Episode Transcript
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Of Us, in us at work, or to find the flesh of bringing
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more fruit of marusness. That same
spirit and caused huge wise from the dead,
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also causes us to be born again, the neddess nor life, the
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promise of gold, of Resurrection from
the dead and strength for hear, for
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beast that you were sanctifying our of
your church that we in we pray that
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you can do these things now as
home to the reading, reaching of the
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bread of your grace and Jesus name, for this is a story. First
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Corinthians chacolate one, first printhians boil. I'll be reading to end through sixteen,
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your first printings, one tender sixteen. All gives to the church in
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corners of instructures. He tells them
to lives. Why? Instructions of us
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today is one I feel you brothers
by the name Jesus Christ, all be
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no divisions, but that you being
united in the same mind and the same
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judgment. For it is reported to
me by chloe's that there is quarreling.
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My brothers. What I mean is
that each one of you says I fell,
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I follows, I follow see,
I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?
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Was Paul Crucified for you or were
you baptized in the name of Paul?
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I thank God that I baptize none
of you except crispus and guy us,
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so that no one may say that
you were baptized in my name.
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I did baptize also the household of
Stefanis, but are beyond that. I
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do not know whether I baptized anyone
else. The God bless his word to
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us. So, as I mentioned
before, I read Paul has instructions here
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for us. He wants us to
be of the same mind, united of
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the same mind, to be of
the same judgment or, to put it
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negatively, not to be quarreling among
ourselves, not to have divisions among ourselves.
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He appeals to them. He calls
them brothers twice very early on in
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the passage. He's he's trying,
and I think he is being gentle here.
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He uses that brotherly language both to
remind them of his connection with them
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but also their connection with each other. They're not to be divided their brothers.
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They're part of this same family.
But the families fighting and dad saying
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stop it, stop fighting, stop
the quarreling, stop arguing, the united
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with one another. Christ is not
divided. Paul feels so strongly about this
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that he speaks in a way that
I would say is uncommon among ministers of
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Christ, to say I'm glad that
I didn't baptize you, as an unusual
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way for a minister who is charged
with baptizing and preaching to speak. He
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says I don't know whether I baptized
anyone else. He's in some ways relativizes
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of the baptisms of people that he
baptized in the church. I wonder how
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you would feel if you're like,
Hey, you baptize me, Paul o?
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Can you don't remember stuff on is
okay, but you see what Paul's
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doing right, he's he's relativizing these
things. He's in some ways connecting to
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the people by using this language of
brotherhood, but all so disconnecting from them
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as well. Why? Because Paul
wants them to see their identity not in
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him, even though they're brothers with
him or he is their brother, but
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he wants them to see themselves in
Christ, as we must as well.
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We all know what it's like to
have family fights and church fights as well.
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Sadly, sometimes we get to the
place where we just begin to accept
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this as okay, like, well, it's just the way it is,
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and it's true. We don't want
what we might say in a fancy way
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and over realized eschatology, or we
don't want to bring heaven down to Earth
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before it's time. We don't want
to try to create a utopia that can't
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exist. The Lord has told us
that life under the sun is hard,
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that there are enemies within the church, that we not to not we ought
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not to be mindless about how we
are in union with people. We ought
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not to be in judge. Are
Have the same judgment when that judgment disagrees
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with the scripture, for example.
Right, we don't want to go beyond
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what he says here, but we
also don't want to overqualify what he says
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and excuse ourselves from our fighting and
from our quarreling simply by saying, well,
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life is hard and there's still sin. That's certainly true, but it
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doesn't excuse us from what he's calling
us to do, does it? He
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calls us to be united with one
another, and he'll talk about this in
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other places. First Corinthians, for
example, has that famous chapter, Chapter
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Thirteen, which is all about love. We read this at our men's Bible
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study this last week. Right.
Love is that thing that binds us together.
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Love is a gift and which we
give ourselves one to another. As
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we abide in God's love, we
can share that love with each other.
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But that's not what's happening in Corinth. In a number of ways, the
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church there is struggling to get along
and there's some very particular reasons behind that,
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which will explore this morning. Paul
tells us in Verse Eleven and twelve
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what's going on. He says it's
been reported to me by chloe's people that
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there is quarreling among you. Now
there's all different kinds of quarreling and fighting.
