{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"1CO","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"1 Corinthians","commonName":"1 Corinthians","introduction":"The AUTHENTICITY of this Epistle is attested by CLEMENT OF ROME [First Epistle to the Corinthians, 47], POLYCARP [Epistle to the Philippians, 11], and IRENÆUS [Against Heresies, 4.27.3]. The city to which it was sent was famed for its wealth and commerce, which were chiefly due to its situation between the Ionian and Ægean Seas on the isthmus connecting the Peloponese with Greece. In Paul's time it was the capital of the province Achaia and the seat of the Roman proconsul (Act 18:12). The state of morals in it was notorious for debauchery, even in the profligate heathen world; so much so that \"to Corinthianize\" was a proverbial phrase for \"to play the wanton\"; hence arose dangers to the purity of the Christian Church at Corinth. That Church was founded by Paul on his first visit (Acts 18:1-17).\n\nHe had been the instrument of converting many Gentiles (Co1 12:2), and some Jews (Act 18:8), notwithstanding the vehement opposition of the countrymen of the latter (Act 18:5), during the year and a half in which he sojourned there. The converts were chiefly of the humbler classes (Co1 1:26, &c.). Crispus (Co1 1:14; Act 18:8), Erastus, and Gaius (Caius) were, however, men of rank (Rom 16:23). A variety of classes is also implied in Co1 11:22. The risk of contamination by contact with the surrounding corruptions, and the temptation to a craving for Greek philosophy and rhetoric (which Apollos' eloquent style rather tended to foster, Act 18:24, &c.) in contrast to Paul's simple preaching of Christ crucified (Co1 2:1, &c.), as well as the opposition of certain teachers to him, naturally caused him anxiety. Emissaries from the Judaizers of Palestine boasted of \"letters of commendation\" from Jerusalem, the metropolis of the faith. They did not, it is true, insist on circumcision in refined Corinth, where the attempt would have been hopeless, as they did among the simpler people of Galatia; but they attacked the apostolic authority of Paul (Co1 9:1-2; Co2 10:1, Co2 10:7-8), some of them declaring themselves followers of Cephas, the chief apostle, others boasting that they belonged to Christ Himself (Co1 1:12; Co2 10:7), while they haughtily repudiated all subordinate teaching. Those persons gave out themselves for apostles (Co2 11:5, Co2 11:13). The ground taken by them was that Paul was not one of the Twelve, and not an eye-witness of the Gospel facts, and durst not prove his apostleship by claiming sustenance from the Christian Church. Another section avowed themselves followers of Paul himself, but did so in a party spirit, exalting the minister rather than Christ. The followers of Apollos, again, unduly prized his Alexandrian learning and eloquence, to the disparagement of the apostle, who studiously avoided any deviation from Christian simplicity (Co1 2:1-5). In some of this last philosophizing party there may have arisen the Antinomian tendency which tried to defend theoretically their own practical immorality: hence their denial of the future resurrection, and their adoption of the Epicurean motto, prevalent in heathen Corinth, \"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die\" (Co1 15:32). Hence, perhaps, arose their connivance at the incestuous intercourse kept up by one of the so-called Christian body with his stepmother during his father's life. The household of Chloe informed Paul of many other evils: such as contentions, divisions, and lawsuits brought against brethren in heathen law courts by professing Christians; the abuse of their spiritual gifts into occasions of display and fanaticism; the interruption of public worship by simultaneous and disorderly ministrations, and decorum violated by women speaking unveiled (contrary to Oriental usage), and so usurping the office of men, and even the holy communion desecrated by greediness and revelling on the part of the communicants. Other messengers, also, came from Corinth, consulting him on the subject of (1) the controversy about meats offered to idols; (2) the disputes about celibacy and marriage; (3) the due exercise of spiritual gifts in public worship; (4) the best mode of making the collection which he had requested for the saints at Jerusalem (Co1 16:1, &c.). Such were the circumstances which called forth the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the most varied in its topics of all the Epistles.\n\nIn Co1 5:9, \"I wrote unto you in an Epistle not to company with fornicators,\" it is implied that Paul had written a previous letter to the Corinthians (now lost). Probably in it he had also enjoined them to make a contribution for the poor saints at Jerusalem, whereupon they seem to have asked directions as to the mode of doing so, to which he now replies (Co1 16:2). It also probably announced his intention of visiting them on way to Macedonia, and again on his return from Macedonia (Co2 1:15-16), which purpose he changed hearing the unfavorable report from Chloe's household (Co1 16:5-7), for which he was charged with (Co2 1:17). In the first Epistle which we have, the subject of fornication is alluded to only in a way, as if he were rather replying to an excuse set up after rebuke in the matter, than introducing for the first time [ALFORD]. Preceding this former letter, he seems to have paid a second visit to Corinth. For in Co2 12:4; Co2 13:1, he speaks of his intention of paying them a third visit, implying he had already twice visited them. See on Co2 2:1; Co2 13:2; also see on Co2 1:15; Co2 1:16. It is hardly likely that during his three years' sojourn at Ephesus he would have failed to revisit his Corinthian converts, which he could so readily do by sea, there being constant maritime intercourse between the two cities. This second visit was probably a short one (compare Co1 16:7); and attended with pain and humiliation (Co2 2:1; Co2 12:21), occasioned by the scandalous conduct of so many of his own converts. His milder censures having then failed to produce reformation, he wrote briefly directing them \"not to company with fornicators.