- Paul planted the church of Corinth on his second missionary trip around AD 50 and spent 18 months.
- 1 Corinthians was not the first letter that Paul wrote to them. Chapter 5:9: "I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people." It is however the first letter to Corinth in the Bible.
- This letter is written on Paul's third missionary journey, toward the end of his three years of ministry in Ephesus (which are recorded in Acts 19), he received both an oral report from some messengers (16:17) and an urgent letter (7:1, 8:1, 12:1, 15:1, and 16:1.) from the Corinthian leaders asking for help to resolve a number of urgent problems that had developed (1:11, 7:1).
- This is written to the whole church, as they all were involved in the communication ()