The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians: A Bible Study

By William Flewelling

The Bible studies I chose to do came about in answer to the request from my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the interest among my parishioners. I would take a book in the Bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning, and make sense to the reader in that format. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of 1 Corinthians (198283) followed that pattern exactly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546213123

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

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Published by AuthorHouse 10/23/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1313-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1312-3 (e)

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Contents

Foreword

Notes On Paul’s First Letter To The Corinthians

Corinthians 1:1-3

Corinthians 1:4-9

Corinthians 1:10-17

Corinthians 1:18-31

Corinthians 2:1-8

Corinthians 2:9-16

Corinthians 3:1-17

Corinthians 3:18-23

Corinthians 4:1-5

Corinthians 4:6- 13

Corinthians 4:14-21

Corinthians 5:1-8

Corinthians 5:9-13

Corinthians 6:1-9a

Corinthians 6:9b-20

Corinthians 7:1-7

Corinthians 7:8-16

Corinthians 7:17-24

Corinthians 7:25-35

Corinthians 7:36-40

Corinthians 8:1-3

Corinthians 8:4-13

Corinthians 9:1-6

Corinthians 9:7-14

Corinthians 9:15-27

Corinthians 10:1-15

Corinthians 10:16-22

Corinthians 10:23-29

Corinthians 10:30 – 11:1

Corinthians 11:2-16

Corinthians 12:1-11

Corinthians 12:12-31a

Corinthians 12:31b – 14:1a

Corinthians 14:1b-33a

Corinthians 14:33b-40

Corinthians 15:1-11

Corinthians 15:12-19

Corinthians 15:20-28

Corinthians 15:29-34

Corinthians 15:35-49

Corinthians 15:50-58

Corinthians 16:1-24

About The Author

Foreword

In the fall and winter of 1982-83, I took up Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians with the Bible Study group that came together at LaPorte, Indiana’s First Christian Church. Part of the impetus for this particular study lay in the fact that I did not know a great deal about the letter and felt I should. There was also the factor that I had preached my first sermon in that congregation in February of 1981 out of 1 Corinthians 2. I was struck from that sermon on the line ‘I had decided to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified’. Indeed, I was beginning to get the idea that that particular line which fed that opening sermon had come to be the touchstone of my work – not only preaching but also in general pastoral work. Certainly, that increased the intrigue of the letter of 1 Corinthians.

As I work through these study notes again, transcribing [and lightly editing] the work of nearly 35 years ago, I am struck by the number of questions that get thrown into the text, over and above the pattern I used in those days of adding questions at the end, under the heading of Some thoughts. I find that I remember never having had any of those questions taken up by any member of the group, not this group in LaPorte, nor earlier ones in Mantua, Ohio. I suspect the fact that they were not questions looking for observed facts but open-ended questions that invite a deeper thought and care with the text had something to do with it.

As I reflect back further, it seems that open ended questions are a problem for more than just those study groups. A number of my class mates in Seminary – not all of them, by any means, but enough to make for a significant sample – wanted to know the facts, just the facts. There is a comfort in facts; that they are already interpreted by several, even many, layers of comment and more or less astute theological derivation over centuries is generally ignored. For the status of facts has an objective quality to it. Besides, we tend to have had our lives taught to us – all of us – in just that pursuit of facts. We have a certain affinity to Police Sgt. Joe Friday of the fictional TV show Dragnet of my childhood.

Coming to the text of 1 Corinthians pericope by pericope over 40 some weeks, we find lots of facts – all of them interpreted by the translator, in this case me, and properly identified with the way Paul uses his language and ideas and themes to express his own vision of Church and Christian life in the context of the well-known, well-loved congregation in Corinth. That search is what I have attempted to follow in the course of these notes and the study that they re-present in this volume.

William Flewelling

Notes On Paul’s First Letter

To The Corinthians

***

Bibliographic References:

Conzelmann, Hans, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. by James E. Leitch, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975.