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Paul's a very particular kind of quarreling
in mind, and he says in
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verse twelve what I mean is that
each one of you says I follow Paul
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or a police or Cephus or Christ, and Paul says he is saying here
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and is he will go on to
say over the next several chapters, essentially
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chapters one through four, this is
not right, and he's going to develop
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that and help us to understand various
things in this in this light. He's
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going to help us understand the Ministry
of the word. He's going to understand,
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help us to understand the work he
does as an apostle. He's going
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to help us to understand how we
are united to one another and, as
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we get into that once to help
you'd understand a little bit more of what
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he's talking about by thinking about the
background, to understand, in other words,
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what this, these instructions, would
have meant for the Corinthians and for
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us to think more deeply about what
it means for us. It's really,
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really helpful to understand what Corinth was
like in Paul's Day. That's because this
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quarreling that's going on in Corinth is
coming out of a culture of that day.
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They're taking things that they normally they
saw and were part of their lives
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and they're bringing them into the church
in a way that was not right.
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It helps us to understand this.
I follow Paul. Paul, I follow
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a constious apollos controversy. I want
to just draw mention here this pause for
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a moment and say that I'm drawing
here from the excellent research of several authors
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and will do so as I continue
in the sermon sermon series. In particular,
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Bruce Winter. He's a Cambridge historian
of the early church and the Greco
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Roman world. He specializes in ancient
corinth, and also Dwayne Lifton. He's
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a Meritis, president of Wheaton College. So what is the background going on
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here? What is the background for
this quarreling? Why are they saying this?
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I follow Paul, I follow Paulse
we know that Paul didn't set this
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up this way. A polas didn't
set this up this way. Peter wasn't
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asking them to be divided with one
another. They were. These teachers were
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not fighting with one another. So
what's going on? Why were people claiming
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individual leaders or apostles, even Christ
as their leader? The answer is that
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at this particular time in Corinth,
Corinth and other places in the Greco Roman
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world, we're experiencing a rebirth of
a movement that had been popular several centuries
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before, in the fifth century BC, and now is making a big comeback,
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a big comeback. Now, various
times in various places you'll see one
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profession or one or another become kind
of the hot thing, you know,
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on and especially among the social elite, on the WHO. Then, of
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course, as they pursue that thing, make it desirable for everyone else and
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at this particular time, that hot
profession, the thing that everybody wanted to
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be involved in in some way,
was sophistry. Now, sophist was a
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highly polished speaker. Bruce Winter calls
it, a virtuoso orator, so one
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who's really, really good at speaking. We have people like this today,
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right, we have people who,
you know, they speak at graduations and
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they go speak at corporate events and
they sell out stadiums and they go around
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and they're known for their ability to
speak. That it's a little different back
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then. I'll explain it a little
bit, but it was. It was
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a very desirable job for people.
It made you rich, made you admired,
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it made you famous and and it
was one of the few ways that
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you could actually break out of your
social status, right. And we've had
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moments like this where all of a
sudden there, if you get a little
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lucky and you work hard, that
you can jump up in society. And
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this was like this for sofistrey.
If you could learn to speak well,
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if you could get connected with the
right teacher, if you had a certain
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amount of gifts, you could become
someone that was important, just difficult in
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a society that was very stratifical,
stratified. So Sofas. What were they
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will partly they were entertainers. They
would draw a large crowds. Sometimes they
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were followed by many people. They
also participated, even competed in a kind
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of Olympic Games called the is smiths. Is SMITHIAN Games one of the most
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important events that was held in Corinth
during that time every couple of years.
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It's one of the main things.
In fact, being the president of those
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Games was one of the highest positions
you could have of any position in society,
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and the SOFISTS would compete there and
people would watch and they talk about
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it and they analyze it and it
was a big deal. The sofists would
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also put participate in the Cities Assembly. Interestingly, it's a word Ecclesia,
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like church. This they were people
called out and they they were good at
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public speaking and they would participate in
that. They would be contracted to represent
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the government for various important reasons.
All right, we need to send out
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these emissaries, for example, to
go speak to Soandso and make sure this
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thing happens, kind of like a
diplomat or something like that. And they'd
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send the sofist? Why? Because
the guy really good at talking, he's
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really good at presenting the case,
he's really good at making the argument.
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Now to how would you become a
sofist? Well, you do so by
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enrolling in one of the schools of
the sofist. So these so fists would
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have people that were called disciples.
