5:1-13
· Lawsuits among believers — 6:1-11
· Sexual immorality and the abuse of freedom — 6:12-20
3.2 Questions from the Corinthian Church [7:1-15:58]
· Married life, and the umarried — 7:1-40
· Concerning food sacrificed to idols, and personal freedom — 8:1-11:1
·· Consider others in the exercise of your rights — 8:1-13
·· Paul's rights and the use of his freedom — 9:1-27
·· Warnings from the history of Israel — 10:1-13
·· Keeping the Lord's table from idolatry — 10:14-22
·· The believer's freedom and its exercise — 10:23-11:1
· Dealing with head covering & leadership — 11:2-16
· Correcting abuse at the Lord's supper — 11:17-34
· Spiritual gifts — 12:1-14:40
·· Place and function of the gifts — 12:1-31
·· The best way for exercising the gifts — 13:1-13
·· The priority of prophesying — 14:1-25
·· Order in worship — 14:26-40
· Dealing with the resurrection — 15:1-58
·· The resurrection of Christ — vv.1-11
·· The reality of the resurrection, both of Christ and believers — vv.12-19
·· The historical basis of Christ's resurrection — vv.20-28
·· The crucial importance of resurrection — vv.29-34
·· Explaining the resurrection of the body —vv.35-49
·· The victory of resurrection — vv.50-58
· The collection for the church in Jerusalem — 16:1-9
· Personal matters — vv.10-18
4. Farewell: Chapter 16:19-21
 
 

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