“United Through Christ, Bound to Each Other” Lesson One

Introduction and Lesson One: Unity in Christ, Wisdom from God

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1–2

“Love is patient; love is kind . . . It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

If you’re studying Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians with Presbyterian Women this year, there’s a good chance you have heard those words about love before.

I wonder, what’s your first memory of hearing them?

Maybe it was at a wedding. Maybe even at a funeral, where the departed person’s life was lifted up as an example of Christian love faithfully offered. Or maybe on a regular Sunday morning, when the preacher wanted to reassure the congregation of God’s love, exhort them to love more fully, or both.

You might not remember where you first heard these words, either because it was so long ago or because they have become so familiar it seems you might have been born with the memory of them.

Regardless of how long you’ve been acquainted with Paul’s hymn to love, I wonder what kind of relationship you have with these words.

Do you hear them as hopeful and encouraging? Do they help you live up to your marriage vows? Do they guide you in your friendships?

Or do they feel burdensome, as a standard it’s impossible to live up to?

Are these words so familiar that they seem like a cliché, just another exhortation to “be nice” in a world where new conflicts—interpersonal and international—ignite on a distressingly regular basis?

Whatever your relationship with this Bible passage, whatever your emotional response to it, this year’s Horizons Bible study, United Through Christ, Bound to Each Other, will give you a new perspective. Hearing these words in their original context, sharing responses with your study companions, is sure to offer you some insight you haven’t experienced before. I can’t predict what that insight might be, but I pray it feels like a gift.

Now, what about the author of the hymn to love, Paul? What’s your relationship with him, your response to him?

Paul contains multitudes: an apostle who didn’t know Jesus during his earthly ministry but had an overwhelming experience of the risen Christ’s presence; a former persecutor of Christians who himself became a martyr; the author of a substantial amount of the New Testament with whom Christians remain in dialogue—and argument!—almost two thousand years later.

You might appreciate Paul for his beautiful phrasings about God’s love for humanity, the Spirit’s interceding for us, the grace and hope we see in Jesus Christ. You might feel neutral about him, never having given him much thought, nor wondered about how his writings came to be part of our Bible. Or you might dislike Paul for what he wrote about gender and sexuality, or slavery; or you might think he and his writings receive too much attention, attention that would be better devoted to the Gospels that tell the story of Jesus’ life.

Any and all of these perspectives on Paul and his writings make a fine place to start studying his First Letter to the Corinthians. I invite you to consider your thoughts and feelings about Paul, or your lack of them, as you begin, and see how they do or do not change over the next several months as you engage with his writings. Whatever your relationship with Paul, I trust that studying his words, and his experiences with the church in Corinth, will deepen your relationship with Jesus Christ and your fellow disciples. May it be so.

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This blog is the first in a series of nine blogs.

United Through Christ, Bound to Each Other is the Presbyterian Women in the PC(USA), Inc. Bible study for 2026–2027. Go to presbyterianwomen.org/bible-study/united to find more resources and copies for you and your group to study along with us. Call 800/533-4371 or order online.