If you had one last thing to say to your family and friends, what would you say? What would you want them to know? That’s where we find Paul in this section of 1 Corinthians. He’s in the last paragraphs of his letter. He has one last shot to drive his message home....

We’re almost at the end of our study and it’s time to make a choice. We’ve asked this question for the past twelve weeks, and now it’s up to you to answer. Will you choose this risky, others-centered life? [Especially if you have just completed the experiment of...

We’ve talked a lot about the risky life that puts other people before us. It’s a risk because it means we might have to live with unmet needs. We might have to sacrifice time, energy, or money. We might have to say no to something we want for the sake of another...

The others-centered life can be easier to define within our immediate circle. We can think of specific Christians, like we did yesterday, and intentionally invest in them. But as we’ve seen throughout 1 Corinthians, however, the risky life shouldn’t be confined to our...

We’ve made it. We’re in the final chapter of 1 Corinthians. We’ve followed Paul’s words to the fledgling church in Corinth. He’s had to correct a lot of self-centered behavior. He’s advocated for an others-centered life that chooses sacrifice over selfishness, and...

People often spend their lives trying to avoid death. Our culture obsesses over youth. No one wants to grow old. No one wants to appear weak. No one wants to die. We’ll do anything to keep us from meeting the end of our lives. And when the end comes, we don’t know...

One danger we face when we think about the future—Jesus’s return and our resurrection—is that we can get caught up in the details. We can fret about the specifics of when it will happen or how it will happen or what kind of bodies we’ll have. Paul cautions us against...

We’ve talked a lot about the others-centered life in this study of 1 Corinthians. Living this way is a risk because we put our own security, well-being, and control of our lives aside so that we can meet the needs of other Christians. We give ourselves away because we...

Sometimes it’s good to get back to the basics. In the final chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul draws the church back to its roots. He reminds them of what he first taught them when he visited their city years before. It all comes back to the gospel. Read 1 Corinthians...

Paul has been encouraging the church in Corinth to live an others-centered life. This way of living exhibits the sacrificial love of Jesus in all areas of life from the local church to the family to the workplace. We live selflessly only through the power of the Holy...

You might have noticed that we covered chapters 12 and 14, but we skipped over chapter 13. We did that on purpose. That’s because we often take chapter 13 out of the context of its surrounding chapters. We read it at weddings or during a marriage series, which can...

Now that we know we have gifts from the Spirit, we need to know the proper way to use them. We don’t want anything to get out of hand. We want to be selfless with our gifts. But what does that look like? 1 Corinthians 14 is another one of those sticky passages we...

Today's reading is a fun one. Over the years, it has been popular to use spiritual gift inventories and questionnaires to help believers discover their spiritual gifts. The major problem with these tools is that they’re an abstraction; we can take those tests and try...

Think about the last time you needed someone’s help. Maybe you couldn’t reach the top shelf at a grocery store or you asked some friends to help you move. Even though it’s hard for us to admit, we all need help sometimes. The same goes for the church—we need each...

First Corinthians can feel like a beat-down. Paul isn’t happy with how the church is acting, and the past 11 chapters have all been about what they need to fix. The Corinthians were selfish, which caused lots of problems. Paul’s main point is that Christians should...

Selfishness can poison the church. We’ve already seen how it damaged the church in Corinth outside of their corporate worship. But this week we also realized how their selfishness ruined their worship time together. We can fall into the same trap as the Corinthians....

Have you ever experienced the feeling when everyone in the room is on the same page? Maybe it was a meeting at work when every team member got on board with a new project. Or maybe it was the thrill of a concert when the entire audience sang along. Or even when...

The church is diverse. People who follow Jesus come from all kinds of upbringings, social classes, ethnicities, countries, and cultures. The local church is also diverse—everyone comes from a different neighborhood, career, or income bracket. Our differences shouldn’t...

As we talked about yesterday, chapter 11 is all about orderliness in corporate worship. Another way to put it is, “How to live selflessly in the context of a worship service.” The key is to set aside selfishness for the sake of the other people in the congregation—and...

So far in our journey through 1 Corinthians, we’ve looked at a lot of the external issues in the church. They were dealing with division over leadership, sexual ethics, and food. For the first time studying this letter, we’ll peek into the Corinthians’ actual worship...

We’ve talked a lot about our rights in this session. It’s not normal to give them up. But we surrender them because we follow a savior who did it first. The reasons he chose selflessness are the same for us. And that’s what we’ll look at today. Open up your Bible and...

