The Books of 1 & 2 Corinthians (2020 Edition) E-Book

Brian Simmons

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Passion Translation
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 226

Beschreibung

The book of 1 Corinthians was written to believers in the city of Corinth, where God sent the apostle Paul to establish a church for people who desperately needed love and truth. It includes teachings on the church, love, and the resurrection and encourages believers to remain steadfast to the gospel.   The book of 2 Corinthians is one of the most personal letters from Paul and serves as an apostolic manual for the body of Christ, replete with supernatural encounters, encouragement, truth, glory, and revelation. At the center of this letter is a call for believers to lead holy lives marked by generosity.    Like the Corinthian believers, we possess every spiritual gift; we are fully equipped to minister to others and demonstrate love to all. The treasures found within the inspired letters of 1 and 2 Corinthians should stir our hearts with greater passion to follow Jesus.   All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3  

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1 and 2 Corinthians: Love and Truth

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Information

A Note to Readers

1 Corinthians

2 Corinthians

Your Personal Invitation to Follow Jesus

About the Translator

A NOTE TO READERS

It would be impossible to calculate how many lives have been changed forever by the power of the Bible, the living Word of God! My own life was transformed because I believed the message contained in Scripture about Jesus, the Savior.

To hold the Bible dear to your heart is the sacred obsession of every true follower of Jesus. Yet to go even further and truly understand the Bible is how we gain light and truth to live by. Did you catch the word understand? People everywhere say the same thing: “I want to understand God’s Word, not just read it.”

Thankfully, as English speakers, we have a plethora of Bible translations, commentaries, study guides, devotionals, churches, and Bible teachers to assist us. Our hearts crave to know God—to not just know about him, but to know him as intimately as we possibly can in this life. This is what makes Bible translations so valuable, because each one will hopefully lead us into new discoveries of God’s character. I believe God is committed to giving us truth in a package we can understand and apply, so I thank God for every translation of God’s Word that we have.

God’s Word does not change, but over time languages definitely do, thus the need for updated and revised translations of the Bible. Translations give us the words God spoke through his servants, but words can be poor containers for revelation because they leak! Meaning is influenced by culture, background, and many other details. Just imagine how differently the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament saw the world three thousand years ago from the way we see it today!

Even within one language and culture, meanings of words change from one generation to the next. For example, many contemporary Bible readers would be quite surprised to find unicorns are mentioned nine times in the King James Version (KJV). Here’s one instance in Isaiah 34:7: “And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.” This isn’t a result of poor translation, but rather an example of how our culture, language, and understanding of the world has shifted over the past few centuries. So, it is important that we have a modern English text of the Bible that releases revelation and truth into our hearts. The Passion Translation (TPT) is committed to bringing forth the potency of God’s Word in relevant, contemporary vocabulary that doesn’t distract from its meaning or distort it in any way. So many people have told us that they are falling in love with the Bible again as they read TPT.

We often hear the statement, “I just want a word-for-word translation that doesn’t mess it up or insert a bias.” That’s a noble desire. But a word-for-word translation would be nearly unreadable. It is simply impossible to translate one Hebrew word for one English word. Hebrew is built from triliteral consonant roots. Biblical Hebrew had no vowels or punctuation. And Koine Greek, although wonderfully articulate, cannot always be conveyed in English by a word-for-word translation. For example, a literal word-for-word translation of the Greek in Matthew 1:18 would be something like this: “Of the but Jesus Christ the birth thus was. Being betrothed the mother of him, Mary, to Joseph, before or to come together them she was found in belly having from Spirit Holy.”

Even the KJV, which many believe to be a very literal translation, renders this verse: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”

This comparison makes the KJV look like a paraphrase next to a strictly literal translation! To some degree, every Bible translator is forced to move words around in a sentence to convey with meaning the thought of the verse. There is no such thing as a truly literal translation of the Bible, for there is not an equivalent language that perfectly conveys the meaning of the biblical text. Is it really possible to have a highly accurate and highly readable English Bible? We certainly hope so! It is so important that God’s Word is living in our hearts, ringing in our ears, and burning in our souls. Transferring God’s revelation from Hebrew and Greek into English is an art, not merely a linguistic science. Thus, we need all the accurate translations we can find. If a verse or passage in one translation seems confusing, it is good to do a side-by-side comparison with another version.

