The church at Corinth began while Paul was traveling through the city on his second missionary journey. Paul actually resided with the Corinthians for a year and a half and during this time he was able to personally teach them about the ways of Christ (see Acts 18:1-18). However, after Paul’s departure, the Corinthian church encountered major problems and Paul wrote them a letter (1 Corinthians 5:9) in order to confront some issues. This letter has since been lost.
While Paul was in Ephesus on his third missionary journey, he heard of more problems within the church, so he wrote another letter, which is known as 1 Corinthians. Paul used this letter to warn against their divisiveness and bring clarification about some issues within the Corinthian church. It seems as if Paul’s writing of 1 Corinthians resolved some of the issues, but another threat entered into Corinth – false teachers. These teachers were misleading the Corinthian church by questioning the apostolic authority and sincerity of Paul, so he left Ephesus and attempted a brief visit to Corinth, but he was turned away by an arrogant insulter (2 Corinthians 2:1,5; 12:14; 13:1-2) . Since a personal visit was not well received, Paul returned to Ephesus and wrote a “severe” letter (2 Corinthians 2:4) to the Corinthians, which has since been lost.
Titus eventually gave Paul the news that many of the Corinthians had repented and affirmed their loyalty to Paul (2 Corinthians 7:7) as a result of his written letter. This news brought great joy to Paul. Although many had repented, Paul knew that the false teachers were still in Corinth and some of the Corinthians were still against him. With this in mind, Paul wrote 2 Corinthians in order to defend his apostleship (2 Corinthians 1-7), to instruct them concerning giving (2 Corinthians 8-9), and to confront the false teachers directly (2 Corinthians 10-13).
