A Letter of Pain and Tears – Introduction to 1 Corinthians
Pastor Tan Thai · Jun 26, 2016
This sermon explains the historical context and reasons why the Apostle Paul wrote his letters to the Church at Corinth, a congregation filled with serious problems in a complex urban society. Paul wrote not from cold distance, but with deep love, pain, and tears, like a father toward his children.
The sermon opens by introducing the Apostle Paul's heart toward the Church at Corinth through two passages from 2 Corinthians 2:4 and 6:11–13. Paul was not a minister who kept his distance, but one who expressed deep love and even wept over the sins and problems within the congregation. For this reason, the sermon series is titled 'letters of love, pain, and tears.'
The historical background of the Corinthian church is presented in detail. Corinth was the Roman capital of the province of Achaia, a wealthy and complex port city of approximately 600,000 people. The temple of Aphrodite, goddess of erotic love, employed thousands of temple prostitutes, creating a sexual culture so pervasive that the Greek word 'korintiazomai' was coined to describe fornication in the Corinthian manner. Paul arrived in the city not by his own plan but through a vision, being led by God from Asia to Europe, and he remained there 18 months to establish the church around AD 50.
The sermon clarifies that 1 Corinthians is actually the second letter Paul wrote to this church, and 2 Corinthians is the fourth. Two other letters have been lost. Paul's reasons for writing 1 Corinthians were twofold: to address serious problems reported by members of Chloe's household, and to answer questions the congregation had written to him while he was in Ephesus during his third missionary journey around AD 55–56.
The sermon lists the full range of issues Paul addresses in the letter, including factions and divisions, the influence of worldly philosophy, sexual immorality, lawsuits among believers, misunderstandings about marriage, food offered to idols, spiritual gifts, love, and the resurrection. The preacher emphasizes that these problems are not confined to the first-century church but speak directly to congregations in the twenty-first century worldwide.
The sermon concludes with a practical lesson: believers today should be grateful to the Corinthian church, because it was precisely their serious problems that moved the Holy Spirit to use Paul to write teachings of timeless value. At the same time, the sermon warns that certain sinful habits are difficult for believers to escape without a healthy spiritual community surrounding them.