It is difficult to say which translation is the “best.” “Best” is often in the eyes of the reader and is determined by how important differing factors are to different people. However, the “best” translation, in my thinking, is the one that makes the Word of God clear and accurate, no matter how many words it takes to express it.

That’s the aim of The Passion Translation: to bring God’s eternal truth into a highly readable heart-level expression that causes truth and love to jump out of the text and lodge inside our hearts. A desire to remain accurate to the text and a desire to communicate God’s heart of passion for his people are the two driving forces behind TPT. So for those new to Bible reading, we hope TPT will excite and illuminate. For scholars and Bible students, we hope TPT will bring the joys of new discoveries from the text and prompt deeper consideration of what God has spoken to his people. We all have so much more to learn and discover about God in his holy Word!

You will notice at times we’ve italicized certain words or phrases. These portions are not in the original Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic manuscripts but are implied from the context. We’ve made these implications explicit for the sake of narrative clarity and to better convey the meaning of God’s Word. This is a common practice by mainstream translations.

We’ve also chosen to translate certain names in their original Hebrew or Greek forms to better convey their cultural meaning and significance. For instance, some translations of the Bible have substituted James for Jacob and Jude for Judah. Both Greek and Aramaic manuscripts leave these Hebrew names in their original forms. Therefore, this translation uses those cultural names.

The purpose of The Passion Translation is to reintroduce the passion and fire of the Bible to the English reader. It doesn’t merely convey the literal meaning of words. It expresses God’s passion for people and his world by translating the original, life-changing message of God’s Word for modern readers.

We pray this version of God’s Word will kindle in you a burning desire to know the heart of God, while impacting the church for years to come.

Please visit ThePassionTranslation.com for more information.

Brian Simmons and the translation team

1 CORINTHIANS

(return to table of contents)

Introduction • One • Two • Three • Four • Five • Six • Seven • Eight • Nine • Ten • Eleven • Twelve • Thirteen • Fourteen • Fifteen • Sixteen

1 CORINTHIANS

Introduction

AT A GLANCE

Author: The apostle Paul

Audience: The church of Corinth

Date: AD 53–55

Type of Literature: A letter

Major Themes: The gospel, the church, spiritual gifts, holiness, love, and the resurrection

Outline:

Letter Opening — 1:1–9

Causes and Cures of Division — 1:10–4:21

Moral Issues and Marriage — 5:1–7:40

Condemnation of Idolatry — 8:1–11:1

Affirmation of Worship and Gifts — 11:2–14:40

The Resurrection of the Dead — 15:1–58

Letter Closing — 16:1–24

ABOUT 1 CORINTHIANS

The once influential seaport city of Corinth was strategically located at the crossroads of the world. Prosperous, powerful, and decadent, it was a city that God wanted to reach with the power of the gospel. God sent the apostle Paul to Corinth on his third missionary journey to establish a church in a city that desperately needed love and truth. Paul spent a year and a half in Corinth and saw the church grow, with more believers being added to their number daily. But they needed wisdom from their spiritual father, Paul. So he wrote this letter to encourage them to carry on in their faith and to remain steadfast to the truths of the gospel.

Written while Paul was in Ephesus, this letter had a powerful effect on the Corinthian believers. In his second letter to them, he was able to take them even further into the truths of our new covenant reality and the power of the gospel to overcome sufferings. While Paul was ministering in Corinth, he met two people who would become his coworkers: Aquila and Priscilla, a husband-and-wife team.

Perhaps this book is best remembered for the so-called love chapter. In 1 Corinthians 13 we have the clearest and most poetic masterpiece of love in the New Testament. God’s unending love always sustains us and gives us hope. Think how many of the problems in your life could be solved by embracing the revelation of love found in this anointed letter of Paul! May the love of God win every battle in your heart, bringing a full restoration of your soul into the image of God, for God is love.

