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I. CORINTHIANS

The apostle, who had himself founded the Corinthian church, specially loved it, and nurtured it with uncommon care. His experiences among these converts were diversified, his difficulties peculiar; and the human side of his individuality is seen in what he writes to them more clearly than in any other epistle. His practical sagacity, spiritual insight, tact and delicacy, were called into exercise by the weighty problem to be solved-the planting of a new religion in Greek soil. . Nowhere is the manysidedness of the apostle's mind so evident the breadth and largeness of view that touch topics of multifarious difficulty with masterly ability. All his powers were needed for the successful solution of the problem, which the first church reared on the classic ground of ancient Greece presented; nor did they fail to meet it successfully.—

S. Davidson.

11-9 Greeting: introduction.

110-421 Party-spirit and parties in the church:

110-34

35-421

The genuine character of Christianity as evidenced in Paulits "foolishness" and "wisdom."

The genuine character of the ministry as evidenced in Paulsubordinate and co-operant.

51-13 A case of incest.

61-9a Litigation in pagan courts.

610-20 Fornication.

7-164 Answer to Corinthian letter on:

8-111

112-16

1117-34

12-14

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161-4

165-18 Personal.

1619-24 Farewell.

MARRIAGE and its problems-the principle of celibacy.

FOOD offered to idols-the principles of forbearance and

liberty.

WORSHIP: (a) The rules for women.

(3) The rules for the Lord's supper.

(7) Spiritual gifts: their nature, degree, and

purpose.

The pre-eminence of love:

practical application.

THE RESURRECTION of the dead-of Christ, of mankind: its necessity and reasonableness.

THE COLLECTION.

I. CORINTHIANS

11 PAUL, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Sosthenes the brother,

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to the Community of God which is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, along with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, theirs as well as ours: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God for you, for the grace of God granted you in 5 Christ Jesus, because in him you were enriched in everything, in all 6 speech and all knowledge, since the testimony borne to Christ was con7 firmed in you; so that you do not suffer want in any privilege, while you 8 wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also will confirm you 9 to the end, to be irreproachable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Now I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be all in unison and have no divisions among you, but be at harmony 11 together in the same mind and the same judgment. For I have news of you, my brothers, from the household of Chloe to this effect, that there 12 are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: each of you is saying, 13 "I am of Paul," or "I of Apollos," or "I of Kephas," or "I of Christ." Is

Christ divided up? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Or did 14 you get baptized into the name of Paul? I am thankful I baptized none 15 of you except Krispus and Gaius, that no one may say you got baptized 16 into my name (well, I did baptize the household of Stephanas also; for 17 the rest, I do not remember if I baptized anyone else). Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel-not in wisdom of word, lest the cross of Christ should be rendered void.

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For the word of the cross is foolishness to the perishing,

But God's power to us who are being saved.

19 For it is written,

I will ruin the wisdom of the wise,

And the cleverness of the clever I will frustrate.

20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?

21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom failed to know God,

It pleased God to save those who believe, through the foolishness of

what is preached ;

22 Seeing that Jews demand signs and Greeks require wisdom,

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While we preach Christ crucified,

To Jews a hindrance, to Gentiles foolishness,

24 But to those who are called (both Jews and Greeks), Christ God's power and God's wisdom:

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For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,

And the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 Why, lock at your calling, brothers:

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There are not many wise after the flesh, not many principal men, not many of high birth;

Nay, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put the wise men to shame,

And God has chosen the weak things of the world to put the strong things to shame,

And God has chosen the low-born things of the world and the despised things-the things which are not, to put down the things which are, 29 That no flesh should exult before God.

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From him you have your being in Christ Jesus,

Whom God made our "wisdom," that is, uprightness and sanctification and redemption;

So that, even as it is written,

Let him who exults, exult in the Lord.

And so, brothers, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming 2 the testimony of God to you by way of elaborate speech or wisdom. I decided not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ-and him 3 crucified. And when I was with you I was in weakness and fear and 4 great trembling; nor did my speech and preaching rest on persuasive words of wisdom, but on a "demonstration" of the Spirit and of power; 5 that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. 6 Wisdom however we do speak among the mature,

But not a wisdom which belongs to this age

Or to the leaders of this age (who are being put down);

7 It is God's wisdom as a secret that we speak,

The hidden wisdom which God fore-appointed before the ages in our honour.

8 None of the leaders of this age knows it

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(For had they known it, they had not crucified the Lord of majesty); Nay it means, as has been written,

Things no eye has seen, no ear has heard,

That have not entered the mind of man,

Even all that God has prepared for those who love him.

10 To us God has revealed them through the Spirit,

For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

11 Among men, who knows the things of a man

Save the spirit of the man that is within him :

So is it also with the things of God,

None has knowledge of them save the Spirit of God.

