☀️ 2 Corinthians 5:17 | "If anyone is in Christ..."

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📧 In today’s email…

• 🤓 Book context: 2 Corinthians & the city of Corinth

• 🎢 Paul’s roller coaster relationship with the Corinthians

• 🙏 A prayer and reading to set the tone for the week

• 🎵 A song to help you meditate and memorize this week

Let’s dig in…

 🧠 Memorize

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Book & Cultural Context: 2 Corinthians ✍️ 

2 Corinthians is the third letter in the New Testament written by Paul.

• Author: Paul, along with Timothy (2 Corinthians 1:1)

• Original Audience: Paul wrote to Christians living in Corinth (mostly Gentiles, but some Jews). He sent this letter a few years after personally founding the church.

• When: AD 55—56, within a year of the completion of 1 Corinthians

• The City of Corinth at the time was known for:

  • Wealth and commerce:

    • It was a crossroads for trade & travel between the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire

  • Sexual Immorality: 

    • Corinth was well known for The Temple of Aphrodite (goddess of love and beauty), where “sacred prostitution” was rampant

    • A new Greek word was coined because of their reputation - korinthiazomai - which meant “to live immorally like a Corinthian”

Historical context: Paul and the Corinthian church 🎢 

Let’s track Paul’s relationship with the church in Corinth.

• Paul starts the church in Corinth (Acts 18)

• He receives a report of quarreling, sexual immorality and other issues within the church (1 Corinthians 1:11)

• Paul writes his first letter correcting the church in various areas (1 Cor)

• Some question and reject his teaching authority as as an apostle on the basis of worldly standards:

  • He was poor/homeless

  • He was a manual laborer

  • He was always being persecuted

  • He was not best public speaker (2 Corinthians 10:10)

• Paul visits them to correct them in person (this “painful visit” is referenced in 1 Corinthians 2:1)

• Most people repent and listen to Paul while some still reject him

• Paul writes the second letter, which brings us to the passage we’re memorizing this week

💡 The verse we’re memorizing is in chapter 5. In this section, Paul is finalizing his reconciliation with the Jesus followers in Corinth.

Apply & respond: A prayer and reading for the week 📖 

Imagine risking your life to plant a church and spread the good news of the gospel.

Then imagine hearing that those people - friends and fellow carriers of the gospel - have gone astray and are sowing division within the body of Christ.

Well, that’s what Paul experienced.

Paul planted this church and he cares deeply about them.

The tone of Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth (especially this second letter) is that of a loving pastor.

Hear his heart in this:

Consider this context as you memorize 2 Corinthians 5:17 this week.

Pray 🙏 

Lord, as I memorize 2 Corinthians 5:17 this week, help me connect with the original context of Paul’s writing.

Please speak to me through your Word. Reveal your heart for your followers, and show me what work you want to do in my heart. Amen.

Read 📖 

Read 2 Corinthians chapter 5 slowly, preparing your heart to be worked on this week.

🍽️ Bonus: Read it out loud at your dinner table with family or friends.

Listen 🎵 

Ever wonder why you can remember lyrics from a song you haven’t heard in 20 years? What if we could use that to help us memorize Scripture?

Occasionally, there are songs we find that can help us soak in the verse we’re memorizing.

Here is one where the lyrics pull directly from 2 Corinthians 5:17.

You can click below to listen to 2 Corinthians 5:17 on Spotify to help you meditate on this passage this week! (or click here to listen on Apple music)

LAUGH 😂