Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)
1 Corinthians 12 - Introduction
DIVISION IV. DISORDERS IN WORSHIP AND CHURCH LIFE, 11 14. The Ap. returns to the internal affairs of the Church, which occupied him in Div. I., dealing however not as at the outset with the relations of the Cor [2013] Church to its ministry, but with the mutual relations and behaviour of its members within the society. The questions arising under this head are bound up with the moral and social problems of Divs. II. and III., and several leading topics of former chaps. reappear in a new connexion e.g., the Christian relationship of the sexes (common to 5., 6., and 11.), the Lord's Supper (10 and 11), the superiority of Love to Knowledge (8 and 13). The matters treated in these chaps, are well defined: (1) the unveiling of the head by women in public worship, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; (2) profanation of the Lord's Table, 17 34; (3) the exercise of spiritual gifts, 1 Corinthians 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 12:14..a subject which leads the Ap. into two digressions: (a) on the corporate nature of the Church, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; (b) on the supremacy of love, 13. As in the earlier parts of the letter, the train of thought is objectively dictated; the matters taken up arise from the faulty state of the Cor [2014] Church, and were supplied to the writer partly, as in chh. 7 10., by the Church Letter, and partly by information conveyed in other ways (see 1 Corinthians 11:18, and Introd., chap. 2.), which indicated the existence of disorders and scandals within the community of the gravity of which it was unaware.
[1810] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.
[1811] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.