We are so enriched by having this inspired letter, written to Paul’s spiritual sons and daughters. How grateful we are that God has given us the treasures found in 1 Corinthians!

PURPOSE

Many see 1 Corinthians as a letter of correction. Indeed, many errors had crept into the belief system of the church of Corinth and the spiritual walk of its members. Some of the issues Paul needed to address include: living godly in a corrupt culture, being unified as one body without competition, maintaining the priority of sexual and moral purity within the church, understanding more completely the role of spiritual gifts in the context of the church, embracing love as the greatest virtue that must live within our hearts, maintaining orderly worship with proper respect toward one another, and keeping the hope of the resurrection burning brightly in our hearts.

But 1 Corinthians is not all correction. Paul gave many wonderful teachings to the young church that will impact your life as well. Like the Corinthian believers, you possess every spiritual gift, you are fully equipped to minister to others, you are capable of demonstrating love to all, and the hope of a future resurrection brings meaning to your life today.

AUTHOR AND AUDIENCE

The apostle Paul wrote to the church of Corinth not as an outsider but as one who was intimately involved in their affairs as a founding father (see Acts 18). He composed this letter about AD 53–55, while living in Ephesus. He was responding to certain issues and problems in the Corinthian church. Apparently, a delegation had arrived from Corinth and notified Paul of what was taking place and asked for his advice. First Corinthians was his response.

While this letter was directed to a specific congregation in a specific Roman city, we are as much of the audience today, given how we mirror many of the characteristics that defined Corinth. It was considered a modern, cosmopolitan city; its people were staunch individualists; their behaviors reflected this individualism; their spirituality was polytheistic; and believers accommodated the gospel in ways that made it palatable to the surrounding culture. These characteristics could also be said of us.

Corinth was the New York, London, and Sydney of the ancient world. We need the voice of Paul and the Spirit of God to speak into our lives today. May we hear them clearly.

MAJOR THEMES

The Nature of the Gospel. This letter is gospel drenched! Not only in what it reveals about our story in Christ, but in what it reveals about his story too. In 8:6 we find revelation-truth about Christ that hadn’t been understood before: “For us there is only one God—the Father. He is the source of all things, and our lives are lived for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus, the Anointed One, through whom we and all things exist.” Here Paul equates the one true God of Israel, Yahweh, with Jesus. Jesus is Yahweh, the only true God.

Paul also revealed the nature of our story, the story each of us has committed to by believing the gospel. Paul shared the core message that had been part of the church from the beginning: “The Messiah died for our sins, . . . He was buried in a tomb and was raised from the dead after three days, as foretold in the Scriptures. Then he appeared to Peter the Rock and to the twelve apostles” (15:3–5). This is the essence of the gospel, the good news about our forgiveness from sins, freedom from shame and guilt, and new life in Christ. Like Paul, God’s amazing grace has made us who we are.

The Church of Christ. One of the central issues Paul addressed was what we call ecclesiology, the nature of the church. What does it mean to be the people of God? What does it mean to gather as God’s holy people—in Corinth, throughout America, or in Australia? One commentator declares these teachings on the church to be this letter’s greatest theological contribution. As a church planter this makes sense. Paul was deeply concerned for his spiritual children and how they publicly professed and lived out the gospel in a gathered community.

In this anointed letter, Paul confronted the nature of church leadership and pastoral ministry. He addressed lawsuits that were tearing believers apart. He confronted head-on the toleration of sexual immorality within the community. And he addressed the nature of worship, particularly the expression of God’s supernatural gifts that God has imparted to every believer. No stone is left unturned as Paul shapes our understanding of what it means to be “God’s inner sanctuary” (3:16), literally “the body of Christ” (10:16) living and breathing in the world!

Holy and Ethical Living. In two of his other letters, Romans and Galatians, Paul made it clear that we are saved by grace through faith. In this letter, he makes it equally clear that we are “God’s expensive purchase, paid for with tears of blood,” and in response are called to “use your body to bring glory to God” (6:20). We do this by “following God’s commandments” (7:19) and obeying “the law of Christ” (9:21).

