Spurgeon's notes on 1 CORINTHIANS
1 Corinthians 1:4
It is always well to acknowledge and commend all the good which we see in our brethren, even though we may discern much to mourn over. They will all the more readily receive our reproofs, if we are just enough to admit and admire their excellencies.
1 Corinthians 1:5-11
If we bring a charge, we should be always willing to give our authority for it and mention the name of the accuser. Those who speak against others, and yet will not allow their names to appear, are unworthy of attention.
1 Corinthians 1:8-31
The history of the fall of Jericho through the blast of rams'-horns reminds us of Paul's expression in the Corinthians, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds." Let us read a passage in which the reputed weakness of the gospel is gloried in because the Lord, nevertheless, works by it—
Paul loved the church in Corinth, but it caused him much pain and trouble through the evils which grew up in it, principally through the erroneous doctrines of Judaizing teachers, the fact that the church had more talent than grace, and that no pastor was raised up to conduct its affairs. We will now read a part of the first chapter of his first epistle.
1 Corinthians 1:12
Many of the Gentiles stood up for their own apostle; the Judaizers, on the other hand, cried up Peter; a third class were charmed by the eloquence of Apollos, and a fourth party separated from the other three under the professed object of following only Christ. These last appear to have been quite as censurable as the others. Party making in the church of Christ is always evil.
1 Corinthians 1:13-15
There are some baptized people who make us feel glad that we had no hand in their baptism; as, for instance, those who rely upon the ordinance, those who live inconsistent lives, and those who sow strife among brethren.
1 Corinthians 1:16
This is a very singular passage. The apostle was inspired, and yet he made at first a statement which he afterwards corrected, and which he also modified with a hint that there might still be some others who had escaped his memory. This is intended by the Holy Spirit to teach us great carefulness in our statements, for even in small details we ought to speak the truth with the utmost accuracy.
1 Corinthians 1:17
Fine preaching feeds man's pride, plain preaching brings glory to God and benefit to men.
1 Corinthians 1:18
The same thing is different to differing persons. One sees in the gospel folly, and another omnipotence. These last have felt its gracious power, and therefore are well assured of what they believe.
1 Corinthians 1:19, 20
Let this be remembered still, and it will help to cure the craving after learned and intellectual preaching. What have we to do with setting up what God means to destroy? The plain gospel of Jesus, simply preached, is infinitely superior to all the "deep thinking" and "exact criticism" of modern times.
1 Corinthians 1:21
Philosophy left the world in the foulest mire of lasciviousness and unbelief, but the unlettered men who delivered the Lord's message of love just as they received it, became the salvation of myriads.
1 Corinthians 1:22-24
Tastes are not to regulate the gospel. What men desire is one thing, but what the gospel gives them is another. Instead of signs and wisdom, God's ministers show unto men the crucified Savior, and nothing else.
1 Corinthians 1:25
It will be seen in the end that what men think foolish and weak in God's gospel, will be more than a match for human power and learning.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
As election thus makes no account of human greatness, the preacher must pay no deference to it in his ministry. He is to proclaim his message to the common people, and to be content if his converts are despised as belonging to the base things of this world. If God's election ran among the grandees, he might have sent to them a philosophical gospel to be delivered with all the graces of classic oratory: but such is not the mind of the Lord. Let us, as a family, hold fast to the old gospel, and love the honest ministers of it who care more about winning souls than about being considered fine orators. The gospel which saved the apostles, the martyrs, the reformers, and our godly ancestors, is quite good enough for us. Let those who please seek after the wisdom of man, we will abide by the teaching of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:30-31
All is of Jesus, from first to last, and so all the glory is unto him who deserves it. Blessed be the name of the Lord, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.
1 Corinthians 2:1, 2
This is the one thing needful for us to know. All our reading and studies will be in vain if we are ignorant of Christ and his atoning blood. If Paul the preacher determined to know nothing but this, we may be sure it is above all things important.
