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Ambrosiaster

Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500 · 1,043 passages across 16 books

Commentary

1–20 of 1,043
1 Corinthians 1:1

Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

Paul begins this epistle differently, because his subject matter is different. He writes that he is an apostle by the will of God, alluding to those false apostles who had not been sent by Christ and whose teaching was not true. There were many sects which had emerged and which preached Christ according to their own whims. They broke up churches, and some of their dried-up branches are still with us today. For this reason, Paul sets out everything which is opposed to the heresies and asserts that he is a true preacher because he has been sent by Christ, according to God’s will.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:2

Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:

Paul writes to the church as a whole, because at that time leaders had not yet been appointed for individual churches. He censures them for many things, but in spite of that he still says that they have been sanctified. However, they later began to behave badly, so that although the whole church was sanctified in Christ, some members of it had been deflected from the truth by the wicked teaching of the false apostles.The Corinthians were called to be saints, which means that they could not deviate from the narrow path of sanctification. Paul linked them, as Gentiles, with the true Jews, because salvation is of the Jews, so that wherever there are Gentiles who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and wherever there are true Jews, both are united in him. But the false apostles, who preached the name of Christ in accordance with the wisdom of this world, criticized the law and the prophets. Like Marcion and Mani, they maintained that Christ was not really crucified but that it merely appeared that he had been. Neither did they believe in the resurrection of the body.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:3

Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul teaches that Christ should be invoked in prayer but all grace comes from the Father. The two are one in their divinity, but primacy belongs to the authority of the Father.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:4

I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;

God has decreed that a person who believes in Christ can be saved without works. By faith alone he receives the forgiveness of his sins.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:5

That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;

This means that the Corinthians have remained steadfast in the grace which they have received and in the preaching of the doctrine of truth, because they have acquired spiritual knowledge. Paul therefore gives thanks to God for these things.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:6

Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:

The testimony of Christ has been confirmed in them because they have been strengthened by their faith. They had come to put no trust in human things. Rather, all their hope was in Christ, for they were ensnared neither by pleasure nor by the enticements of pleasure.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:7

So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:

It is clear that Paul was a circumspect man who was full of concern as he awaited the day of judgment. On that day the Lord Jesus Christ will be revealed both to believers and to unbelievers. Then unbelievers will realize that what they did not want to believe is in fact true. Believers will rejoice, finding that what they believed in is more wonderful than they had imagined.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:8

Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is confident that the Corinthians will persevere in righteousness until the day of judgment. People who could not be shaken in spite of so many turmoils and disagreements proved that they would remain faithful to the end. In praising them, Paul is also challenging those who had been corrupted by the errors of the false apostles, for in proclaiming the faith of the former, he is calling the latter to repentance.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:9

God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Fellowship is brotherhood. Just as Paul declares God’s unfailing faithfulness toward us in this regard, so we ourselves must not be found to be faithless or dishonorable with respect to our adoption. Rather we must remain faithful in it.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:10

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Paul prays that the Corinthians will all think one thing, namely, that those who have been born again are children of God. He wants them to be perfectly united in the teaching which he had given to them. He challenges them to think this way and to defend his teaching.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:11

For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

Some people think that “Chloe’s people” are those who remain faithful and bear fruit in the faith of Christ. Others think that Chloe is a place, as if one were to say “Antioch’s people,” for example. But others think that she was a woman devoted to God, in whose company there were many faithful worshipers.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:12

Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.

Paul exposes their error without mentioning the names of the people responsible. The men whom he names here were all good teachers, but by alluding to them in this way he is really getting at the false apostles. For if the Corinthians were not to boast of their devotion to any of these men, how much more would this be true in the case of false teachers, whose corrupt doctrine he refers to next?

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:13

Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?

By believing different things about Christ, the people have divided him. One person thought that Christ was a mere man, another that he was only God. One says that he was foretold by the prophets, while another denies it.Paul starts with himself, so that nobody will think that he is disparaging the status of others. If Christ died for us, how can we attribute his grace and blessing to men, thereby doing him a grave injustice?

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:14

I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;

These Corinthians were like the Novatianists and the Donatists of today, who claim baptism for themselves and do not recognize anybody else’s. Those who are so baptized glory in the names of Novatian and Donatus, having been deprived of the name of Christ. Crispus and Gaius are called as witnesses, because although they were baptized by Paul, they never suggested that he should be given any glory because of it.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:17

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.

Because it is a greater thing to preach the gospel than to baptize, Paul says that he was sent to do the former, not the latter. Not everyone who baptizes is competent to preach the gospel, for the words used at baptism are an established formula. When Cornelius became a believer, the apostle Peter gave orders that he should be baptized along with his household, but he did not bother to do it himself when he had his assistants standing by. It was because Christian preaching does not need elaborate refinement of verbal expression that fishers, who were uneducated, were chosen to preach the gospel. In that way the truth of the message would be its own recommendation, and it would not depend on the cleverness or ingenuity of human wisdom. The false apostles were doing just that, and moreover they were omitting the things which the world does not believe, like the virgin birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:19

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

By doing this, God shows that actions speak louder than words. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.

1 Corinthians 1:20

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

Here Paul attacks the Jews as much as the Gentiles, because their scribes and doctors of the law think that it is foolish to believe that God has a Son. Gentiles also laugh at this, but the Jews’ unbelief is based on the fact that the matter is not openly stated in the law, whereas the Gentiles think it is silly because the reasoning of the world does not accept it, claiming that nothing can be made without sexual union. The debater of this age is a man who thinks that the world is governed by the conjunction of the stars and that births and deaths are brought about by the twelve signs of the zodiac. Is there anything more foolish than the belief that the Creator does not care about the world he has made? What would be the point of making it in that case? It is because they see some people enjoying life and others not, because they see the righteous suffering while the wicked boast, that they have come to believe that God does not care. But to say this is to say that God is malevolent and unjust.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:21

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

The world has not recognized God but has attributed divine majesty to his creatures and to the elemental powers of the universe, thinking that visible things ought to be worshiped. God has therefore chosen a form of preaching which will seem foolish to such people. Those who reject what the apostles preach will be condemned, while believers are being saved.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:22

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

The Jews seek signs because they do not reject the possibility that things like this can happen. What they want to know is whether it has actually occurred, like Aaron’s rod, which sprouted and bore fruit, and Jonah who spent three days and nights in the belly of the whale before being spewed out alive. But the Greeks seek wisdom, refusing to believe anything which does not accord with human reason.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

1 Corinthians 1:23

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

It is a stumbling block to the Jews when they hear Christ calling himself the Son of God yet not observing the sabbath. It is foolishness to the Gentiles because they hear things like the virgin birth and the resurrection being preached but regard them as irrational.

COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES

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