No aspect of our new Christian ethics and holy living is left unaddressed. “People who continue to engage in sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, sexual perversion, homosexuality, fraud, greed, drunkenness, verbal abuse, or extortion—these will not inherit God’s kingdom realm” (6:9–10). We may be saved by grace, but Paul makes it clear that as Christians we are to live our lives in a way that glorifies and honors God (10:31).

Love, the Motivation of Our Lives. Each of Paul’s letters seems to have an ethical high note. In his second letter to the Corinthians, it is generosity. In Ephesians, one could say it’s humility. And Galatians emphasizes the fruit produced by the Spirit life. In this letter Paul uncovers the beautiful ethical prize after which we are to run: love. The so-called love chapter expounds upon the virtues of loving both God and neighbor, as Christ commanded. According to Paul, love is more worthy than speaking eloquently “in the heavenly tongues of angels” (13:1), better than having “unending supernatural knowledge” (13:2), and far more important than giving away everything to the poor (13:3). As Paul says, “Love never stops loving”; it never fails (13:8).

Issues of “the End.” By “the end” we mean both our personal end at death and also our world’s end when Christ returns. While we often think our end hope is in heaven, it isn’t. Our ultimate Christian hope is in the resurrection. Paul spent fifty-eight verses and an entire chapter making this clear. In fact, this was his main message. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead paved the way for our own resurrection. He is “the firstfruit of a great resurrection harvest of those who have died” (15:20). Because Jesus is alive, we have a bright hope for tomorrow. For this reason we can confidently declare, along with Paul, “Death is swallowed up by a triumphant victory! So death, tell me, where is your victory? Tell me death, where is your sting?” (15:54–55).

1 CORINTHIANS

Love and Truth

Paul’s Greeting

1From Paul, divinely appointed according to the plan of God, to be an apostle of the Anointed One, Jesus. Our fellow believer Sosthenesa joins me 2in writing you this letter addressed to the community of Godb throughout the city of Corinth. For you have been made pure, set apart in the Anointed One, Jesus. And God has invited you to be his devoted and holy people, and not only you, but everyone everywhere who calls on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord, and ours also.

3May joyous gracec and endless peace be yours continually from our Father God and from our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!

Made Wonderfully Rich

4I am always thanking my God for you because he has given you such free and open access to his grace through your union with Jesus, the Messiah. 5In him you have been made extravagantly rich in every way. You have been endowed with a wealth of inspired utteranced and the riches that come from your intimate knowledge of him. 6For the reality of the truth of Christ is seen among you and strengthenede through your experience of him. 7So now you aren’t lacking any spiritual giftf as you eagerly await the unveilingg of the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One. 8He will keep you steady and strong to the very end, making your character mature so that you will be found innocent on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is forever faithful and can be trusted to do this in you, for he has invited you to co-share the life of his Son,h Jesus, the Anointed One, our King!i

Paul Addresses Divisions in the Church

10I urge you, my brothers and sisters, for the sake of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree to live in unity with one anotherj and put to rest any division that attempts to tear you apart.k Be restoredl as one united body living in perfect harmony. Form a consistent choreography among yourselves, having a common perspective with shared values.

11My dear brothers and sisters, I have a serious concern I need to bring up with you,m for I have been informed by those of Chloe’s house churchn that you have been destructively arguing among yourselves. 12And I need to bring this up because each of you is claiming loyalty to different preachers. Some are saying, “I am a disciple of Paul,” or, “I follow Apollos,” or, “I am a disciple of Peter the Rock,”o and some, “I belong only to Christ.” 13But let me ask you, is Christ divided up into groups? Did I die on the cross for you? At your baptism did you pledge yourselves to follow Paul?p

14Thank God I only baptized two from Corinth—Crispus and Gaius!q15So now no one can say that in my name I baptized others.r16(Yes, I also baptized Stephanus and his family. Other than that, I don’t remember baptizing anyone else.) 17For the Anointed One has sent me on a mission, not to see how many I could baptize,s but to proclaim the good news. And I declare this message stripped of all philosophical arguments that empty the cross of its true power. For I trust in the all-sufficient cross of Christ alone.

