Lesson #02

• This was a common practice.
• There were some people who questioned Paul’s authority.

• Who was this man?
• Sosthenes was a fellow Christian who was with Paul at the time and sends his greetings to Corinth by way of this letter by Paul.
• The people in the Corinth church knew this man.
• Sosthenes persecuted Christians before he came to know Jesus Christ as his personal savior and Lord. He had much in common with Paul who persecuted Christians before he was saved..

(2)

• Paul established this church, but he does not call it his church.
• This point is important considering the problems in this church which we will see in this lesson.
• The church belongs to God. He is responsible for it.
• The problems of discontent and divisions in churches are the result of having forgotten this fact. The church is not all about what I want, but what God wants.
• While the letter was written to this church and sent to this specific church, notice that Paul broadens his audience by the phrase, “…all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord…” (2)
• In other words, this church contained believers who were a part of the universal body of believers in Jesus Christ.
• It was common in that day to circulate Paul’s letters among the churches by travelling Christians. Therefore, the truths in this letter to the Corinthian church were intended for all Christians, then and now.
• Those called saints (2)
• All those people that God has set apart for holiness to serve God are called saints.
• The word, saint, means = holy.
• It is not because the believer is in reality holy, but it is that God sees this as the believer’s position in Jesus Christ as though it were already accomplished.
• In reality there is a great deal of holiness lacking in our experience with God, but because He sees our potential for holiness, His Holy Spirit works with us in the process of sanctification, or the process of being made holy little by little, step by step.

• Grace and Peace.
• Usually Paul began a letter with these two words. It is a formal greeting of that time.
• The word, grace, was a Gentile greeting.
• The word, peace, (Shalom) was a Jewish greeting.
• Paul puts grace before peace because God’s grace must first be experienced before you can experience God’s peace.
• All aspects of the Christian life involve God’s grace.
• Salvation is by grace (Eph 2:5)
• The Corinthian believers already had salvation by grace.
• The Christian walk is by grace. (1Cor 15:10 Rom 5:1-2)
• This is what the Corinthian believers needed.
• The gifts God gives to His people to grow and mature in Christ are by grace. (7)
• This is what the Corinthian believers also needed.
• All aspects of life on this earth seek to rob the believer of peace.
• The Corinthians already had peace with God through salvation, but they did not have peace in the trials through which they passed. (Phi 4:6-7)
• Gifts (7)
• Paul said that this church was very blessed with gifted people and spiritual gifts. However, gifted people and spiritual gifts did not make this church spiritually mature in their relationship with God. Why?
• We will see in our study of this book that the Corinthian people did not know how to properly use the spiritual gifts that God gave them.
• The Corinthian church focused themselves on the gifts instead of on Jesus Christ.
• All the gifts of God should be manifested in the church until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.(8)
• The day of our Lord Jesus Christ is a reference in time to the rapture of the church.
• “God is faithful…”

(9)

• Paul made sure these people understood that God was faithful even though they were not faithful to God.
• Believers are called into fellowship: (9)
• The believer in Jesus Christ is first called into fellowship or partnership with God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit.
• Then the believer is called into fellowship or partnership with other believers in the universal body of Christ.
• Notice that there are no lone-ranger Christians for we are called to a partnership with God and other believers for two purposes:
• =1= So that we might grow spiritually in our Christian faith and in our walk to be more like Christ. The Christian cannot grow to maturity in a vacuum. He needs the fellowship of God and the fellowship of other Christians.
• =2= So that we might serve Jesus Christ through our lives to minister to other people.

• Usually Paul began a letter to a church with words of commendation for the good things they were doing.
• Paul does not commend these Christians for anything.
• Instead Paul tells them what God has faithfully done for them.
• God has sanctified them in Jesus Christ.(2)
• What does that mean?
• The word, sanctified, means = to set apart for holiness in service to God.
• God has set them apart for holiness even though they may not live holy lives.
• God has called them. (2)
• God has called them to be His people in Jesus Christ to serve the living God until Jesus Christ comes a second time to this earth
• The reference to the “coming” of Jesus Christ (7) uses the word for the event of the second coming, and not the word for the rapture of the church.

(10)

• Notice that Paul uses the full designation for our Lord. He does not just call Him Jesus.
• Many of the new versions of the Bible have deleted this full aspect of the name of our Lord from the text.
• In the early church, this full aspect of His name and title were used by every Christian.

• Church divisions: How did Paul know about the divisions in this church?
• Paul had not visited the church for some time. However, he received periodic reports about the progress of the churches he founded from Stephanas, Fortunatas, Achaicus (16:17) and from members of a church that met in Chloe’s house. (11)
• The form of these divisions:
• Divisions in the body of believers in Jesus Christ is a work of the flesh nature and not a work of the Spirit of God.
• Divisions, factions, and dissentions were about to break the precious fellowship into sects.
• This is how the universal Christian church came to be divided into various denominations. It was not the work of the Spirit of God but by the flesh nature of man.
• These divisions took the form of arguing over different leaders in the Corinthian church as to who was best, who had the truth, who baptized who, who preached more eloquently, who was the most gifted leader, etc.
• The group belonging to Paul.
• Because Paul founded the church, some people were pledging their allegiance to Paul.
• What is wrong with this?
• Allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ.
• Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are supposed to put Him at the center of the church, not a pastor or a leader.
• When believers lift up a leader or a pastor and place him at the center of the church:
• –man is glorified and not Christ.
• –the church is built on personality and not on the person of Christ.
• –the church falls when that leader leaves the church or when he falls into sin in his personal life.
• The group belonging to Apollos.
• Who was Apollos?
• Apollos was an educated Jew from Alexandria, Egypt who knew the scriptures.
• Apollos was a very charismatic teacher and a dynamic, eloquent speaker.
• Read Act 18:24-28
• Apollos spent some time in Corinth after Paul had left. Apollos’ purpose was to establish the church firmly on the Word of God.
• The group belonging to Peter (Cephas).
• Because Peter was one of the original disciples of Jesus Christ, he was closer to the truth than Paul. Some people thought so.
• Peter was the head of the church. This was a position given him by Jesus Christ. Because of that, some thought it was better to follow him rather than Paul.
• The group belonging to Christ.
• This group was the spiritual snobs who thought that only they had the truth.

