The Life of an Early Church—I

Of no one of the early churches have we so full a knowledge as of the church at Corinth. We owe this to the preservation of the letters to this church which are contained in our New Testament. Paul was working at Ephesus soon after leaving Corinth. The two cities were joined by a great highway of the sea, with vessels constantly passing back and forth, and it was not hard for Paul to keep in touch with the church. Paul had received a letter from the Corinthians and had written one in return, both lost to us. A second letter was written him by the church, asking his judgment on various questions. About the same time Chloe, apparently a well-to-do Christian woman, sent some of her servants or slaves, also presumably Christians, and these informed Paul of serious conditions that had arisen in the life of the church. Later three other members of the church came, Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaiacus, the two last named being probably slaves of the first. Apollos too, who had been working at Corinth, came to Paul at Ephesus, and Paul, himself prevented from going by the importance of his new work at Ephesus, had sent Timothy as his personal representative. All this had taken place before Paul sat down to write the letter which we now have. It is a good instance of Paul's care of his churches and at the same time a picture of the freedom of travel which characterized the age.

More important than these incidents is the picture of the life of a Christian church in the Roman world, and the problems which the Christian religion faced in thus establishing itself. Christianity was a new way of living. Paul's first message to men concerned their relation to God: "We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5:20). But he did not stop with this. The new religion was a life to be lived out among men. It meant a new conduct and character. It was a moral revolution. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new" (2 Cor 5:17). Paul's greatest task was to show his converts what this new life meant. The old religions had little to say about right living. Often their influence lay upon the wrong side. The temple of Aphrodite at Corinth, for example, had a thousand women attached to it who were giving themselves to a life of shame as part of the service of the goddess. The Corinthian converts had no trouble in accepting the new doctrines and sacraments, but it was not so easy to teach them that the new faith meant purity and sobriety and uprightness. Nor was that all. Paul had the further task of teaching them what the new spirit meant in the thousand and one activities and relations of life. These Christians had to live in the pagan world and touch its life on every side. The political life, the social life, the business life was pagan in spirit and practice. They could not leave this world; how should they live the new life in the midst of it?

In all these matters Paul shows a marvelous patience. He knows he is dealing with children. They are still babes, and he does not expect everything at once. He is skillful too. He holds up the highest principles, but he shows the greatest tact and common sense in application. All fanatical extremes are absent. More wonderful still is his faith. He knows with what materials he has to deal in the Corinthian church. In writing them he mentions a long list of those who cannot enter the Kingdom of God—fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with men, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. And then he adds, "And such were some of you" (1 Cor 6:9-11). Moreover, most of his converts were taken from the lower social classes, from the great proletariat of Corinth. And yet before such folks Paul holds the highest ideals of Christianity, nor abates from them one whit. It is for these people that he sets forth his lofty ideal in the marvelous chapter on love (1 Cor 13). He believes that even such people can be made over in the spirit of Christ.

The problems that appear in the Corinthian letters may be taken up under two heads: (1) Moral problems; (2) Problems of church life. We shall take these up in the order noted.

The first problem that Paul had to handle was a peculiarly distressing one. Apparently the servants of Chloe informed him of this, that a member of the church had actually married his stepmother upon his father's death. And the church had permitted this without proceeding against this member. That does not mean that they defended such a deed. Individually they may have condemned it, but Paul demands that this man must be put out of their fellowship. With such men they might have to associate in the world without, but the Christian fellowship had a different meaning (1 Cor 5:1-13). Back of this lay the broader question, the general matter of social immorality. Here was the prevalent sin of the Grecian world, for which Corinth was especially notorious. Paul's warnings do not imply that this sin had appeared in the church, but it shows how great a task Christianity had that the apostle should deem it necessary to solemnly warn the church upon this subject. "Be not deceived. The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." It was an echo of the old prophetic message: Religion means righteousness. But Paul went further. The Christian was one who had received the Spirit of God. How could he dishonor the body in which that Spirit lived? "Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?" That was Christianity's first fight in the Roman world: it stood for purity of life (1 Cor 6:9-20).

Paul's next question took him into the business world. He found his Corinthian converts indulging in sharp business practices, defrauding each other, and going to law. Has Christianity anything to say as to business? Paul did not go into the question in detail. He had no such occasion for this as we have now. But he made clear the principle: Religion has something to say about business. Brotherhood must be taken into business life. Neither fraud nor unrighteousness nor extortion has any place in the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:1-11).

