1 Corinthians

Covers 1 Corinthians 2-3

The difference between exhaustive knowledge of the Word and genuine spiritual understanding — how the natural person cannot grasp the things of the Spirit, so that even gifted non-Christian scholars miss what a new believer sees plainly.

Covers Jeremiah 45 · 1 Corinthians 4

Using God's word to Baruch and Paul's account of apostolic suffering to confront both health-and-wealth teaching and the quieter assumption that faithfulness should at least spare us life's extremes — faithfulness produces an eternal weight of glory, not exemption from suffering.

Covers 1 Corinthians 7

Working through the puzzling features of Paul's teaching on marriage and singleness — the concession of verse 6, his distinction between his own words and the Lord's, the mistranslated virgin daughter, and why his counsel is shaped by Corinth's present distress.

Covers 1 Corinthians 8

Why the popular redefinition of an idol as anything that takes first place over God breaks down against 1 Corinthians 8 — biblical idolatry means worshiping other gods alongside Yahweh, and Scripture should not be twisted to feel more applicable.

Covers 1 Corinthians 8

Recovering the polytheistic setting of Paul's teaching on meat sacrificed to idols — eating it is not itself worship, but mature believers must weigh how their freedom might lead newer Christians, used to adding gods, into sin.

Covers 1 Corinthians 9

Agreeing that Christian workers deserve support but wrestling with how Paul argues it — his claim that the do-not-muzzle-the-ox command of Deuteronomy 25 was not really about oxen, read instead as an a fortiori from animal to human labor.

Covers 1 Samuel 22 · 1 Corinthians 10

Saul's slaughter of the priests at Nob as a cautionary tale on how small indulged sins callous the heart and lead far beyond where we ever imagined — paired with Paul on idol-meat in 1 Corinthians 10, where intent, not just the act, determines sin.

Covers 1 Corinthians 11

Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for some going hungry while others got drunk suggests the Lord's supper was a full shared meal — and a reflection on how far quiet, solemn modern Communion may be from that intimate communal table.

Covers 1 Corinthians 11

Asking when Communion shifted from a full shared meal to a quiet, personal ritual — reading Paul's correction of the Corinthians not as ending the common meal but as curbing those who took more than their share while others went hungry.

Covers Exodus 5 · 1 Corinthians 11

How quickly we grow discouraged in God's work — Moses and Aaron departing from God's instructions before Pharaoh, then despairing at the expected resistance — alongside a reflection sparked by the death of Michael Heiser on the joy of one day knowing God fully.

Covers 1 Corinthians 12

Paul's picture of the church as a body, where each member's distinct gifting is vital and no individual constitutes the whole — and how far Sunday-only, independently lived Christianity in the West falls from that interdependent design.

Covers 1 Corinthians 12

How Western individualism distorts Paul's vision of the Body of Christ — where every role matters in its own right rather than serving as a stepping stone to the top, and both members and church leaders must make room for each gift God provides.

Covers 1 Corinthians 13

Reading the love chapter alongside a personal translation, drawing out how Paul implicitly affirms the diversity of human gifting and drive — and how being refined by God's love does not erode individuality but lets it come fully into focus.

Covers 1 Corinthians 13

A candid reflection on drawing identity from performance even in godly pursuits, and the freedom of realizing that knowing the Bible or praying well counts for nothing without love — the very thing God prizes most highly.

Covers 1 Corinthians 13

Joe's Bible Translation — 1 Corinthians 13.

Covers 1 Corinthians 15

Paul's seed-and-plant analogy for the resurrection body explains why setting our affections on eternity is so hard — we are acorns who cannot conceive of the oak, left to live by faith in a Father who has promised to carry us through.

Covers 1 Corinthians 15

Questioning the assumption that we go to heaven at death rather than sleep in Christ until the bodily resurrection on a renewed Earth — and a wider reflection on how unexamined we let inherited teaching filter our reading of Scripture.

Covers 1 Corinthians 15

Taking Paul's warning that the Corinthians are saved if they hold fast at face value — arguing he allows for a genuine believer to abandon the faith and lose salvation, a matter of continuing in faith rather than of sin or of never having truly believed.

Covers 1 Samuel 28 · 1 Corinthians 15

Samuel's word to Saul through the medium at Endor strengthens the case that David's refusal to remove Saul may have been misguided rather than exemplary — paired with 1 Corinthians 15 on assurance grounded in present faith in Christ, not a once-prayed sinner's prayer.