• Paul commands them to stop these divisions in the local church.(10) He calls them to unity.
• Read Phi 3:15-16
• In Philippians Paul tells believers who disagree to “…let us mind the same thing.” (Phi 3:16)
• In other words, they concentrate on the areas of agreement permitting the Holy Spirit to bring them together by changing hearts and minds.
• There is a key word that is repeated in verses 13-17 that gives us the answer to these divisions in the church.
• That word is baptism.
• Evidently the arguments were centered around who had baptized who.
• Paul tells them that every one of them were baptized into Jesus Christ.
• This is not water baptism to which Paul initially refers, but the baptism of repentance performed by the Holy Spirit where the born-again believer is immersed into the body of Christ.
• Then Paul refers to water baptism when he says he baptized few.
• The purpose of water baptism:
• Water baptism is the believer’s public testimony of his new birth experience. It gives testimony that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ took away his personal sins.
• The reality of the baptism of repentance and water baptism:
• The baptism of repentance is the born again experience.
• The baptism of repentance divides believers from non-believers.
• The baptism in water is an identification with Jesus Christ and an identification with the body of believers in Christ.
• It is this universal bond of identification that should bring the body of Christ together instead of dividing it.
• The baptism of water should never divide the church body.

• Paul’s second answer to the problem of divisions in the church.
• God’s wisdom in contrast to man’s wisdom:
• Man’s elite egotism attempts to claim superiority of truth and wisdom.
• God’s wisdom cuts through man’s eloquent speech and causes it to appear foolish.
• The preaching of the gospel brought these people to the feet of Jesus.

• “…the preaching of the cross…”

(18)

• The word, preaching, is not the word for announcing or proclaiming. Instead it is the word, logos, that refers to the living Word, and in turn refers to the Jesus Christ, the Word of God.
• It was not by eloquent words that saved them.
• It was the power of the Holy Spirit that saved them.
• “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:”

(22)

• Even though God gave the Jews a sign, the resurrection of Christ, they still did not believe.
• Even though God is ultimate wisdom in Jesus Christ, still the Gentiles did not believe.
• The Greeks put wisdom on a high pedestal. They made wisdom a god.
• This is the cultural background of the Corinthian church from which these people were saved.
• “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise…”

(27)

• There are 7 foolish things of the world that God used to defeat Israel’s enemies in their possession of the promised land, one of which was the oxgoad (Jdg 3:31)
• In the Old Testament, the “foolish things” were objects, but in the New Testament, the foolish things are people.
• “That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

(29-31)

• Paul’s final statement tells us that everything is in Jesus Christ, in Him, through Him, and for Him. All other pursuits for glory are vain.
• From the wisdom of God comes the righteousness, the sanctification, and the redemption.
• The believer begins to have wisdom the moment he is saved. He receives the righteousness of Christ the moment he is saved. Sanctification is the gradual process of maturing in Christ when wisdom and righteousness are perfected in our lives. Redemption begins at salvation and is completed at the rapture of the church, when all believers receive a new glorified body.

• What is revealed about this church in this chapter?
• This church was like many churches today, where there are arguments, frustrations, and clashes of personalities that divide churches. In other words, where Christians are not acting like Christians but acting like the world.
• It is for this reason we can say that the people in the Corinthian church were carnal Christians.
• A carnal Christian is a believer who experienced the new birth, but does not walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. Instead his flesh nature controls him, and his life has the appearance of a non-believer.
• It is obvious from this chapter that Christ is not glorified through the life of a carnal Christian.
• What is revealed about Jesus Christ in this chapter?
• Grace and peace come from God through Jesus Christ. (3)
• He gives us knowledge. (5)
• He gives us gifts. (6)
• He makes us holy. (8)
• God is faithful (9)
• He calls us to spiritual fellowship with Him. (9)
• Fellowship:
• All believers in Jesus Christ are placed (baptized or immersed) into one body of believers by the Lord Jesus Christ at the moment that believer is born again by means of identifying himself with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God.
• This act gives the believer fellowship with the Holy Trinity.
• This act gives the believer fellowship with other believers in Jesus Christ.

• Application:
• The only way Christ is glorified in the life of a believer is through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
• The most important characteristic of a church is its level of unity in the Spirit.

HOMEWORK
1CORINTHIANS 2
This is a self-study. Please do not send homework answers to the teacher forcorrection.

• Application of 1Cor 1
• Honestly evaluating your life, do you find yourself walking more in the power of the flesh nature than under the control of the Holy Spirit?
• If your answer is yes, what can you do this week to walk more in the power of the Holy Spirit?

• Preparation for 1Cor 2
• Read 1Cor 2:1-9
• What were Paul’s purposes? (2, 5)
• What was Paul’s message? (6-9)
• Read 1Cor 2:10-16
• How does the believer in Jesus Christ understand spiritual truth?
• What does this passage teach you about the role of:
• God the Father?
• Jesus Christ, the Son?
• The Holy Spirit of God?
• What are the differences in this chapter between the wisdom of man and wisdom of God?

• Memory Verse: 1Cor 2:12