| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 47 secs | 0 Comments
What a powerful bit of scripture this chapter is and a total reminder of what God’s love for us looks like. Paul writes about ‘agape’ love in this chapter, not to be confused with other kinds of love that we all know and understand – Eros (sexual or romantic), Phileo (friendship or affection) which both […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 36 secs | 0 Comments
The heading at the beginning of this chapter says – Paul Surrenders his Rights (ESV). The term surrender conjures up images of conflict and defeat with the displaying of a white flag or the lowering of the colours (standard). Not so in this case, Paul is saying that he has made a decision willingly, this […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 55 secs | 0 Comments
Paul now addresses yet another issue in the church in Corinth. It’s the thorny one of food sacrificed to idols. Last year I used the modern day example of a Halal Doner kebab, where the animal was slaughtered with an Islamic issue. In Paul’s day “food sacrificed to idols” was an even bigger deal than […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 49 secs | 0 Comments
New believers in Corinth were getting pretty confused. It’s understandable when the culture was as pleasure seeking and sex-saturated as ours. Some were throwing off moral restraint completely and others entering into celibacy to be more spiritual. So Paul starts today’s reading with a quote from their letter to him – “It is good for […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 51 secs | 0 Comments
The first 11 verses can really be summed up by love (or lack of it!). Paul is reminding the believers in Corinth that they need to show love to each other. For a start they are taking each other to court and so are having decisions made by people whose lifestyle they disagree with! Not […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 50 secs | 0 Comments
One of the ways the church in Corinth was unhealthy was the spotlight on individual leaders – there was too much comparison of the various merits of leaders like Peter, Paul and Apollos. To address this Paul uses 7 metaphors to show us how unhelpful comparing leaders in the way they were was. Have you […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 25 secs | 0 Comments
Christ crucified. Paul spent roughly eighteen months planting and teaching a church in Corinth. The reason it became such an influential church in the area was because of Paul’s verse 2 decision – “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Paul focused on the message and did not […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 7 secs | 0 Comments
I find Paul’s letters to the Corinthians so helpful for three reasons… The early church was not perfect – it shows us that the early church had struggles like we do, The early church was nevertheless fruitful – growing exponentially, It is therefore all about Jesus and what He does in and through us. Paul […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 9 secs | 0 Comments
We are so free in Christ! The legalists were bound up in earning God’s favour by obeying the Old Testament Law – especially around Sabbath, food laws and circumcision. Those things were, as Gordon Fee points out, boundary markers to be in the Old Covenant People of God. Under the New covenant, the marker for […]