A Church Freed for Holiness (1 Corinthians 5)

Incest,

adultery

sexual immorality,

greed,

idolatry,

slander,

drunkenness,

theft,

lawsuits between Christians,

frequenting prostitutes

This is what awaits us in the next three weeks.

With just one question:

Do we know who we are?
Do we know who we are?

Do we understand our identity?

When someone asks you, "What is your church?", what do you say?

An evangelical Protestant community?
People who share a tradition?
A family?
A group of friends?

Perhaps you have never asked yourself this question.

But it's crucial.

Our identity always guides our behaviour.

During the Six Nations Championship or the World Cup, some people change their shirts, their schedules, their moods... why?
Because of their identity.

(After yesterday's results, my mood has changed too! Forza Italia!)

Our identity always guides our behaviour.

And that is exactly the problem in Corinth.

In the new section of 1 Corinthians that we are beginning, chapters 5 and 6, we see a Church that tolerates things it should never tolerate —and Paul keeps coming back to the same question:

Do you know who you are?

1 Cor 5:6: "Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are unleavened." We will see what this means. Let us just note the question: do you know who you are?

1 Cor 6:2 "Do you not know that the saints—that is, Christians—will judge the world?"

1 Corinthians 6:3 “Do you not know that we will judge angels?”

1 Corinthians 6:15 "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

1 Corinthians 6:19 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”

Do you see the logic?

Our identity always guides our behaviour.

***

This morning, we're going to talk about the connection between our identity, sin, and what we call church discipline.

The word itself may sound boring.

"Discipline"

Many of you here participate in summer camps for teenagers. We always start by explaining the rules of discipline.

Not many young people say at the end of camp, "You know what my favourite part was? The discipline briefing!"

And yet—it's vital.

If we understand our identity correctly, we will see that the health of the Church,

the credibility of our mission,
and the reputation of Jesus are at stake.

Before going any further, two things.

First, our supreme pastor is Jesus Christ. He cares for us by teaching us. He teaches us through all of his word, the Bible, even the passages we would rather avoid. So let's keep our noses in the text.

Second, we are going to talk about sexuality, among other things. We do so as sexual sinners saved by grace. Preachers included.

We are not here to preach! I need to hear this passage as much as anyone else.

***

This morning, we are going to look at this:

We are the people whom God has liberated for holiness.
And so... a people called to purify themselves from the remnants of their former slavery.

Let us read together 1 Corinthians 5.

It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and immorality of a kind that is not even mentioned among unbelievers—so much so that one of you has taken his father's wife. And you are proud! Should you not rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? As for me, absent in body but present in spirit, I have already judged the perpetrator of such an act as if I were present. When you gather in the name of [our] Lord Jesus[-Christ]—I will be with you in spirit—with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the sinful nature, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.

You really have nothing to be proud of! Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean in an absolute sense the people of this world who are sexually immoral or are always greedy for more, thieves, idolaters; otherwise, you would have to leave the world. In fact, what I wrote to you was not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality, is always eager to possess more, is an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a thief, not even to eat with such a man. Is it for me to judge those outside? Is it not those within that you are to judge? God will judge those outside. Drive the wicked out from among you.

We will not start at the beginning of the passage but in the middle this morning.

Verses 6 to 8 give the reason for the other instructions that are given.

First point:

1. We are no longer of the same mould – what a liberation!

Since God has saved us from sin, let us throw away all its rotten remnants!

Our daughters love to bake cakes.

One day, we opened the packet of flour... disaster.

There are worms in it.

"This is rubbish! We can't make snacks anymore!"

So we rush to the supermarket, buy more flour, and throw away the old one. "We're saved! Chocolate fondant!"

Now imagine someone saying: "It's a shame to throw away the old flour... We've already eaten it and we didn't die... Come on, let's get some back out of the bin... for the taste! More protein..."

(Come and have afternoon tea at our house whenever you like!)

No one does that! That's exactly what Paul says to the Corinthians

Verse 1 - He has learned that there is immorality among them that even non-believers do not tolerate: a man is sleeping with his father's wife.

And Paul replies: Don't you understand that Jesus came to save you from this?

To show them why they cannot tolerate this, he takes them back to the Old Testament.
Verse 6

"You really have nothing to be proud of! Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purify yourselves [therefore] from the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, since you are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed [for us]. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Paul compares our salvation to the liberation from Egypt in the book of Exodus.

The Pharaoh refused to let Israel go; God sent plagues; the last one was the death of the firstborn.

To be spared, the Israelites sacrificed a lamb and put its blood on their doors: the death of the lamb took the place of the firstborn.

They had to leave quickly, without letting the bread rise. The only bread they had time to eat was unleavened bread.

At that moment, leaven was incompatible with their liberation and therefore became the life they were leaving behind.

When they later celebrated this liberation, they cleaned their homes to remove all traces of it.

Jewish families still do this today.

Hence verse 7

Purify yourselves [therefore] of the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened.

In other words, God has set you free!

Jesus' sacrifice saved you from his judgement! You are... unleavened. Pure! Free! Saved from judgement! No longer slaves!

This is an objective fact! Are you a Christian?

You have a totally new life and identity!

You are no longer made of the same stuff as before!

In Christian life, the indicative precedes the imperative.

What we are... determines... what we must do.

Not the other way around.

So Paul says: you have a new identity, you are free... get rid of all the rotten remnants of your former slavery!

What remnants?

Verse 8 - Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The problem with the Corinthians is that they have too narrow a view of salvation.

For them, it's like personal development... a new philosophy.

Paul says no.

It is God's dramatic intervention to free a people.
A new life.
A new identity.
True freedom.

And the special flavour of our new dough, our new identity, is not perfection —

It is... repentance!

The effort to live in accordance with our status as liberated people.

We too can have too narrow a view of salvation.

For example, by confusing grace with something that superficially resembles it but has nothing to do with it... complacency. Tolerating evil.

'I know I'm doing wrong, but God forgives and accepts us as we are.'

That's true. God forgives and accepts us as we are. Thank you, Lord!

If you are here this morning because you have questions about God, God wants to meet you as you are.

He is not waiting for you to reach a certain level of holiness.

Come as you are!

But... his salvation is too great to leave us as we are!

He did not say to the Israelites: if you want, take your chains with you!

He does not say to us, "If you want, continue to eat infested flour!"

He says that all that is in the past!

Get rid of the remnants of your slavery.

This may be the message that some need to hear this morning.

Perhaps you attend church as spectators; intrigued but unwilling to embrace the change God wants to make.

God does not want us to be spectators of his salvation. He wants us to be participants!

If that scares you, rest assured! This salvation does not lead to a new slavery, but to purity, truth, freedom, and life.

We are no longer made of the same stuff – what a liberation!

***

It is because we have this new identity that Paul asks us to draw all the consequences from it.

Sometimes this means taking radical measures, not only individually but also as a Church.

2. We are no longer of the same mould – the need for separation

The second thing to understand is that as a redeemed community, we must be prepared to sometimes exclude from the church, out of love, those who persist in sin.

Let us return to verse 1

It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and immorality of a kind that is not even mentioned among unbelievers, to the extent that one of you has taken his father's wife. 2 And you are proud! You ought rather to have been filled with grief, so that the one who has done this deed might be removed from among you. 3 For I, though not present in body, am present in spirit, and I have already judged the one who has done this deed, as though I were present. 4 When you gather in the name of [our] Lord Jesus[-Christ]—I will be with you in spirit—with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ 5 deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.

Let us acknowledge this from the outset: talking about exclusion is painful to hear.

To say that sometimes someone must be excluded from the Church—or, as Paul says, delivered over to Satan—does not seem very loving to us.

We live in a society where tolerance is a supreme value:
"We can tolerate everything except intolerance!"

And yet... there are situations where exclusion is the most loving thing to do.

We do not accuse a doctor of lacking love when he quarantines a contagious patient—to treat him and to protect others.

By tolerating in the Church this man who sleeps with his mother-in-law,

the Corinthians did not act out of love but out of pride.

Perhaps they boasted about being so open-minded.

Perhaps they just didn't see what was wrong with it.

But for Paul, the question was not whether what this man was doing was right or wrong.

Even the pagans of Corinth knew it was inexcusable.

Paul's target is the Church:
Why did you do nothing?
You think you are spiritual — your inaction proves otherwise.

You should weep.

***

Let's be clear: Paul is not saying that this man should be excluded because he sinned.

We all sin.

Nor is it someone who was struggling with sin without having overcome it.

We all struggle.

Paul does not even say that this man should be excluded because his sin was particularly serious.

He had to be excluded because he was someone who was clearly living in sin without wanting to come out of it. Without repentance.

In verse 11, he says: "What I have written to you is not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality."