Moulton, W. F. and Geden, A. S., eds., A Concordance to the Greek Testament, fourth ed., T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1963.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome, 1 Corinthians, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Del., 1979.

Orr, William F. and Walther, James Arthur, 1 Corinthians, The Anchor Bible, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1976.

Schutz, John Howard, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975.

TDNT: Kittel, Gerhard and Friedrich, Gerhard, eds. Geoffrey W. Bromley trans., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 10 Vols. various dates.

Zerwick, Max and Grossvener, Mary, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, vol. II, Biblical Institute Press, Rome, 1979.

Notes on 1 Corinthians 1:1-3

First, the text:

1. Paul, a called Apostle of Christ Jesus through

[the] will of God,

and Sosthenes, the brother,

2. to the Church of God,

to that one being in Corinth,

to the having been consecrated in Christ Jesus ones,

to the called saints,

together with all the ones calling upon

the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

in every place – theirs and ours:

3. Grace to you and peace

from God our Father

and [the] Lord Jesus Christ.

We begin the letter of 1 Corinthians tonight; we will be with it for quite a while. So far as we know, it is the Apostle Paul’s first writing to the Corinthian Christians, to the Church he had established in that city. Corinth was a cosmopolitan center, an ancient city which had been reestablished as a Roman colony in 44 B.C.E. It controlled two ports on two seas, being situated in the midst of an isthmus about three and a half miles wide. It had become the provincial capital for that part of the Roman Empire. The city had a reputation for vice. At the same time, it had a commercially established wealth. Religiously, the city had all the evidence of being a regular Graeco-Roman city. There has been a reputation given to Corinth of being exuberant, with a concentration of capable men; money often concentrates talent, particularly talent in the commercial interests. So much for a sketch of Corinth; we will need to watch for Paul’s perceptions of the city as we pursue the letter. [See, for example, J. Finegan’s article Corinth in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Abingdon Press, NY, 1962.]

Paul introduces himself and Sosthenes as the origin of the letter. Whereas we identify ourselves at the end of our letter, the ancient pattern called for the sender to identify him[/her] self first. Along with the giving of the name, Paul informs us and them of the authority he claims for writing the pastoral letter to them. [Paul shows a remarkable and consistent pastoral concern for his people throughout his writing.] He writes to them as an Apostle: he had been sent by Christ and by God the Father to bear witness to the gospel among the Gentiles. No one ever chooses to be an apostle; no one just grows up to assume the position, even with an acquired degree of training. Neither was Paul. He was called to the task of being an apostle. The sense of call is of fundamental importance in grasping Paul’s assuredness in writing to the Corinthians. He realized the imperative which lay in that call. He was removed by call beyond the limitations of himself. The call of God [it came through/by means of the will of God] completely colored Paul’s self-understanding and self-presentation. He did not operate on his own but under the direct imperative of God Almighty. That sense of call/vocation remains an awesome feel, for it stands beyond all ordinary experience while defining forever after the mode of experience. It has been argued that Paul’s entire ministry derives ultimately to the fright of being struck down by God on the Damascus Road. [I suspect that the call itself was confirmed repeatedly in the vigorous intensity of the Apostle’s experience of Christ.] How do we talk about call in our own life in Christ? Can we speak of recognizing authority in the call of one by God. Remember, such calls do not have independent witnesses; they must be judged by their fruits. Given the vast variety of religious flavors in the world today, even among those claiming to be Christians, how do we make judgments?

The call of God was to be an Apostle. Paul was commissioned by God, sent by God. His authority lay in his interpretation of God’s power [following Schutz: Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority]. His position was that of Apostle. His authority lay in the seriousness of his call and in the intensity of his own life in Christ. We cannot shortchange the importance of the intensity of the Apostle in evaluating his authority and his position. Yet we can easily see from our own experience the traps within an over-regard for personality. The man’s true religious and spiritual intensity may be a key to his apostolicity. Paul had his rivals, as his letters make abundantly clear. And often times those rivals succeeded in winning against his more severe position. There was a desire by many to remove the Apostle from prominence. We now live at a great distance from the Apostle, a distance measured in time, in space and in culture. It is easier to have his intensity, his fiery intensity of faith and thought blurred for us by that distance than it was for those who had seen him face to face. And when we are distant from the apostolic intensity [either in the Apostle himself or in his spiritual heirs], we are readier to accept a likely sounding counterfeit. How do we recognize authority in the intensity of holiness? or do we? or should we?

