The city of Corinth had history going back to the dawn of civilization. It was part of many ancient Greek myths. They claimed to have been founded by Corinthos, son of Zeus. Older legends said the city was founded by Ephyra, daughter of the Titan Oceanus. Jason and the Argonauts stopped there. The Corinthians fought in the Trojan war. The winged horse Pegasus drank from a spring in Corinth and was caught and tamed by Corinthian demi-god Bellerophon, son of Poisidon and a mortal princess.

🤨 Sounds like a Nephilim to me.

I’m just summarizing the Wikipedia articles, but the shoe certainly fits. Pegasus and Athena were on ancient Corinthian coins. Athena had given Bellerophon a golden bridle that he used to capture Pegasus.

Corinth had also been the home of a theater that could seat 15,000 and a temple to Aphrodite built on its hill called Acrocorinth. At one point in its history, the Greek geographer Strabo said the temple was so wealthy it owned more than 1000 slave courtesans which had been given as gifts to Aphrodite. Merchants, sailors, soldiers and wealthy visitors were known to squander all their money on these expensive prostitutes. There was even a proverb about it: “Not for every man is the voyage to Korinthos.”

The point is, by the time Paul showed up, Corinth was already super ancient. They had fought alongside and against the Spartans.

They hosted the Isthmian Games which were held between the Olympic Games. Corinth was a powerful and wealthy ancient city ranking right up there with Athens and Thebes. They settled disputes between powerful city-states and joined with them to fight the mighty Persians. They had tremendous wealth and influence from their dual ports.

If you look closely, the red line marked “Diolkos” was an ancient version of a canal to save ships the time and difficulty of going around the Peloponnese landmass. It wasn’t an actual canal. A king had tried that and gave up. This was a limestone roadway that may have used a type of train track system. It’s unclear if only ship’s cargo was transported the 3-4 miles overland and reloaded onto other ships, or if the ships themselves (smaller ones) could be moved entirely across the land, loaded on carts and pulled by ropes with teams of over 100 men.

This was a wealthy, sophisticated, advanced city. And the Romans completely destroyed it in 146BC. They killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery. About 100 years later Julius Caesar had it rebuilt. So by the time Paul visits and meets Priscilla and Aquila, the new city was only about a century old. The huge theater was gone; replaced by a much smaller one.

In the illustration above, the center of the large open space on the left is where Paul was taken before Gallio in Acts 18:12-17. That’s where the Bema (judgment seat) was. The large grey building in the center is the Temple of Apollo. Seven pillars from that temple have survived to the present and it’s one of the major tourist sites.

American Evangelicals shudder to think of a city having an idol set up in a park or courthouse. The entire city of Corinth had been dedicated to Zeus in the past and in Paul’s time there was an active Imperial Cult (worship of the Roman Emperor). There were 3 main temples and numerous other shrines to Greek and Roman deities. And that’s not counting the temples in the “suburbs” of Cenchrea, Isthmia, and Lechaion.

I say all this to remind us that the letters to the Corinthians are not letters to quaint midwestern American towns in the buckle of the Bible Belt with churches on every corner and a maybe one bar that has the nerve to exist in such a salty atmosphere.

In the Greco-Roman world prostitution was open and normalized. Sex slaves were also openly acknowledged (and were more a Roman thing since being on the submissive end of a same-sex relationship was considered socially debasing and emasculating thing). The Greeks had long practiced “pederasty;” a consensual same-sex relationship between an older man and a teenage boy. These people were utterly lost. Idolatry. Witchcraft. Demonic possession. And you think our politics are corrupt? Today’s politicians at least try to cover their tracks when it involves murder and it’s all considered very shocking. The scandals in the ancient political world make ours look tame by comparison, except that ours tend to affect more people and involve more money. And they happened so frequently that it was just matter of course that some emperor or official had someone killed.

Paul is writing to an ethnically diverse group of Christians whose lights are shining in a thick and turbulent darkness. They are metaphorically wearing white shirts in a cesspit. This will help us get some perspective the next time we start pearl-clutching because the government just legalized something sinful. We aren’t the first to face a sin-sickened society. The early Christians were turning the world upside down in just such a culture. And they weren’t doing it from a favored political status. They were doing it under persecution.

So who was Paul writing to specifially?

In Acts 18 we learn the names of some of the believers in Corinth. We get a much longer list in Romans 16 because Paul was in Corinth when he wrote it.

• Crispus and family, personally baptized by Paul (Acts 18)
• Justus (Acts 18)
• Gaius, personally baptized by Paul, hosted gatherings of the church in his home (Rom 16)
• Erastus, city administrator (Rom 16)
• Quartus
• Phebe, a deaconess from neighboring Cenchrea (Rom 16)
• Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, and Tertius, it’s unclear if they travelled with Paul or were residents of Corinth. (Rom. 16)
• Chloe, probably hosting gatherings of believers in her home, (1 Cor. 1:11)
• Stephanas and family, personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1)

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬ ‭ESV‬‬

It’s important that we get clear on this because, as we read this first letter, we kind of wonder if these people are actually Christians or not. There’s some pretty unsaintly things going on. But keep the immoral culture of Corinth in mind and the fact that these people are a hodgepodge of Greeks, Romans, Jews, slaves, and sinners who have believed the good news about Jesus but don’t have a Bible or any of the church infrastructure or history we have.