This sin characterises him. He indulges in it instead of putting a stop to it.

He is like an Israelite who remains in Egypt instead of seizing his salvation.

This passage made me think about how to practise church discipline at Connexion.

Here is a very important principle.

Connexion Church will never exclude someone we believe to be a true Christian.

Where it becomes necessary is when someone persists in sin in a way that contradicts their profession of faith.

The mark of genuine conversion is repentance.

Exclusion is always a last resort.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus describes the steps:
First, one-on-one, we approach the person. "Dear friend, I care about you. I believe the Bible requires you to stop doing this."
Then with one or two others,
then involving the rest of the Church,
and only if they still refuse to repent... exclusion.

At each stage, the goal is repentance, involving as few people as possible.

Exclusion—removal from the membership list, prohibition from partaking of the Lord's Supper—is the last resort.

And note: Paul is speaking to the whole church.

The holiness of the assembly is everyone's business.

If you are a member, it is as much your concern as it is the elders'.

The covenant of membership that you have agreed to says so.

If you'll pardon the pun, we are all invited to lend a hand in promoting the holiness of God's people.

Perhaps this seems harsh to us.

But when the Church comes to the conclusion that someone must be excluded from the congregation—which is extremely rare; in ten years of pastoral ministry, I have never seen it, thank God—

When it comes to this conclusion, it acts first...

• Out of love for the unrepentant sinner who refuses to change.

Verse 5

“Hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.”

To hand someone over to Satan is to stop considering him a member of God's family.

It means no longer considering them a Christian.

And it is the loving thing to do!

If someone has a terminal illness, it is not loving to say that they are healed.

Love is telling them that they still need treatment.

We must not give false assurance. If someone persists in sin in a way that invalidates their profession of faith because there is no repentance, they must understand that they are in danger.

The goal is the "destruction of the sinful nature."

This is a way of saying that, after several warnings, we allow the person to go to the end of their sin, to the end of their slavery, so that they realise that it is horrible, that they are heading towards death and that they need a saviour.

What does this mean in practice?

In verse 11, Paul says not even to eat with such a person.

I am not convinced that this means cutting off all social contact.

Jesus says to treat him like a pagan or a tax collector.

How did Jesus treat pagans and tax collectors? With love and compassion... offering them forgiveness... but without giving the false impression that they were part of God's people until they repented.

It is up to us to think about the types of activities, synonymous with fellowship, that we could no longer do with such a person.

What form would the relationship take?

***

This approach works!

In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of a man who was disciplined by the church, perhaps the same one in this passage, who repented and was restored as a brother.

We act out of love for the unrepentant sinner.

We also act...

• Out of love for the church

Verse 6 again

You really have nothing to be proud of! Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

My children love baking. Our interns are good at baking.

It's not my area of expertise. That's why Debs, Dahlia, Eva and Silvain, I'll leave the baking to you.

One thing I do know is that sachets of yeast are small, and you only need to add a tiny pinch to make the whole cake rise.

Paul knew this too. A tiny bit of leaven is enough to affect the whole dough, the whole church.

Tolerating serious sin risks contaminating the whole Church.

If we allow someone to persist in sin, even though God is calling them to change, we are sending the message that it is okay. It is not.

God cares too much about his people to let them sink because complacency has replaced repentance.

I have never been on a leadership team that has asked for someone to be excluded from the church.

I have had to ask someone to step down from a position of responsibility because of serious sins.

It's not a pleasant thing to do. There's no joy in it.

It had to be done.

God loves his people too much to let them return to slavery.

We act out of love for the church and...

• Out of love for the world.

Verse 9:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean in an absolute sense the people of this world who are sexually immoral or are always greedy for more, thieves, idolaters; otherwise, you would have to leave the world. In fact, what I wrote to you was not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality, is always greedy for more, is an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a thief—not even to eat with such a man. For what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Is it not those within that you should judge? God will judge those outside. Drive the wicked out from among you.

Church discipline does not mean sectarian ghetto.

We are the pure ones! Outsiders, yuck! We want nothing to do with them.

Perhaps this was the attitude of the Corinthians.

We must seek the opposite!

The Church must be in the world, but not of the world.

We are like the crew of a lifeboat sent to rescue people who are drowning.

To succeed in our mission, the boat must be in the sea.

The sea must not be in the boat.

If the captain discovers someone opening the portholes to let water in and sink the boat, that person must be removed from the crew. It is a matter of life and death for the crew and for those who need to be saved.

This is what Paul says about the church.

That there are people in mortal danger because of their sin outside the church is our world.

That is why God sent a Saviour!

This should inspire in us not moralistic judgement, but compassion.

We have received salvation by pure grace to share it.

The problem is when the church itself does not take its own salvation seriously.

We are saved for the beautiful and good life of freedom and joy that can only be found in God!

The church is therefore of no benefit to the world if outsiders say, "They are just like us."

Then we are just a club for early risers on Sundays!

The world needs a church that truly lives out its salvation, that seeks holiness...

...and so strange as it may seem, the world needs a church that enforces discipline.

So that it is clear that true salvation from God is salvation from sin... for... freedom and holiness.

A true liberation that cannot be found anywhere else!

***

So, becoming a moralising ghetto could be dangerous for us.

We stay among Christians.

We do everything together.

We despise those who do not share our faith.

God calls us, on the contrary, to be open to the world, in contact with our contemporaries, serious about our salvation, and therefore serious about holiness.

That doesn't mean we want a culture of policing at Connexion. Always looking for faults in our neighbours.

God forbid!

No, the first thing I must do, if I care about the church, is look in the mirror.

How am I doing?

Do I have a beam to remove from my own eye?

Only then can I humbly approach my brother and say, "I think you have a little splinter to remove." It happens to me too.

God wants us to have the humility to examine ourselves, and also to listen to the brother or sister who, out of love, points out something we need to correct.

________

So...

Do we know who we are?

It is easy to have a much too small view of who we are as a church.

A Sunday morning club

A tradition

A place where we feel comfortable

A group of friends – great if Connection is your group of friends.

But it's much, much more than that!

The Church is the people whom God has rescued from slavery through the blood of His Son.

The Church is the community of liberated people

The Church is the people saved for holiness and for a mission

of rescue in a world that is perishing

No other group has such an identity!

Not our sports club

Not the alumni of polytechnic or ENA, No one!

We are the people saved for holiness...

and to show the world that true freedom exists.

There is nothing on earth that God cherishes more... than you! His church.

Let us cherish it too?

When the Church takes its identity seriously, it becomes beautiful and attractive.

A Church where we repent,

where we rise again,

where grace truly transforms lives

where we take our salvation seriously

that is what the world needs to see.

Since we are already purified, already liberated, already God's people, let us live as we are.

It is a privilege

It is a blessing

It is also... a responsibility

Proven Maturity (1 Corinthians 4.8-21)

Ever since the beginning of this series, we’ve been hearing Paul make a contrast between the perceived wisdom of the Corinthians, and the true wisdom of God. Wisdom and philosophy were a big deal in this city at this time, and Paul wants this church to see that what they think is wisdom is actually hollow and empty, while the gospel is true wisdom.

But he’s clear that this is going to seem illogical to them at first. In 1 Cornithians 1.18, the apostle Paul says that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.” We talked a few weeks ago about why that is the case: a Savior who obtains victory by dying doesn’t make any sense, especially in the context of first-century Rome.

But that’s not the only reason why the word of the cross seems like folly to those who don’t have faith in Christ. It’s not just because without faith, we won’t be able to see how a crucified Savior can be victorious; it’s also because following Christ means following him in his suffering. In other words, it’s not just about what it cost him to save us, but what it costs us—and that cost will just be one step too far for many people.

That’s what Paul’s going to get at today. In last week’s text, Paul put all of the emphasis on the Corinthians’ immaturity and pride—they’re assessing their leaders to make judgments on which leader is the best, using their own opinions as weapons for their own pride, but the tools they need to even think such thoughts show them they have nothing to boast about. You have nothing that you didn’t receive, Paul says, so you have no reason to boast.

Now, he’s going to transition from a slightly abstract idea—the idea of leaders as servants, not as reasons for pride—to a very concrete idea that the Corinthians won’t be able to deny, because they’ve seen it with their own eyes.

Proof of Truth (v. 8–13)

This is just my opinion, but I stand by it: as a rule, especially in conversation, sarcasm is almost always more harmful than helpful. Sarcasm feels really good to the person who uses it, and usually bad for the person who receives it. I’m not talking about good-natured sarcasm, but of the sort that comes out when you’re having an argument. It almost always serves to build one person up and to tear another person down.