Sosthenes, the brother in Christ, joins as the junior partner in the writing of the letter. He is not the one with authority. But he is one in the Church and, more particularly, one of Paul’s companions in his labors. The name does not recur in this letter – and is otherwise found only in Acts 18.

The letter comes from the Apostle and the brother. The letter goes to the Church. Church translates ‘ekklesia’ those called out to be in one place together. In particular, it is sent to the Church in Corinth. Letters sent a generation or so later were addressed to churches sojourning in a given place [eg., Clement’s letter to the Corinthians, a part of the collection known as The Apostolic Fathers]. This letter is sent to that Church in Corinth, composed of those who have been consecrated in Christ Jesus, who have been called saints or holy ones. These people have a calling as well. They are identified very interestingly. First, they are known by the Church. It has been argued that we tend to identify ourselves by our social groupings: family, business associations, lodge, school, church; that notion is largely correct. In Paul’s sight, the most significant identification of the people of interest in Corinth was their partaking membership in the Church of God. Secondly, they are partakers of that particular Church which is in Corinth. The religious dimension of life bears a certain prominence in the way people are perceived. For the Apostle knows them well; he had formed that congregation. He knew them to have been consecrated in Christ Jesus. To be consecrated is to be made holy, and to be set aside for holy purposes. As Christians, the focus of their life and of their life-style [complete with values and attitudes and ways of working] is Christ. Holiness pervades their lives because of the pervasive presence of Christ. That is a pattern of intensity of faith which Paul assumes. After all, these Corinthian Christians have their calling: to be holy, to be saints. And that call is just as imperative and [with some variation of terrain] just as intense as his own more specialized vocation. This call of Christians is not just in Corinth; it is common to all places. The called Christians are recognizable by their calling upon/invoking the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We can ask all sorts of questions about how reasonable [or unreasonable] the Apostle was in his view of Christians. For he was rigorous and vigorous in his views. Yet, such an intensity of identification of his Christian audience does serve to open his letter: we know from the very beginning that the Apostle has a very high understanding of the calling of the Christian. He has every expectation that his converts will be holy – saints, consecrated in Christ and to God. He has no room for ‘conventional religion’. We could suppose that the early Church was full of Paul’s ideal and that it has run downhill ever since [with some variations in the terrain]. But the New Testament itself makes it obvious that that is not true: 1 Corinthians is itself a prime example? What authority upon us does Paul’s intense vision of the ordinary Christian bear? Where does the Church fit into our self-identification? How do we express any solid notion of consecration in ourselves?

Finally, Paul sends his initial greeting. That is, he invokes/calls-in grace and peace toward his readers. The gifts come from God and the Lord Jesus. We find him, the Apostle, calling upon God to give these gifts to these Christians by means of the word. It is expected that the word itself, full of the spiritual and faithful intensity of the man, will bring into actuality the gifts of God. Can we still assume that kind of assurance without falling into the traps of mere magic-formulae? Paul says that the ground of his call gives him authority, and that authority gives him the possibility of invoking blessing upon the people. Yet, the Apostle is clearly the channel or trigger of the action, not the source; the origin is divine, the same sacred core into which the Apostle so heavily invests himself. The gifts are grace and peace. Grace is freely expensive. It is given away without strings attached, yet demands the very deepest involvement of soul. It is [or dearly involves] the full presence of God, to which our own full presence is demanded. Peace is the wholeness and integrity which inheres with those close with God. Interestingly, these gifts flow through and from and in the intense togetherness in personal relations with one another and with the Lord Jesus Christ we are called, as saints, to exemplify. Could this greeting come to us – legitimately, that is?

