Let's Study 1 Corinthians

Book excerpt: A practical guide to a key New Testament book, in which the Apostle Paul teaches how the gospel must shape the believer's life-style and relationships both in the church and the community. A welcome help to those facing unrelenting pressure from a godless environment and sin's continuing deceitfulness. Corinth was a confident, modern and self-assured city, proud of its image and thoroughly pagan. It was a miracle of God's grace that the seed of the gospel had taken strong root in such potentially hostile soil. But the young and tender plant was in grave danger of being choked by the suffocating pressures of a godless environment, and the deceitfulness of sin still at work in the hearts of believers. In the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he teaches his readers how the gospel, in which they have believed, must now shape their life-style, within the church and the community. What does it mean to be 'spiritual' in a truly Christian sense? Where do God's power and wisdom lie and how are they to be experienced? What is the relationship of knowledge to behaviour, of truth to love, and of love to life?