161. The Prayer Of St. Paul For The Church At Corinth.

The Prayer Of St. Paul For The Church At Corinth. The Prayer as recorded.—1 Corinthians 1:3-4.

There was no branch of the Church of God which had fallen into so many errors as that of Corinth, for there were contentions, divisions, and strife among the people. St. Paul laments over these in prayer, while at the same time he thanks God for his gifts conferred on Christians in the church established there, and asks for an increase of this grace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. His affectionate and pathetic prayers for the Corinthians are intermingled with exhortations and directions to them. Prayer with St. Paul was not a solitary, independent exercise, but an exercise incorporated with many, and inseparably connected with that golden chain of Christian duties, of which, when so connected, it forms the most important link. St. Paul acted as well as prayed. This quickened his spiritual pulse, increased his ardor, made him watchful and anxious for the welfare of the Church.

Prayer was the great motive power which moved the machine; prayer kept him supplied with work; it made him “keen-sighted, clear-eyed;” he was enabled to survey the whole Church, to see clearly the temptations with which she was surrounded in this licentious city of Corinth; he saw the influence of false teachers on the minds of the people; saw the effect of the “enticing words of man’s wisdom;” hence he comes to them with prayer, and the simple story of the cross; prays for them “with the spirit and the understanding;” he would confirm them to the end of their course in the faith and hope of the gospel. St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which this prayer is recorded, is filled up with vindications of his own character against the calumnies which, had been heaped upon it by his opposers, and contains, also, the most perfect and triumphant argument for the doctrine of the resurrection.