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World English Bible: 1 Corinthians

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This is the opening chapters (1–5) of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, an epistle from the New Testament written in the tradition of early Christian pastoral correspondence. Paul addresses a fractured community in Corinth where members have divided into rival factions pledging loyalty to different teachers — Paul, Apollos, Cephas — and he argues forcefully that such divisions betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what Christianity is. His central theological claim is that the gospel deliberately inverts worldly wisdom: the crucified Christ appears as foolishness and weakness by human standards, yet is in fact God's power and wisdom, and God intentionally chose the lowly and despised to shame the powerful. Paul develops an extended metaphor of the community as God's building, with teachers as mere laborers on a foundation that is Christ alone — no teacher deserves personal allegiance or boasting. The letter also turns sharply practical, rebuking the Corinthians for tolerating a case of sexual immorality while remaining complacently "puffed up," and demanding the offender be expelled. A distinctive recurring rhetorical move is Paul's ironic self-deprecation — he presents himself and the apostles as weak, dishonored, and "filth of the world" precisely to expose the Corinthians' misplaced spiritual pride.

World English Bible: 1 Corinthians

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