After establishing that Paul ‘practiced what he preached’ with regard to not making his full use of his rights as an apostle, in the next verses, 1 Corinthians 9:19-27, Paul continued to explain how he had made it a principle of life to win people for Christ and maintain his own place in the race […]

It’s not always an easy thing to practice what you preach. Sooner or later, someone will point out your hypocrisy. After telling the church in Corinth to put the law of love over the principle of freedom and liberty, the Apostle Paul found it necessary to let the believers in Corinth know that this was […]

It’s pretty fair to say that everybody likes food. Not all the same kinds of food of course, but it’s rare to find someone who isn’t interested in what they eat. At Corinth, as we are told in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, the believers were having some issues with food, especially food that had been offered […]

Relationship advice is everywhere on just about any topic you can think of in relation to relationships, especially marriage! But the advice that the Apostle Paul gives to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40 is advice that helps put all relationships into some kind of perspective. See, no earthly relationship will last, no […]

There’s no doubt that the world we live in offers little in the way of contentment. This applies not only to possessions but also to our relationships. Some say ‘if you don’t like the bed, change the sheets’, ie get a new partner! Some TV shows even throw 2 strangers together and expect them to […]

Relationships. According to the way the world thinks, they’re everything. The best that life can offer. In some ways that is true…but what happens when relationships go sour?  In 1 Corinthians 7:6-11, Paul gives some answers towards those questions. Not everyone will end up in a relationship. Not every relationship will stay together. Singleness is […]

It seems that the believers at Corinth were having trouble (as often happens) with sexual issues. We learned something of this in chapters 5 and 6 when we noted how Paul had to address both incest and promiscuity. There was also another extreme view at Corinth which Paul addressed in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5. Some, even […]

There are many times in life when bad news strikes, circumstances change or life takes a twisty turn for the worst. At the other end of the spectrum are the exhortations in the Scriptures that we ought to follow regardless of those circumstances. Philippians 4:4 is one of those verses. The challenge that this verse […]

It seems the members of the church in Corinth, very much like the culture of the people of that city, held to wide ranging views about the place of their ‘bodies’ within the Christian life. Some held the view that it was immaterial what you did with your body, and so, a visit to a […]

It must be a terrible thing to have amnesia – not being able to remember (among other things)  your name or your family! It is a terrible thing to have ‘gospel amnesia’, that is, to belong to a church, but not be able to remember how the gospel of Jesus affects your whole life – […]