Testing, 1 Corinthians
10:13; James 1:2
The first nine
verses of 1 Corinthians gives us the introduction.
Paul begins with thanksgiving, and the thanksgiving focuses on what the Corinthians have in Christ, what we have in Christ. What we are
going to discover in this epistle is that the Corinthians faced just about
every problem that people face in life, and they usually handled them the way
most people do, and that is the wrong way. So Paul has to straighten them out.
That is to our benefit because we get to listen in on his correction for them
and his instructions to them, and see how he handles them.
When we come to
verse ten we come to the first major section in this epistle. It covers from
verse 10 to the end of chapter four, and it is usually described as dealing
with divisions in the church. That is sort of the occasion for this remark
because there are four factions or cliques within the congregation that are
vying with one another for power. The interesting thing is the way Paul handles
that. Any church, any group of people, any company or business, has a tendency
for people to congregate together around certain leaders. That is just normal, it doesn’t have to be something that is negative.
Sometimes there are cliques that form, and when those cliques begin to
emphasize exclusion to other people that is when it becomes bad. But every time
a group of people get together there are always problems eventually and that is
because we are all sinners. Everybody has a sin nature and when people are
operating on arrogance eventually there is always going to be a breakdown in relationships, there are always going to be
problems.
The way modern
man wants to solve a problem is they want to get people together and sit around
a table and open up some manner of discourse to find out what the real problems
are, what the concerns are, what you are sensitive to, and find out what the
other person’s problem are, and we get into this kind of an inter-personal
dialogue based on all kinds of psychological models of human behaviour. The
problem is that most of us don’t realize that this whole approach to
problem-solving and inter-personal relationships and conflict management (they
call it) is always grounded on the psychological framework of looking at human behavior. Notice, here we have a church that is having some
major conflicts and schisms and we want to pay attention to how Paul handles
this. This is the divine viewpoint strategy for handling any personal problems.
He doesn’t do it by having people sit around, holding hands, going through some
sort of sensitivity training; he doesn’t handle it in any of the approaches
that we are used to in our conflict management, personnel management type of
approaches. The Scripture says that there is a different way to approach this
and that is from the framework of Scripture. Man always handles his problems
through various different techniques which we classify under the general
heading of human viewpoint and all of it is an outgrowth of pagan thinking.
(Paganism is not a pejorative term, is refers to any category of thinking that
is not biblical) So there are only two ways of looking at life, God’s way and
the pagan way, and there are only two strategies basically for dealing with
things in life and that is God’s way and the pagan way. So it is not just a
matter of what we do, it is also how we do things; it also affects methodology.
We are going to get a glimpse of that and how Paul addresses this issue of
divisions in the church at
A couple of observations before we get into the section of verses
10-17.
1)
First
of all, the divisions that exist in the church at
2)
What
Paul is correcting is the framework within which this congregation is looking
at their leadership. It is not a doctrinal problem,
therefore, it is more of a political problem. The terminology that is used here
is more often found in the language of politics, the language of a civil
government and the problems of a civil government. He doesn’t use language that
is related to doctrine.
3)
In
Paul’s correction he is consistently stressing wisdom in contrast to
foolishness. A vast number of all the times that the words foolishness and
wisdom are used in the New Testament they are used in these four chapters. That
is a major theme. When there are words like foolishness and wisdom used this
much in this sort of space it says something. So Paul is addressing the problem
by saying they are looking at life the wrong way—from their culture, not the
framework of the Scriptures.
In verse 10 we have a plea for unity, a
request. NASB “Now I exhort
you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and
that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same
mind and in the same judgment.” Paul addresses them
as brethren and says that he exhorts them to all agree and that there not be any divisions among them. Then in verse 11 he says how he
received this information that there were problems in the congregation, and in
verse 12 he tells us what these problems are: four different divisions within
the congregation relating to four different people. In verse 13 he skips his
subject and says, “Has Christ been divided?” So he is still talking about
division but he starts with division in v. 13 at the beginning and his last
phrase is “were you baptized in the name of Paul?” He moves from division to
baptism. Why is that? And then he spends the next three verses talking about
baptism and by the time he ends this paragraph in verse 17 he says Christ did
not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel. He starts the section by
talking about the fact that there are divisions and problems in the
congregation, moves through the subject of baptism, and ends with the gospel.
