1st Corinthians

NRSV

5:9-13, Paul says they are to drive out of the believing community sexually immoral folk, the greedy, idolaters, robbers, drunkards, and revilers.

6, Paul says righteous believers will judge the world, even angels, when the time comes.

So they should not take fellow believers to the courts but have disputes resolved by fellow believers, or better yet leave off suits altogether.

Better to be wronged and defrauded.

6:9-11, sinners will not be saved, he says.

7, Better to marry than burn up with desire, he says. 

Spouses may not deny one another sexual congress. 

Believers may not divorce, or remarry unless again to each other. 

Nor may they divorce unbelieving spouses, though if the unbelieving spouse divorces them, that is an end to the marriage, the believer is no longer bound.

7:19 Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything.

7:25-31, Paul absolutely anticipates a prompt arrival of the end of the world.

8 Paul says believers may eat food sacrificed to idols in the temples of the idols, unless it leads others to fall out of their faith.

Why is this an issue?

Were the people invited into pagan temples to eat food sacrificed to the pagan gods?

Meat or other food?

Paul says repeatedly in this letter to the believers that they belong to Christ, that they were "bought for a price."

He also writes of Jesus as the Lamb of God and the Paschal lamb.

Two complementary but different understandings of the significance of the crucifixion.