The True Power of the Cross

18To preach the messaget of the cross seems like sheer nonsense to those who are on their way to destruction, but to us who are being saved, it is the mighty power of God released within us.u19For it is written:

I will dismantle the wisdom of the wise

and I will invalidate the intelligence of the scholars.v

20So where is the wise philosopher who understands? Where is the expert scholar who comprehends? And where is the skilled debater of our time who could win a debate with God? Hasn’t God demonstrated that the wisdom of this world system is utter foolishness?

21For in his wisdom, God designed that all the world’s wisdom would be insufficient to lead people to the discovery of himself. He took great delight in baffling the wisdom of the world by using the simplicity of preaching the story of the crossw in order to save those who believe it. 22For the Jews constantly demand to see miraculous signs, while those who are not Jewsx constantly cling to the world’s wisdom,y23but we preach the crucified Messiah. The Jews stumble over him and the rest of the world sees him as foolishness. 24But for those who have been chosen to follow him, both Jews and Greeks, he is God’s mighty power, God’s true wisdom, and our Messiah.z25For the “foolish” things of God have proven to be wiser than human wisdom. And the “feeble” things of God have proven to be far more powerful than any human ability.aa

God’s Calling

26Brothers and sisters, consider who you were when God called you to salvation. Not many of you were wise scholars by human standards, nor were many of you in positions of power. Not many of you were considered the elite when you answered God’s call. 27But God chose those whom the world considers foolish to shame those who think they are wise, and God chose the puny and powerless to shameab the high and mighty. 28He chose the lowly, the laughableac in the world’s eyes—nobodies—so that he would shame the somebodies. For he chose what is regarded as insignificant in order to supersede what is regarded as prominent, 29so that there would be no place for prideful boasting in God’s presence. 30For it is not from man that we draw our life but from God as we are being joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. And now he is our God-given wisdom, our virtue, our holiness, and our redemption. 31And this fulfills what is written:

If anyone boasts, let him only boast

in all that the Lord has done!ad

a1:1 Sosthenes means “savior of his nation.” He was the Jewish synagogue ruler in Corinth who had converted to Christ and had been beaten for his faith (Acts 18:12–17).

b1:2 Or “church.” This is the Greek word ekklēsia, which means “a summoned people, called to assemble, a legislative body.” It is also a word used in Greek culture to “assemble an army.”

c1:3 The Greek word charis, in its original sense, is descriptive of that which brings pleasure and joy to the human heart, implying a strong emotional element. God’s grace includes favor and supernatural potency, and it is meant to leave us both charming and beautiful. In classical Greek it was meant to convey the attitude of favor shown by royalty. See Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 1–5.

d1:5 Or “in every kind of speaking.” By implication, Paul is commending them for their speaking gifts (prophecy, tongues and interpretation of tongues, preaching, and teaching the word of God). This will be developed further in chs. 12–14.

e1:6 Or “validated” or “confirmed.” The word used here is found in classical Greek in the context of establishing (building) communities.

f1:7 Or “You don’t fail to receive any gift of the Holy Spirit.” God wants his church to receive every gift the Holy Spirit has to give us. This may be a figure of speech called a litotes, which means it could also be translated, “You have every spiritual gift.”

g1:7 Or “eagerly accept” or “eagerly await.” The Greek word ekdechomai is a compound word, ek (out of, from) and dechomai (to accept or receive or take hold of).

h1:9 Or “a life of communion with his Son.” That is, a co-participation (communion, fellowship) of the Son. The Aramaic can be translated “You have been called to the (wedding) feast of his Son.” We see a clear picture here that believers are called to share in the sonship of Jesus. By God’s grace, we will share in the Son’s standing and position before the Father. We are not only blameless but made holy by the co-sharing of the life of God’s Son.

i1:9 Or “Lord.”

j