Outline
I.
Introduction (1:1-9)
A.
The Fact of the
Divisions (1:10-17)
III.
Moral and Ethical
Disorders in the Life of the Church (chs. 5-6)
IV.
Instruction on
Marriage (ch. 7)
V.
Instruction on
Questionable Practices (8:1;11:1)
VI.
Instruction on Public
Worship (11:2;14:40)
VII.
Instruction on the
Resurrection (ch. 15)
1 Corinthians 1 NLT
1 This letter is from Paul, chosen by the
will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother
Sosthenes.
2 I am writing to God’s church in Corinth,
to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy
by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.
3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ give you grace and peace.
4 I always thank my God for you and for
the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus.
5 Through him, God has enriched your
church in every way—with all of your eloquent words and all of your
knowledge.
6 This confirms that what I told you about
Christ is true.
7Now you have every spiritual gift you need as
you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8 He will keep you strong to the end so
that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ
returns.
9 God will do this, for he is faithful to
do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord.
10 I appeal to you, dear brothers and
sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with
each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind,
united in thought and purpose.
11 For some members of Chloe’s household
have told me about your quarrels, my dear brothers and sisters.
12 Some of you are saying, “I am a follower
of Paul.” Others are saying, “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Peter, ” or “I
follow only Christ.”
13 Has Christ been divided into factions?
Was I, Paul, crucified for you? Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul?
Of course not!
14 I thank God that I did not baptize any
of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15 for now no one can say they were
baptized in my name.
16 (Oh yes, I also baptized the household
of Stephanas, but I don’t remember baptizing anyone else.)
17 For Christ didn’t send me to baptize,
but to preach the Good News—and not with clever speech, for fear that the cross
of Christ would lose its power.
18 The message of the cross is foolish to
those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the
very power of God.
19 As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”
20 So where does this leave the
philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made
the wisdom of this world look foolish.
21 Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the
world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish
preaching to save those who believe.
22 It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for
signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.
23 So when we preach that Christ was
crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.
24 But to those called by God to salvation,
both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 This foolish plan of God is wiser than
the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of
human strength.
26Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few
of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called
you.
27 Instead, God chose things the world considers
foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things
that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.
28 God chose things despised by the world,
things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the
world considers important.
29 As a result, no one can ever boast in
the presence of God.
30God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our
benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he
made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.
31 Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If
you want to boast, boast only about the LORD .”
1
Corinthians 2 NLT
1 When I first came to you, dear brothers
and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s
secret plan.
2 For I decided that while I was with you
I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.
3 I came to you in weakness—timid and
trembling.
4 And my message and my preaching were
very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on
the power of the Holy Spirit.
5 I did this so you would trust not in
human wisdom but in the power of God.
6 Yet when I am among mature believers, I
do speak with words of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this
world or to the rulers of this world, who are soon forgotten.
7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the
mystery of God —his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for
our ultimate glory before the world began.
8 But the rulers of this world have not
understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious
Lord.
9 That is what the Scriptures mean when
they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God
has prepared for those who love him.”
10But it was to us that God revealed these
things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s
deep secrets.
11 No one can know a person’s thoughts
except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except
God’s own Spirit.
12 And we have received God’s Spirit (not
the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given
us.
13 When we tell you these things, we do not
use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the
Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths.
14 But people who aren’t spiritual can’t
receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they
can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the
Spirit means.
15 Those who are spiritual can evaluate all
things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others.
16 For, “Who can know the LORD ’s thoughts?
Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the
mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 3 NLT
1 Dear brothers and sisters, when I was
with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk
as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in
Christ.
2 I had to feed you with milk, not with
solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still
aren’t ready,
3 for you are still controlled by your
sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other.
Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living
like people of the world?
4When one of you says, “I am a follower of
Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people
of the world?
5 After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul?
We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us
did the work the Lord gave us.
6 I planted the seed in your hearts, and
Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.
7 It’s not important who does the
planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed
grow.
8 The one who plants and the one who
waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their
own hard work.
9 For we are both God’s workers. And you
are God’s field. You are God’s building.
10 Because of God’s grace to me, I have
laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But
whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.
11 For no one can lay any foundation other
than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.
12 Anyone who builds on that foundation may
use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw.
13 But on the judgment day, fire will
reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a
person’s work has any value.
14 If the work survives, that builder will
receive a reward.
15 But if the work is burned up, the
builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone
barely escaping through a wall of flames.
16 Don’t you realize that all of you
together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?
17God will destroy anyone who destroys this
temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
18 Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think
you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly
wise.
19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to
God. As the Scriptures say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own
cleverness.”
20 And again, “The LORD knows the thoughts
of the wise; he knows they are worthless.”
21 So don’t boast about following a
particular human leader. For everything belongs to you—
22 whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the
world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to
you,
23 and you belong to Christ, and Christ
belongs to God.
1 Corinthians 4 NLT
1 So look at Apollos and me as mere
servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s
mysteries.
2 Now, a person who is put in charge as a
manager must be faithful.
3 As for me, it matters very little how I
might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own
judgment on this point.
4 My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t
prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide.
5 So don’t make judgments about anyone
ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to
light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one
whatever praise is due.
6 Dear brothers and sisters, I have used
Apollos and myself to illustrate what I’ve been saying. If you pay attention to
what I have quoted from the Scriptures, you won’t be proud of one of your
leaders at the expense of another.
7 For what gives you the right to make
such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything
you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?
8You think you already have everything you
need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom
without us! I wish you really were reigning already, for then we would be
reigning with you.
9 Instead, I sometimes think God has put
us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade,
condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people and
angels alike.
10 Our dedication to Christ makes us look
like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are so
powerful! You are honored, but we are ridiculed.
11 Even now we go hungry and thirsty, and
we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no
home.
12 We work wearily with our own hands to
earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who
abuse us.
13 We appeal gently when evil things are
said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage, like everybody’s
trash—right up to the present moment.
14 I am not writing these things to shame
you, but to warn you as my beloved children.
15 For even if you had ten thousand others
to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became
your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you.
16 So I urge you to imitate me.
17 That’s why I have sent Timothy, my
beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of how I follow
Christ Jesus, just as I teach in all the churches wherever I go.
18 Some of you have become arrogant,
thinking I will not visit you again.
19 But I will come—and soon—if the Lord
lets me, and then I’ll find out whether these arrogant people just give
pretentious speeches or whether they really have God’s power.
20 For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot
of talk; it is living by God’s power.