This is a word that it was very
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prominently used in the fifth century and
then again at this time in this movement
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sprung up again. Disciples, and
it was the job of the disciple or
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the follower to imitate the one they
were following. That's what a disciple did.
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This, of course, was lucrative
for the sofas because, right,
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you'd gather people into your school,
you'd be paid all these fees by these
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rich families so you could train up
their boys and then they would and this
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would elevate your own esteem, right, and your own reputation is all these
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people followed around imitating you, trying
to be like you. And of course
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this kind of thing still happens today, right celebrities, when they become famous,
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people go and cut their hair like
them and wear clothes like them and
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try to match their gait and and
things like that. This would happen with
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the sophists as well. It was
the job of the disciple to imitate the
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one they were following. Jesus told
his followers, his disciples, to teach
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others all that he commanded. He
called us to imitate him in his way
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of life, not his manner of
dress, but the things he did.
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The sofist did require this, but
much more disciples, they not only followed
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their strategies for speaking well, but
also their mannerisms, the way they talk,
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the way they leaned a certain way, the way they paused after their
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sentences, and sometimes this was quite
ostentatious. These people would dress exquisitely.
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They would dress to impress. They
would aim to be godlike, perfect elegance.
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When they entered a room, they
exuded charm, they spoke eloquently,
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elegantly. Everyone said wow, someone
you wanted to be like. It was
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someone who was important. Well,
as they gathered these schools together, as
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they gathered these disciples together, what
would often happen is the sophists, remember
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this is a competitive, competitive and
even business environment. They would often roast
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other sophists or straight up lie about
them to gain an advantage over them,
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and then the disciples would do that
as well. They would follow this teacher
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or follow that teacher, and you'd
have these groups of people following and living
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out these ways and then fighting one
another because that established yourself as a true
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disciple of this person or that person. It established the reputation of your your
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teacher you. So you had these
kind of tribes of people centered around these
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sofist sometimes there's records of even physical
fights breaking out between disciples as they stood
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up and protected their the reputation of
their teacher, and as they all this
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happened, people would him this ladder
of importance. They would gain wealth and
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fame, but it also created a
lot of strife and a lot of quarreling,
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backbiting, self protection, self promotion, gossip. Some of what went
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on among the sophist was certainly immoral
and some of it was just good market
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competition. That was putting to use
of God given skill. But neither of
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those had any place in the Church
of Christ. One the first one,
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because the moral and second one because
the Church of Christ is constituted differently.
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It's the Church of Christ is not
a competitive market place of people's trying to
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establish themselves one of her or against
another. It was something else. The
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problem is is that the Christians of
that time were viewing these new teachers,
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that they were seeing the Apollos and
the sea fasts and the Peter and the
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Paul, and they were looking them
not as ministers of the Gospel but as
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sophists. That's an easy mistake.
People still make this today. Right,
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you see a preacher, you hear
him speak and you and you begin to
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treat him in a different way.
Maybe you begin to treat him like other
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speakers. You get analyzed like a
Ted x speaker, for example, or
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graduation speaker, a politician who speaks
all different kinds of ways. But Paul
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says, no, preaching has its
own particular thing. Yes, we use
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language, yes, where it's rhetoric
involved in all of that, but it
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has its own purpose, has its
own way of doing things and it's different
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than what you're used to thinking about
and it's certainly different than the way that
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you are used to treating and following
these teachers. You say they were looking
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to Paul and Apollos and others as
prominent teachers within the Church and then following
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them like sophists. Oh, man, a pause. He's really our guy.
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Man, he's so eloquent. Paul, his knees were shaking last time.
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Did you see that? That guy? You can't even speak. His
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bodily presence was not that awesome.
Sure, his words are great, his
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letters are awesome, but his public
performance not so hot. Paulse tells it.
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tells us that that's what was being
said about him and was probably true.
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He tells us that in Second Corinthians
ten that's how people were judging him.
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They began to follow these various Christian
teachers like you might follow a sophist.
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And Paul is saying, guys,
guys, know, this is different.
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This people, this body, is
a different thing. We're not acting
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like sophist. We're not trying to
gather people around ourselves, saying, Oh
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yeah, I baptized you and you
and you, and you're all followers of
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me and let's go make fun of
Apollos and all of that. He'll go
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on to say, no, I
I planted apoulos watered. We're all in
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it together. Sure, we may
have different gifts. A police might be
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a better speaker, but God is. But God has given these gifts in
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different ways for the building, of
building up of us together into one.