1 Corinthians 2:3-5
If men believed because of the preacher's grand speech, their faith would be good for nothing. If one man can convert you, another can unconvert you. God's power is needed; no minister can give us faith.
1 Corinthians 2:6-8
Simple as the gospel is, it is wisdom itself—more philosophical than philosophy, and more reasonable than human reasons best conclusions.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
What reason and imagination could not have conceived, the Holy Spirit has revealed; spiritual men have an inner eye and ear to which the Spirit grants discernment.
1 Corinthians 2:12
Ours is a spiritual religion, which our new nature receives from the Spirit of God: it is not wrought in us by ceremonies which we can see with our eyes, neither are we persuaded into it by the fair speeches of men, but we are taught it by the Holy Spirit himself.
1 Corinthians 2:13
As spiritual men receive the faith by a spiritual work, so they endeavor to spread it by spiritual means only. They reject the pride of learning and the pomp of oratory, and rely upon the Spirit and the truth.
1 Corinthians 2:14, 15
judges or discerns
1 Corinthians 2:14, 15
judged discerned
1 Corinthians 2:16
The whole of mankind may correctly be divided into natural and spiritual, and these are as distinct as the dead and the living. The natural man has no spirit, and cannot therefore discern spiritual things. In the new birth a spirit is implanted in us, and thus we gain spiritual faculties, we live in a spiritual atmosphere, and are capable of spiritual joys. Have we received this higher life? Have we the mind of Christ? Lord, work it in us, for Jesus' sake!
1 Corinthians 3:1
Being more carnal than spiritual because so weak in grace.
1 Corinthians 3:2
The deeper doctrines cannot be received by the weak, and it is wise to teach such the simpler truths only.
1 Corinthians 3:3, 4
Every one thinks his party has the kernel, and others only the shell; whereas they all are apt to let the kernel alone and dispute about the shell, as if that were the kernel.
1 Corinthians 3:7
We must not rest in the best of men, or make idols of them; they are instruments in God's hand, and nothing more. Let us look above the servants to their Master.
1 Corinthians 3:18
A sense of folly is the doorstep of wisdom. It is needful to leave the world's wisdom if we would know the wisdom of God.
Ours it is to possess a spiritual faith which looks into the inner truth, whose brightness is too great for unregenerate eyes. The Spirit of the Lord has brought us near to God, opened our blind eyes, and given us to see the character of the Invisible God, and to become partakers of it. 1 Corinthians 3:21, 22
True Christian teachers, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, Luther or Calvin, Wesley or Whitfield, belong to the whole church, and every member of the church derives benefit from their teachings. Thus the mind is expanded beyond party limits into a true catholicity.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Sin is that sour leaven which must go from the heart where Jesus is the Savior. The apostle Paul puts this more at length in
1 Corinthians 5:6
It is a spreading thing, and if any be left it will speedily multiply itself.
1 Corinthians 5:8
May the Holy Spirit grant us grace to accomplish this sweeping of the house. Where the precious blood is sprinkled, no sin can be tolerated.
1 Corinthians 10:1
Ignorance about Old Testament history is very undesirable, for thereby much of spiritual instruction is lost. The Israelites were intended to be practical lessons to us. They had all the outward ordinances and privileges of religion, and yet they perished, and we ought to take heed lest we do the same. Were we baptized with an outward baptism at the outset of our religious history? So were they, with the cloud above them and the sea on either side, buried in baptism with their leader.
1 Corinthians 10:3, 4
Thus they had the analogy of the Lord's Supper; they ate manna, and drank from the riven rock; the bread and wine of the Communion are similar types of him whose flesh is meat indeed, and whose blood is drink indeed.
1 Corinthians 10:5
They died, notwithstanding their participation in divine ordinances, and so shall we, unless by faith we avoid their faults.
1 Corinthians 10:12
Our baptism, participation in the Lord's Supper, and other privileges, may make us think ourselves secure, but we must take heed, for far more is needed.
In the Psalms we find the same lesson set to music.