However, there are occasions during which sarcasm can be helpful. If someone has come to a point where no logical argument can sway them, then sarcasm may be the only thing that can hit home, because it presents a false picture of what’s going on, in order to show the other person they’ve actually started believing that false picture. It paints a ridiculous picture—a ridiculous lie—in order to show the other person that they’ve fallen for the lie.

That’s what Paul’s doing here. He’s positively dripping with sarcasm, but he’s not doing it to hurt the Corinthians; he’s doing it to help them see the contrast between themselves and the leaders they claim to follow.

V. 8:

8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

The Corinthians believe they are spiritually mature—already you’ve become rich! They believe they’re wise. They believe they’ve achieved the status of people who can take command, who can reign as kings. They believe their reputations are protection. They believe they’re doing well—they have all that they want.

You see, they haven’t accepted wisdom; they’ve redefined wisdom. They claim their spiritual life is founded on the cross, but they’re operating by a worldly system of evaluation.

The cross shows us what true wisdom looks like, by showing us Jesus. What Christ showed us at the cross is the polar opposite of what we see in the Corinthians.

The Corinthians think wisdom means superiority; the cross says that wisdom means humility.

The Corinthians think wisdom means strength; the cross says that wisdom means weakness.

The Corinthians think wisdom means prestige; the cross says that wisdom means suffering.

The Corinthians think wisdom means present glory; the cross says that wisdom means future glory.

The Corinthians knew this already; they’ve heard the gospel, they know what Jesus was like. But they’ve forgotten it in practice, because the world around them is so radically different from the way Jesus lived.

So now that Paul has reminded them of this, he lets the sarcasm go and tells them the simple truth—and it’s a truth they’ve seen with their own eyes, something they cannot deny. V. 11:

11 To the present hour we [the apostles] hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

The apostles’ lives could not have looked more different from the lives the Corinthians set up for themselves. They endure material suffering; they’re hungry and thirsty; they’re poorly dressed and homeless. This isn’t episodic; it’s not occasional. This is the way they live.

They endure social injustice: they’re reviled and persecuted and slandered. And yet, when they are reviled, they bless; when they’re persecuted, they endure; when they’re slandered, they entreat (they continue to encourage those who slander them).

So you see, Paul now proves everything that he has been saying over the course of the first two chapters. The cross looks foolish to the world, he said—so do the apostles. The cross looks weak to the world—so do the apostles. Christ was rejected—so are the apostles. Christ was mocked and reviles—so are the apostles. Christ was crucified in weakness—the apostles suffer in weakness.

Paul’s life, and the life of the other apostles, are proof that he is telling the truth, that his life, and the lives of the other apostles, are in keeping with the gospel of Christ.

This is the difference between genuine Christianity and cultural Christianity, between real faith and inherited faith. Lots of us here grew up in church, so we know what Christianity sounds like. But many people who grew up in church don’t necessarily know what true Christianity looks like.

It’s easy to speak of trusting God in the midst of suffering; it’s really different to be genuinely at peace when you’re fighting cancer. It’s easy to speak of persevering in persecution; it’s really different to remain open about your faith when you live in a part of the world where you can be killed for being a Christian. It’s easy to speak of sacrificing for the gospel; it’s really different to literally leave your world and your possessions behind to serve God as a missionary in a needy country.

Or, a much simpler example: it’s easy to pray for God to make us holy, but it’s really different to be faced with a temptation to sin that no one is ever going to see but you, and to resist that sin anyway.

Christ gave everything for us when he lived our life, took our sin on himself and suffered in our place, for our sin. If we have truly grasped what he did for us in the gospel, then we will see that the gospel gives us not only salvation, but a life pattern to follow. The cross doesn’t just save us; it forms us.

A Life Worth Imitating (v. 14–17)

It might be easy to look at Paul’s sarcastic rebuke as simply mean, but that’s not his intention; he wants to help the Corinthians see more clearly, because he loves them. V. 14:

14 I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 17 That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

I’ll be honest—coming on the heels of everything Paul said in the first three chapters about how the Corinthians shouldn’t be so attached to one leader or another, I found this to be a bit confusing at first. But if you take it in the context of what he said just before, it actually makes sense. You have countless guides in Christ, he says, but “you do not have many fathers.” He calls himself their “father”, not because he feels they owe him loyalty, but because he’s the one who first introduced them to the gospel, and because they have seen that his teaching is trustworthy: they’ve seen it worked out in his own life.

Several weeks ago I mentioned the fact that my dad could discipline me more effectively than my mom. I said it clumsily, because I gave the impression that I didn’t take my mom seriously, which wasn’t true. But my dad was different—in part because of his demeanor, but also because my dad was the picture of what I, as a young man, wanted to be. When I looked at my dad, I saw a picture of what a mature Christian man looks like.

That’s the kind of relationship Paul is pleading for here—he doesn’t want the Corinthians to be loyal to him, but he does want them to recognize that the life he has showed them is worthy of being imitated.

And that really is the difference between infancy and maturity. When you’re a child, you take orders; you’re expected to do what your parents tell you because they’re your parents, and you have to. When you’re older, your parents can’t expect the same obedience, but they do hope that you are able to recognize the good things they taught you and do those things on your own—not for the sake of obedience, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

That’s the Corinthians’ problem: they have accumulated voices, but resisted formation. So Paul is pleading with them to let themselves be formed by his example. Their own spiritual birth came through Paul’s suffering, Paul’s preaching, and Paul’s sacrifice. To despise the pattern of life Paul laid out for them is to despise their own origin story.

And this—that model Paul has shown them—is the power of which he spoke before, in chapter 2. Remember, he said (2.3-5):

3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

He didn’t come with lofty speech or philosophical brilliance. He came to them in weakness and fear and trembling, which showed that the true power of the gospel didn’t come through him, but through God. And now, they have the same example in Timothy, Paul’s apprentice who has come to them. Timothy lives like Paul lived. He’s there to show the Corinthians that the pattern of the apostles is consistent and transferable.

To put it another way, Paul’s telling them all of this and reminding them of his life and sending Timothy as another example in order to say, “We aren’t innovators. We are disciples of Christ. Live like us.”

The Power of God’s Kingdom (v. 18–20)

Timothy’s coming may be taken as a sign that Paul is passing the torch—which the Corinthians might take to mean they no longer really need to take him seriously. Distance from Paul has produced an inflated sense of their own ego. But Paul is planning to return, he says, and when he does, truth will be exposed. V. 18:

18 Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. 19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. 20 For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. 21 What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

Paul is closing the loop now before moving on to other topics. Remember, in 1.18, he said,

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

If the word of the cross is the power of God to those who are being saved, then it is no surprise that life in the kingdom of God consists in that same power—a power that looks like folly.

The Corinthians have assumed that impressive words, impressive rhetoric, confer authority. But that’s not what true power or kingdom authority look like. Kingdom power doesn’t consist in eloquence or charisma, but in endurance, and holiness, and sacrificial love.

The same paradox holds here: true power doesn’t look like strength to those outside the kingdom; it looks like weakness.

One of the most convincing signs of maturity is not feeling the need to fight, even when you know you can win. Not needing to be impressive, even when you know you can impress. If a little kid wants to show you how fast he can run, you’re not going to laugh and say, “Come on—I can run so much faster than that.” If you’re mature, you don’t need to prove yourself to those who are immature.

That’s what Paul’s going to examine when he comes—not giftedness, but formation. And there will be two possible outcomes to what he finds. Either he will come with “a rod”, meaning with correction and discipline, or “a spirit of gentleness,” meaning encouragement and comfort.

This is just my opinion, but I don’t think he means that if the Corinthians can’t be mature, Paul’s going to go in guns blazing to make them all look dumb. I think Paul’s going to have the same basic discourse in either case—the same arguments he’s been maintaining since the beginning of this letter.

But maturity changes the way you hear correction. An immature person will listen to correction and react to it as being harsh or overbearing. They’ll reject correction, because it doesn’t fit into their idea of their own value.

A mature person will listen to correction—even unpleasant correction—and will recognize it as useful, as helpful. A mature person feels encouraged by the prospect of further growth, even if it hurts a little to get there.

Again—power looks like weakness. It’s okay to need correction. It’s okay to need someone to tell you the areas in which you need to change. A mature child of God, a person of kingdom power, will recognize that they aren’t perfect, and will welcome any opportunity for growth.

Conclusion

One of the big problems the Corinthians show us here is that of an over-realized eschatology. The word “eschatology” refers to the theology of last things—the theology of the return of Christ, and eternal life. Proper eschatology tells us that Christ will one day return to judge the living and the dead, after which he will rid all of creation of the ravages of sin and reign forever with his people in the new heavens and the new earth.

But the Corinthians—and, frankly, many Christians still today—assume that if they’ve made a decision to follow Christ, then that eternal glory, that kingdom reign, will begin for us now.

