Lessons from a Messed Up Church

[591 words] Corinth was a busy metropolitan city in the days that Paul helped start the church there. But Corinth also had a much-deserved reputation for moral bankruptcy. Folks who were in the practice of using prostitutes were said to have “Corinthianized.” This term later came to be used to describe moral decay in general. The sins out of which the Corinthian Christians came attest to the type of society it was (1 Cor. 6:9-11). At the time Paul wrote his first letter to the church there, they were a troubled group, struggling to jettison the influences of their past. Factions had formed in the church over preachers. There was an immoral relationship among them that they not only refused to deal with, they were proud of their tolerance of it. They were taking each other to small claims court. They were trying to navigate sticky marriage situations. There was…