1 Corinthians — Chapter 1

Authorship & Background

Map & Geography

• Corinth (v.2): Greek port city known for commerce and immorality; Paul planted a church there.

Places on this map

• CorinthAncient Corinth, GreeceOn the four-mile isthmus joining the Peloponnese to mainland Greece, with a harbor on each side. Cargo was hauled overland between them to avoid the dangerous voyage round the cape, so the city was rich, transient and famously loose. Wikipedia

Towns sit on their excavated or traditional site. Regions, rivers and seas are ringed rather than dotted, because for those a single point is only an anchor. Coastlines from Natural Earth.

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Ephesus around AD 53–55, during the long stay of Acts 19 ("I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost," 16:8). He had planted the church in Corinth a few years earlier, staying a year and a half (Acts 18:1–18). Corinth sat on the narrow isthmus joining mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, with a port on each side, and ships and cargo were hauled across the land bridge rather than risk the stormy sail around the southern cape. The old Greek city had been razed by Rome in 146 BC and refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC as a Roman colony, so it was newly rich, mixed, ambitious and status-hungry. It hosted the Isthmian Games and was crowded with temples. The church was a cross-section of that city: a few well-off members, many ordinary people and slaves, Jews and Gentiles. Paul had already written them one letter, now lost (5:9). Since then reports had reached him of quarrels, and the church had sent him questions (7:1). Chapter 1 opens the whole letter: a greeting, a thanksgiving, and then the first and deepest problem, a church splitting into fan clubs, which Paul answers by taking them back to the cross.

Greeting (vv1–3)

• "Called by the will of God to be an apostle" (v1). Paul leads with his calling because some in Corinth were weighing him against other teachers and finding him wanting (4:3; 9:1–3). An apostle (apostolos) is one sent with a commission. Paul did not volunteer for the job or win it by vote. God put him there.
• "Our brother Sosthenes" (v1). Possibly the synagogue ruler of Acts 18:17, beaten before the governor Gallio's court when the case against Paul collapsed. If so, the man who once led the synagogue that opposed Paul is now co-signing his letter. The name was common, so this is a reasonable guess, not a certainty.
• "The church of God that is in Corinth" (v2). The church belongs to God, not to Paul or Apollos, a quiet first answer to the factions of v12. Ekklēsia was the ordinary word for a city's citizen assembly, and the Greek Old Testament used it for Israel gathered before the LORD. The Corinthian believers are God's assembly set down in a pagan city.
• "Sanctified… called to be saints" (v2). Both words come from the same root, holy. The words "to be" are supplied by translators. Paul literally says "called saints." They are already holy by God's call and Christ's work, and the rest of the letter will urge them to live like it. A church with this many problems is still addressed as "saints."
• "Together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord" (v2). From the first sentence Paul reminds a proud church that it is one congregation among many (4:17; 7:17; 11:16; 14:33). "Call upon the name of the LORD" is Old Testament language for worshiping Israel's God (Joel 2:32), and here it is directed to Jesus.
• "Grace to you and peace" (v3). Paul's usual greeting, joining the Greek greeting ("grace") with the Hebrew shalom, and tracing both to the Father and the Lord Jesus together.
• Commentators: Guzik and JFB both note that "to be" is not in the Greek, so the Corinthians are saints by calling, not by achievement. JFB adds that Paul may name Sosthenes "in modesty," or because he was "a 'brother' of note in Corinth" whose name would carry weight. Guzik leans toward identifying him with the man of Acts 18:17 and suggests he may also have been Paul's scribe, while treating both as possibilities.

Thanksgiving (vv4–9)

