Introduction:
A. Imagine, with me, a church wracked by divisions.
1. Powerful leaders promote themselves against each other, each with his band of loyal followers.
2. Someone in the congregation, maybe one of the leaders, is having an affair with his stepmother, but instead of disciplining him, many in the church boast of his freedom in Christ to behave in such a way.
3. Some of the church members are suing each other in the secular courts, some like to visit prostitutes.
4. As a backlash against this rampant immorality, another faction in the church is promoting celibacy.
5. Still other debates rage about how decisively new Christians should break from their pagan past.
6. Disagreements about men’s and women’s roles add to the confusion.
7. And a significant number in the church may not even believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ.
B. Does that sound like any church you have ever been a part of? I hope not!
1. Perhaps no contemporary church faces this exact cluster of issues all at once, but this is indeed what was going on in the first century in the church at Corinth.
2. And so the Apostle Paul wrote them a series of letters to try to help them with their problems.
C. Today’s sermon begins a new series that I am calling “The Most Excellent Way.”
1. This new series is a study of Paul’s letter called 1 Corinthians.
2. Studying the letters of the New Testament is always an interesting experience, because in many respects we are reading and studying somebody else’s mail.
3. The letter of 1 Corinthians was originally addressed to a fledgling mission church in the ancient Mediterranean city of Corinth.
4. I’m guessing that the Corinthian Christians of Paul’s day would have preferred that this correspondence not be broadcast to the ages, for it portrays them in an unflattering light and divulges a number of things that they might wished to have kept private.
5. Fortunately for us, however, the letter was preserved, widely circulated, and ultimately canonized as a part of the New Testament.
6. Thus, we are given a privileged glimpse into one particular tension-filled moment in the life of the first generation of the church.
7. Although the letter is not written to us, we are allowed to overhear a fascinating conversation in progress.
8. The truths that are conveyed by Paul as he tries to deal with their questions and problems, are invaluable to us as we try to do the same with the questions and problems that we face in our time and culture.
D. As we study 1 Corinthians, we will certainly experience a range of emotions. There will be many highs and many lows.
1. As Paul proclaims the wisdom of God in the gospel and the beauty of Christian life and service, our hearts will be filled with awe and joy.
2. But then as we learn of the carnal minds and wicked lives of many of the Christians at Corinth, our hearts will sink in frustration and disappointment.
3. One of the benefits we will gain from spending some time with this letter will be the contrast between the divine ideal and the human reality.
4. That contrast was certainly evident at Corinth way back when, but it is still the realistic life situation of God’s people on earth, in the here and now.
5. As painful and convicting as it might be, we need the ideal held before our eyes for the sake of our understanding and motivation.
6. We need to evaluate ourselves honestly in light of that ideal and then by divine grace, we need to grow toward that ideal.
7. But we need to remember and appreciate the magnificence of God’s patience with us in our weaknesses. He knows and we know that we will always fall short of that ideal.
E. As I’ve said, the church at Corinth had problems.
1. Division, immoral conduct, brethren fighting with one another in court, marriage and divorce controversies, abuses of the Lord’s Supper...the list goes on and on.
2. What is wonderfully amazing to me is that Paul didn’t give up on the church at Corinth.
3. While some of us might have been tempted to write off the whole bunch of them and said that God had no church in Corinth, the apostle Paul still regarded that troubled body as “the church of God which is at Corinth” (1 Cor. 1:2).
F. What should we do when there are church troubles?
1. Should we grumble?
2. Should we run from them by moving to another church?
3. Should we pull off and start a new congregation and have no fellowship with the old one?
4. Or maybe we should just “drop out” altogether and excuse it on the basis of all the turmoil in the church.
5. The apostle Paul did not react in any of these ways.
6. He was determined to do everything within his power to help resolve the problems, to restore unity, and to see that none of them perished.
