Someone has called Corinth the Las Vegas of the Ancient World.  It was a city of 250,000 citizens and another 400,000 or so slaves. We have been told that the city had at least 12 temples, although they may not all have been in use in Paul’s day.  The most famous of these temples was the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, where worshipers practiced ritual prostitution.  The temple was served by more than 1000 pagan priestess-prostitutes.  The immorality of Corinth was so widely know that the verb “to Corinthianize”  meant “to practice sexual immorality.”Paul had had some success in this city, but he received word while staying at Ephesus that there were great problems among the Corinthian Saints.  The letter of 1^st  Corinthians was sent to address those problems. Because Paul had to correct so much, he wrote more to Corinth than to any other branch on record. The two Corinthian letters contain more than a quarter fourth of the content of all fourteen of Paul’s letters.

The members of Christ’s church must be unified.

News of divisions and petty bickering had come to Paul and he was determined to set the Saints right by teaching that they should be unified in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. Paul had to remind them how the Lord wants us to treat one another.

‘Oneness is at the very heart of the atonement, which literally means at-one-ment. Its transcendent purpose is to provide a means whereby mortals, utterly divided from their Father by sin and mortality, can become one with him again. …. The atonement is also the only means whereby people, divided by their selfish interests, can become united in a glorious relationship of harmony. If oneness is God’s goal for us, then, we can be certain that its very opposite is division, the grabbing territory and self-protection, the dissension that is so often part of life in mortality. When Lucifer is on the loose, he scatters people and disintegrates relationships.’ (Maurine Proctor, Meridian Magazine.)

1 Cor. 1:12 every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas

Paul was very concerned about these Corinthian factions. Some of the Corinthian saints had been converted by Paul, some by Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew and an eloquent speaker who had much success among the Jews in Corinth and some by Cephas or Peter, who had apparently traveled there with his wife (1 Cor 9:5). What is most interesting is that the Lord mentions these factions in the D&C in connection with those who will inherit a telestial glory (DC 76:99). Here we see that we must repent of our contentious ways and follow the brethren will full purpose of heart if we expect to attain to a celestial glory. 

It’s amazing how mankind can take the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is set up to be the great equalizer, and distort it into some sort of caste system.  It is a part of our fallen nature to be continually tempted by competition and comparison.

To accomplish God’s work, we need the wisdom of God.

‘The more we incline our hearts and minds toward God, the more heavenly light distills upon our souls. And each time we willingly and earnestly seek that light, we indicate to God our readiness to receive more light. Gradually, things that before seemed hazy, dark, and remote become clear, bright, and familiar to us.

By the same token, if we remove ourselves from the light of the gospel, our own light begins to dim—not in a day or a week but gradually over time—until we look back and can’t quite understand why we had ever believed the gospel was true. Our previous knowledge might even seem foolish to us because what once was so clear has again become blurred, hazy, and distant.’ (Dieter F Uchtdorf, General Conference, October 2014)

“In these long weeks since July 8 [1943, the date Spencer W. Kimball was called to be an apostle] I can tell you that I have been overwhelmed and have felt that I was unable to carry on this great work; that I was unworthy; that I was incapable because of my weaknesses and my limitations. I have felt many times that I was up against a blank wall. And in that interim I have been out in the desert and in high mountains alone, apart, and have poured out my soul to God. I have taken courage from one or two scriptures that constantly came to my mind and of which people continued to remind me. One was from Paul, and as I felt so foolish, small, and weak, I remembered that he said: ‘Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. That no flesh should glory in his presence.’ (1 Corinthians 1:25-27, 29.)

“When my feeling of incompetence wholly overwhelmed me, I remember the words of Nephi when he said: ‘I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.’ (1 Nephi 3:7.) I want to tell you that I lean heavily on these promises, that the Lord will strengthen and give me growth and fit and qualify me for this great work.” (Spencer W Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972], xvii.)

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spirituallydiscerned.

“Note that Paul does not say that the natural man simply does not know the things of God; he says the natural man cannot know them. The things of the Spirit are just as real as the things of the earth, but they are in a different sphere, and fallen man’s ability to perceive and understand them is so limited that he can comprehend them only by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.” (Robert J. Matthews, A Bible! A Bible! [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1990], 163.)

Our physical bodies are sacred.

‘What would happen if we truly treated our bodies as temples? The result would be a dramatic increase in chastity, modesty, observance of the Word of Wisdom, and a similar decrease in the problems of pornography and abuse, for we would regard the body, like the temple, as a sacred sanctuary of the Spirit. Just as no unclean thing may enter the temple, we would be vigilant to keep impurity of any sort from entering the temple of our bodies.

Likewise, we would keep the outside of our bodily temples looking clean and beautiful to reflect the sacred and holy nature of what is inside, just as the Church does with its temples. We should dress and act in ways that reflect the sacred spirit inside us.’ (Susan Tanner, General Conference, October 2005)

President Boyd K. Packer said, “If we abuse our body with habit-forming substances, or misuse prescription drugs, we draw curtains which close off the light of spiritual communication.”

Elder Bednar in the Sept. 2001 Ensign:
“Our physical bodies indeed are temples of God. Consequently, you and I must carefully consider what we take into our temple, what we put on our temple, what we do to our temple, and what we do with our temple. And we can learn a number of important lessons by comparing the Church’s temples to our physical bodies as temples

“All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not. The devil has no power over us only as we permit him” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 181).