Partakers of Grace: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians

Prostitution. Incest. Drunkenness at the Lord's table. Rampant sectarianism. Charismatic chaos. The church at Corinth was Paul's most troubled startup, and the letter he wrote to it is one of the most demanding in all of Scripture. First Corinthians is not tidy. It covers more ground, and more difficult ground, than almost any other Pauline letter, with an urgency that reflects how badly things had gone wrong. In this verse-by-verse commentary, Douglas Wilson works through the letter with patience and directness, tracing Paul's argument as he calls the Corinthians back to the Gospel as the only sufficient basis for right unity, sexual ethics, proper observance of the sacraments, and ordered worship. No passage is skipped, no difficult section handed off with a wave. Wilson engages even the debates most commentators prefer to sidestep, including the one about head coverings, which he addresses without apology. What emerges is a picture of a church being rebuilt from the foundation up, the Gospel applied to problems that have not changed much in two thousand years. Whether the Corinthians' specific sins are your specific sins or not, their need for the Gospel certainly is.