7. I think we can learn a great deal from his approach and his inspired counsel.
I. The City of Corinth
A. Corinth was located on a narrow strip of land connecting Northern Greece with the Peloponnesus.
1. Corinth was a thriving center for travel and trade in the first-century world.
2. It controlled north-south commerce by virtue of its strategic location.
3. And because sailing was difficult around the Peloponnesus, Corinth also had command over east-west traffic between Rome and the Near East.
4. It was safer to transport cargo overland at Corinth between its port cities of Cenchrea on the east and Lechaeum on the west than to run the risk of navigating harsh seas.
5. An ingenious system used rollers and slave labor to drag cargo and even small ships overland for the four miles from one port to the other.
B. The city of Corinth was enormously wealthy and had both the assets and liabilities that accompany prosperity.
1. A pleasure-mad and immoral atmosphere had been cultivated over the years.
2. Corinth came to be what one historian described as “the cesspool of the ancient world.”
3. Drunkenness, prostitution, brawling, murder, and assorted other sinful things took place there.
C. Corinth was the capital city of the province of Achaia when Paul wrote this letter.
1. Its population was something near a half-million souls.
D. What religion there was at Corinth centered around the polytheistic gods of Greco-Roman mythology.
1. In particular, the worship of Aphrodite – the Greek “goddess of love” – had a large following.
2. The acropolis of Corinth shown in this picture, is known as Acrocorinth, and it rises about 1800 feet above the surrounding plain. At the highest summit was the Temple of Aphrodite.
3. This cult certainly contributed to the immorality of the city since the priestesses of the cult were “sacred prostitutes,” and the worship center was nothing more than a brothel.
4. Corinth housed other religious shrines too, most notably a temple to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, as well as sites for worshiping Isis, the Egyptian goddess of seafarers, and her Greek male counterpart Poseidon.
5. Also, there was a synagogue in Corinth, so there was a small Jewish community in the city.
II. The Beginning of the Church in Corinth
A. Perhaps few elderships or missions committees would have selected the city of Corinth as a promising site for a church planting.
1. But Corinth is precisely where the Holy Spirit led Paul on his second missionary journey.
2. Paul arrived in Corinth from Athens in early A.D. 50 (Acts 18:1).
3. There in Corinth, he ran into Aquila and Priscilla, two Jewish believers who had recently arrived from Rome.
4. Paul lived with them and joined them in working at their common trade as tentmakers so as to support himself.
B. Paul began preaching the gospel to any and all who would listen.
1. Every sabbath in the synagogue, he reasoned and persuaded Jews and Greeks that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 18:4).
2. Paul was joined later by Silas and Timothy, who likely brought him financial support, because after their arrival, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching.
3. His ministry was so successful that the Jewish leaders opposed him and became abusive (Acts 18:5-6).
4. Paul left the synagogue and moved his evangelistic work next door to the house of Titius Justus a worshiper of God who had been learning under Paul.
5. Even Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue and his family were convicted and convinced by Paul’s preaching and they believed and were baptized, and left the synagogue.
C. Paul stayed in Corinth for a total of 18 months in order to teach the Word and help establish the church in such a hostile environment (Acts 18:9-11).
1. In late A.D. 51 or early 52, Paul decided to move on to Ephesus, and there he stayed for 3 years.
2. During Paul’s extended ministry at Ephesus, Paul naturally was concerned to know the situation of the young church in Corinth.
3. When word came to him of immorality in the church, it appears he wrote them a letter and gave them counsel about dealing with the problem.
4. Many believe that Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 5:9, “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people...” is an illusion to that letter that no longer exists.
5. Therefore, the letter we call 1 Corinthians is actually Paul’s second written communication with the saints at Corinth.
6. Since we know that Paul left Ephesus in the spring of A.D. 55, and that he was planning on leaving as he wrote the letter, we can assign the date of early A.D. 55 to the letter of 1 Cor.
D. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to address a situation which was deteriorating rapidly.