• "I give thanks to my God always for you" (v4). Before a single rebuke, Paul gives thanks. He is about to confront factions, incest, lawsuits, drunkenness at the Lord's Supper and denial of the resurrection, yet he can honestly thank God for this church, because what he thanks God for is "the grace of God that was given you." His confidence is in what God has done, not in their record.
• "Enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge" (v5). These are the very gifts the Corinthians were proudest of. "Speech" (logos) and "knowledge" (gnōsis) return again and again in the letter: knowledge that "puffs up" (8:1), tongues without love (13:1). Paul thanks God for the gifts here, and later corrects how they were being used.
• "Not lacking in any gift" (v7). "Gift" is charisma, a gift of grace, the word used for spiritual gifts in chapters 12–14. They had plenty of gifts. What they lacked was humility and love.
• "As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v7). The gifts are for the meantime. "Revealing" (apokalypsis) points to Christ's return. Some in Corinth acted as if they had already arrived (4:8). Paul keeps their eyes on a future that has not yet come.
• "Who will sustain you to the end, guiltless" (v8). "Guiltless" (anenklētos) means not open to any charge, unaccusable. It is a courtroom word. "The day of our Lord" takes up the Old Testament "day of the LORD," now named for Jesus. Believers will still give account for their work (3:12–15; 2 Cor 5:10), but no charge will stand that could separate them from God (Rom 8:33–34).
• "God is faithful" (v9). The ground of all this confidence. The same words come back in the promise about temptation (10:13).
• "Called into the fellowship of his Son" (v9). "Fellowship" is koinōnia, a shared life, partnership, participation. It is the word Paul uses for sharing in Christ's body and blood at the Lord's Supper (10:16). That is the bridge to what follows: people who share in one Son cannot be split into rival camps. Notice how often Jesus is named in these nine verses. Paul mentions him in nearly every one.
• Commentators: Guzik stresses that Paul thanks God for grace given, not for the Corinthians' achievements, and that God's faithfulness is the only reason to expect they will stand blameless. Henry, in his concise commentary: "Those that wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, will be kept by him to the end." On v7 JFB is careful: "not that all had all gifts, but different persons among them had different gifts," a point Paul develops in chapter 12.

Divisions in the Church (vv10–17)

• "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v10). He appeals not by his own name, which some were rallying behind, but by Christ's. "Brothers" (adelphoi) includes the sisters, as the next verse shows.
• "No divisions among you" (v10). "Divisions" is schismata, from a verb meaning to split or tear. The same word is used of the tear in an old garment patched with new cloth (Mark 2:21). The church is not yet split into separate congregations. It is torn while still meeting together (11:18).
• "United in the same mind" (v10). "United" (katartizō) means to put in order, repair or restore. It is the word for James and John "mending their nets" (Mark 1:19), and in medical writers it was used of setting a broken bone. The goal is not grudging coexistence but a torn thing made whole.
• "Chloe's people" (v11). Chloe is mentioned only here. "Her people" were probably members of her household, perhaps slaves or employees, who traveled between Corinth and Ephesus, possibly on business. Paul names his source openly rather than passing on anonymous complaints. "Quarreling" is eris, strife or wrangling, which Paul lists among the works of the flesh (Gal 5:20).
• The four slogans (v12). "I follow Paul": loyalty to the founder. "I follow Apollos": the eloquent Alexandrian teacher who had worked in Corinth after Paul left (Acts 18:24–19:1). "I follow Cephas": Peter, using his Aramaic name, perhaps favored by Jewish believers or by people impressed that he had been with Jesus from the start. "I follow Christ": either the right answer said in the wrong spirit, a superior group above all human teachers, or Paul's own sarcastic way of finishing the list. Interpreters are divided. There is no sign that Paul, Apollos or Peter encouraged any of this. Paul speaks warmly of Apollos (3:6; 16:12).
• Who really led the parties? Some scholars think the groups formed around local leaders, and that Paul uses his own name and Apollos's as stand-ins to avoid naming people. He says as much in 4:6, "I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit." Either way, the problem is the same: Christians ranking teachers the way Corinth ranked orators and athletes, and gaining status from the one they backed.
• "Is Christ divided?" (v13). Three questions, each expecting "No!" Christ cannot be cut up and handed out in portions. "Was Paul crucified for you?" puts the cross at the center of the argument for the first time. "Were you baptized in the name of Paul?" Baptism in Jesus' name marks a person as belonging to Jesus, not to whoever did the baptizing.
• Crispus and Gaius (v14). Crispus had been ruler of the Corinthian synagogue and believed with his whole household (Acts 18:8). Gaius later hosted Paul and the whole church (Rom 16:23). Some scholars identify him with Titius Justus, whose house stood next door to the synagogue (Acts 18:7), which would give him the full Roman name Gaius Titius Justus. That is a plausible reconstruction, not a stated fact.
• "I do not know whether I baptized anyone else" (v16). An honest correction mid-sentence, as if dictating: Paul remembers Stephanas's household, the first converts in Achaia (16:15), who may have been the very people carrying this letter (16:17). It shows how little Paul cared about keeping a tally.
• "Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel" (v17). Paul is not downplaying baptism. He commands it and ties it closely to faith elsewhere (Rom 6:3–4; Gal 3:27). He is saying that his particular commission was to preach, and that others could do the baptizing. His point is that no one has a claim to rank because of who baptized them.
• "Not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power" (v17). Literally "not in wisdom of word." Corinth loved polished speakers. Traveling orators drew crowds and fees, and audiences judged them on style. Paul refused to win people that way. "Emptied" (kenoō) means made empty or of no effect. If people were won by the speaker's cleverness, their faith would rest on the speaker, and the cross would be robbed of its power. This verse is the hinge into the rest of the chapter.
• Commentators: JFB calls "perfectly joined together" "the opposite word to 'divisions,'" a word for "healing a wound, or making whole a rent." Guzik, following Barclay, calls it a medical word for setting a broken bone. The lexicon's main senses are "mend, repair, restore," with "set" among its classical senses, so the picture is fair, though mending nets is just as close. Henry: "Agreement in the greater things should extinguish divisions about the lesser." JFB says of v17 that "Paul says this not to depreciate baptism; for he exalts it most highly." Guzik argues from v17 that baptism is not the thing that saves. Traditions that hold a higher view of baptism read the verse more narrowly, as being about Paul's calling and the Corinthians' boasting, not about baptism's meaning.