\" On their misapprehending this injunction, he explained it more fully in the Epistle, the first of the two extant (Co1 5:9, Co1 5:12). That the second visit is not mentioned in Acts is no objection to its having really taken place, as that book is fragmentary and omits other leading incidents in Paul's life; for example, his visit to Arabia, Syria, and Cilicia (Gal 1:17-21).\n\nThe PLACE OF WRITING is fixed to be Ephesus (Co1 16:8). The subscription in English Version, \"From Philippi,\" has no authority whatever, and probably arose from a mistaken translation of Co1 16:5, \"For I am passing through Macedonia.\" At the time of writing Paul implies (Co1 16:8) that he intended to leave Ephesus after Pentecost of that year. He really did leave it about Pentecost (A.D. 57). Compare Act 19:20. The allusion to Passover imagery in connection with our Christian Passover, Easter (Co1 5:7), makes it likely that the season was about Easter. Thus the date of the Epistle is fixed with tolerable accuracy, about Easter, certainly before Pentecost, in the third year of his residence at Ephesus, A.D. 57. For other arguments, see CONYBEARE and HOWSON'S Life and Epistles of St. Paul.\n\nThe Epistle is written in the name of Sosthenes \"[our] brother.\" BIRKS supposes he is the same as the Sosthenes, Act 18:17, who, he thinks, was converted subsequently to that occurrence. He bears no part in the Epistle itself, the apostle in the very next verses (Co1 1:4, &c.) using the first person: so Timothy is introduced, Co2 1:1. The bearers of the Epistle were probably Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (see the subscription, Co1 16:24), whom he mentions (Co1 16:17-18) as with him then, but who he implies are about to return back to Corinth; and therefore he commends them to the regard of the Corinthians. \n\n\n\nNext: 1 Corinthians Chapter 1\n\n","order":46,"numberOfChapters":16,"sha256":"9bf5da45bfa8b3ebeb897bb227e19d039c2c950176364829d04b3dcc496cb600","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1CO/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1CO","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":16,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1CO/16.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1CO","chapter":16},"totalNumberOfVerses":416},"chapter":{"number":5,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["puffed up--with your own wisdom and knowledge, and the eloquence of your favorite teachers: at a time when ye ought to be \"mourning\" at the scandal caused to religion by the incest. Paul mourned because they did not mourn (Co2 2:4). We ought to mourn over the transgressions of others, and repent of our own (Co2 12:21) [BENGEL]. \n\nthat--ye have not felt such mourning as would lead to the result that, &c. \n\ntaken away from among you--by excommunication. The incestuous person was hereby brought to bitter repentance, in the interval between the sending of the first and second Epistles (Co2 2:5-10). Excommunication in the Christian Church corresponded to that in the Jewish synagogue, in there being a lighter and heavier form: the latter an utter separation from church fellowship and the Lord's house, the former exclusion from the Lord's Supper only but not from the Church.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["as absent--The best manuscripts read, \"being absent.\" \n\npresent in spirit-- (Kg2 5:26; Col 2:5). \n\nso done--rather, \"perpetrated,\" as the Greek word here is stronger than that for \"done\" in Co1 5:2. \"So,\" that is, so scandalously while called a brother.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ--By His authority and as representing His person and will (Co2 2:10). Join this with \"to deliver such a one unto Satan\" (Co1 5:5). The clause, \"When ye have been gathered together and my spirit (wherein I am 'present,' though 'absent in body,' Co1 5:3), with the power of our Lord Jesus,\" stands in a parenthesis between. Paul speaking of himself uses the word \"spirit\"; of Christ, \"power.