Paul planted this church himself — a year and a half of his own life, spent in Corinth in person. Now, writing from Ephesus, he opens his letter to it not with news but with a rebuke: reports have reached him that the congregation he founded has split into rival fan clubs, each one waving a different teacher’s name like a banner. His answer reaches all the way back to the one thing none of those factions can claim credit for — a cross that looked like foolishness to the wise and a stumblingblock to the devout, and was handed, on purpose, to nobodies.
A study in 1 Corinthians 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 16 min read
Sanctified In Christ Jesus
“Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.”
1 Corinthians 1:1-2
“As he pondered these things in his heart, Paul understood more and more clearly the meaning of his call ‘to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.’”
Ellen G. White · The Acts of the Apostles, p. 127
This same phrase — “through the will of God” — is the one Ellen White traces back to Paul’s own retreat into Arabia after his conversion, three years of solitude in which he reworked his entire understanding of what his calling actually meant. By the time he writes this letter, that phrase is not a formality; it is the settled conclusion of years spent alone with it.
Notice, too, who Paul addresses: not the leaders, not the gifted, not even primarily the faithful, but simply “them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” Whatever chaos is about to be described in this letter — and Corinth’s chaos is considerable — Paul opens by naming this congregation for what it already is in Christ, before he ever gets to what it currently looks like in practice.
“Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge.”
1 Corinthians 1:3-5
“Always,” Paul says — not merely on the good days. He is about to spend most of sixteen chapters correcting this church’s divisions, its tolerance of scandal, its lawsuits, its disorder at the Lord’s table, its confusion over spiritual gifts, and its doubts about the resurrection. And yet the very first thing out of his pen is uninterrupted thanksgiving for the grace they have already received. Rebuke, in this letter, never gets to erase gratitude; it only ever supplements it.
“So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:7-9
“Come behind in no gift” will turn out to be almost ironic once chapters 12 through 14 arrive — this congregation has spiritual gifts in abundance, and will manage to turn even that abundance into a source of rivalry. Paul’s confidence here rests on nothing the Corinthians have themselves produced; it rests entirely on the single word that closes verse 9: God, not the church, is faithful, and it is God who called them into fellowship with His Son in the first place.
Is Christ Divided?
“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”
1 Corinthians 1:10
The thanksgiving ends and the actual letter begins — and the very first item on Paul’s agenda, ahead of the scandal in chapter 5 or the lawsuits in chapter 6, is division. Whatever else is wrong in Corinth, this is the wound Paul reaches for first.
“For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 1:11-12
“There was danger that this party spirit would result in great evil to the Christian church, and Paul was instructed by the Lord to utter words of earnest admonition and solemn protest. Of those who were saying, ‘I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ,’ the apostle inquired, ‘Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?’ ‘Let no man glory in men,’ he pleaded.”
Ellen G. White · The Acts of the Apostles, p. 280
Four names, four camps, and notice that even “I am of Christ” makes the list of factions Paul is correcting — claiming Christ’s name as a party slogan, used to outrank the other three parties, is its own kind of division. Nobody in Corinth was actually teaching a different gospel; Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter) all preached the same Christ. The quarrel was never doctrinal. It was tribal.
“Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.”
1 Corinthians 1:13-15
Three rapid questions, each one unanswerable in Paul’s favor on purpose. Christ cannot be divided; Paul was not the one crucified; nobody was baptized into Paul’s own name. The rhetorical bluntness here is deliberate — Paul is not gently correcting an opinion, he is dismantling a premise so obviously false that stating it plainly is enough to expose it.
“For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”
1 Corinthians 1:17
“Not with wisdom of words” is the hinge on which the rest of the chapter turns. A church built around competing personalities is, underneath the surface, a church that has started to prize the messenger’s style over the message’s substance — exactly the temptation Paul spends the remainder of this chapter refusing.