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God (vv18–31)

• "The word of the cross" (v18). The gospel in one phrase. In the first century the cross was not a piece of jewelry. It was the most degrading execution Rome had, reserved for slaves, rebels and the worst criminals, and polite people avoided even naming it. An ancient graffito from Rome shows a man worshiping a crucified figure with a donkey's head, mocking a Christian: "Alexamenos worships his god." That is what "folly" meant.
• "Those who are perishing… us who are being saved" (v18). Both are present tense, ongoing. Humanity is not divided by intelligence but by direction. To one group the cross is "folly" (mōria, from which English gets "moron"). To the other it is "the power of God," the same thing Paul says of the gospel in Romans 1:16.
• "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise" (v19). From Isaiah 29:14, in the Greek version. In Isaiah, Judah's leaders were trusting their own clever foreign policy, an alliance with Egypt, instead of trusting the LORD, and God promised to bring their wisdom to nothing. Paul sees the same pattern on a larger scale: God's saving act makes nonsense of human cleverness.
• "Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?" (v20). The wise man is the Greek philosopher. The scribe is the Jewish expert in the law. The debater (syzētētēs, a disputant) is the professional arguer. The questions echo Isaiah 19:12 and 33:18, where God asks where the experts have gone. None of them saw the cross coming, and none of them can explain it away.
• "In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom" (v21). God arranged it so that human wisdom could not reach him on its own terms. "It pleased God" means it was his good choice. "The folly of what we preach" is not the folly of the act of preaching but of its content. The word is kērygma, a herald's proclamation, the message itself. God saves through a message the world finds ridiculous, and he saves "those who believe," not those who figure it out.
• "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom" (v22). Each side set its own terms. Many Jews wanted proof by power, a sign from heaven like the Exodus (Matt 12:38; John 6:30). Many Greeks wanted a system that satisfied the mind. God refused both sets of terms.
• "Christ crucified" (v23). In Greek the participle means "Christ as the crucified one," not only a past event but a lasting identity. The risen Christ still bears the wounds (John 20:27). To Jews this was a "stumbling block" (skandalon, originally the bait-stick of a trap, then a snare or obstacle). A crucified Messiah sounded like a contradiction, since "a hanged man is cursed by God" (Deut 21:23; Gal 3:13). Paul knew that offense from the inside. He once persecuted the church over it. To Gentiles it was simply absurd: a god who dies as a criminal.
• "To those who are called… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (v24). God's call overcomes both objections. The Jew who wanted power finds it in the cross, and the Greek who wanted wisdom finds it there too. "Called" links back to v2 and v9.
• "The foolishness of God is wiser than men" (v25). Paul is not admitting God is foolish. He is saying that the thing that looks most foolish and weak about God, a crucified Messiah, outstrips the best of human wisdom and strength. It dealt with sin and death, which no philosopher could touch.
• "Consider your calling, brothers" (v26). "Look around the room." Not many were "wise" (educated), "powerful" (holding office or influence) or "of noble birth" (from the old families). Not many, but some: Crispus the synagogue ruler, Gaius who could host the whole church, and Erastus the city treasurer (Rom 16:23). A paving inscription found near Corinth's theater names an Erastus who laid the pavement at his own expense as aedile, a city official. Many scholars think he is the same man, though that is debated. Most of the church, though, were ordinary tradespeople, freed slaves and slaves.
• "God chose what is foolish… weak… low and despised… even things that are not" (vv27–28). "Chose" is repeated three times. "Things that are not" means people the world counts as nothing. God picked people Corinth would not have looked at twice, and through them he shames and "brings to nothing" what the world prizes. This is not praise of ignorance. It is the cross pattern repeated in the makeup of the church.
• "So that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (v29). The point of it all. "Boast" (kauchaomai) can be glad praise or self-promotion, depending on what is being praised. Paul uses the word family more in his letters to Corinth than anywhere else, because boasting was the city's way of life and the church's disease.
• "Because of him you are in Christ Jesus" (v30). Their standing is God's doing, not their own discovery. Christ "became to us wisdom from God," and that wisdom is then spelled out as three gifts. Righteousness: right standing with God, credited to believers (Rom 3:21–26; 2 Cor 5:21). Sanctification: being made holy, set apart for God (1:2; 6:11). Redemption: release by payment, the language of buying a slave's freedom (6:20; 7:23). The wisdom the Corinthians were chasing turns out to be a person, and he gives them everything they need.
• "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord" (v31). A shortened form of Jeremiah 9:23–24: "let not the wise man boast in his wisdom… but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me." Jeremiah names the wise, the mighty and the rich, the same three groups as v26. In Jeremiah "the LORD" is Yahweh. Paul applies it to the Lord Jesus. Boasting is not banned, only redirected.
• Commentators: Henry: "All the boasted science of the heathen world did not, could not, effectually bring home the world to God." On vv26–29 he adds that God "is a better judge than we what instruments and measures will best serve the purposes of his glory," pointing to the fishermen Jesus chose as his first preachers. On v30 he holds the gifts together: "Where Christ is made righteousness to any soul, he is also made sanctification." JFB makes the same point with a neat contrast: justifying righteousness is "perfect, but not inherent," while sanctification is "inherent, but not perfect." JFB takes the scribe as the Jewish expert and the debater as the Greek one, and on v29: "We are to glory not before Him, but in Him." Guzik argues that both Jewish and Greek demands were ways of making God answer to human terms, and warns against reshaping the message of the cross to fit what a culture finds acceptable. He also tells the story of a countess who said she was saved by the letter "m": the verse says "not many noble," not "not any."