It’s not at all difficult to see. Think of the number of people who have left the Christian faith, or who at the very least have struggled with extreme doubt, because their life didn’t get better when they decided to follow Christ. Their relationships didn’t get easier; their problems didn’t go away; their financial problems weren’t solved; their jobs didn’t suddenly fulfill them—and they’re devastated and filled with doubt, because they came into the faith with the assumption that Christ would make everything better.

Of course, Christ will make everything better…he just didn’t promise to do it right now.

The apostles are a wonderful example of this. Paul never presents the apostles as heroes; he presents them as patterned after Christ. They are dishonored; they are weak; they are rejected; they suffer. This isn’t incidental hardship; this is their call. You can’t have the power of the resurrection without the humility of the cross.

Christ reigns now today, absolutely, and one day he will reign in full view of all creation, and his people will reign alongside him. But during his life, Christ was not valued. He was despised and rejected. He had a fiery ministry for a short time, but that ministry ended in his rejection by his own people, abandonment by his disciples, false accusations, and ultimately, death.

In regards to the Christian life, the true grace of Jesus Christ is shown, not in the fact that he prevents us from suffering, but rather that he preceded us in suffering, to show us that present struggle, present weakness, is in no way a sign of failure. The kingdom of God consists not in words but in power; but that power often looks like weakness. As Paul said in chapter 1, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

So as we close, let’s try to put ourselves in the Corinthians’ shoes. If we received this letter from the apostle Paul, how would we hear it? Would we recognize in ourselves impatience with weakness or suffering? Are we easily disilusioned when we go through difficult times? Do we have a fascination with status, or an inflated sense of our own value?

If we are like this—and I think most of us are to some extent, if we’re honest—then what Paul says here very much applies to us.

The cross doesn’t just grant us salvation; it also guides our formation. Maturity isn’t a question of moving beyond suffering, but of being shaped through it. If we pay attention to the Bible, we see it time and again: the God of all miracles most often brings his people to maturity through misunderstanding, through rejection, through loss of reputation, through perseverance in suffering.

And if we pay attention, we’ll be able to see this in the Christians around us. Think about it for a minute: who do you know that models this kind of maturity for you? Whose life has been marked by growth in Christ, not through good fortune, but through endurance in the hardship that God allows? Whose life isn’t just a voice box for the gospel, but a picture of the gospel? Whom would God call you to observe and imitate?

We can be sure that no one who has grown in Christlikeness has come by it without struggle. And no one who has truly grown in Christlikeness will boast that they have “made it”—that they are like Christ. They’ll see what God has done in them, and they’ll be thankful to him; they’ll boast in him.

The power of God, which shames the strong, is not found in miracles—every religion in the world boasts of miraculous signs. It is not found in influence—every major religion has significant influence around the world. It is not found in success—that’s the world’s metric for truth.

The true power of God can be seen in his people when they grow in holiness; when they endure faithfully through hardship; and when they love well under great pressure.

That is the power of God that Paul models. It’s the power of God I want to see in myself, and it’s the power of God I pray to see in our church.

Lucid Maturity (1 Corinthians 3.1-4.7)

I love my job, and I’m happy to introduce myself as a pastor. But it always makes me a little uncomfortable when someone introduces me as “the pastor” of Connexion. First of all, because there are four of us elders here—I’m not alone. But even when I was the only elder in this church, at the very beginning, I didn’t care for the label of THE PASTOR of the church…

…for reasons we’ll see in today’s text.

The main problem we’ve been seeing in these first two chapters of 1 Corinthians (it’s not the only problem, but the first) is that the Corinthian church has divided itself over tribal lines. These lines are drawn around the leaders they esteem.

Everything that Paul says in today’s long passage centers around this problem. He’s going to say several things that seem to stray from the topic of this misguided allegiance to specific church leaders, but in reality everything he says here goes in that direction.

So this is a peculiar text to preach, because it is as much a message for leaders as for members of the church. This is a message for me, not just for you.

I. A Lucid Vision of Leaders (3:1–11)

If you remember, last week Paul affirmed that those who have been saved by Christ “have the mind of Christ” (2.16). And this must have flattered the Corinthians, who loved the idea that they knew what they needed to know. Their intellect and philosophical acumen were points of pride for them.

But then Paul drops the hammer. 3.1:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

So we need to see that Paul isn’t denying the Corinthians are in Christ; he’s saying they’re babies, infants in the faith. It’s really important that it’s okay to be a baby in the faith; new Christians often compare themselves to more mature Christians and feel bad for everything they don’t yet know. You don’t have to be mature in the faith for your faith to be genuine.

The problem comes when you think you’re mature, but you’re actually not. You say you’re spiritual, but you’re acting “merely human”, as Paul says in v. 4. And those problems will always be visible.

Paul gives the Corinthians proof of their spiritual immaturity. He says, There is jealousy and strife among you. Some of you say, “I follow Paul”, and others say, “I follow Apollos,” and you drawing those lines is proof of your immaturity. These aren’t theological disagreements—the division they’re creating is purely preferential, based on subjective opinion, and that’s how the rest of the world works. That’s how the world without Christ works.

So now Paul is going to lean really hard into this problem and show them why what they’re doing is so silly. He’s going to speak specifically about himself and Apollos (one of the teachers to whom some of the Corinthians are attached), and he’s going to use several different images to describe what exactly he and Apollos are doing.

V. 5:

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.

This is the basis of everything he’s going to say now: What am I? What is Apollos? We’re servants. You believed through us, because we shared the gospel with you; but we shared the gospel with you because God told us to. We’re servants, not “heads.”

The first image he uses to show this is the image of a plant, in v. 6:

6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

This image is simple enough for a child to understand. Plants do not grow themselves. And the gardeners who plant them and tend them don’t grow them either. Gardeners work, they help, but God grows plants.

Planting and watering matter, but growth does not belong to the worker. Leaders are important, yes—but they are not the source of life.

And that is where the Corinthians have gone wrong. They’ve attached themselves to certain leaders, and we can understand that: the leaders that have helped us are always going to be important to us. But no human leader—neither Paul, nor Apollos, nor any other human leader—is the source of life.

The next image Paul uses is that of a building. V. 10:

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

We see the same thing here. A building does not build itself. A foundation is laid, and then perhaps others build on it.

We are in a building right now. Is the person who built this building really important for us? Of course not.

What’s the most important thing about this building? The most important thing is whether or not the foundation is solid.

The foundation, Paul is very clear, is Jesus Christ. In regards to our faith, no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

The Corinthians are dividing over their perceived “quality” of one ministry compared to another, based on their own opinions and reasoning. And they’re ignoring the fact that all of their favorite ministries—whether Paul’s or Apollos’s or Peter’s—all have the same foundation.

Let me give you an easy example.

D.A. Carson is a theologian who grew up in Canada and who now works as a professor of New Testament; he has written many books, he was the co-founder of the Gospel Coalition (along with Tim Keller), and he’s a world-renowned teacher and speaker. His ministry has been helpful to millions, including myself. It would be easy to consider his ministry—his “building”—to be of incredibly high quality, and I believe it is.

Now, compare his ministry with that of another man: D.A. Carson’s father, Tom Carson. Tom Carson served as a perfectly ordinary pastor in a perfectly ordinary church near Montréal, for over sixty years. He never wrote a book. He never had an online presence. He never established a ministry outside of his own small pastoral ministry.

And yet, his ministry was faithful despite the challenges of his particular place and time. He faithfully preached the gospel, and he quietly cared for the people under his responsibility.

So whose ministry is of higher quality? D.A. Carson’s, or his father’s?

That’s the kind of question the Corinthians are asking, and both Carsons would agree that it’s the wrong question. The question isn’t what is the quality or reach or impact of the ministry, but what is the foundation?

If the foundation is Christ alone, every other judgment we could render about a leader or his impact belongs to God.

II. A lucid Vision of Ministry (3.12-17)

This is the point Paul makes clear in v. 12-17:

12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

These verses have sidetracked a lot of people over the years, causing us to develop entire theologies of salvation and reward and judgment around them. And while some of these theologies may not be wrong, they’re not Paul’s point here.

His point is that the true quality of a ministry, or of a Christian life, can only be properly judged by God.

It would be easy to look at D.A. Carson’s ministry and consider it a building built with gold, silver or precious stones, because his ministry has been profoundly impactful on a lot of people all over the world. It would be easy to consider his father’s ministry as a building built with wood, hay or straw—because almost no one even knew who he was before his son wrote that book.

But it doesn’t work that way! People with hugely impactful ministries have built on other foundations than Christ—they’ve built their lives on the foundation of their own name or charisma. And other people have had very unimpressive ministries, very unimpressive lives—but they’ve remained faithful to the foundation that was already laid: everything in their lives and work was centered around Christ. So no matter how impressive or unimpressive they may seem, the eternal quality of their work will be revealed by God.