12 Now we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God,

That we might know the things bestowed on us by God;

13 And these are what we speak in words taught by no human wisdom, but by the Spirit,

Interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men.

14 The natural man rejects the things of the Spirit of God, to him they are foolishness:

Indeed he cannot understand them, for they are estimated spiritually.

15 Whereas the spiritual man has an estimate for everything,

Yet no man has an estimate for him.

16 For who has known the Lord's mind, so as to instruct him? No man and our mind is the mind of Christ.

31 And so, brothers, I could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as 2 creatures of flesh, as mere children in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with solid food; you were not able for solid food. No, and you are not 3 able yet. You are fleshly still. For in so far as jealousy and quarrelling exist among you, are you not fleshly? are you not walking after the 4 manner of men? When one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not merely human?

5 What is Apollos, then? What is Paul?

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Ministers through whom you believed-each indeed in the measure granted him by the Lord.

I planted, Apollos watered,

But God made the growth.

So then neither planter nor waterer is anything,

But God who makes the growth.

Planter and waterer alike are one,

Yet each shall receive his individual reward according to his individual labour.

9 For we are God's fellow-workers;

You are God's field, God's building.

10 By virtue of God's grace granted me I laid the foundation like an expert master-builder;

But another man is building on it.

Let each man take care how he builds on it.

11 (For no man can lay any other foundation than the foundation laid, namely, Jesus Christ.)

12 If any man is building on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble

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Each man's work shall be disclosed:

The Day will make it plain, for the Day is revealed with fire,

And the fire itself will test each man's sort of work.

If the work built up by any man survives,

He shall receive a reward:

If any man's work be burned up,

He shall be a loser;

He shall be saved himself, yet saved as through fire.

16 Do you not know that you are God's sanctuary, and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

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If any man is destroying God's sanctuary, him shall God destroy.
For God's sanctuary is holy-and such are you.

18 Let no man beguile himself:

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If anyone among you imagines he is wise in this age,

Let him become a fool to become wise

For with God the wisdom of this world is foolishness.

For it is written,

He who seizes the wise in their craftiness,

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The Lord knows that the designs of the wise are futile.

21 So let no man exult in men ;

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For all things are yours,

Be it Paul or Apollos or Kephas,

Or the world or life or death,

Or the present or the future,

All are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

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4 1 Let a man look on us as servants of Christ and stewards of the secrets 2 of God. Well, then, in this matter of stewardship, it is required that 3 a man be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be cross-questioned by you or by any human court. I do 4 not even cross-question myself. For though I am conscious of nothing against myself, that does not clear me; he who cross-questions me is the 5 Lord. So judge not at all before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of the darkness and also disclose the counsels of the hearts: then shall each man get his praise from God. Now, brothers, I have transferred these things by a fiction to myself and Apollos for your sake, so that from our case you might learn the maxim: "Up to what is written, and no further," not to be puffed up one 7 against another in favour of this one or the other. Who singles thee out? What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Why exult as if thou hadst 8 not received, when thou didst receive? Have you been sated already? Grown rich already? Come to reign, apart from us? Ah, would that 9 you had come indeed to reign, for us to share your reign as well! For God, I think, has exhibited us apostles last and lowest, as men doomed to death; we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ's sake, you are sensible in Christ; we are weak, 11 you are strong; you are illustrious, we unhonoured. Even to this hour 12 we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad, buffeted, waifs, and toilers, working with our own hands. Reviled, we bless: persecuted, we bear patiently: 13 defamed, we strive to appease to this hour we are made like offscourings 14 of the world, the refuse of all things. I am not writing this 15 to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you should have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet you have not more 16 than one father: in Christ Jesus through the gospel I begot you. I 17 appeal to you then, become imitators of me. For this reason I have

sent you Timotheus, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord; he will remind you of those methods in Christ Jesus, which I teach everywhere 18 in every Community. Certain people have got puffed up, however, as 19 though I were not coming to you? But I shall come to you soon, if the Lord will, and learn not what is the word of those who are puffed up, 20 but what is their power; for God's reign is not a matter of words but of 21 power. What is your choice? Must I come to you with a rod, or with love and the spirit of gentleness?

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It is actually reported that there is fornication among you, and fornication such as does not even exist among the Gentiles, namely, that a 2 man has his father's wife. And yet you are puffed up! You ought rather to have mourned, so that the perpetrator of this deed might be removed 3 from your midst. For my part, absent in body but present in spirit, I have already-as though really present-passed judgment upon him 4 who has practised this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus (you being gathered together and my spirit also, with the power of our Lord Jesus), 5 to have the man in question delivered to Satan for the destruction of the 6 flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your exulting is discreditable. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the 7 whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump; even as you are free from leaven, for indeed Christ, our paschal lamb, has been 8 sacrificed. So then let us keep festival not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity 9 and integrity. I wrote you in my letter to keep no company

1 Omitting ['oï].

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