Some thoughts:

(1) A symbol opens the way to the sensing of transcendent realities. At the same time that it points, the symbol also partakes deeply of the reality it presents. Could it be that the Apostle in his ministry has become a symbol for God, imbibing deeply in the divine reality of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord? Does the authority lie in the that?

(2) What might we suppose to be the expected results of the gifts Paul invokes? Or was it a merely conventional opening? [The form is highly conventional for his day.]

(3) Can we be comfortable with Paul’s apparent assumptions concerning the Christian life?

Notes on 1 Corinthians 1:4-9

First, the text:

4. I give thanks to God always concerning you

upon the grace of God,

that given to you in Christ Jesus,

5. that in everything you were enriched in him,

in all speech and all knowledge

6. just as the witness of Christ was confirmed in you,

7. so that you be not lacking in any gift of grace

awaiting the revelation of our Lord

Jesus Christ:

8. who will make you firm/confirm you

until end,

irreproachable in the day of our Lord

Jesus Christ.

9. Faithful is God

through whom you were called

into the communion of his son,

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul has opened with a quick action of establishing his authority as an apostle, his conjunction with the relatively unknown [at least to us] Sosthenes, and his conception of his addressees. They are the Church – or members of the Church – called to be saints, personally and corporately, as certainly as Paul was called to be an apostle. The sense of religious intensity pervaded Paul’s opening, we saw. They are a sanctified people; he brings that clear note of presupposition upon us quickly, insistently.

Now, our author turns to his customary Thanksgiving: only on certain sharp occasions [such as Galatians] does he forgo this element of the customary letter form. Here, we find the element setting the entire discourse within the thankful communion of Christians before God. Paul gives thanks to God – ‘my God’ – always concerning these Corinthian Christians. In giving thanks, a particular spiritual climate is invoked. It is a climate of reception and appreciation and presence. It is a climate self-consciously before God. The thanksgiving joins the Corinthians to the Apostle in the face of God from the very beginning of the letter; here we come to speak to one another. Both were called: now both are further joined in the inclusive act of thanksgiving. [Can true thanksgiving ever be exclusive?] We are accustomed to giving thanks to someone for something nice that they did for us. In a way, it is a formality, a social lubricant which affirms our connections with one another. We can look at giving thanks as a securing of a bond of friendship between two persons or groups. Or we can see that giving of thanks as a pay-off to a kindly superior or an acknowledgement to an inferior [socially or hierarchically speaking]. But Paul is using thanksgiving to God concerning the gift to the Corinthians; the scene is more complex than usual, for God receives gifts from Paul for the gifts [or grace] God gave to the Corinthians. What sort of spiritual connections are involved in such an act?

The act of thanksgiving is customarily encouraged of us. We ought to give thanks for what is given to us; it is the polite thing to do. But, is that what thanksgiving, as an act with its own integrity, is meant to be, or is? A Thank Offering is something given to God in joy, a fit of joy; the joy resonates and is expressed in thanksgiving. We have more a sense of the joyous child throwing the arms around a grandpa’s neck with truly unrestrained joy than a proper ‘thank you’ and proper smile offered to an aunt for some sort of gift. The latter conveys social lubrication and a pleasant refinement. The former bears the intensity and the urgent outgoingness of the act of thanksgiving. [Pardon the play on the over worn stereotypes.] How do we give thanks to God? Is it with reserve? or does our whole body and soul resonate with love and thanksgiving to our God? Where does the difference make itself known?

Now, we give thanks to God for what God has done for a third party. Is it a polite paying off of God, keeping him happy, so to speak? It is a reflex of love. For the gifts are given to someone we love by God, whom we love even more. Our joy is richer because it is resonating with others and on the behalf of others; it is more explosive now in its being flung Godward. Is this Paul’s action here? Does this convey a spiritual urgency and ‘surgency’ in the pastoral act of writing? Does such an act ever take place in the life of an ordinary congregation or of an ordinary Christian?