1. The immorality about which he had written already was not only unresolved but was now even worse.
2. The church had responded to Paul’s letter with one of its own that contained a list of questions concerning matters for which they needed guidance.
3. When we add to all that the report brought to him by the people of Chloe’s household (1:11), we can understand why the apostle’s concern must have been tremendous.
4. Therefore, he wrote the letter we call 1 Corinthians to challenge his brothers and sisters at Corinth to live up to their status in Christ.
III. Paul’s Love for the Corinthians
A. Was Paul grieved by the problems at Corinth? Of course.
1. Was Paul concerned that some there were in jeopardy for their souls? Certainly.
2. Did doctrinal error threaten the church’s identity? Yes, indeed.
3. So how might we expect that Paul would begin his letter to them?
4. Would we expect anathemas, condemnations, rebukes and threats? Perhaps, the situation was that serious.
5. But that is not how Paul started his letter.
B. Paul opened the letter with a series of affirmations about the Corinthian church members.
1. With all of their problems, they were still the people of God. They were still “the church of God in Corinth.” (1:2)
2. They were “those sanctified in Christ Jesus…” (1:2)
3. Throughout the letter, Paul will maintain this positive an hopeful view of the troubled Corinthian church.
4. He calls them “brethren” on numerous occasions (1:10; 2:1; 3:1, etc.)
5. He calls them “God’s field, God’s building (3:9), and “God’s temple” (3:16).
6. Have you ever noticed how children tend to live up to the names we give them?
a. Call them “clumsy” or “poor in math,” and they probably will be.
b. Call them “thoughtful” or “a good student,” and they probably will be.
8. Self-image is important. It becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophesy.
9. Guided by the Spirit, Paul began by fostering a positive image of the spiritual identity of these people, and from that he would be in a better position to call on them to live differently.
10. Therefore, Paul and Sosthenes together began by greeting this church with “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3), rather than beginning with fire and brimstone from heaven.
C. Then, believe it or not, Paul proceeded to talk about his constant prayers of thanksgiving on their behalf.
1. Paul focused on the spiritual gifts which he knew to be present there among the Corinthians.
2. The presence of those gifts was proof to Paul that these people had indeed been recipients of God’s grace.
3. And the apostle knew that the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst gave hope for victory over their various problems.
4. Paul certainly was not ready to give up on the church at Corinth.
5. The same divine power that had turned a persecutor of Christians into a Christian missionary, could certainly complete a good work there in Corinth.
6. Therefore, ultimately, Paul’s confidence was not so much in the Corinthians themselves, as in his God of grace and power.
7. So Paul focused their attention on God, “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” (1:8-9)
Conclusion:
A. Corinth was hardly an ideal or perfect church.
1. It had more problems than any other church that any of us have likely seen or heard about.
2. But nevertheless, that body of struggling, carnal, and imperfect people was God’s church in that city.
B. Let us thank God for his patience with his people.
1. Thank God that there are people like Paul who will step in and help troubled churches.
2. And thank God for strong, gifted, faithful Christians who will stay with churches and help them work through problems, and help rescue them from ruin.
3. May God help us to love and appreciate this church and each other no matter the amount of wrong or weakness that may exist.
C. And let us thank God for this letter and our opportunity to study it.
1. May God show us a more excellent way.
2. May God help us to see ourselves and our weakness and sinfulness.
3. And may God help us to grow in our unity and maturity in Christ.
4. God is faithful and He is able to make us strong to the end, so that we will be blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.
5. Let’s put our trust in God!
Resources:
The (Im)Perfect Church (Studies in 1 Corinthians), Rubel Shelly, 21st Century Christian, 1983.
First Corinthians (Interpretation – A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching), Richard Hays, John Knox Press, 1997.
1 Corinthians (The NIV Application Commentary), Craig L. Blomberg, Zondervan, 1994.
1 Corinthians (Bible Study Guide), Charles R. Swindoll, Insight For Living, 1977.
