NOTES for Co1 1:13
In his letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul is evidently speaking about some division that had happened in the Corinthian church, about certain church or near-church parties that had formed there. Now, of course, it is hard to say exactly what the essence of the conflict was, but judging by Paul's words, one has to think that the issue was groups formed around different teachers or preachers connected with the Corinthian church. And apparently things sometimes reached the point where, behind their mentors, their followers sometimes ceased to see Christ, often forgetting the very essence of Christianity.
The apostle, judging by his words, did not try at all to go into the subtleties of the disagreements that had arisen. He asks a simple question: who was crucified for you? Who opened the Kingdom to you? One of your teachers or mentors? Or Christ after all? Paul does not try to resort to any theological arguments; he is not interested in the details of the doctrine or religious worldview of the groups that had arisen in the Corinthian church. And not because he lacked the knowledge to sort it all out. He simply remembers well what many of his Corinthian fellow believers had apparently begun to forget: Christianity is not a religion, and the Church is not a theological academy or a club of religious intellectuals. Jesus did not come into the world and did not die on the cross in order to give the world a new religion, a new theology, or a new morality, but in order to open the Kingdom to it. And the Church was founded by Him as a community of people living in the Kingdom.
Of course, religion, theology, and morality can all be useful for witness to the Kingdom. But not when they come to the forefront, so that disagreements on these questions begin to determine the whole life of the church community, even to the point of division. If this has happened, it means that Christ has already been forgotten in this community, and the church has essentially ceased to be the Church, turning into an ordinary religious organization. Paul speaks sharply against such a transformation. For after his meeting with the Risen One on the Damascus road, he became an inhabitant of the Kingdom, not an adherent of a new religion. And he calls the Corinthian Christians to the same thing: to be inhabitants of the Kingdom.