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CHAPTER 1

😲 Wait a second… you’re just NOW starting on chapter 1?! We’ve been here long enough for a whole post.

Background is important.

🤨 So is breakfast.

Here, have a donut while you read. 🍩☕️

🙄 Breakfast of champions.

In these opening 3 chapters, Paul addresses the problem of division in the Church. They have divided into factions or tribes. Paul has already written to the Galatians that this type of behavior is a work of the flesh. And he says the same thing to the Corinthians.

“But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Ya know how we tend to use the excuse “I’m only human”? I don’t think Paul would’ve considered that a legitimate excuse. He expects Christians to be more than human.

Think about that. 🪑

When a person is born again by the Spirit, they aren’t just human anymore. God dwells inside them. Or, at least that’s what is supposed to happen. And that’s not normal.

Born again believers are meant to be spiritual people. And not in the way the word “spiritual” is used today which means, “I believe in supernatural beings but I don’t think any of the religions are right. I prefer to pick and choose from them like a buffet and make up the rest to my own liking.“

When Paul talked about being “spiritual” he describes people who are unmoved by the usual things: popularity, self-satisfaction, pride, competition, prestige. Spiritual people are humble. Spiritual people aren’t trying to prove anything to anyone. They aren’t influenced by showmanship and impressive speech or even miracles. Spiritual people are led by the Holy Spirit. Their judgment isn’t based on how popular or polished something is. They practice spiritual discernment. And they are perfectly fine not getting the credit for the good things in their lives and instead acknowledge that Jesus has done it.

The Corinthian Church is not being spiritual.

They’re being tribal. And they are focussed on things we can measure in the flesh:

• Who is the better speaker?
• Who has the most followers?
• Who is the best looking?
• Who is the smartest?
• Who is the most successful?

We dare not cast the first stone at the Corinthians though. How many churches have (and continue to) choose leaders based on polished performance, business acumen, talent, corporate experience, or “cool vibes?”

Are we not also immature and fleshly when we do that?

Paul could’ve tried to impress the Corinthians with his powerful knowledge of the scripture and personal experience of seeing the risen Jesus, but he didn’t. He simply preached the Cross of Christ.

Paul wasn’t much to look at. He was badly scarred from beatings and the stoning at Lystra. He wasn’t an orator like Apollos. And he hadn’t spent 3 years with Jesus like Peter. But he refused to compete with these brothers.

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The reason for not taking the let’s-wow-their-socks-off approach was so that their faith would be in God and not in a person.

If we lure people into the Church with slick entertainment, impressive rhetoric, and carefully crafted marketing, are we leading people to Jesus or to a man’s ministry? I’m concerned that many believers are more connected to a particular minister or Christian artist than they are to Christ Himself. And Paul was too. So he did something about it. He intentionally avoided using fleshly means to draw people to Christ.

The Corinthians were so immature and carnal that they gravitated toward the polished and impressive of this world anyway, even though Paul had intentionally avoided it.

But God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He is not impressed with human intelligence. In fact, the world’s greatest wisdom is so small, it only ranks as “foolishness” on the scale of God’s mind. So how on earth is anyone supposed to understand an infinitely wise Being?

Easy. The Infinitely Wise Being moves inside and brings His light with Him.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2‬:‭12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The Kingdom of Heaven is completely “other” to the world we know. Even a highly intelligent person cannot think his way into the Kingdom. One must faith his way in.

If you like long-form videos and you have 90 minutes to watch an interview, this video of a highly intellectual unbeliever interviewing a highly intellectual (but humble and genuine) Christian will demonstrate what Paul is getting at. If you prefer a 60 second clip, click here. Dr. Lennox does not try to intellectually argue his atheist interviewer into faith. His ultimate “argument” is that Christ has given him peace and forgiveness.

Earthly wisdom tends to impress us as deep, obscure, and complex. I think the reason the flesh cannot receive or perceive the things of the Spirit is because they are beyond the realm of the physical senses and the self-centered intellect.

“Spiritual wisdom” is s a way of knowing that bypasses the usual ways of knowing through our 5 senses and the processing by the physical brain. But spiritual wisdom is not like it’s adding a 6th sense. To me, it feels more like taking away the noise. It reminds me of a hidden message with “decoder ring.”

A message is written in light blue or green and then scribbled or printed over with a bunch of red lines. If you hold a red filter “spy decoder” over it, it filters out all the red and you can see the message that was there all along.

The Holy Spirit filters out the world’s scribbles so we can discern the wisdom of God.

Let’s pray for the grace to turn away from the world’s influence. Let’s stop caring about what the world thinks is impressive. Let’s receive the Spirit of God and ask Him to teach us His wisdom.