Some leaders are faithful to the gospel, and they will receive a reward for their work. Tom Schreiner says in his commentary:

Paul does not tell us what the reward will be. Possibly it is the satisfaction and joy of seeing the fruit of their ministry on the final day. Such a reading fits with what Paul says elsewhere: ‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy’ (1 Thess. 2:19–20; cf. Phil. 2:16; 4:1; 2 Cor. 1:14).

Other leaders have placed their faith in Christ—so their salvation isn’t in question—but they find themselves sidetracked by other concerns. They’ll be saved, but ultimately the substandard quality of their ministry will be revealed by God.

And yet other leaders are wolves disguised in sheep’s clothing; they build huge ministries, but ultimately serve to tear down the church, the temple of God. These people will be judged, not only for the value of their “ministries”, but for their lack of faith, and the way they misled others.

Do you see what Paul’s doing? He’s trying to get the Corinthians to look up to God, instead of across to the leaders they esteem.

God establishes his church on the foundation of the gospel—on the foundation of the finished work of his Son Jesus Christ. And every leader who faithfully builds on that foundation is a servant of God, not someone to whom we owe our loyalty.

III. A Lucid Vision of Pride (3.18-4.7)

After this Paul makes what seems to be an odd segue, but it’s not a change of subject. V. 18:

18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

The Corinthians are dividing over their own ideas of which leader is best: Paul or Apollos or Cephas or any others. They are dividing not because these leaders are bad leaders, but because they, the Corinthians, are prideful in their own estimation of them.

And if this seems silly, then we’re not really giving it much thought. It only takes a single conversation to see what this looks like.

Get two people together: one guy who is a fervent supporter of, say Emmanuel Macron, and another who is a fervent supporter of Jean-Luc Mélanchon. Get these two guys together and have them talk about the politician of their choice. Things will go awry really quickly.

The exact same thing can happen in regards to Christian leaders. Let’s say instead of a Macron supporter and a Mélanchon supporter, you have one person whose life was greatly influenced by the ministry of Tim Keller, and someone else whose life was influenced by Paul Washer. Both faithful leaders, lots of people met Christ through their ministries, and both are radically different in their styles and approach.

A mature Christian will recognize the value in both of these men’s ministries. But if the two people having this conversation are immature, then pride will show itself very quickly: they’ll start to show signs of clear disdain—not for Keller or Washer, but for the other person—because how could they possibly think Keller’s ministry is of more value than Washer’s, and vice versa?

That’s what Paul’s getting at. Human wisdom would find reasons to prefer one leader to another. Keller’s able to reason with people and get them to see the logic of the gospel. Washer just tells the gospel like it is, with no frills or fluff. Human wisdom would have us prefer one to the other. But the wisdom of this world is folly to God.

So what does it look like for the person “who thinks he is wise in this age” to “become a fool”? It looks like rejecting that kind of thinking altogether, and remembering that maybe Washer planted and Keller watered, but God is the one who gives the growth. It looks like setting aside boasting, because everything you have—the world and life and death and the present and the future and, yes, the leaders through whom God has brought you to him—they’re all gifts that God has given you. You are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, and that’s what truly matters.

That’s Paul’s point, and that’s what he says in very simple and clear terms starting in 4.1:

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

The “mysteries of God” are simply the truths that were once hidden but have now been revealed in the gospel. Paul and Apollos and Peter all know the church does not exist for them—they are simply servants of Christ and stewards of the gospel, and that is how they should be considered.

Do you see what Paul’s doing? The Corinthians’ pride in their own so-called wisdom has resulted in two aberrant behaviors: the first is judgment against the leaders they think are inferior, and the second is arrogant division from one another because they follow the “inferior” leader.

Paul addresses the question of judgment first. V. 2:

2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

I’ve been a Christian for a long time and a pastor for a good while now; I like to think that if I have the pertinent facts, I can look at the situation and at what the Bible says and make a good judgment call about that situation. And there are moments when a church, and the leaders and members of a church, will need to make decisions—to make judgments—based on those sorts of observations.

But there is a difference between “judgment” and “judgment”, so to speak. I can judge facts that are presented to me, and how I should respond to those facts. But I can’t presume to judge what’s going on in any one of your hearts, or what God will do in your lives, because that information doesn’t belong to me. There’s no way I could know that. And Paul will make similar arguments later on in this letter.

So how ridiculous is it for the Corinthians—baby Christians that they clearly are—to presume to judge the eternal worth of one of their leaders! How arrogant! The Lord is the one who judges Paul; that is not the Corinthians’ job. You think Paul’s ministry, or Apollos’s ministry, is lacking, and is worth less? Fine—wait and see. When the Lord returns, he will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness; he will disclose the purposes of their heart and render a verdict.

For now, look at the facts: both men, both leaders, are building differently, but they’re both building on the same solid foundation: the life and work of Jesus Christ. Impressiveness does not designate worth. The only valid metric of a servant’s worth is faithfulness. An ordinary pastor like Tom Carson, if he is faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ, may well be worth more to the kingdom of God than the most influential Christian leader we can think of. God makes that call.

Next he turns to the question of division. V. 6:

6 I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. 7 For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Paul has used a lot of images in our passage today: teachers as gardeners, teachers as builders, teachers as servants and stewards. And he has applied these images to Apollos and himself so that the Corinthians “may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” That is, he wants the Corinthians to learn to value what is truly valuable—faithfulness to the Word of God that was revealed in Jesus Christ. Scripture, not personalities, is the framework for truth.

But these personalities have become for the Corinthians, according to what each individual happens to value more, a badge for pride, and they’re using their own preferred leader as a cudgel with which to beat one another. So Paul gives them three diagnostic questions to help them see how unwise their wisdom is, and how immature they really are.

First question: What is your basis for comparison? “Who sees anything different in you?” Or, as the NIV says more faithfully: “For who makes you different from anyone else?” It’s not Paul or Apollos; it’s God! Isn’t God the one who saved you? Isn’t God the source of the good news that brought you life?

Second: “What do you have that you did not receive?” You think you’re wise? Okay, who gave you that wisdom? Was it not God? Whatever you have is a gift. What do you have that you did not receive?

Second: “If you received it, why boast?” They’re acting like children boasting about their Christmas presents: the kids are showing off, debating over whose new tennis shoes are the best, when they should be debating over whose parents are the best, because the parents bought the shoes!

Everything they have came from God! So any kind of boasting that is used to put Christian above another is nonsensical. The gospel leaves no room for superiority, and gives no reason for insecurity.

Conclusion: What Maturity Recognizes

It’s not lost on me that it may be uncomfortable to be talking about these things when we’re all together like this, because we can look around and see people with whom to compare ourselves. But this text calls us to self-examination, not examination of others—and having people around us with whom we would be tempted to compare ourselves is like having a good mirror for ourselves to look into. If we find ourselves wanting to compare ourselves with anyone in here (including one of the pastors or deacons or leaders), then we are struggling the same root problem as the Corinthians.

Of course it’s unlikely that in Connexion we will fall into this sort of clivage over our leaders. The elders of this church are pretty unified, and even if our styles are different, we are very much marching to the beat of the same drum. Most people here know that; in Connexion, I’ve never heard the sort of discussion that we see happening in Corinth.

However, the pride Paul is warning against here can show up in other ways.

For example: we can try to judge the church based on the form our services take. Should we allow women to lead worship? Are we too formal, not charismatic enough? Are our services too free, too open, not liturgical enough? These are all valid questions, and we want to be as faithful as we can in all of these areas.

But if we’re mature, we’ll recognize that even if we happen to find a church whose services take the form we think is right, that is not a guarantor of faithfulness to the gospel. If we’re mature, our primary basis for decisions will not be whether we think the building is being built with gold and silver and precious stones, or with wood and straw and hay. If we’re mature, we’ll base our decisions on whether or not the building is being built on the foundation of Christ and his work.

This can also happen on a personal, one-on-one level. We can compare ourselves to other Christians in terms of knowledge or right theology, what we have learned. It can be positive or negative: “How great am I, that I know so much more than this fool who doesn’t know what I know?” “How worthless am I, that I know so much less than these geniuses who know Bible by heart?”

But none of those things are valid marks of maturity.

Maturity shows itself, in part, by our recognizing that Christ was judged so that we don’t have to compare. Christ was given so we don’t have to boast. Christ is the foundation so that the church can finally begin to build. Christ is the sun so the church can be fed and grow.

We look to him, and him alone, for our identity and worth and validation. As the old song goes, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

The Power of Our Folly (1 Corinthians 1.18-25)

So you’re a Christian and you want to share the gospel with someone. But you’re afraid to do it.

