The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth, a church that he himself had planted a few years earlier. The church at Corinth had been arguing over various different issues. In order to resolve the conflict, some of the people in the church sent a letter to Paul asking for him to teach them about these various issues. Paul indeed sent them a letter; however, Paul didn’t address the issues they wanted him to address first. Instead, Paul spends the first four chapters talking about a different problem, the root problem of the Corinthian church—their pride.
1 Corinthians 1-4 is especially relevant for us today. As we look around at the American church we see so many things that are wrong, and so many different sins to fight. So where do we start? The church is already so broken. How can we fix it? The answer that Paul gives is that
in order to see the church put back in order, we need to be willing to put ourselves back in order first.
Pride is an elusive sin we often don’t know how (or want to) talk about. In other words, pride is easy to miss. Pride is like a magician doing a sleight-of-hand trick: it focuses our attention in the wrong places in order to distract us from what’s really going on. Or think about a garden. You might see some weeds and pluck them, thinking the problem is solved, but if you just get the weeds and not the roots, then the weeds will come right back.
If we as a church want to be a part of God’s mission, we must be committed to pulling roots, not plucking weeds.
We’re going to begin studying 1 Corinthians on Wednesday the 29th. We’ll go through the first few verses and dive deeper into the context of the letter. This first passage will be a more teaching-style lesson. After that, we’ll spend 4 Sunday evenings walking through the rest of chapters 1-4 in a normal sermon format. As we prepare to study God’s Word together, let’s commit ourselves to pray that the Lord would give us humility under the Scriptures that leads to joy in Christ.