Pastoral Tone and Context

Episode Synopsis:

Sex and marriage were pressing issues in Corinth.  Gentiles who came to faith in Jesus Christ during Paul’s Gentile mission were learning the biblical sexual ethic for the first time.  Grounded in the creation order, the Ten Commandments, and the teaching of Jesus, it did not take long for the Corinthians to understand that sex was not merely a pleasurable bodily function, but biblical sexuality has a strong moral foundation.  That meant that much of the common sexual attitudes and practices of the Greco-Roman world were in direct conflict with Paul’s teaching regarding sexual ethics.
  

As these new Christians learned the teaching of Jesus, it was clear that Jesus limited sexual relations to marriage and taught that divorce was an illustration of fallen human nature.  The Corinthians also learned that Christians understand sex as a part of something much larger–the way in which God created things, and that God assigned sexual activity to marriage which was intended to be a lifelong commitment centered around the family.  It was difficult for the Corinthians to embrace Christian sexual ethics because they went against the grain of so much Corinthian culture and religion.  It is also hard to both unlearn something you’ve embraced all your life (pagan sexuality) and then learn a new way to think about sex and marriage–a view which at first glance seems quite restrictive.

In the first half of Paul’s Corinthian letter (chapters 1-6), the apostle is responding to distressing news from Corinth which came to his attention when members of Chloe’s family passed through Ephesus where Paul was then staying.  Paul heard about all sorts of things going on back in Corinth, including news that his prior letter to the Corinthians was badly misunderstood and needed a reply.  So too he learned of a number of things going on back in Corinth which required his immediate attention–the content we have covered so far in the first six chapters.
  

About the time Paul was chatting with members of Chloe’s family, a delegation from Corinth arrived in Ephesus bringing a letter to Paul from the Corinthians, asking him a number of questions about sex, marriage, divorce, idolatry, how men and women are to relate to each other in worship, how the worship service was to be conducted (specifically the Lord’s Supper), about spiritual gifts and how they ought to be used and understood, before coming to the matter of the resurrection.  The struggle facing the Corinthians was how to stop being pagans and how to live and think as Christians.

Those matters troubling the Corinthians resurface through Christ’s church across time.  Many of the questions asked of Paul by the Corinthians are issues with which Christ’s church struggles today, making Paul’s Corinthian letter vital to the health of Christ’s church then and now.  So lets dig in.

For show notes and other recommended materials located at the Riddleblog as mentioned during the Blessed Hope Podcast, click here: https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/