Then he is going
to move from the cross, defined as the real power of God in v. 18, and begin to
contrast that, the gospel as the power of God, with the wisdom of this age, in
v. 20. Ten times in these next chapters there is the mention of a fool or
foolishness in contrast to 26 mentions of a word related to wisdom—wisdom or
the wise, or something like that. That should tell us right away that the major
emphasis in this section is going to have to do with the contrast of God’s
wisdom with man’s wisdom which is classified as foolishness.
By verse 26 he
begins to contrast divine methodology with human methodology, and this includes
the whole concept of public speaking or preaching. Then in chapter two there is
a shift from the divine viewpoint and human viewpoint methodology to an
explanation of the mind of Christ. In verse 4 of chapter two he says: “my message and my preaching were not in persuasive
words of wisdom [relating to the understanding of Greek rhetorical style], but
in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” At that point he begins to talk
about the Holy Spirit and the role of the Holy Spirit in revelation, and that
is going to be the subject of verse 6 down to the end of the chapter—how the
Holy Spirit revealed the mind of Christ to us and how we are able to learn it.
We want to get the whole road
map here. He starts of with the divisions in the congregation. To solve the
problem of divisions and to help them understand why they need to quit this he
goes to baptism, then to the cross, then he deals with the contrast in the way
in which people think and approach life (human viewpoint vs. divine viewpoint),
then we get divine viewpoint from the Holy Spirit in the revelation of
Scripture, and then when we get to chapter three he is going to come back to
the division. Then he moves into rewards and the judgment seat of Christ. Why
is that? From the judgment seat of Christ he moves in vv. 16, 17 to emphasizing
the fact that every believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy
Spirit sets apart the body of the believer as a temple for the indwelling of
the Shekinah glory of Jesus Christ. From that he
comes back to the problem of foolishness vs. wisdom at the end of chapter
three, and then in chapter four he is going to apply everything he has said in
chapters two and three to the role of the apostles and apostolic authority, and
concluding in 4:20 by saying that the kingdom of God does not consist in words
but in power. Now you can’t understand that sentence of you don’t understand
everything that has gone before. That is why you always have to study things in
context. What he is saying here, “does not consist in
words,” is the Greek approach to rhetoric and oratory which put its emphasis on
style and manipulative techniques as opposed to content. So the power that he
mentions is power that is going to go back to an understanding of the cross and
what God has done for us at salvation, in contrast to the human viewpoint or
Greek culture approach which puts emphasis on words and the whole concept of a
group of men that were coming to the forefront at this time called sophists and
their whole methodology.
So to understand a lot of
what is going on here we will be looking at Greek culture and how that has
affected the people in the congregation. We are not any different from the
Corinthians. We were all saved out of a cultural context and we think a certain
way. But the way that we were taught to think and approach life and to
problem-solve is unique to our culture, but it is not necessarily biblical even
though it may be influenced by a certain amount of biblical truth that has a
sort of residual effect in our culture. It does not mean that the frame of
reference for our thought is biblical or that the framework of our thinking is
the framework of God’s thinking. The purpose of coming to church, the purpose
of the pastoral ministry, is to teach. We are here to learn how to think
biblically. One of the major themes in this section is that the Corinthians have failed to learn how to think biblically.
They are thinking just like unbelievers, they are operating like unbelievers
inside the congregation, and it is going to be emphasized again and again in
the entire epistle that they continue to think and act just like unbelievers
and are just like a new group—a new social group, a new club, or a new school
of thought and they are all calling themselves Christians now. They are not
thinking or acting any differently from the unbelievers around them. This is a
problem we still have—very much so in the church today—that most churches do
not understand that the purpose of what happens in the pulpit is to teach
people how to think differently.