Pointing to Christ

The chapter names Jesus in nearly every verse, and it moves from his name (v2) to his cross (vv17–25) to his person as everything God gives (v30). The Corinthians were looking for wisdom, power and status, and dividing over which teacher supplied them best. Paul's answer is that God has already given all three in a crucified Messiah, in a way designed to leave no one anything to boast about except him. The weakness of the cross is not a stage God passed through on the way to power. It is the shape his power takes.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the divisions, the foolishness of the cross, God's upside-down wisdom, and Christ as our everything.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 1 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Unity Over Human Loyalty (vv.10-13) — The Corinthians were splitting into camps around Paul, Apollos, and Cephas instead of standing united in Christ. Do you find your identity more in a leader, group, or label than in Christ Himself?
• The Cross as Power, Not Just Doctrine (v.18) — Paul says the message of the cross looks foolish to those perishing but is the power of God to those being saved. Is the cross something you merely believe, or something you experience as power in your daily life?
• God's Wisdom Confounds the World's (vv.20-21) — God chose to save people through preaching the world calls foolish rather than through impressive human wisdom. Are you ever tempted to soften or dress up the gospel to make it seem more respectable?
• God's Preference for the Overlooked (vv.26-29) — Paul reminds the Corinthians that not many of them were wise, powerful, or well-born by the world's standards, yet God chose them so no one could boast before Him. Does it encourage or challenge you that God delights in using ordinary, unimpressive people?
• Christ Is Everything We Need (vv.30-31) — Paul says Christ has become our wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption, so the only rightful boast is in the Lord. What are you tempted to boast in besides Christ — your achievements, knowledge, or reputation?