Most Christians have had this sort of experience—it’s scary to share the gospel with just about anyone who isn’t a Christian. But why is that the case? What exactly are we afraid of?

Generally, we’re afraid of two things. We’re afraid the person in front of us will respond with anger, or we’re afraid the person will respond with laughter. We’re afraid of being the subject of confrontational rejection, and we’re afraid of feeling ridiculous.

There’s a reason why we’re afraid of these things, and in today’s text Paul gets right to the heart of why that is.

This is our third week in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. If you remember, the Corinthian church is a church with a lot of very serious, very deep problems. Paul began his letter in v. 1-9 by reminding them of their identity in Christ—they have been saved, they have been sanctified, they have been gifted and they will be preserved by God. Then once their identity is solidly established, he moves to the first problem of their church, which is division among the members. This division is based on human teachers to whom the Corinthians cling: “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

And what Paul said in last week’s text is that the root of the problem is not the human teachers themselves, but rather that the center of the church’s focus has shifted. When the cross becomes sidelined, and anything else takes its place, then our idea of our own identity shifts, and divisions follow.

In today’s text, Paul is going to begin tightening the screws before returning to the problem of division. He’s going to go one step further and say that the cross doesn’t get sidelined accidentally; it doesn’t happen on its own. It’s very difficult, in fact, for the cross not to get sidelined, because the cross contradicts how humans instinctively think about what makes sense and what is admirable.

So here’s the big idea: the cross does not merely save sinners—it dismantles every competing system of wisdom, status, and self-reliance. Which means that if we keep the cross central in our focus, that will inevitably mean living a life the world finds foolish.

The Gospel in the World (1:18-25)

Here’s where Paul starts: the cross always divides humanity into two different ways of perceiving it. V. 18:

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

We have here the same message—it’s “the word of the cross.”

Same message, two radically different perceptions of it. It is “folly” to some, and “the power of God” to others.

On both sides of this divide, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of disdaining those on the other side. We see it in politics all the time. People who fall on one side of a political divide get incredibly frustrated with their family members or friends who fall on the other side, because they just can’t fathom it—why can’t my family members see what I’m seeing?! It seems so obvious to us, and it makes those can’t see it seem…well, sort of stupid.

But when we’re talking about the gospel, the issue isn’t intelligence. It isn’t reason. It isn’t logic. The issue is spiritual orientation.

The word of the cross is folly for whom? Not for the unintelligent, but for those who are “perishing”—that is, those who aren’t Christians.

The word of the cross is the power of God for whom? Not for the enlightened, but for “those who are being saved.”

It has nothing to do with intelligence; it has to do with spiritual orientation.

Neutrality toward the cross does not exist. The cross necessarily divides, because it always produces two different perceptions. Either it’s perceived as folly, and rejected; or it completely redefines reality.

This wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t a sort of unfortunate side effect of the work of Christ. Paul quotes Isaiah 29 in v. 19:

19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

This was God’s plan all along: to show that the wisdom of the wise, the wisdom we humans naturally trust, isn’t really wisdom at all; the most discerning of men has no discernment compared to that of God himself.

This idea was a slap in the face for people who lived in a place like Corinth, because the people of Corinth prized philosophical wisdom. It’s not, in reality, all that different from what we see in Paris today. We put great philosophers and thinkers on a pedestal because of all they have contributed—and many of them did contribute a great deal. But where has all this elevated thinking brought us? It hasn’t brought us to God; it’s made us feel smart enough and resourceful enough to move away from him.

None of this was a surprise to God; he knew this would happen, and it’s been progressively happening for as long as human beings have walked the earth.

So God did the one thing no one would expect. He dismantled the “wisdom of the wise” by something we humans, with our “enlightened” reasoning, naturally find ridiculous.

V. 20:

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The world did not come to know God through its own wisdom, Paul says in v. 21. So God chose a means of salvation that looks absurd—and that is a crucified Savior.

When I was nineteen I broke my ankle while leaving my final exam in my college psychology class. The stairs were extra wide, I finished early, and as I was walking down the stairs, in front of two hundred students behind me, I missed the last step and broke my ankle. I was out in the lobby before I realized how bad it was; I started to feel light-headed and nauseous; my friend had to sit next to me and hold a trash can under my chin while we waited for my mom to come take me to the hospital.

The worst part of that whole experience wasn’t the broken ankle. It was sitting there and having the two hundred students that finished after me walk out and see me like that: pale, in pain, with a trash can under my chin. I felt so stupid.

All I did was break my ankle in public, and I was ashamed. And most of us feel that way; we don’t like being hurt or vulnerable in front of other people.

That’s what made crucifixion so effective. There were far simpler ways to execute criminals, but the goal wasn’t mainly death; it was shame. Those who were crucified were stripped naked, nailed to a cross in a public place, and forced to hang there in agonizing pain until they eventually died of asphyxiation. Crucifixion forced the condemned to carry their shame into death; it forced them into a state of complete weakness, complete vulnerability.

And Christianity states that our Savior, the Creator of the world, was condemned by the Jews as a blasphemer and crucified by Rome. This is the message that Paul preached, at a time when crucifixion was still widely practiced. So from the perspective of those outside, from the perspective of the world, the message of Christianity proclaims something shocking: our Savior lost. Our Savior was defeated by Rome. Our Savior was publicly shamed. That’s what people heard when they heard Paul speak of Christ crucified. This is not the kind of Savior that anyone would seek.

What do they seek?

Well, the Greeks—that is, non-Jews—sought “wisdom”, Paul says in v. 22. They sought extensive and persuasive discourses of philosophical insight. Even if the teachings of Christ were widely available at the time (and they weren’t, for most people), much of what Jesus said didn’t sound like philosophical wisdom. (“Those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” It’s tough to find the logic in that.) And to have him finish in such a shameful way… The message of the cross seemed like folly.

What about the Jews? They sought “signs”—they looked for displays of power. The Jews were waiting on their Savior, the Messiah, and their point of reference for what that Messiah would look like was someone like the great King David, who defeated Israel’s enemies and brought the kingdom to prosperity during his reign. A Messiah who commits blasphemy by saying he’s God and allows himself to be crucified… Such an idea wasn’t just folly to them, but outright offensive.

“The Jews seek signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.” The gospel takes all of our ideas of what is powerful and desirable and worthwhile, and turns them all on their heads; it flips the world upside-down.

And strangely, this is what many people who call themselves Christians today still stumble over. Many Christians come to the faith mainly for what they can experience—through what they think God can do for them. They want to solutions to their problems; they want to see signs of power; they want to experience something incredible. But Christianity has never been defined by the experience of visible power. It has always been defined by the cross.

That is why experience-based ministry can never produce saving faith. If someone has already been saved by the gospel of Christ, then a miracle can be a helpful encouragement, and thank God that he does still do these kinds of things. But they are not the center of our faith, because experiencing a miracle will never save a soul. Only those whom the gospel saves, and only those whom the gospel has saved, see the gospel’s power.

Which is what Paul says in v. 24:

to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.

It’s not a question of intelligence—it’s not at all surprising that the Jews and Greeks outside the church rejected the gospel, because for them the gospel is folly, it’s offensive. But to those who are called, to those whom God has saved, the message of the cross—this ultimate display of weakness and vulnerability—is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And the church itself is the first picture of that reality.

The Gospel in the Church (1:26–31)

Paul does not pull his punches. V. 26:

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

Let’s just be honest: none of us are as great as we’d like to be. And that’s fine—that’s actually intentional. Thank God, there are in the world some people in positions of power who are Christians. But in most churches, you won’t find presidents or prime ministers; you’ll find ordinary people. People who have ordinary jobs and who live ordinary lives, people whom the world may not see as wise or powerful or noble.

God does this on purpose: he populates churches with ordinary human beings whom the world will typically not think much of. The question is why? V. 27:

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

V. 27-28 are tricky, because they’re a little cryptic. What are the “foolish” things in the world that shame the wise? What are the “weak” things, the “low and despised things,” the “things that are not”?

The answer, I think, is two-layered. The first layer is Christ. We’ve already seen why the world would consider Christ weak, low and despised, of no account. Through the wisdom of Christ, God will shame the wise. Through the weakness of Christ, God will shame the strong. The message of the cross will ultimately show that all of the foundations on which we have built our ideas of our own greatness are in fact worthless.

The second layer, though, is the church. Of course, Paul’s not saying that the church will shame the wise, shame the strong, nullify the significant, in the course of our lives. He’s speaking eschatologically—he’s speaking about things that will happen at the end. When Christ returns to judge the world, the wise and the strong and the powerful, who depended on their own strength to save them, will be proven weak and foolish and low. Those who will not be brought low will be those who have placed their faith in Christ—the ordinary human beings in our churches, who have trusted in him alone for their salvation.

