1 Corinthians 14:36 Commentary and Bible Study

The sarcasm in these questions makes this a sharp reproof, but not sharper than the Corinthians deserved, for the apostle speak under inspiration and cannot therefore miscalculate in these matters. Are you the teachers of all other churches, so that your behaviour becomes definitive, and what you say is what all the churches should submit to? Are you Corinthians the ones who are appointed by God to decide what is the right form of conduct in church, and what relations men and women should have to each other, and what are the right element of Christian worship? Are you so self-confident and so self-important that you have been inflated by your pride to this arrogant claim? Because that is what your claims amount to. It is as if you are the greatest church of all, with more wisdom than all others, and able to set rules for all others. ‘Or came it to you only?’ Are you the only church which is under God’s standards, and will the word of God come to no one else after you, so that you can change it and adopt it to suit yourself as you think fit. No, you Corinthians are one church among many, and not the only one, not even the first. You need to puncture your inflated view of yourselves and start submitting to apostolic authority like all other churches. It is God who has appointed the rules of conduct for the churches, and he has revealed those rules through the apostles. The churches are not at liberty to decide whether they will or will not accept these rules. They are not to exercise their common sense in such matters or think that submission to these things is optional. They are to study them and learn from them and consider why he has given them, but they have no authority to change them or add to them. This was such a shameful way of thinking, because it betrayed the pride in their hearts which could so elevate their status within the universal church. In Corinth there were evidently some people – we would hope only a few – who were very opinionated in their treatment of the word of God, and behaved as though private individuals could say whatever they liked. Well, it is one of our great Protestant principles that every individual Christian can interpret the word of God, but we have to do so with care and reverence. It is not fair game for us to draw out from it whatever we like, and there were some people in Corinth who were too confident in their teaching of the word of God.