\" Christ's power was promised to be present with HIS Church \"gathered together in His name\" (Mat 18:18-20): and here Paul by inspiration gives a special promise of his apostolic spirit, which in such cases was guided by the Holy Spirit, ratifying their decree passed according to his judgment (\"I have judged,\" Co1 5:3), as though he were present in person (Joh 20:21-23; Co2 13:3-10). This power of infallible judgment was limited to the apostles; for they alone had the power of working miracles as their credentials to attest their infallibility. Their successors, to establish their claim to the latter, must produce the former (Co2 12:2). Even the apostles in ordinary cases, and where not specially and consciously inspired, were fallible (Act 8:13, Act 8:23; Gal 2:11-14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["Besides excommunication (of which the Corinthians themselves had the power), Paul delegates here to the Corinthian Church his own special power as an apostle, of inflicting corporeal disease or death in punishment for sin (\"to deliver to Satan such an one,\" that is, so heinous a sinner). For instances of this power, see Act 5:1-11; Act 13:11; Ti1 1:20. As Satan receives power at times to try the godly, as Job (Job 2:4-7) and Paul (Co2 12:7; compare also as to Peter, Luk 22:31), much more the ungodly. Satan, the \"accuser of the brethren\" (Rev 12:10) and the \"adversary\" (Pe1 5:8), demands the sinner for punishment on account of sin (Zac 3:1). When God lets Satan have his way, He is said to \"deliver the sinner unto Satan\" (compare Psa 109:6). Here it is not finally; but for the affliction of the body with disease, and even death (Co1 11:30, Co1 11:32), so as to destroy fleshly lust. He does not say, \"for the destruction of the body,\" for it shall share in redemption (Rom 8:23); but of the corrupt \"flesh\" which \"cannot inherit the kingdom of God,\" and the lusts of which had prompted this offender to incest (Rom 7:5; Rom 8:9-10). The \"destruction of the flesh\" answers to \"mortify the deeds of the body\" (Rom 8:13), only that the latter is done by one's self, the former is effected by chastisement from God (compare Pe1 4:6): \n\nthe spirit . . . saved--the spiritual part of man, in the believer the organ of the Holy Spirit. Temporary affliction often leads to permanent salvation (Psa 83:16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["Your glorying in your own attainments and those of your favorite teachers (Co1 3:21; Co1 4:19; Co1 5:2), while all the while ye connive at such a scandal, is quite unseemly. \n\na little leaven leaveth . . . whole lump-- (Gal 5:9), namely, with present complicity in the guilt, and the danger of future contagion (Co1 15:33; Ti2 2:17).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["old leaven--The remnant of the \"old\" (Eph 4:22-24) heathenish and natural corruption. The image is taken from the extreme care of the Jews in searching every corner of their houses, and \"purging out\" every particle of leaven from the time of killing the lamb before the Passover (Deu 16:3-4). So Christians are continually to search and purify their hearts (Psa 139:23-24). \n\nas ye are unleavened--normally, and as far as your Christian calling is concerned: free from the leaven of sin and death (Co1 6:11). Paul often grounds exhortations on the assumption of Christian professors' normal state as realized (Rom 6:3-4) [ALFORD]. Regarding the Corinthian Church as the Passover \"unleavened lump\" or mass, he entreats them to correspond in fact with this their normal state. \"For Christ our Passover (Exo 12:5-11, Exo 12:21-23; Joh 1:29) has been (English Version, \"is\") sacrificed for us\"; that is, as the Jews began the days of unleavened bread with the slaying of the Passover lamb, so, Christ our Passover having been already slain, let there be no leaven of evil in you who are the \"unleavened lump.\" Doubtless he alludes to the Passover which had been two or three weeks before kept by the Jewish Christians (Co1 16:8): the Gentile Christians probably also refraining from leavened bread at the love-feasts. Thus the Jewish Passover naturally gave place to our Christian Easter. The time however, of keeping feast (metaphorical; that is, leading the Christian life of joy in Christ's finished work, compare Pro 15:15) among us Christians, corresponding to the Jewish Passover, is not limited, as the latter, to one season, but is ALL our time; for the transcendent benefits of the once-for-all completed sacrifice of our Passover Lamb extends to all the time of our lives and of this Christian dispensation; in no part of our time is the leaven of evil to be admitted. \n\nFor even--an additional reason, besides that in Co1 5:6, and a more cogent one for purging out every leaven of evil; namely, that Christ has been already sacrificed, whereas the old leaven is yet unremoved, which ought to have been long ago purged out.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["not . . . old leaven--of our unconverted state as Jews or heathen. \n\nmalice--the opposite of \"sincerity,\" which allows no leaven of evil to be mixed up with good (Mat 16:6). \n\nwickedness--the opposite of \"truth,\" which allows not evil to be mistaken for good. The Greek for \"malice\" means the evil habit of mind; \"wickedness,\" the outcoming of the same in word and deed. The Greek for \"sincerity\" expresses literally, a thing which, when examined by the sun's light, is found pure and unadulterated.