The point Paul’s trying to help the Corinthians to see here isn’t that the strong and the wise and the powerful will be put to shame. His point is that no one in the church in Corinth has anything in themselves to boast about. No human being can boast in the presence of God, because through the cross, God dismantles all of our ideas of what greatness really is. The cross shows us that the only thing we have to boast in before God is God himself. V. 30:

30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

God has brought us into Christ by his own power. And he has shown to us that our crucified Savior, who paid the price for ur sin (that’s righteousness and redemption), who gave us his perfect life (that’s sanctification), who was raised from the dead and who now reigns in heaven (that’s power), is what true greatness looks like. He is our wisdom; he is our sanctification. He is our redemption.

The composition of the church proves the message of the cross.

And lastly, since the church itself displays the power of God in weakness, Paul wants to display the same principle through his ministry.

The Gospel in Ministry (2:1–5)

Chapter 2, verse 1:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

We saw this a little bit last week, but now Paul brings it up again. He did not come to Corinth with displays of rhetorical brilliance (even though he probably could have). He did not come proclaiming the gospel with “lofty speech or wisdom.” He preached a simple message in a simple way.

The center of his message was Christ crucified, and he proclaimed it in a way that didn’t seem convincing. His speech and message weren’t in “plausible words of wisdom,” but “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

In other words, the messenger matched the message. Paul let God do all the work. We’ll see this more in next week’s text, but the demonstration of the Spirit and power he speaks of are not mainly seen in miracles. They are mainly seen when someone hears this crazy message Paul is preaching—folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews—and instead of responding with rejection, they say, “Wait—this is true. The gospel is the truth! This is how I can be saved—through a crucified Savior!”

The only way any human being will come to that realization is through the power of the Holy Spirit. A crucified Savior will convince no one outside of God’s intervention. Paul preached one unified message, without rhetorical flourishes, in weakness and trembling… And the result was faith that rested not on human persuasion, but on the power of God.

Conclusion

The Corinthians wanted a Christianity that kept the cross but upgraded it with worldly wisdom. But the moment you try to upgrade the cross, you lose the cross.

If a ministry relies on the charisma of its leaders, the technique of its teachers, or some other sort of branding, it contradicts the message it claims to believe. Paul’s model goes the other way: he displays weakness in himself, while preaching the cross clearly and depending entirely on the Spirit to do the work of saving people.

Same thing in the church. Programs, activities and social engagement are not bad things in a church. But if a church needs these things to look impressive, then it has already drifted from the cross. A church shaped by the cross will look strange, because it will be filled with people who don’t seem all that exceptional. But because they are depending on the Spirit and keeping the cross the center of their lives, what will we see? We will see power; we will see people come to Christ through this crazy message we preach.

And it’s the same thing for each one of us. If we still feel the need to prove ourselves, then we betray the fact that the cross actually isn’t central in our lives. If our lives are shaped by the cross—if the cross defines us—then we no longer need to prove ourselves. We no longer need to be exceptional. We no longer need to seem wise. We no longer need to be convincing. All we need to do is trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and live lives that are shaped by that grace we have received.

That will radically change everything we do as individuals, as a church, and in ministry. Because none of it will be about us. Everything will be from him and through him and for him. And we will be overjoyed to let him take center stage.

30 And because of [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

The Absurdity of Division & the Cross of Christ (1 Corinthians 1.10-17)

One of the truths the Bible teaches about marriage is that whatever should happen in a church, should also happen on a smaller scale in the home. So I’m going to start by using marriage as an example. Most of you know a little bit about my marriage to Loanne, but it’s just too appropriate an illustration to not use it today.

Loanne and I have been married for longer than some of you have been alive—it will be 23 years in April. Our marriage happened very quickly: we met in mid-February 2003, and we were married at the end of April—nine weeks later. So we didn’t have time to actually get to know one another before we get married.

We should have, because if we had given it a bit more time, we would have realized that we have nothing in common. We like some of the same music, some of the same books, but pretty much nothing else. In our day-to-day lives, it’s an easy bet that if I would do things one way, Loanne would do that same thing the opposite way.

So reading what the apostle Paul says in v. 10 can seem almost ridiculous, in the context of our marriage.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

Loanne and I agree on almost nothing. We do not have the same mind, we do not have the same judgment. So how can we possibly obey what Paul says here? How can we not be “divided”?

And when we take this verse in the context of the entire church (which is its proper context), we could ask the same question. How could any church ever truly be “united”? When you have this many people, there are bound to be disagreements—even profound disagreements—among our members. How could we ever really be united in the same mind and the same judgment?

That’s the question of today’s text, and it’s a question we’ll keep coming back to over the course of the next weeks and months.

If you remember, last week Paul began his letter to the Corinthians by affirming the work of God in their church. God has shown them his grace in Jesus Christ, he has sanctified them and called them to be saints, and he has enriched them in every gift they would need to persevere until Christ’s return.

All of these things are true, and will remain true. But it is possible to live with a deep disconnect between what is true about us and how we’re actually living. And that disconnect is woefully present among the Corinthians.

So now that he’s established what is true about them, Paul is going to begin addressing the many problems in their church. The first problem Paul highlights in his letter, following his encouraging introduction, is that of division in the church.

Be United (v. 10-12)

Paul makes no transition. He reminds the Corinthians in v. 9 that they have been called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And because they are all in fellowship with Christ, because they have all been saved by Christ and are in Christ, that necessarily implies that they should be in fellowship with one another.

That’s why Paul says (v. 10):

10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

This appeal Paul makes is not a suggestion; he’s not giving advice. He appeals to them by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So he’s invoking Christ’s authority as Christ’s apostle: this command is non-negotiable. Divisions among you are unacceptable, he says: Be united.

And the unity to which he calls them well-defined, not vague. He says, “be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”

It’s important to understand what he means here. He’s not talking about uniform personality or identical opinions: he’s talking about shared identity, and shared trajectory.

Let’s come back to the example of my marriage to Loanne. Like I said, we could not be more different. We disagree all the time. And we’ve had some hard periods in our marriage because of that; no one said it would be easy. So how is it that we’re still married today? How is it that we really are “united”?

Because no matter what things we don’t have in common, there are two main things that have united us, from the very beginning.

First, we have a shared identity. We are both disciples of Christ, children of God, saved by grace through faith, united to one another as brother and sister in Christ. Our identity comes from the same source, and it doesn’t at all depend on similarities of personality or opinion.

We also have a shared trajectory. From the very beginning, for everything on which we disagreed, we have always agreed on the one essential thing: what is the goal of our marriage? If you’re newlyweds, of if you’re engaged, or if you’d like to be married one day, listen closely, because this is important. The goal of marriage is not to make one another happy; it’s not to fulfill one another’s needs. The goal of marriage is to glorify God by displaying the gospel to the world through the life we live together.

That is the goal. We are coming from the same place, and we are going in the same direction, and we are using the same means—the grace and gifts God has given us in Christ—to do it.

That is what it means to “be united in the same mind and the same judgment”. The goal of marriage is also the goal of the church. It is unity in the way we live out the gospel with one another, for the sake of the glory of God. This means being united in our identity and our trajectory. It means having the same basis for judgment (which is what God has revealed to us in his Word). It means having the same authority that guides our decisions (not our own opinions or reason, but again, what God has revealed to us in his Word).

Today, churches tend to normalize division, because fighting for unity amongst diversity is hard work. If it gets hard, just find another church. Paul doesn’t do that. Paul doesn’t tell the church to “try to get along.” He treats division in the church as a contradiction of their calling, a contradiction of who they are in Christ.

And we can see this is what he’s getting at—that the division is coming from mistaken identity rather than simple disagreement—when he explains why he’s saying these things. V. 11:

11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

We don’t know who Chloe or her “people” were, and it doesn’t matter—the point is that Paul names his source. The problem is public and verified. This isn’t a rumor; it’s a problem the Corinthians can observe among themselves, and that they can’t deny.

12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

Apollos was a well-known Christian teacher at the time, whom Paul knew personally, and Cephas is another name for the apostle Peter. The point isn’t whom these people claim to follow; the problem is that they are identifying with whom they claim to follow.

Even those who say “I follow Christ” are part of the problem, not because they follow Christ—he’s the one we should all be following—but because they say they follow Christ in comparison to everyone else. In the church of Corinth, little clans have popped up, clans that identify with specific people rather than with the message of the gospel.

And if we think things are better today, we are hopelessly naïve.

Loyalty to celebrity leaders, adherence to certain teachers as a way to signal status… These things are alive and well in our Internet age, and in the context of evangelical churches in France—a world which is relatively small. It’s easy to “follow” a hundred different teachers, and even feel loyal to them, to the detriment of the gospel.