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So, in other words, the
Christians thought of Paul as a kind of
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Christian Sophist, and Wal Paul did
act with power and certainty. He was
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not a sophist. He did not
care whether his physical presence was charming people
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or not. He wanted his words
to be clear. He wanted to speak
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the truth of Christ. He was
there to deliver a message that he trusted
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not in his rhetorical abilities but in
the Holy Spirit to have the effect on
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the people that it would come to
them not as the words of men and
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then they would all, you know, swoon and go oh Paul, but
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that they would lift their hands and
praise to God. That was his desire.
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He was not an embattle asset for
the civil government, he was an
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ambassador for Christ. He and a
police were not competitors for market attention,
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though differently gifted. They were co
workers in a field ready for harvest.
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So that's why he'll conclude in chapter
three. The beginning of chapter three,
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he says, you guys are being
childish, he says, but I,
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brothers, could not address you as
spiritual people, but as people, the
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fresh as infants in Christ. I
Fed you with milk, not solid food,
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for you are not ready for it. And even now you are not
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ready, for you are still of
the flesh. For while there is jealousy
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and strife among you, are you
not of the flesh, behaving only in
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a human way? For when one
says I fall a Paul and another I
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follow a police, are you not
being merely human? Paul is saying is
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that the church is different, that
he's called us to be not merely human,
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but those who are being conformed into
the image of the God man Jesus
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Christ, those who are being established
in a new way, in a new
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kind of organization, an organization and
organism, a body that is not divided.
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That's what he says here in our
verses this morning. He says,
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I Paul a Paul, I follow
Apolos, all fallow Christ. But is
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Christ divided? The answer of courses
is no. Christ is not divided.
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We understand ourselves as people who belong
to him first and foremost. Yes,
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the Lord uses the Apostle Paul.
Yes, the Lord uses a brother,
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Sausthenes and Apollos and others, but
it's the Lord who's using him, and
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it's the Lord whom we follow as
disciples, not Paul. We are united
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to him, we are following him, we are to have his mind,
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to be in greement with ourselves through
him. Remember how this letter began.
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What does Paul say about himself?
He calls himself up, called by the
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will of God to be an apostle
of Jesus Christ. He's a sent one
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to draw our attention to him.
Remember what else Paul said in the beginning?
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He said this was to this letter
was to the Church of God,
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that is in clorance to those who
are sanctified in Christ, called to be
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saints together, Not Saints Divided,
Not Saints Quarreling, Not Saints at war.
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He then goes on to say grace
to you and peace from God,
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our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The people of God don't need to
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be clamoring for the things of this
world because they have all that they need
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in Christ. Remember what we went
over last time in verse five, where
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he says that in every way you
were enriched in him, in all speech
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and all knowledge. Isn't that interesting? How he says that in all speech
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and all knowledge. Well, everyone
else was running to the sofist to find
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knowledge tell us, things, speak
to us, things train us how to
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speak. When we come to Jesus
Christ, he says I'll take care of
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you, I'll give you everything you
need for life and godliness. He says
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in verse seven, you are not
lacking any gift as you wait for the
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revealing of all our Jesus Christ.
If we are people who are not lacking
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any gift, what do we need
to fight about? Usually if we fight
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about things that we feel like we
don't have, things that we feel are
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threatened if somebody else doesn't submit and
give them to us. We have everything
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we need, so let's not fight. Quarreling often happens out of fear that
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we won't get what we need.
But we have what we need in Jesus
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and that means that we don't need
to bring cultural modes or man centered modes
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into the church in order to obtain
the things that Christ offers. The usual
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tools are barely even able to accomplish
earthly things. They're certainly not going to
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be able to accomplish spiritual and heavenly
blessings, and that's fine. They don't
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need to, because God came into
this world to give us all that we
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need. We do need the things
that people often seek after, that we
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seek after. We need security,
we need to be valued, we need
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significance and meaning, but we don't
get them the way the world thinks they
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ought to be got. We get
them through the grace of Jesus giving us,
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giving them to us, when we
simply believe him and trust him.