In this tenth chapter of his epistle Paul mentions the sins and chastisement of ancient Israel, and then adds—
1 Corinthians 10:13
If our temptations were such as none else had ever endured, and there were no way out of them, we might give up in despair; but it is not so. The Lord will not try us too much, too long, or too often. Grace will bear us through.
1 Corinthians 10:14, 15
Idolatry in every form is to be avoided by us, and in these days especially we must avoid all participation in the Popish ritualistic idolatry which is becoming so common. All bowing before the cross or the wafer, and all attendance upon such idolatrous worship must be abhorred by the faithful.
1 Corinthians 10:19, 20
As both among Christians and Jews the partaking of holy feasts involved fellowship, so if we join with idolaters we have fellowship with them and shall be sharers in their sin.
1 Corinthians 10:22
Communion with the unholy is a challenge to Christ, an open defiance to his kingship.
1 Corinthians 10:27
There could be no harm in the meat itself, and the believer was free to eat what was set before him so far as he himself was concerned, but there were times when it would be better not to eat it, lest in the judgment of others the Christian should seem to have communed in an idolatrous sacrifice.
1 Corinthians 10:28-31
This is the rule at the table; let us always observe it. Much evil may come out of eating and drinking: it was by eating that man first fell from innocence, The table must be watched lest it become a snare unto us.
1 Corinthians 10:32, 33
What we may do lawfully it will frequently be better not to do lest we injure others: for their sakes we must deny ourselves, for selfishness in a Christian is a grievous vice.
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
The apostle Paul gives us a full account of this Supper, which he received by express revelation. He thus writes: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29.
1 Corinthians 11:29
For he who eats and drinks unworthily without faith, reverence, and sincerity of soul
1 Corinthians 11:29
eats and drinks damnation or condemnation
1 Corinthians 11:29
He insults the ordinance by staying in the emblem and seeing no further; his heart is not occupied with the death of Jesus, he does not use the Supper as the Lord intended. Let us pay great attention to this, and mind how we behave at the Lord's table.
1 Corinthians 12:7
We are neither born nor born again for ourselves. Like bees, we must all bring honey to the common hive.
1 Corinthians 12:8-12
Meaning thereby, Christ mystical, or the church.
1 Corinthians 12:14-16
None of us, therefore, may despise another, because he does not happen to have our gifts. Variety in each is necessary to the completeness of the whole.
1 Corinthians 12:17-23
We cover with great care those parts of the body which are either tender or unsightly, and so those Christians who are feeble and faulty should receive the more of our kind care, lest the whole body should be injured through their means.
1 Corinthians 12:24-31
What was that which was better than the best? Love to God and man. Graces are better than gifts. A heart full of holy love is a far better endowment than a head full of the clearest knowledge, or a tongue overflowing with utterance. Whatever way we cannot run in, let us make sure walking in the "more excellent way" of love.
1 Corinthians 13
Let us for our instruction read Paul's description of holy love, which is so excellent a grace as to be absolutely essential to the Christian character.
1 Corinthian 13:1
Eloquence of the most lofty kind is mere sound, unless there be love in the speaker's heart to give weight to his words. Better to have a loving heart than to speak twenty languages.
1 Corinthian 13:2
Gifts may be plentiful, and those of the highest order, and yet we may perish; grace in the heart is the only sure evidence of salvation. A man may prophesy and be a Balaam, he may understand mysteries and be a Simon Magus, he may have all knowledge and perish like Ahithophel, and he may have a mountain-moving faith, and be a son of perdition like Judas. Love to God and man there must be, or we have nothing good in us.
1 Corinthian 13:3
Men may endow the poor with all their substance out of mere ostentation, or die as martyrs out of sheer obstinacy, but if they have no love to God they have suffered in vain. Love is an essential grace, it is the soul of godliness, and without it religion is but a dead carcass.
1 Corinthian 13:4
It is glad of another's good.
1 Corinthian 13:4
It never glorifies itself.
1 Corinthian 13:4
It hates flattery.
1 Corinthian 13:5
Christian love conducts itself properly. Love to others will not allow us to act in a manner unfitting our position and the decencies of society.