In effect, what happens in
the process of spiritual growth is that God the Holy Spirit is demolishing the
thought forms, the value systems, the norms and standards, the thinking
methodology that we develop through years of human viewpoint training, and He
is erecting a new edifice. But of we don’t give Him the information through the
consistent detailed study of God’s Word, day in and day out, then there are no
tools and there are no materials for the Holy Spirit to reconstruct this new
edifice.
1 Corinthians 1:10 NASB “Now
I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all
agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete
in the same mind and in the same judgment.” Paul begins by using the verb PARAKALEO [parakalew], the present active indicative. This is the verb
form of the noun PARAKLETOS [paraklhtoj]
for the Holy Spirit, and it means literally to call alongside. As a noun it has
the idea of a helper or an assistant, and this refers to the Holy Spirit who is
the one who is our helper and assistant who enables us to live the spiritual
life; but as a verb it has a different set of meanings. It means to ask, to
request, in some cases it might even mean to beg, it means to appeal, to
summon. Its primary use in Greek rhetorical style or in oratory was to
introduce some sort of appeal that was designed to manipulate, to sway, or to
convince people. Paul doesn’t use it this way. If Paul was to use it that way
it would be in contrast to the very message that he was using it in. The word
basically was used in two different ways in the literature of the first
century. One was in this specific technical Greek rhetorical style where it was
designed to have some sort of manipulative aspect to it. Or it was used to make
a simple request, and that is how it should be translated here. “Exhort” in the
NASB
is not a good translation; it should be “I ask you” or “I request of you.” Paul
is making a request based on his apostolic authority. Then he says, “though the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and there he uses another technical
construction, the preposition DIA [dia]
plus the genitive. We have seen DIA plus the genitive in Ephesians 2:8, 9—“by grace you
have been saved through faith.” DIA plus the genitive always has the idea of means or instrumentality, that it is through something, not because
of something. He is asking this through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Lord Jesus Christ is the one who commissioned him as
an apostle and sent him on a particular mission, and as an apostle he is a
direct representative of the Lord Jesus Christ and he is laying the foundation
of the church, according to Ephesians 2:20. So the Lord Jesus Christ is working
through the apostles in directing the church. Sp Paul is once again reminding
them of his apostolic authority which is a major issue with the Corinthians.
They are going to question his credentials and whether he really has authority
over them. So Paul begins by emphasizing his apostolic authority. The “name”
always emphasizes the character of someone; in other words, because of who Jesus Christ is.
The term “brethren” is a term
that is all-inclusive of men and women in the congregation and is a term related
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So here again we are emphasizing the fact
that all of these messed-up, screwed-up, confused, carnal Corinthians are all
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul has authority over them as an
apostle. Her ask of them, “that you all agree.” This is not in a doctrinal
sense because the issue is not talking about doctrine. He says, “that there be no divisions among you.” This is the Greek
word SCHISMA [sxisma]
which can refer to strong divisions, but it can also refer to just differences
in thinking or differences in judgment. It was used to describe some things
that were torn apart physically, or literally ripped apart, and is was also used in a metaphorical sense to describe
division between people. This use of division between people can be traced as
far back as Herodotus in the 5th century. It was also used in the
first century BC and then later by Clement of Rome in 96 AD when he was
referring, once again, to divisions in the Corinthians church. Some churches have
been deeply divided over doctrine but they tend to split into different
congregations. This is till one congregation so the problem of divisions here
is real but it is not so deep and rigid that is it causing the congregation to
split into different congregations. But there are disagreements and the cliques
that have developed in the Corinthian church and for the next 50 years it is
going to be plagued by this same kind of problem. Paul is requesting them that
they agree and that there not be any divisions among
them.
These divisions, as we will
see, always come from mental attitude sins and the sin nature. In verse 11 says
that Chloe’s people have informed him that there are quarrels among them, and
this is the same word used for strife in Galatians 5:20, which talks about this
as being one of the manifestations of the works of the flesh or the sin nature.
Paul is countering that and he says they need to have the same kind of thinking
and the same judgment. The word that is translated here “same mind [thinking]”
and “same judgment” are words that are used typically in political discourse of
the day.
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