Sometimes we want to pick and choose the parts of Christianity we like. Take the subject we’ve been talking about this week. There are some rights that are easier to give up than others. It can be tempting to keep some things under our control while being selfless...

Self-centered living doesn’t feel all that bad, right? It might make us a little prideful, but at least our needs will be met and we won’t have to rely on everyone else. Paul anticipates that the Corinthians might think along those lines. So at the beginning of...

As we go through life everyday, we like to know what’s ahead. We structure our days around our needs— what we’ll eat, when we’ll sleep, what we’ll do at work. Without realizing it, our day can become all about us. In our discussion about giving up our rights, it’s...

Learning to live selflessly isn’t only about setting aside our pride as we talked about last week. It’s also about choosing to set aside certain rights for the good of others. Setting aside our rights paints a much broader stroke across our lives and affects more than...

In 1 Corinthians 8, we’ve seen another way the Corinthian church was missing the others-centered life that Jesus modeled for us. Their pride blinded them to how they were causing other Christians to sin against God. In the last verse of this chapter, Paul says he’d...

We talked yesterday about the internal consequences of pride. Pride has a wider effect than the corruption of our hearts, though. It can cause us to harm other Christians, which is exactly what happened in Corinth. Read 1 Corinthians 8:7-13.  7 However, not all...

It’s a great feeling when we know something someone else doesn’t. Whether it’s the best route to a burger joint, the proper way to change a tire, or the name of the president of Turkey, pride bubbles up in us when our knowledge surpasses everyone else’s. The same...

Yesterday we did not look into the culture of Corinth yet. So, before we jump into the text, let’s get a little background. As we’ve said before, Corinth had temples for many gods, and one of the common practices of the day was offering sacrifices to those gods. They...

We’re at the halfway point in 1 Corinthians. Since the beginning of this study, we’ve walked through Paul’s frustrations with the Corinthians’ actions. In chapter 5 we talked about sinful practices that even non-Christians deplore. In chapters 6 and 7, Paul spoke...

As we wrap up our study of chapter 7, let’s remind ourselves of what Paul is not saying. He’s not saying it’s bad to be married or even to get married. He’s also not saying all Christians should stay or become single. He’s simply pointing out what it means to be...

So far this week, we’ve been talking about staying where God has placed us—whether that’s as a spouse or a single person. Our romantic relationships and our life stage aren’t about us, but we often think they are. But today we hit a passage near the end of the chapter...

There’s an idea among Christians that says you’re only a really good Christian if you do certain things for God—like be a missionary in an impoverished country or sell your suburban house to live in the inner city. While living radically for Jesus can be a good,...

We talk a lot about personal rights in today’s world—especially in the United States. Culture says we’re owed sexual fulfillment. We’re entitled to romance. But what God says about sex and relationships is entirely different. If we follow Paul’s logic from the...

Reading 1 Corinthians feels like watching Paul take the Corinthians on a walk through their problems and we’re just along for the ride. It’s similar to taking a guided tour through an art museum. The guide plants you in front of painting after painting, pointing out...

We’ve come to the end of another difficult passage in 1 Corinthians. So, for this final day, we’re going to take a step back. Chapter 6 demands a lot from us. It asks us to act in a way that contradicts everything the world stands for. That’s what it means to be a...

Yesterday had us considering what it could look like to risk getting hurt for the sake of other people. Without Jesus, few people would really think about putting their safety and security on the line for other people. And we’re not done yet. In the rest of chapter 6,...

We left yesterday with the conclusion that treating other Christians poorly sends a bad message to the world about who Jesus is and what it means to be part of his family. But what are we supposed to do if another Christian cheats us? In 1 Corinthians 6:7, Paul has an...

Have you ever felt embarrassed by someone? Maybe your kid threw a fit in the grocery story the other day. Or maybe your friend said something offensive at a dinner party without knowing it. We’ve all felt the shrink-into-your-seat feeling when someone does something...

Last week we examined what it looks like to deal with sin in this others-centered life we’ve been exploring in 1 Corinthians. Paul advocates for taking sin seriously— for uprooting it in the church and in us. We must be proactive about anything that poisons the church...

We’ve come to the end of a difficult chapter. Paul doesn’t mess around when it comes to sin. He takes it seriously and we should too. We finished yesterday reflecting on the ways we could be misjudging the other Christians around us. Today, we’re taking a hard look in...