1 Corinthian 13:4
Is not suspicious and captious.
1 Corinthian 13:6, 7
Covers many things with its mantle, and as Old Master Trapp says, "swallows down whole many pills which would be very bitter in her mouth if she were so foolish as to chew them."
That is to say, all things which are for a neighbors credit; trying to put a good construction upon everything, even where it needs great faith to be able to do so.
1 Corinthian 13:8, 9
It is an unwithering flower.
1 Corinthian 13:8, 9
Our greatest knowledge is to know that we know nothing. We are but scholars in the lower forms of Christ's College.
1 Corinthian 13:10-12
He shows that our best intellectual attainments here below, even in heavenly things, must be necessarily temporary, and thus he leads us to prize those choice graces of the heart which will outlast time, and be perfected in eternity.
1 Corinthian 13:13
It is not true that faith and hope will cease any more than love. The three divine sisters are each immortal. We shall trust the Lord all the more when we meet him face to face, and we shall hope all the more ardently for the continued enjoyment of his glory when we enter into it. Still love bears the palm, may we be made perfect in it.
1 Corinthians 15:1-18
The apostle Paul has collected the evidence of our Lords resurrection, and has drawn from it the grand doctrine of the resurrection of all believers. His wonderful words have cheered mourners in all ages, and confirmed the faith of the saints. Let us read with deep attention—1 Corinthians 15:1-18.
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
This, then, is the gospel. It consists in great facts. Christ died for our sins, he has made atonement for our transgressions; Christ was buried and has risen from the dead;—this is the gospel in a nutshell;—those who heartily believe these facts, and rely upon the risen substitute for sinners, are saved.
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Paul goes on to say that Jesus really rose,
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Cephas or Peter
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Nothing in history was ever better attested. The witnesses had nothing to gain, and many of them even lost their lives for maintaining their belief.
1 Corinthians 15:8
He refers here to the time of his conversion, when Jesus spoke to him out of Heaven and plainly revealed himself to him.
1 Corinthians 15:9
God had forgiven Paul, but he never forgave himself; tears were ever in his eyes at the remembrance of his sin.
1 Corinthians 15:10
His modesty did not lead him to deny the grace of God. We ought to think little of ourselves, but it would be dishonoring to God to depreciate what he has done for us.
1 Corinthians 15:11-14
Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection of its founder. No man can be a Christian and doubt the resurrection of the Lord; if that had not happened, the whole matter would have been proved an imposture.
1 Corinthians 15:15
Who can believe the apostles to have been guilty of deliberate falsehood on this point? Their characters, their holy teaching, and their martyr deaths all forbid us to rank them with common cheats and liars. Their testimony is in all respects worthy of credit. Jesus did rise from the dead.
1 Corinthians 15:18
If Jesus did not rise, those who died resting upon him were deceived, and have found no advocate at the bar of God; they are. therefore lost forever. The Corinthian Christians were not prepared to believe this, and yet so it must be if Jesus did not rise.
1 Corinthians 15:19-34
The apostle Paul proceeds with his argument upon the resurrection, and declares for himself and brethren—1 Corinthians 15:19-34.
1 Corinthians 15:19
If after all there is no resurrection, then the apostles suffered for nothing, they were wretched dupes, and having higher expectations than others their disappointment was proportionately bitter.
1 Corinthians 15:20
The risen Savior is the pledge and guarantee of our resurrection; we shall surely live again.
1 Corinthians 15:22
By Adams sin all who are in him die, and by Christ's righteousness all who are in him shall be made alive. There are two great covenant headships: the first was Adam's headship under the covenant of works, by which we have fallen, and the second is the headship of the Lord Jesus under the covenant of grace, by which we rise to eternal life.
1 Corinthians 15:28
As Mediator, all power is given to our Lord Jesus in Heaven and in earth, and this he will exercise until he has vanquished every foe. Then shall his mediatorial reign cease, the universe shall come under the direct sovereignty of God as God; and the Blessed Trinity shall shine forth before all the redeemed, and enter into immediate fellowship with them.