Christianity had to meet the question of the family. The Corinthians had raised several questions as to marriage. There was an extreme party in the church, it appears, whose effort to be holy had carried them so far that they did not believe in marriage or in maintaining the relation of husband and wife. For them everything that had to do with the flesh was sinful. Paul denies this asceticism. Marriage is not sinful, though he feels that with the end so near at hand it would be better for Christians to remain unmarried, as he is. Others apparently thought that a Christian husband or wife whose partner was unconverted should take a divorce. This too Paul declares against (1 Cor 7:1-40).

In the matter of womanhood Christianity also rendered a great service in setting up a new ideal. Social immorality in that day was widely prevalent, as we have seen. Divorce was common and on the increase. The father was not only the head of the household but the absolute master and ruler. Children and women had no rights. A woman had no standing before the law except as belonging to some man, father, husband, brother. In Greece education and freedom belonged only to the class of women called hetairœ, who purchased these privileges with their honor. In some points Paul was still the conservative Jew: The head of the woman is the man, he says, and the woman is the glory of the man as the man is the image and glory of God (1 Cor 11:3, 8, 9). But Paul knows the deeper Christian truth—that every human personality is sacred: "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). Here lies in principle that position toward which woman has been moving since that day. For the woman, as for the child and the slave, Christianity meant emancipation. All were alike children of God, and the words "brother" and "sister" set them all upon the same plane.

Slavery Paul touches upon with only a few words (1 Cor 7:20-24). He bids the slave remain contented in his position. Christianity was not a political movement. It would have had short shrift in the Roman world had it been such. But it had a message that concerned slavery. (1) The slave knew himself as Christian to be a free man: "He that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman." (2) Within the Christian Church the slave was a brother. The servants of Chloe and the slaves of Stephanas came to Paul not as mere letter-carriers, but as trusted Christian brothers. Within the church it was brother and sister, not master and servant. When Paul, later on, writes from Rome the charming letter to Philemon and sends back the runaway slave whom he has won to Christ, he sends him back "no longer as a servant [slave], but more than a servant, a brother beloved." It sometimes happened, indeed, in the early church that slaves held the highest office. (3) In these ideals Christianity set free the silent forces which were at last to make slavery impossible.

Paul's discussion of the question of the eating of meat that had been sacrificed to heathen gods shows how difficult the situation of the Christian was in the midst of the life of a pagan world. When an animal was sacrificed it was customary, after certain portions had been given to the priests, to use the rest for a feast which might be held in the temple or at home. Sometimes the meat was offered for sale in the market. To such feasts the Christians would be invited by their unbelieving friends, or they might unwittingly buy such meat in the markets. Was it wrong to partake in either case?

Paul does not answer with a simple yes or no. He is not giving rules; he is setting up principles of conduct. He discusses these questions in two passages here (1 Cor 8:1-13; 10:14-33) and in Rom 14. He declares (1) that idols are nothing at all. The meat offered to idols cannot therefore be unclean. The Christian by his knowledge is lifted above these things. When you go into a market to buy meat, therefore, or when you are at the table of a friend, you need not stop to inquire whether the meat offered you has been sacrificed to an idol. (2) But there is something besides a man's own conscience, and that is his brother. There are Christians who have not gained this knowledge. To them eating meat that has been offered to idols seems like falling back into the old idol-worship; and your eating may lead them to do what would be against their own conscience and so injure them. In such case the brother is more important than the meat. The meat is a small matter. "The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." And your knowledge is not the most important thing. There is something greater than knowledge, and that is love. "Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up." Therefore, says Paul, "If meat causeth my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I. cause not my brother to stumble." (3) But while an idol is nothing at all, and meat offered to idols is not as such unclean, it is quite a different matter for Christians to participate in the old idol feasts. How should the Christian go from the Lord's Supper over to some pagan festival, as though by accepting Christ he had simply added another god and another feast? Flee idolatry, Paul says; it is nothing but the worship of demons.

Directions for Reading and Study

As to social morality, read 1 Cor 5:1-13; 6:9-20. As to marriage, read 1 Cor 7:1-40. As to slavery, read 1 Cor 7:20-24.

As to pagan feast and meat offered to idols, read 1 Cor 8:1-13; 10:14-33; Rom 14.