Christ in 1 Corinthians

Corinth was a city that prized cleverness, eloquence, and status, and the young church there had carried that appetite indoors - collecting favourite teachers and splintering into parties. Into that, Paul writes a chapter that puts Christ crucified at the dead center of everything. He opens by naming the believers them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints (v. 2) and gives thanks that they come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus…

Christ Connection - The Cross as Redemption

“Jesus Christ, and him crucified” is not just the gospel’s method - it is its entire substance. At the cross, Christ “was made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). He became what we are so that we might become what He is. The cross is not a tragedy to be forgiven and moved past; it is the hinge on which all redemption turns. When you preach Christ crucified, you preach the only message that saves.

Christ Connection - God Alone Gives Growth

But only God gave the increase. Jesus said it to His disciples: “I have planted you, I have watered you, but My Father gives the growth” (cf. John 15:1-5). Every revival, every conversion, every deepening of faith is the work of the Spirit. The apostle who sees his own ego in the growth has lost sight of the Maker. Paul kept his sight. He labored. He let God do the growing.

Christ Connection - The Judge Who Sees All

Christ alone has authority to judge because Christ alone knows the hearts. "He knows all things" (1 John 21:17). The apostles will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt 19:28), but Christ is the final judge. In Hebrews 4:12-13, the Word of God is described as able to "judge the thoughts and intents of the heart" and all things are "naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." Nothing remains hidden from Him.

Christ Connection - Redemption, Not Destruction

Notice where the sentence lands. The man is handed over to Satan, and the very next breath says why: "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." The hardest words in the chapter are aimed at his rescue. This is how Christ Himself works. He says, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" - the rebuke is the love, not its opposite. The church acts in the name of Jesus, so it must carry His heart: even the painful act reaches toward the day He saves.

Christ Connection - Judgment Seated with Christ

Paul is drawing on an NT reality: believers are already seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph. 2:6). Christ is the judge of all (John 5:22), and those united to Him participate in His authority. Not to judge arrogantly, but to discern rightly according to God’s Word. The Corinthians forget their own dignity - and their own responsibility.

Christ Connection - Your Body, Not Your Own

Notice the logic running underneath this verse. A husband and wife can hand authority over their bodies to each other only because neither of them was ever the absolute owner to begin with. One chapter earlier Paul had told this same church that their bodies were not their own - they had been bought, the deposit paid in full at the cross. Marriage simply takes that prior surrender and makes it visible between two people. You give yourself away in the bedroom because you ha…

Christ Connection - Love as the Measure

Watch what Jesus made the test of a disciple. Not right answers. Not how many mysteries you could unlock. Love. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Paul is simply echoing his Master here. In the kingdom Christ opened, love is the one currency that proves you know anything at all about God.

The whole chapter turns on a single, costly move, and it is the very move of Christ. Paul, a free man with every right - Am I not an apostle? am I not free? (v. 1) - and with a plain claim to be supported by those he serves ( they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel , v. 14), lays that right down: I have used none of these things (v. 15), that… I may make the gospel of Christ without charge (v. 18). And the reason is love that aims to win others: thoug…

Christ Connection - Baptized unto Moses, Baptized unto Christ

Nobody talks about being baptized into a person anymore, but that is the language here. The sea that swallowed Pharaoh bound Israel to the man who led them through it. Your baptism does the same thing, only the man is Christ. You were sealed to Him the way that generation was sealed to Moses - and look how that generation ended. The seal is real. It is not a charm. It marks you as His, which means it makes you accountable to Him, not safe from Him.

Christ Connection - The Head of the Chain

Paul says he imitates Christ even as the Corinthians are to imitate him. Christ is the original of the pattern, the one every following is meant to trace back to. “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). Imitation is not mere behavior-copying; it is alignment with the One who holds all things together.

Christ Connection - Jesus Is Lord

In Corinth, “Lord” was Caesar’s word. To say Jesus is Lord was to demote the emperor, and you did not stumble into a sentence like that by accident. Paul says you cannot even mean it apart from the Spirit. The shortest creed in the New Testament is also the surest sign the Spirit is in the room: a person looking at a crucified Galilean and calling Him King. Every gift in this chapter exists to serve that one confession.

Christ Connection - Love Is the Heart of All Acts

Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. All the law and prophets, He said, hang on these two (Matt. 22:37-40). Paul here echoes that. Every gift, every act of charity, every sacrifice finds its meaning only when love is the source. Christ’s death on the cross was the supreme act of agapē - love that went to its death for those who rejected Him (Rom. 5:8).

Christ Connection - The Prophet Who Came to Build

Jesus spoke God’s word with perfect clarity and always for the good of His hearers. He edified the weary, exhorted the wayward, comforted the grieving. His entire ministry was the living model of what Paul describes: a prophet whose gifts serve the body He came to build.

Christ Connection - The Gospel in Three Sentences

The whole gospel fits in three short sentences. Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He rose the third day. The first sentence deals with what stands between you and God. The third proves the dealing worked - the grave could not hold the one who paid your debt. Memorize those three lines. On the day you cannot remember anything else about your faith, they will be enough.

Christ Connection - Why Sunday

Notice the day Paul picks. Not the Sabbath. The first day of the week - the morning the tomb was found empty. The early church had quietly moved its center of gravity to the day of resurrection, and now even the offering is folded into that rhythm. Giving lands on Sunday because Sunday is when death lost. So the coin you set aside is a small echo of an empty grave: the risen Lord’s grace reaching past your own soul to your neighbor’s hunger. Giving is one of the ways the r…