1 Corinthians 15:29
As one believer died another came forward to occupy his place, and so the ranks were filled up by fresh converts. Where was the reason for such enthusiasm if in death men cease to be? Baptism is itself a picture of burial and resurrection, and it loses all its meaning if there be no rising from the tomb.
1 Corinthians 15:30, 31
His life was always in jeopardy: what was the use of enduring such perils if, after all, death turned out to be an endless sleep? The suffering Christian is the greatest of fools if the dead rise not.
1 Corinthians 15:32
The most sensible thing to do if this life is all and there is nothing beyond it, is to enjoy all the pleasures we can while the days fly by us. The apostle had been exposed in the amphitheater and had escaped: but why run such risks for a mere dream?
1 Corinthians 15:34
Living among philosophical skeptics, the Corinthian Christians had learned to doubt. Paul here warns them of the danger of such company, and rebukes them for having so shamefully called in question the fundamental doctrine of their religion. God save us from the evil communications of this infidel generation.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38
The insinuation is, that a dead body decays and cannot be raised again. Paul has little patience with the skeptical question, and cries,
1 Corinthians 15:35-38
But God gives it a body as it has pleased him, and to every seed his or rather its
1 Corinthians 15:35-38
You cannot tell from looking at a seed what the plant is to be, neither can we determine from our present bodies what their future form will be. How lovely is the flower compared with the shriveled grain! How fair will our bodies be in comparison with these trembling frames!
1 Corinthians 15:41
As all these things differ from each other, so will the resurrection body differ from that in which we now live. It will be the same body as to identity, yet will it differ in many important points.
1 Corinthians 15:44
It is sown a natural body or a soulish body, animated by the animal life
1 Corinthians 15:44
it is raised a spiritual body fit for the immortal spirit which will quicken it
1 Corinthians 15:44
There is a natural or soulish
1 Corinthians 15:46
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural or for the soul
1 Corinthians 15:48, 49
Blessed assurance!
1 Corinthians 15:51, 52
Those who are alive when Jesus comes must undergo a transformation before they can enter Heaven.
1 Corinthians 16:1
The apostle had written that glowing chapter upon the resurrection which we have read on a former occasion, but he did not consider it at all unseemly to close his letter with a few words upon "the collection." To give of our substance to the poor, or to the cause of Jesus, if done in a right spirit, is one of the highest acts of worship—a deed of love which angels might envy us our power to perform. Is it not wonderful that God should condescend to receive a gift at his creatures' hands?
1 Corinthians 16:2
This is the true Christian custom to lay by the Lord's portion weekly and then give from the Lord's purse to the various works which need our help. From the oldest to the youngest let us all be cheerful givers.
Weekly storing is a most healthful Christian practice. If we were to put a portion into the Lord's bag every Sabbath, we should always have money in hand to give to deserving objects.
1 Corinthians 16:6-11
Timothy was young, and therefore some might slight him: it is pleasing to see how the apostle thus protects him, and requests respect for him. The old should be considerate for the young.
1 Corinthians 16:12
He does not blame Apollos for declining to grant his request, but puts a kind construction upon his action, and is sure that he will visit them when he can. Always think the best you can of others.
1 Corinthians 16:13-15
This would be one of the best cures for the disorders which had marred their church! Watchful pastors are necessary to churches, and those are wrong who attempt to set up assemblies in which all rule, and none submit.
1 Corinthians 16:19
Not with a hollow kiss of hypocrisy, or an unholy kiss of wantonness. A shake of the hand is our western substitute for the kiss; and a good hearty shake of the hand is a noble sign of Christian fellowship.
1 Corinthians 16:21
To prevent imposture the apostle took the pen out of the writer's hand, and wrote the last few lines himself.
1 Corinthians 16:1
Anathema, Maranatha or accursed when the Lord comes
1 Corinthians 16:23, 24
A sweet conclusion. He had been obliged to write sharply, but it was all in love. May love be lord of this dear home.