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Jesus didn't come into the world and
say go and do these things and after
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you do them, my grace will
be sufficient for you and then I will
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bless you because you will have proved
yourself. As my disciple, Jesus,
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says, just trust and follow me
and you will receive everything. Give up
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on the things of this world,
follow me and all will be added to
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you. When the world rejects Jesus, rejects the body of Christ and then
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just fights among themselves, they give
up on the prospect that they forget the
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central problem that we really have,
which is enmity with God. That's the
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real problem, that's where our real
problem is. That's why we don't have
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what we want. That's why we
feel frustrated, that's why we feel a
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lack of significance and value and security, because we are enmity with the one
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who can give us all those things. So what's the answer to that problem?
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Is it to fight among ourselves,
or is it to get peace with
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God? It's, of course,
to get peace with God, and God
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gives that to us through Jesus Christ. God sends his only son into the
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world to die on a cross to
forgive us our sins so that we would
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have peace with him. So instead
of obtaining these things ourselves, we receive
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them through the one who gives them
to us. receive them through Jesus.
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That means that in the church we
receive things like dignity, honor, importance,
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significance, value and security. But
we achieve them not by or we
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get them not by achieving them through, you know, ranks, and and
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and and, yeah, certainly quarreling, but we get them through faith alone.
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When we begin to the more we
understand who Jesus is, in other
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words, the more we will understand
who we are in him and who we
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ought to be. There's a line
that jumped out at me recently from be
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Thou my vision. You know,
the famous hymn the little there's a little
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line in it that I guess I
noticed for the first time or renoticed or
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something like that is stood out to
me in a new way. It says,
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be Thou my dignity. That's a
really interesting prayer. Isn't it a
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request of the Lord to ask him
to be our dignity? We often find
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ourselves in places where we want esteem, we want to feel valued, we
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want significance. We don't want to
be fools and mocked at and derided people.
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We want value, and there's nothing
wrong with that. The question because
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we are valuable. God made us
in his image. Right. But how
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do we receive that dignity? Do
we do it by pushing others down,
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climbing ladders and raising ourselves up,
or we do it by being raised up
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by God himself into his life,
where we receive the dignity of Christ,
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the honor of Christ, the value
of Christ in us, and as we
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received that together. Brothers and sisters, what reason is they're left to argue?
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What reason is they're left to quarrel
and to fight? Now we have
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our own particular problems about quarreling and
fighting in this time and in this age.
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We need to be sensitive of them. Some of them overlap with these
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concerns that Paul had in Corinth and
some of them don't. But it's ours
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to think about, isn't it?
And it's ours to think about in this
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way, with Christ as the center
of our life, with Christ is our
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head and us in him. So
let's pray and ask for him to help
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us to do that and to give
us His grace that we might be unified
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in him. Our heavenly father,
we do praise your name. We praise
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your name for the grace and peace
that come to us from you and through
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the Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly Christ
is not divided, one member over here,
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one member over there. Know he
is one and even one with you,
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and you have called us into that
divine life, uniting us to Christ,
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so that he might be in us
and so that we might be in
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you. These things are glorious and
wonderful, and in this, Lord,
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we find everything that we need.
We find our life, we find eternal
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salvation, we find the forgiveness of
our sins, we find peace with you,
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we find glory in you and value
in you, significance meaning. We
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find safety in you, under the
shadow of your wings, Lord, when
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people would seek to pick fights with
us, let us learn how to not
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not be afraid, but learn how
to stand strong and Christ. Let us
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also learn how to not be people
who pick fights and and quarrel and put
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others down. Instead, lord,
t us to love with that same love
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that we abide in and a love
that we have been given. Let us
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learn how to think practically through these
things in our own church and our own
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contexts. What are the ways in
which we might exhibit the love of Jesus
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Christ to others more than we currently
are? Let us learn to rely on
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you for everything, knowing that you
will not fail, that you will not
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fail, according to your steadfast love, to give us everything that we need.
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Instead of turning against each other,
let us learn to turn toward you,
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and in that, Lord, may
you be glorified and may you build
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up a people that are not childish, but that are mature. I'm strong,
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not filled with jealousy and strife,
but filled with love and with peace,
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not tossed about by every wind of
doctrine, but standing strong against the
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turmoil of this world. And as
you do this work in us, Lord,
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may your name be praised and may
you cause us to be sustained until
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the end, when the Lord Jesus
Christ will be revealed. We pray this
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in his name. I an