The thanksgiving is for grace, given of God: quite literally, the thanksgiving [the word is later used technically for the Lord’s Supper, the Great Thanksgiving] is upon grace: grace upholds and supports the thanksgiving of the Apostle. The grace is that given by God to the Corinthians, in Christ, as Christians. The gifts that God gives to them support the abundant thanksgiving in Paul. Do we find our thanksgiving ever built upon God’s gift to someone else, someone not even close at hand? What does that building upon someone else’s gift imply of the nature of the communion Christians share across wide boundaries of time and space?

The grace which was given not only is used here to identify the ground or basis of thanksgiving, but it also throws us forward. For grace is not static, ever. Grace does things. In particular, grace had the action in Corinth to enrich them in him in everything. Enrichment makes something of greater value, enhances its quality, raises its worth. The breadth of enrichment as wide – in everything. In a very hedonistic age, a material age, one would expect that enrichment to include or even to emphasize the material wellbeing of the saints [made prominent at the time of the Reformation, coming strong out of the theological constructions of John Calvin]. Some feel that a direct return is necessary to show the importance of serving God. Paul, here identifies the enrichment with two glances. The first is given as ‘in him’, in Christ, which is Paul’s phrase for the place in which Christians live, so personally wrapped up together in the living and loving of the Savior. The second is expanded as ‘in all speech and all knowledge’. Knowledge did not mean to suggest the handy store of information on how to get ahead in the world, in the community of faith, or with God [in the sense of getting in the ol’ boy’s good graces!]; rather, it suggests a resonance with the Spirit of Christ which expands the heart and mind beyond mere parochial confinement to the very reach of the cross of Christ. All speech does not indicate a glib or sly tongue; we find the speech which penetrates from the presence of Christ with gracious truth. What kind of gifts are these? Do we seek them? Do we even have an appreciation for them in a very technological and technique-oriented world? Which way do we look? or does it make a difference?

Grace confirms the Corinthians in accordance with the witness of Christ. The witness or testimony of Christ met them, was confirmed or made firm in them – in their midst as a community: we must not impose too much of our modern individualism upon the Apostle Paul. The thrust and aim of grace is toward a solidity in faithful living and in the express intensity of faith, living faith. The enrichment came with Christ alone, indicating the depths of faith-involvement with our Lord which alone feeds on God’s abundant grace. The gifts come to ensure that the people lack no gift of grace in the time of awaiting. Might we say that those gifts of grace are only those which fit into or are measured by the standard of the witness of Christ, and must be of such a nature as to confirm that witness? If so, then we have a key note here in preparation for the letter to follow.

So, we learn that Paul is addressing a time of awaiting, the time in which gifts of grace are so necessary because of the ‘until then …’ nature of the times. Waiting can become trying. The object of the awaiting is the revelation or the showing of Jesus Christ. For now, there is a hiddenness in the Lord: we do not see him. We do not meet him in the street., at least we do not do that in any ordinary way. Normal perception processes do not make obvious to us Jesus Christ. We await his being revealed. For now, we live on an abundant earnest of the foretaste of that finality, that ending conclusion of our waiting. It is normally thought of as the Parousia or final coming to presence of Jesus. Here, Paul uses for it revelation, a rare combination of ideas.

The interim of waiting is a time rich [made rich?] in thanksgiving and teeming with the gifts of grace, the charismata, the richness of God. As Conzelmann comments, this wait is not neutral, not deadly, but set in positive hope. Is Paul talking the balance needed in this in between time? How does that affect our appreciation of the contemporaneity of this particular letter? or can we even conceive of ourselves as being in any sense contemporary with this letter?

Looking forward, this awaited Jesus Christ, whose revelations suggested to be an expansion beyond all the excitements of all the graces of God is now, even now, reaching back to us from the expected time, to make us firm or solid until the end, the perfection, the completion [of … - it must be all things]. In making us firm [given here as a certain future tense – we