Continuing in the sermon series called The Gospel Changes Everything, based on the New Testament book 1 Corinthians, Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, a church he started around the year 50 AD. He has since left the church in the hands of other leaders so that he might start other churches, and he writes this letter around the year 54-55 AD in response to what he is hearing about some of the issues in the Corinthian church. Last week, Paul began to address an issue that is threatening to divide or destroy the church – how they should interact with the rampant idolatry in their city. Corinth was in Greece and was part of the Roman Empire. It was therefore a polytheistic city, with many gods and goddesses and temples to those deities, and so it was a regular part of civic life to attend banquets in temples and homes where you would eat food that was sacrificed to those idols. For a church community that believed that there was only one God, and that idol worship was sinful, this was a tricky subject for a young church to navigate. As you’ll see, some people found eating food that had been dedicated to idols to be morally wrong, while others did not, and it was causing conflict.