Unto The Greeks Foolishness
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
1 Corinthians 1:18-19
Corinth sat within easy reach of Athens, a city that had spent centuries perfecting rhetoric and philosophy into a kind of civic religion of its own. Into that world Paul drops a message with no polish to recommend it — a crucified criminal, preached by an unimpressive traveling tentmaker. Verse 19 quotes Isaiah on purpose: this is not a new problem the gospel has run into, but an old pattern God has always used, confounding human wisdom with something it would never have chosen for itself.
“Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
1 Corinthians 1:20-21
Three titles in a row — the wise, the scribe, the disputer — cover Greek philosopher, Jewish scholar, and professional debater alike, as if Paul is making sure no category of clever person is left standing outside this verdict. None of the world’s accumulated wisdom, on its own, ever managed to arrive at the knowledge of God. What “the foolishness of preaching” accomplished instead was never meant to be impressive; it was only ever meant to work.
“For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.”
1 Corinthians 1:22-23
“Paul well knew how his message would be regarded by both the Jews and the Greeks of Corinth. ‘We preach Christ crucified,’ he admitted, ‘unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.’ … Among his Jewish hearers there were many who would be angered by the message he was about to proclaim. In the estimation of the Greeks his words would be absurd folly.”
Ellen G. White · The Acts of the Apostles, p. 245
Two completely different objections, and the cross manages to violate both of them at once. A Jewish audience wanted power demonstrated through a miraculous sign; a crucified Messiah looked instead like defeat, a curse under their own law. A Greek audience wanted a coherent philosophical system; a crucified God looked like a contradiction in terms. Paul is not offering a message calibrated to please either crowd — he is offering the one message guaranteed to offend both, because it happens to be true.
“But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
1 Corinthians 1:24-25
Verse 24 is the pivot: the very same cross that looks like a stumblingblock or foolishness from the outside looks like power and wisdom from the inside, to “them which are called.” Nothing about the cross itself changes between verse 23 and verse 24 — only the eyes looking at it. And verse 25 pushes the paradox as far as language allows: even God’s foolishness, if such a thing could exist, would still outrank the very best that human wisdom has ever produced.
That No Flesh Should Glory In His Presence
“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-27
“The greatness of the work before him led him to give much study to the Holy Scriptures, in order that he might preach the gospel ‘not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect,’ ‘but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,’ that the faith of all who heard ‘should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.’ … As Paul searched the Scriptures, he learned that throughout the ages ‘not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.’”
Ellen G. White · The Acts of the Apostles, p. 127
This is not a comment Paul writes only to console the Corinthians about their own unimpressive membership roll; it is a lesson he first learned about his own calling, worked out during years of solitary study after his conversion. The pattern he identifies in the Corinthian church is the same pattern he had already identified in himself — God did not choose the persecutor-turned-apostle for his credentials, and He did not fill the Corinthian church with the city’s wise, mighty, or noble either.
“And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.”
1 Corinthians 1:28-29
“Base things,” “despised,” even “things which are not” — the list keeps descending, on purpose, until it reaches the bottom of what any society would count as worth choosing. Verse 29 names the reason for the whole strategy in a single clause: if God had built His church out of the wise, the mighty, and the noble, there would always be room for someone, somewhere, to take a little credit. Building it instead out of nobodies leaves no such room at all.
“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:30-31
“In Christ are ‘hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ … He is ‘made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’ … All that can satisfy the needs and longings of the human soul, for this world and for the world to come, is found in Christ. Our Redeemer is the pearl so precious that in comparison all things else may be accounted loss.”
Ellen G. White · Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 115
Four gifts stack up in verse 30, and every single one of them is something the Corinthians did not manufacture for themselves — wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, all “of God,” all found only “in Christ Jesus.” The chapter that opened by naming this congregation “sanctified in Christ Jesus” closes by explaining exactly how that sanctification actually works: not earned, not achieved, but supplied entirely from outside themselves, in the same Christ crucified that a moment ago looked like nothing but foolishness and weakness. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” is not a new rule Paul is inventing to end the chapter — it is simply the only conclusion that fits everything he has just said. If Paul, Apollos, and Cephas are not the source of a single thing the Corinthians actually have, then no faction built around any of their names was ever going to be worth the division it caused.