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["I wrote . . . in an epistle--rather, \"in the Epistle\": a former one not now extant. That Paul does not refer to the present letter is proved by the fact that no direction \"not to company with fornicators\" occurs in the previous part of it; also the words, \"in an (or, the) epistle,\" could not have been added if he meant, \"I have just written\" (Co2 10:10). \"His letters\" (plural; not applying to merely one) confirm this. Co2 7:8 also refers to our first Epistle, just as here a former letter is referred to by the same phrase. Paul probably wrote a former brief reply to inquiries of the Corinthians: our first Epistle, as it enters more fully into the same subject, has superseded the former, which the Holy Spirit did not design for the guidance of the Church in general, and which therefore has not been preserved. See my Introduction.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Limitation of the prohibition alluded to in Co1 5:9. As in dissolute Corinth to \"company with no fornicators,\" &c., would be almost to company with none in the (unbelieving) world; ye need not utterly (\"altogether\") forego intercourse with fornicators, &c., of the unbelieving world (compare Co1 10:27; Joh 17:15; Jo1 5:18-19). As \"fornicators\" sin against themselves, so \"extortioners\" against their neighbors, and \"idolaters\" against God. The attempt to get \"out of the world,\" in violation of God's will that believers should remain in it but keep themselves from its evil, led to monasticism and its consequent evils.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["But now--\"Now\" does not express time, but \"the case being so,\" namely, that to avoid fornicators, &c., of the world, you would have to leave the world altogether, which would be absurd. So \"now\" is used in Heb 11:16. Thus we avoid making the apostle now retract a command which he had before given. \n\nI have written--that is, my meaning in the letter I wrote was \"not to keep company,\" &c. \n\na brother--contrasted with a \"fornicator . . . of the world\" (Co1 5:10). There is less danger in associating with open worldlings than with carnal professors. Here, as in Eph 5:3, Eph 5:5, \"covetousness\" is joined with \"fornication\": the common fount of both being \"the fierce and ever fiercer longing of the creature, which has turned from God, to fill itself with the inferior objects of sense\" [TRENCH, Greek Synonyms of the New Testament]. Hence \"idolatry\" is associated with them: and the covetous man is termed an \"idolater\" (Num 25:1-2). The Corinthians did not fall into open idolatry, but ate things offered to idols, so making a compromise with the heathen; just as they connived at fornication. Thus this verse prepares for the precepts in Co1 8:4, &c. Compare the similar case of fornication, combined with a similar idolatrous compromise, after the pattern of Israel with the Midianites (Rev 2:14). \n\nno not to eat--not to sit at the same table with such; whether at the love-feasts (agapÃ&brvbr) or in private intercourse, much more at the Lord's table: at the last, too often now the guests \"are not as children in one family, but like a heterogeneous crowd of strangers in an inn\" [BENGEL] (compare Gal 2:12; Jo2 1:10-11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["what have I to do--You might have easily understood that my concern is not with unbelievers outside the Church, but that I referred to those within it. \n\nalso--Implying, Those within give me enough to do without those outside. \n\ndo not ye, &c.--Ye judge your fellow citizens, not strangers: much more should I [BENGEL]. Rather, Is it not your duty to judge them that are within? God shall judge them that are without: do you look at home [GROTIUS]. God is the Judge of the salvation of the heathen, not we (Rom 2:12-16). Paul here gives an anticipatory censure of their going to law with saints before heathen tribunals, instead of judging such causes among themselves within.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["put away from among yourselves that wicked--Sentence of excommunication in language taken from Deu 24:7.\n\n\n\n\nNext: 1 Corinthians Chapter 6\n\n"]}],"introduction":"THE INCESTUOUS PERSON AT CORINTH: THE CORINTHIANS REPROVED FOR CONNIVANCE, AND WARNED TO PURGE OUT THE BAD LEAVEN. QUALIFICATION OF HIS FORMER COMMAND AS TO ASSOCIATION WITH SINNERS OF THE WORLD. (Co1 5:1-13)\n\ncommonly--rather, \"actually\" [ALFORD]. Absolutely [BENGEL]. \"It is reported,\" implies, that the Corinthians, though they \"wrote\" (Co1 7:1) to Paul on other points, gave him no information on those things which bore against themselves. These latter matters reached the apostle indirectly (Co1 1:11). \n\nso much as named--The oldest manuscripts and authorities omit \"named\": \"Fornication of such a gross kind as (exists) not even among the heathen, so that one (of you) hath (in concubinage) his father's wife,\" that is, his stepmother, while his father is still alive (Co2 7:12; compare Lev 18:8). She was perhaps a heathen, for which reason he does not direct his rebuke against her (compare Co1 5:12-13). ALFORD thinks \"have\" means have in marriage: but the connection is called \"fornication,\" and neither Christian nor Gentile law would have sanctioned such a marriage, however Corinth's notorious profligacy might wink at the concubinage.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1CO/5.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1CO","chapter":5},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1CO/6.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1CO","chapter":6},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1CO/4.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1CO","chapter":4},"numberOfVerses":12}