1 From Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and from Sosthenes, our brother,
2 to God’s Church which is in Corinth; to you whom God has sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with those who everywhere call upon the name of our Lord Christ Jesus, their Lord and ours.
3 Receive grace and peace from God our Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord.
4 I give thanks constantly to my God for you and for the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus.
5 For you have been fully enriched in him with words as well as with knowledge,
6 even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you.
7 You do not lack any spiritual gift and only await the glorious coming of Christ Jesus, our Lord.
8 He will keep you stead fast to the end, and you will be with out reproach on the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus.
9 The faithful God will not fail you after calling you to this fellowship with his Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Divisions among the faithful
10 I beg of you, brothers, in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord, to agree among yourselves and do away with divisions; please be per fectly united, with one mind and one judgment.
11 For I heard from people of Cloe’s house about your rivalries.
12 What I mean is this: some say, “I am for Paul,” and others: “I am for Apollo,” or “I am for Peter,” or “I am for Christ.”
13 Is Christ divided or have I, Paul, been crucified for you? Have you been baptized in the name of Paul?
14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you, except Crispus and Gaius,
15 so that no one can say that he was baptized in my name.
16 Well, I have also baptized the Ste pha nas family. Apart from these, I do not recall having baptized anyone else.
The folly of the cross
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim his Gospel. And not with beautiful words! That would be like getting rid of the cross of Christ.
18 The language of the cross remains nonsense for those who are lost. Yet for us who are saved, it is the power of God,
19 as Scripture says: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and make fail the foresight of the foresighted.
20 Mas ters of human wisdom, educated people, philosophers, you have no reply! And the wisdom of this world? God let it fail.
21 At first God spoke the language of wisdom, and the world did not know God through wisdom. Then God thought of saving the believers through the foolishness that we preach.
22 The Jews ask for miracles and the Greeks for a higher knowledge,
23 while we proclaim a crucified Mes siah. For the Jews, what a great scandal! And for the Greeks, what nonsense!
24 But he is Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God for those called by God among both Jews and Greeks.
25 In reality, the “foolishness” of God is wiser than humans, and the “weakness” of God is stronger than humans.
26 Brothers and sisters, look and see whom God has called. Few among you can be said to be cultured or wealthy, and few belong to noble families.
27 Yet God has chosen what the world considers foolish, to shame the wise; he has chosen what the world considers weak to shame the strong.
28 God has chosen common and un important people, making use of what is nothing to nullify the things that are,
29 so that no mortal may boast before God.
30 But, by God’s grace you are in Christ Jesus, who has become our wisdom from God, and who makes us just and holy and free.
31 Scripture says: Let the one who boasts boast of the Lord.
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Comments 1 Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 1
• 1.1 From Paul called to be an apostle.… to God’s church in Corinth… with those who everywhere call upon the name of our Lord Christ Jesus. With these three ex pressions Paul defends his authority. He reminds the Corinthians, so easily entrenched in their rivalries, that they are part of a greater reality, the Universal Church of God.
Called to be holy. You have to become holy, but you already are. Holy, in the biblical sense, is the person or thing that belongs to God. The baptized have been consecrated to God and form part of the people who belong to God, the assembly of the holy ones, which is the Church.
God’s call does not allow them to remain as they are. Their conscience readily adapted to the moral norms of their milieu, but now, God’s call demands a renunciation of a certain vision of existence based on ‘the natural.’ They will have to be orientated, as best they can, towards an ideal of life found in the person of Christ.
In Christ. A single Greek preposition used by Paul is to be translated into English as in or through or with, according to the case. “In Christ” has many meanings:
– We are sons and daughters of God, made after the image of the only Son of God, and God loves us in Christ.
– God the Father saves us through Christ.
– The Father calls us to share with Christ his inheritance.
– We have become part of the body of Christ; we live in Christ and have received his Spirit.
– The word “Christian,” used for the first time in Antioch (Acts 11:26) to denote the disciples of Christ, was still not widely used; often in Christ means Christian. So “marry in Christ” signified “to marry in a Christian way.”
See Paul’s acts of thanksgiving in verses 4-9: what certitude of riches present in a community where all is far from perfect!
In his advice to the Corinthians, Paul shows us how to act when reviewing the activities of our parish or our apostolic group. Instead of being discouraged by the problems we face and accusing one another when something fails, the first thing to do is to remember what we already have in common.
These communities, in fact, like our own had to face their problems and their weakness. Each generation of Christians must learn to follow Jesus and “build Church,” or better still “be Church.”
He will keep you steadfast to the end (v. 8). The hope that maintains the “tone” of faith is the return of Christ. The first Christian generation expected to witness his glorious coming: he would judge the world and take his own with him (1Thes 4:13).
• 10. The first sin of the Church is the division among believers. Several apostles (see 12:28) passed through Corinth. Certain members of the community profited by this to affirm their own identity by declaring allegiance to one leader rather than another: a way of satisfying vanity and the need of self-assertion.
Agree among yourselves and do away with divisions (v. 10): be a united family. This admonition is understood when the Church is a community sharing the same concerns. It is a little different when the church gathers together large numbers of people of different backgrounds who are per haps opposed to one another in daily life. In this case the Christian community must be united, not by ignoring reality and never talking of inequalities, but by recognizing individual and collective faults in daily life. The Church can never be a reunion of passive or “heavenly” people.
I am for Peter (v. 12). Paul says “for Cephas” like in 3:22; this was the aramaic nickname Jesus gave him. Apollos: see Acts 18:24.
Christ did not send me to bap tize (v. 17). When the Church is fully absorbed in its own problems, Paul reminds them of their mission: Is our first concern to preach the Gospel, or to dispute for the posts of guides and ministers of the community?
• 17. Even if these Christians in Corinth are not great “intellectuals,” as good Greeks that they are, they enjoy fine discourses and want to be seen as cultured persons. At this time throughout the Roman Empire people are in search of esoteric doctrines and some people in the Church see in faith the means of acceding to a higher knowledge. So Paul will tell them that all Christian wisdom is contained in the cross.
That would be like getting rid of the cross of Christ (v. 17). The cross should be present in the message we preach and in the way we preach it.
Moreover in evangelization it will always cost us to work with poor resources in a world subject to media. We need to count on the grace of God because we are weak and without titles of prestige. It will cost us to remind our communities of the poverty of Jesus and to be criticized by those who are well off in the world.
See whom God has called (v. 26). The Church of Corinth is formed of ordinary people: this is their strength. Everybody has his place and his mission in the Church. Ordinary people and poor communities, often persecuted and calumniated, have a primary role in the evangelization of the world. God wants them to evangelize the rich and at times, even the hierarchy.