Disclaimer that is on almost every page; please read if you haven't already! Thank you :) : Eternal Grace Alone Ministries are research-based. All information is research completed to point someone to the truth. The author is more than confident in his ability to figure out what is true and not true, and with every document he did his best to be right. Also, he did not complete all documents with 100% certainty. So, while at least the vast majority of the information referenced in this website is accurate and helpful for coming to the right conclusion, it is not guaranteed that anything on or referenced by this website is true. This is intentionally allowed because Eternal Grace Alone exists to invite people to think for themselves.
So, please use your own judgment when coming to any conclusions.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise referenced, are from the NASB 1995.
Quite a few verses show that the church of Corinth was very disobedient to God (3:1, 3; 4:18-19 cf. 8:1; 6:8, 15; 8:11-12; 11:17-18 cf. 1:10-15;11:20-22, 27-34). In the examples below, someone is identified as a Christian while they are sinning.
Paul compared "infants in Christ" to "men of flesh" (3:1) who have "jealousy and strife among" them (3:3).
They did "wrong" to and "defraud[ed]" their own "brethren" (6:8; cf. 6:5-6).
Paul phrased this issue this way: "Have ye not known that your bodies are members of Christ? having taken, then, the members of the Christ, shall I make [them] members of an harlot? let it be not!" (Young's Literal [brackets original]). He did not write, "Shall I forfeit membership with Christ for a prostitute?" Their "members" are first identified as being spiritually members of Christ, and then they are told not to take the spiritual members of Christ and use them to be physically "one body with her" (6:16 [italics removed]). Paul implied that it's a terrible thing to take what spiritually belongs to Christ and abuse it because it's His possession.
They could sin against their own "brother" ( 8:11-13) by eating food when they shouldn't (8:4, 7-10).
They who were the "brethren" needed to "be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment," because there was "divisions among" them (1:10; cf. 1:11-14; 11:18). Paul rebukes "divisions" (11:18) because they are "not for the better but for the worse" (11:17).
Because they drank "the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner," they were "guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord" (11:27). That is such a terrible sin that "many among [them were] weak and sick, and a number sleep" (11:30). (1 Cor. 15:20, 51; 1 Thess. 4:13, 14, 15 show that when Paul used the word "sleep," he was writing about dead believers who were "dead in Christ" [1 Thess. 4:16].) Paul was blunt by saying that someone who is "judged" in that way is "disciplined so that [they] will not be condemned along with the world" (11:32, emphasis mine).
In order for Paul to write a letter of rebuke to someone, either his audience is not willing to listen to the church around them, or the church isn't correcting them. Either way, they keep doing what they were doing. It must have continued long enough to grow into a big enough issue for someone to see, travel with that information by foot -- or boat or some other slow method of travel from the ancient world -- and get all the way to Paul, him to write a letter, and it to safely make its way back to them. That's much longer than just a few days.
In other words, Paul eventually wrote to the church in Corinth because what they were doing kept happening. It was time for him to rebuke them, because they clearly showed by what they were consistently doing that someone needed to correct them. Therefore, no matter what else the Bible says, it is clear from the example of the Corinthian church that Christians can persist in sin.