1 Corinthians 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul opens his letter to the church in Corinth by greeting them and thanking God for the gifts and knowledge they have received. He then addresses a report from Chloe's household that the church has split into rival groups naming Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ, and he urges them to agree instead of dividing. The rest of the chapter argues that the message of a crucified Christ looks foolish to the world, yet is God's power and wisdom, and that God chose people the world counts as weak and low so that no one can boast before him.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • Paul is called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.
   • Paul's call to apostleship is through the will of God.
   • Sosthenes is the brother, and joins Paul in the greeting.
2. 1:2
   • The letter is addressed to the church of God at Corinth.
   • The recipients have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.
   • The recipients are called to be saints.
   • The letter is addressed also to all who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord in every place.
   • Jesus Christ is Lord both of them and of us.
3. 1:3
   • Paul wishes grace to the recipients.
   • Paul wishes peace to the recipients.
   • The grace and peace come from God our Father.
   • The grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. 1:4
   • Paul always thanks his God on the recipients' behalf.
   • Paul gives thanks for the grace of God given to them.
   • The grace of God was given to them in Christ Jesus.
5. 1:5
   • In everything the recipients were enriched in Christ.
   • They were enriched in all speech.
   • They were enriched in all knowledge.
6. 1:6
   • The testimony of Christ was confirmed among them.
7. 1:7
   • The recipients lack no spiritual gift.
   • The recipients are waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8. 1:8
   • Christ will also confirm them to the end.
   • They will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9. 1:9
   • God is faithful.
   • By God they were called into the fellowship of his Son.
   • God's Son is Jesus Christ our Lord.
10. 1:10
    • Paul urges the brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    • Paul urges that they all speak the same thing.
    • Paul urges that there be no divisions among them.
    • Paul urges that they be perfectly joined together in the same mind.
    • Paul urges that they be perfectly joined together in the same judgment.
11. 1:11
    • It has been reported to Paul concerning the Corinthians.
    • Those of Chloe's household are the ones who reported it.
    • The report is that there are quarrels among them.
12. 1:12
    • Paul states what he means.
    • Each of them says something different.
    • One says, I am of Paul.
    • Another says, I am of Apollos.
    • Another says, I am of Cephas.
    • Another says, I am of Christ.
13. 1:13
    • Paul asks whether Christ is divided.
    • Paul asks whether Paul was crucified for them.
    • Paul asks whether they were baptized into the name of Paul.
14. 1:14
    • Paul thanks God that he baptized none of them.
    • Paul excepts Crispus from those he baptized.
    • Paul excepts Gaius from those he baptized.
15. 1:15
    • Paul's not baptizing was so that no one should say that Paul had baptized in his own name.
16. 1:16
    • Paul also baptized the household of Stephanas.
    • Beyond that, Paul does not know whether he baptized anyone else.
17. 1:17
    • Christ did not send Paul to baptize.
    • Christ sent Paul to preach the gospel.
    • Paul does not preach with wisdom of words.
    • Preaching without wisdom of words is so that the cross of Christ not be emptied of its effect.
18. 1:18
    • The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
    • To us who are being saved the word of the cross is the power of God.
19. 1:19
    • It stands written in scripture.
    • God says, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.
    • God says, I will set aside the understanding of the discerning.
20. 1:20
    • Paul asks where the wise man is.
    • Paul asks where the scribe is.
    • Paul asks where the disputer of this age is.
    • Paul asks whether God has not made foolish the wisdom of the world.
21. 1:21
    • In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through its wisdom.
    • God was pleased to save those who believe.
    • God saves them through the foolishness of the thing preached.
22. 1:22
    • The Jews demand a sign.
    • The Greeks seek after wisdom.
23. 1:23
    • We preach Christ crucified.
    • Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews.
    • Christ crucified is foolishness to the Greeks.
24. 1:24
    • To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God.
    • To those who are called, Christ is the wisdom of God.
25. 1:25
    • The foolishness of God is wiser than men.
    • The weakness of God is stronger than men.
26. 1:26
    • Paul tells the brethren to consider their calling.
    • Not many of them were wise according to the flesh.
    • Not many of them were powerful.
    • Not many of them were of noble birth.
27. 1:27
    • God chose the foolish things of the world.
    • God chose the foolish things in order to shame the wise.
    • God chose the weak things of the world.
    • God chose the weak things in order to shame the strong things.
28. 1:28
    • God chose the lowly things of the world.
    • God chose the despised things.
    • God chose the things that are not.
    • God chose them in order to bring to nothing the things that are.
29. 1:29
    • The purpose is that no flesh should boast before God.
30. 1:30
    • It is from God that the recipients are in Christ Jesus.
    • Christ became wisdom for us from God.
    • Christ became righteousness for us.
    • Christ became sanctification for us.
    • Christ became redemption for us.
31. 1:31
    • This is so that what is written may hold.
    • It is written that the one who boasts is to boast in the Lord.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

Letters in this period opened by naming the sender first, then the recipient, then a greeting, which is why Paul's name comes before the address. A Sosthenes appears in Acts 18 as the leader of the synagogue in Corinth, beaten in front of the Roman governor Gallio; whether he is the same man named here is not stated.

1:2

Corinth was a large, wealthy Roman colony on the narrow strip of land joining mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, with harbors on two seas, a mixed population of Romans, Greeks and Jews, and a reputation for trade and for status-seeking. The King James "saints" does not mean a special class of outstanding Christians: it translates a word meaning "holy ones," people set apart for God, and it is Paul's ordinary term for all the members of a church. "Call upon the name" is an Old Testament idiom for addressing a god in prayer and worship.

1:3

"Grace and peace" is Paul's reworking of the standard letter greeting. Ordinary Greek letters opened with a word for "greetings" (chairein); Paul uses the similar-sounding word for grace (charis) and adds the customary Jewish greeting, peace (shalom).

1:5

"Utterance" in 1611 English meant the power of speech, the ability to express yourself, not a single thing said. Skill in speaking and claims to special knowledge were both highly prized in a Greek city like Corinth, which is part of why Paul raises them here.

1:6

"Confirmed" translates a word used in commerce and law for guaranteeing or ratifying an agreement, the way a contract is made binding. The same root appears again in verse 8.

1:7

"Gift" here translates charisma, a gift freely given; Paul uses it for the various abilities he says God's Spirit hands out in a congregation, a subject he returns to at length in chapters 12 to 14. "The coming" renders a word meaning an uncovering or unveiling, the moment something already real is made visible.

1:8

"The day of our Lord" picks up a set Old Testament phrase, "the day of the LORD," which the prophets used for a decisive day of God's judgment and setting things right. "Blameless" is a legal image: no charge can be brought and made to stick.

1:9

"Fellowship" has weakened in modern English to mean friendly company. The Greek word, koinonia, means having something in common: a partnership, a joint share in the same thing, the way business partners share a venture.

1:10

The word behind "divisions" literally means a tear or rip, as in a torn garment. "The same mind and the same judgment" was stock political language in Greek cities for civic concord, the opposite of the factions that split a town council, so Paul is describing the church's quarrels in the vocabulary of public life.

1:11

A "household" in this world meant everyone under one roof and one owner: family, slaves, freed slaves and dependents. Chloe is named without a husband and her people travel, which suggests a woman of some property, though nothing else about her is known.

1:12

Apollos was a Jew from Alexandria, described in Acts 18 as an eloquent and learned speaker, who worked in Corinth after Paul left. Cephas is Aramaic for "rock," the name Jesus gave Simon Peter; Paul usually calls him by the Aramaic form.

1:13

"Baptized in the name of" translates a phrase meaning baptized *into* someone's name. The wording was used in banking and legal documents for transferring something into a person's account or ownership, so the question is about whose possession and allegiance the baptized person has entered.

1:14

Acts 18 names Crispus as the leader of the synagogue in Corinth who believed along with his whole household. A Gaius appears in Romans 16 as Paul's host in Corinth and host to the whole church there.

1:16

Stephanas turns up again at the end of this letter as one of the first people in the province of Achaia to believe. "I know not whether" means simply that Paul cannot now remember, not that he is unsure whether it happened at all.

1:17

"Wisdom of words" refers to rhetoric, the formal art of persuasive public speaking. Trained orators were celebrity figures in Greek cities, judged on style and delivery as much as on content, and audiences paid to hear them. "Made of none effect" translates a verb meaning to empty out, to drain of substance.

1:18

Crucifixion was a Roman public execution reserved for slaves, rebels and the lowest criminals, designed to be slow and humiliating as much as fatal. Respectable people avoided even mentioning it, so "the preaching of the cross" named something shameful, not something decorative.

1:19

Paul is quoting Isaiah 29:14, where God says the schemes of Judah's clever advisers will come to nothing. "The prudent" in 1611 English meant the shrewd and discerning, not the merely cautious.

1:20

The string of questions echoes Isaiah 33:18, which asks where the enemy's officials have gone. Paul's three figures span both worlds: the scribe was a Jewish expert in the written law, while the "disputer" was the Greek professional debater. "This world" renders a word meaning this present age, the current stretch of history rather than the planet.

1:21

"Preaching" here means the content proclaimed rather than the act of delivering a sermon or the manner of it. The word comes from the herald who announced a ruler's message in public; what is called foolish is the announcement itself, not the preacher's technique.

1:22

A "sign" was a miraculous act offered as proof that a messenger genuinely came from God, as Moses' signs authenticated him before Pharaoh. "Greeks" here means Greek-speaking non-Jews generally, the whole non-Jewish world of the eastern Mediterranean, not only people from Greece.

1:23

"Stumblingblock" translates skandalon, originally the trigger stick of a trap, then anything that trips a person up. For Jewish hearers the particular obstacle was the manner of death: Deuteronomy 21:23 says anyone hanged on a tree is under God's curse. For Greek hearers the obstacle was that a crucified criminal could be anyone's savior at all.

1:26

"After the flesh" means by ordinary human reckoning; "flesh" in Paul's usage here stands for human beings as such, not for the body or for sensuality. "Noble" refers to birth: the small class of families with inherited rank, wealth and office. Paul is describing the social makeup of the congregation, not their moral quality.

1:27

"Confound" in 1611 English meant to put to shame or humiliate publicly, not to confuse. In a culture organized around public honor and disgrace, shaming was a social defeat, not a feeling.

1:28

"Base" meant low in social rank, of no standing, rather than immoral. "Things which are not" was a stock contemptuous phrase for nobodies, people who did not register in public life. "Bring to nought" means to reduce to nothing, to put out of action.

1:29

"Glory" as a verb in the King James means to boast or take pride in something. "No flesh" is a Hebrew way of saying no human being at all.

1:30

Three legal and social images stand behind the terms. "Righteousness" is the standing of someone acquitted in court. "Sanctification" means being set apart as holy, dedicated to God. "Redemption" was the ordinary word for buying a slave's freedom or paying the ransom for a prisoner of war, a transaction with a price attached.

1:31

Paul is compressing Jeremiah 9:23-24, where God tells the wise, the strong and the rich not to boast of what they are, but to boast only of knowing him.