We’ve been looking at why Paul takes sin so seriously in this chapter of 1 Corinthians. It can cause serious damage in the church. Paul wants sin cleaned out. This chapter rubs against everything we see as normal and right in our culture. It’s not politically correct...

Yesterday we looked at two reactions we tend to have toward sin—letting it slide or focusing on it too much. Paul advocates for balance. As those who have received God’s grace, we need to take sin seriously. Read 1 Corinthians 5:9–13. According to Paul, whom should...

Christians tend to run to two extremes when it comes to sin [too soft or too hard]. We either lean too heavily towards grace and let sin slide or we’re hyper-vigilant about sin and almost lose grace entirely. Where’s the balance? Open up your Bible and read 1...

We’ve made it all the way to chapter 5 in 1 Corinthians, which means we’re at the first major turning point in the letter. So far, we’ve seen how the Corinthians’ selfishness and devotion to their culture has brought division in the church. They’ve prioritized...

The word authority raises all kinds of red flags in our culture. This is why people today become uncomfortable when they encounter Paul in this passage. Paul claims the position of a father (v. 15), calls on the Corinthians to imitate him (v. 16), and warns them about...

As we’ve talked about our culture and the culture of Corinth this week, we’ve hit some hard topics. Something sinister sits at the root of each worldly issue, and Paul addresses it directly in the final paragraph of chapter 4. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 4:18. What...

Yesterday was tough. We had to look a huge aspect of our culture— consumerism—in the eye and see how it affects our churches and us. It plays out in our attitude toward leaders, Sunday worship services, and each other. Paul’s been pushing against the Corinthians’...

We live in a consumeristic world. All you have to do is take a scroll on social media to know it’s true. Banners and ads tell us we need more—more food, more pleasure, more gadgets—and that we should do whatever it takes to get it. Take a few minutes to journal about...

For the past two weeks, we’ve unpacked Paul’s frustrations with the Corinthians. They’re selfish. They’ve adopted a Jesus-plus-the-world attitude toward the Christian life. It’s played out in how they’re using church leaders to fight with each other. Grab your Bible...

We all have times in our lives when we were less mature than we are now. Just think back to middle school and it’ll probably prove the point. We all have to grow up sometime. We can’t act like we’re in kindergarten if we’re actually an adult. The same goes for how we...

We’ve all given the Bible a double-take. Maybe for you, it was when you were breezing through a passage in the gospel and had to stop and re-read a section a few times wondering, “Did Jesus really say that?” Or maybe you had to scan back through a passage in Leviticus...

We want the things we do and the choices we make to be worth it. The same goes for living the Christian life. Is it worth it to risk living this scary, foolish life Paul’s been talking about? Open your Bible up to 1 Corinthians 2 and read verses 6-16 6Yet when I am...

Some of us love to speak in front of people, while some of us would rather eat a bucket of sardines. In this section of 1 Corinthians 2, we’re going to look at a time in Paul’s past when he spoke publicly to the smartest people of his day . . . and completely failed....

“Will you let go?” is a question we all have to answer as Christians. Will we hold on to our comfort, security, and safety? Or will we risk it all by putting Jesus—and everyone else—first?  This week we’re going to look at why we should let go. We talk a lot about why...

People in Paul’s day highly valued wisdom. People would gather in public places to hear each other’s arguments and debate new ideas. Those with the tightest arguments and best delivery were revered. Jennie spoke about a time when Paul attempted to reason with the...

Typically it is very easy to misunderstand the Gospel. We have our “ticket” to heaven. We have a new life in this world. The rest should be simple, right? No matter how long you’ve been following Jesus, you know that isn’t true. The Christian life is more than just a...

So far this week, we’ve looked at the big problem in the Corinthian church and we’ve learned some more about Paul and the city of Corinth. Let’s take a deeper look at the actual letter. Read 1 Corinthians 1:1–9. As you read, notice how many times Paul mentions Jesus....

Before we dive further into 1 Corinthians, let’s pause and get our bearings. Letters are always written to a specific person or people in a certain time and setting. In order to best understand a letter, we have to know its author, audience, and occasion. Author and...

Welcome! Welcome to the book of 1 Corinthians. As we study this letter, we’ll step into ancient Corinth while reading the words Paul wrote to the fledgling church. We’re going to see that, like all churches, the Corinthian church wasn’t perfect. They had a problem. A...