I hesitated before bringing it up, but it’d be sort of strange if I didn’t: a couple of years ago, this church was nearly divided because of just this sort of thing. A group of people in the church felt an aberrant loyalty toward another pastor, and tried to sow division in our church by pitting their group against those who wanted to stay in Connexion. We didn’t care that these people didn’t feel loyal toward us; we cared that they were pressuring faithful church members to leave, by suggesting those who remained at Connexion were actually being unfaithful. We cared that they had turned the situation into “us versus them”.

God was gracious, and we came out of that situation stronger, but it was incredibly painful.

Christians today still build identity around leaders, tribes, platforms and traditions. To be clear, we’re not talking about having different types of churches built around different types of theology. There are many churches with whom we disagree with them on some secondary but important theological points. It would be very difficult, and ultimately harmful, to just combine and form a single church together, because this sort of clan-thinking would quickly surface.

But we are not divided from our brothers and sisters in these churches; there are good churches with whom we disagree on secondary issues. Our disagreements would make common ministry difficult, but we still share the central beliefs of the Christian faith; they are still our brothers and sisters.

That is not the “division” we’re talking about. We’re talking about division in the midst of a single local church, based upon different ideas of who we are, and where we are going. This sort of thinking is natural, but for those who have been saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, it makes no sense. And Paul shows that it makes no sense by asking three surgical questions.

The Absurdity of Division (v. 13-16)

We find all three of them in v. 13; we’ll take them one by one.

First:

Is Christ divided?

Of course not; the idea is absurd. We have one Jesus Christ, one Savior, one Lord, who has saved one people. If Christ is not divided, neither is his church.

Second:

Was Paul crucified for you?

Of course the answer to this question is also no. But Paul isn’t asking the question because he thinks the Corinthians don’t know the answer; he’s asking the question to redirect their loyalty.

Loyalty in the church is never meant to be directed toward a person, or a tradition, or a theology, or or a culture. Loyalty belongs where salvation occurred. Christ saved his people by living our life and dying our death and being raised again to give us life. He saved us at the cross. So Christ and his work alone deserve our loyalty.

Third:

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Again, no. When anyone is baptized, they are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baptism explicitly names ownership. Christians belong to God, not to pastors or preachers or ministers.

His point is that division within a local church isn’t just bad behavior; it’s theological nonsense.

And Paul shows how little sense it makes by downplaying his own role. V. 14:

14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)

I love that Paul can’t remember exactly whom he has baptized; that ambiguity in his own mind is exactly the point. It doesn’t matter who baptized whom. It doesn’t matter if he’s the one who baptized, or if it was someone else. Paul refuses to let baptism become a badge of pride. There is no cult of personality here, no “my pastor is better than yours.”

Paul makes much of Christ and little of the church’s leaders, even himself. And that’s the way it should be.

When I was a young Christian, no pastor was more helpful to me than John Piper. I found his ministry online, and Piper’s teaching was one of the foundational pillars of my faith in those early years; John Piper is the pastor who taught me how to read the Bible.

So you can imagine what it was like for me when I became a pastor and had the opportunity to meet John Piper for the first time. And then, some time later, I had the chance to spend time with him, to have dinner with him! (And he remembered me!) I’m not too proud to admit there was a good bit of hero worship there.

It took me a long time to realize that my admiration of John Piper, while not inappropriate, could easily have sent me in a direction similar to what we see in these verses. And it would have gone completely against everything I’ve ever heard Piper say, because all he’s ever wanted is to point people to Christ, and his work, and his glory. It’s the double-edged sword of being a good teacher: all you want is to make much of God, and people begin making much of you.

We do need leaders, and there’s nothing wrong with being thankful for the faithful leaders God has provided. But we do not draw our identity from the leaders who have helped us. Ministers in the church are not figureheads; they are interchangeable servants, pointing us to the work of Christ.

The Center of the Ministry: The Cross of Christ (v. 17)

And that’s what Paul says last, in v. 17:

17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Paul’s mission is not to become the figurehead of the early Christian church by baptizing as many people as possible; his mission is to preach the gospel.

And the way he preached was just as important as the content of his preaching.

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he mentions one criticism that was often pointed at him. 2 Corinthians 10.10:

For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.”

In other words, the guy writes well, but when he speaks, he’s fairly unimpressive.

Paul says here in v. 17 that this is intentional. He says, “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom.”

The culture of the city of Corinth valued eloquence; they valued rhetorical showmanship; they valued someone’s ability to make a good speech. If the speech was well-prepared and well-delivered, it was generally more convincing.

And of course, we see this today as well. The person who is able to find the best punchline is the person everyone will remember.

Paul wants to intentionally steer clear of this kind of mentality. He refuses a ministry whose efficiency is based on performance. He refuses to rely on his education (which was extensive), his oratorical skills (which, we see in the book of Acts, were sharp), or his personality. When he preaches the gospel, he does it simply, in a manner that’s not eloquent or impressive.

Why? “Lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power,” he says. That is his controlling concern.

The good news of the finished work of Christ is enough. The work of the Holy Spirit to take the gospel that is proclaimed and use it to wake people up, to bring them from death to life, is enough. Christ doesn’t need Paul to be eloquent. He doesn’t need Paul to be a good preacher.

He needs Paul to be faithful in his proclamation of the good news. That’s it.

Conclusion

Division amongst Christians happens all the time. And 99% of the time, that division makes no gospel sense.

How can a marriage like my marriage with Loanne work? It can only work if our marriage is not the center of our marriage. It can only work if Christ and his cross are the center of our marriage.

The same is true with every relationship, every endeavor, every aspect of our lives as Christians. And that’s what the Corinthians have not understood: the church fractures when anything or anyone other than Christ and his cross becomes the center.

We can see now why Paul began his letter the way he did, in the verses we saw last week. He wanted to remind the Corinthians of what God has actually done for them, because that’s where their identity truly is—and if that truth is kept central, the tracks will be laid for the gospel to do its work.

It won’t happen easily, and it won’t happen on its own; keeping the cross central is very hard work. But it’s the essential work of the church. Every problem Paul will address in this letter has that same root cause: in the church in Corinth, the cross has been displaced as the center.

The cross should level all markers of status. But in the church in Corinth, there’s division—their identity is built on human teachers rather than Christ crucified. This produces competition, pride and comparison.

The cross should remind us that Christ died to make a holy people. But in this church in Corinth, there is open sexual immorality and boasting about the sins they tolerate—their identity is built on cultural sophistication rather than holiness in Christ. This produces pride in sin rather than grief over sin.

The cross should absorb wrongs rather than retaliate. But in this church, Christians are suing one another publicly—their identity is built on personal rights and honor. This produces a public disgrace of the gospel.

The cross should remind us that Christ redeemed our bodies; we belong to him. But in this church, there is deep confusion over sexual ethics and the body—their identity is built on their idea of freedom, and their own appetites. This produces the feeling of Christianity with none of its substance.

The cross should show us that our worship is for him, not for ourselves. But in this church, worship is a disordered means of showing everyone else how good they are—their identity is built on gifts or spiritual experience.

I could go on. Every problem we see in this church—and most of the problems we’ll see in any church—is the same disease wearing different clothes. When something other than the cross becomes central, identity shifts. And when identity shifts, communion fractures, and sin gets the upper hand.

We can see this on a large scale, on the level of an entire church, but we can also see it in each of us as individuals. Every pattern of sin we see in our lives, in our relationships, in our jobs, in our pleasures, can always be traced back to something else slowly but steadily edging the cross of Christ to the margins and taking its place in the center.

It’s subtle, because most of the time, the things that edge out the cross of Christ are not bad things in themselves. We want to be happy in our homes, so we make happiness into an idol, and end up abusing our parents or our spouses or our kids. We want to be secure in our lives, so we make work into an idol, and end up making our careers the central goal of our lives. We want to feel good about ourselves, so we make validation into an idol, selfishly working for others’ approval rather than resting in the approval we already have in Christ.

No matter the sin, it’s the same problem with a different mask, and Paul’s solution is always the same: keep the cross central. Find your identity in Christ. Grow in your knowledge of the gospel, and let nothing eclipse the good news of Jesus Christ.

This is not easy to do, and it will require sacrifice—most often, that sacrifice is quite simple, and looks like staying and persevering rather than leaving when things get unpleasant. But that is our calling.

That is our job, and it is a job we cannot do on our own. We need one another to remind each other of what is true, and what is central. Keep your eyes on the cross. Help others keep your eyes on the cross. And let yourself be helped by them. We do not follow a leader, we do not follow an idea. Our loyalty belongs where our salvation was born. It belongs to the work and person of our Savior.