Do you really want to be a New Testament church? Paul would command you to avoid it.
Prostitution, incest, drunkenness at the Lord's table, sectarianism, and babble all were problems in Paul's rag-tag startup church in Corinth. Paul's letter was a course-correction for many in the church, bringing people back to the Gospel as the basis for right unity, sexual ethics, observation of the sacraments, and worship. This commentary works through this deep and sometimes confusing letter verse by verse, unpacking the details and making applications. Yes, even on the headcoverings.
"A review of the problems in Corinth can be disconcerting for modern Christians, ranging from ordinary to outlandish. Some of their difficulties could be, as far as we are concerned, something that happened five weeks ago instead of two thousand years ago. Christians still sue fellow believers in unbelieving tribunals, for example, thinking nothing of it, but the practice of celibate marriages has not caught on anywhere in the modern church, not even in California. But for all the problems, Paul had not given up on the Corinthians.... The reason he had not given up on them can be seen when we get to his grand exposition of the resurrection in chapter 15. The message of the gospel is not a like a political campaign, or collecting signatures for a referendum, where if we can only enlist 'enough people' then maybe we can get something to happen. Rather, the message we are to preach is that God has set certain inexorable forces in motion, and it is our assigned task to get as many people as prepared as possible before God’s great eucatastrophe hits. We are all living along the beach in our miserable little grass huts, and a great tsunami, a huge tidal wave of joy, is heading toward us. Our task is not that of trying to get the tidal wave to come. We cannot make it come any faster, and we most certainly cannot get it to slow down." -From the Introduction
1 Corinthians Commentary: Partakers of Grace is in the following collections:
