A Church Coming Apart

The next place the post went was Corinth — the rough port where Paul had made tents with Aquila and Priscilla and stayed a year and a half. He was at Ephesus now, and two things came from Corinth: some of Chloe’s household with news, and a letter full of questions. He took the news first.

“I beg you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: all say the same thing. Let there be no splits among you; be mended back together, in the same mind and the same judgment. Chloe’s people tell me there is fighting among you. Every one of you is saying —” And then the four sentences that had broken the church into four. “I am of Paul.” “I am of Apollos.” “I am of Cephas.” “I am of Christ.” “Has Christ been cut up into parts? Was Paul crucified for you? The word of the cross is nonsense to people who are perishing, but to us it is God’s power. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Then he reminded them how he had come: no grand speech, and shaking, knowing nothing among them but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Then he wrote of God’s hidden wisdom. “I had to talk to you as babies. I gave you milk, because you could not chew — and you still cannot. While there is jealousy and fighting among you, you are living the way anybody lives. What is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants you came to trust through. I planted. Apollos watered. God made it grow. Nobody can lay another foundation than the one lying there, which is Jesus Christ — but let each man watch how he builds on it. “Let nobody fool himself. If anybody among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become foolish, so that he may become wise; for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. So let nobody boast in people. Everything is yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

Then how they were to reckon him and Apollos — and how they had begun to reckon themselves. “This is how a person should count us: as servants of Christ and managers of God’s secrets. What is looked for in a manager is that he be found faithful. So do not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, who will bring the hidden things of the darkness into the light and make plain what the hearts were after; and then each will get his praise from God. Learn from us the ‘nothing beyond what is written,’ and do not be puffed up, one for the one against the other. “Already you have had your fill! Already you are rich! You have started reigning without us! It looks to me as if God put us apostles on last of all, a show for the world: hungry, knocked about, working with our own hands, blessing the people who curse us. I write to warn you, like my own dear children. So become imitators of me. Shall I come with a rod, or in love, and gently?”

Then he came to what Chloe’s people had told him. “It is actually being reported that there is sexual sin among you, and the kind not even found among the nations: a man has his father’s wife. And you are puffed up! Should you not have mourned instead, and had the man who did this taken out from among you? I have already judged it, though I am not there: when you are gathered together, with the power of our Lord Jesus, hand such a man over to Satan. “Do you not know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Clean the old yeast out and be a new lump, for our Passover lamb has been sacrificed too — Christ. So keep the feast, not with the old yeast of badness, but with bread that has no yeast in it, of being real and true. “I wrote to you not to mix with people who sleep around. I did not mean the ones outside; you would have to leave the world altogether. I meant this: if a man is called a brother, and he sleeps around, or is greedy, or serves idols, or is a drunk, or robs people — do not mix with him. Do not even eat with him.”

Next, the courts. They had begun taking each other to law in front of the neighbors. “Does one of you, having something against another, dare to go to law in front of unrighteous men instead of the holy ones? Is there not one wise man among you who can decide between brothers? The lawsuit is a defeat before it starts. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead you do wrong and cheat people — and your own brothers at that. “Do not be fooled. People who go on doing wrong do not inherit God’s kingdom: not people who sleep around, nor idol-servers, nor adulterers, nor thieves, nor greedy men, nor drunks, nor robbers. And that is what some of you were. But you washed yourselves clean; you were made holy; you were set right, in the name of the Lord Jesus. “‘Everything is allowed me’ — but not everything is any good to me, and I will not be owned by anything. Run away from sleeping around. Do you not know your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit? You are not your own; you were bought, and there was a price paid. So give God the glory in your body.”

That was the news answered. Now their list — and the first question was marriage. “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because there is so much sleeping around, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband, and let the husband pay his wife what he owes her, and the wife her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body; the husband does. And the husband does not have authority over his own body; the wife does. Do not cheat one another — unless you agree on it for a season, to be free for praying, and then be together again, so that Satan does not test you. “To the unmarried and the widows: it is good if they stay as I am. But if they cannot hold themselves in, let them marry; better to marry than to burn. “To the married I give this charge — not I, the Lord: a wife is not to be separated from her husband, and if she is, let her stay unmarried or be put right with him again; and a husband is not to leave his wife. “To the rest I say this myself, not the Lord. If a brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is content to stay with him, he is not to leave her. If a woman has a husband who does not believe, and he is content to stay, she is not to leave him. But if the one who does not believe walks out, let him walk; God has called us in peace.”

Then a rule he laid down in every gathering there was. “Stay where you were when God called you. Was a man already circumcised when he was called? Let him not undo it. Was he uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; keeping God’s commands is the thing. Were you a slave when you were called? Do not let it gnaw at you — but if you can get free, take it. Do not become slaves of men.” “About the young women who are not married, I have no order from the Lord; this is my own opinion. Because of the hard time we are in, it is good for a person to stay as he is. Are you tied to a wife? Do not look to be free. Are you free of a wife? Do not look for one. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a young woman marries, she has not sinned — only such people will have trouble in this life, and I would spare you it. “The time has been drawn short. From now on let the men who have wives live as if they had none; and those who cry as if they were not crying; and those who are glad as if they were not glad; and those who buy as if they owned nothing; and those who use the world as if they were not using it up. For the shape of this world is passing away. I want you free from worry. I am not throwing a noose over you. And if a man thinks he is not treating his own young woman properly, and it has to be, let him do what he wants; let them marry. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free to marry whoever she likes, only in the Lord.”

The next question was meat. Most of the meat in Corinth had been killed in front of some god before it reached the stall. “Knowledge puffs a man up; love builds him up. We know an idol is nothing at all in the world, and there is no God but one. For us there is one God, the Father, and everything is from him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, and everything is through him. “But that knowledge is not in everybody. Some are so used to the idol that when they eat the meat they eat it as a thing sacrificed to an idol, and their weak conscience is dirtied. Watch out that this freedom of yours does not become a stone your brother trips over — the brother Christ died for. “So if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat again as long as the world lasts, rather than make my brother stumble.”

He knew what he was asking. He had given up more than a plate of meat. “Who ever goes to war at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat the fruit? The Lord laid it down that those who announce the good news should live from the good news — and I have used none of it. I made myself everybody’s slave to win more of them: to the Jews a Jew, to the weak weak, all things to all people. All the runners run, and one gets the prize. Run like that.”

Then he reminded them what happened to people who thought they were safe. “Our fathers were all under the cloud and all went through the sea, and all ate the same food and drank the same drink — and God was not pleased with most of them, and they were cut down in the desert. Do not set your hearts on evil things, as they did. Do not be idol-servers. Do not put Christ to the test. Do not grumble, as they grumbled. So the man who thinks he stands had better watch out that he does not fall. “No test has come on you except what comes on everybody. God is faithful. He will not let you be tested past what you can carry; with the test he will make the way out too, so that you are able to bear it. “So run from idol-service. I am talking to people with sense: judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless — is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread we break — is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? There is one loaf, and we who are many are one body. You cannot drink the Lord’s cup and the cup of demons; you cannot share the Lord’s table and the table of demons. “Let nobody look after his own good, but the other person’s. Eat anything sold in the meat market and ask no questions for conscience’ sake, for the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. If somebody who does not believe invites you and you want to go, eat whatever is set in front of you and ask no questions. But if somebody says, ‘This was sacrificed in a temple,’ do not eat it — for the sake of the man who told you. Not your conscience. His. So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” “And put nothing in anybody’s way to trip them — not Jews, not Greeks, and not God’s own gathering.”

Then a matter of what they wore on their heads when they prayed. “Become imitators of me, as I am of Christ. “I praise you for holding on to what I handed you. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of a woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with something down over his head shames his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered shames her head; it is the same as being shaved. If a woman is not covered, let her hair be cut off as well; and if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. Man did not come from woman, but woman from man; and man was not made because of the woman, but woman because of the man. That is why the woman ought to have authority on her head, because of the messengers. And yet in the Lord woman is not apart from man, nor man from woman — and everything comes from God. “Judge it among yourselves: is it fitting for a woman to pray to God with her head bare? Does not nature itself teach you that long hair on a man is a dishonor to him, and long hair on a woman is her glory? Her hair was given her instead of a wrap. And if anybody wants to argue — we have no such custom, and neither do God’s gatherings.”

The last thing was the worst, and it happened at the supper. The rich came early, from houses with kitchens, and ate their own food while they waited. The people who worked came late, and there was nothing left. “You come together and go away worse instead of better. When you all come to the same place, it is not the Lord’s supper you eat. Each one gets his own supper down first, and one goes hungry while the next is drunk. Have you not got houses to eat in? Or do you shame the people who have nothing? “For I received from the Lord what I handed on to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you. Do this to remember me.’ In the same way the cup, after supper: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, to remember me.’ Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death, until he comes. “So whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in a way that does not fit it will answer for the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a man test himself, and then eat and drink; for the man who eats and drinks without telling the body apart eats and drinks judgment on himself. “So, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If a man is hungry, let him eat at home.”

He was not finished. The longest part of the letter was still ahead.