Welcome to Episode 5 in Series 1, as we study 1 Corinthians for Word Online. In 1 Corinthians Paul deals with some very practical and extremely difficult issues in local church life. It is one of the best places we can go to get help if we are finding difficulty in our local church communities. I think Paul must have found this a very painful situation.

Recap and Background

He spent 18 months establishing the church and bringing a large number of converts together in the church during that time. When he was in another country, he received a message from a group of people in the church to say that there were many problems in the church, and he needed to do something to help. At the time, he wasn’t able to go back. So, how did Paul feel when he wrote this letter? He realised the church was divided and there were lots of problems arising out of that church division. He must have felt incredibly upset, and, in a fatherly kind of way felt he wanted to go there. Some of you know how it feels as a parent: your child is injured, or hurt, or confused, and you want to be with them. Everything in you, the instinct, is to be there. Paul couldn’t do that at the time. He was in Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey; Corinth was in Greece. He had other ministry responsibilities. The only thing he could do was to write a letter. When you write a letter in those circumstances, you put a lot of emotion into it. Paul had a lot of very deep emotions. He was a clear thinker, intelligent, and well-educated, and could write very precise theology, like in the letter to Romans, but most of the time he speaks from his heart. He feels very concerned about the situation, and there is a lot of emotion in the book of 1 Corinthians. You are going to feel some of those emotions in this episode as we look at 1 Corinthians 4.

He has been speaking in 1 Corinthians 3 about the unique place of church leaders and the focus in this section (chapters 2 and 3) is about local church leaders and how they should function. We saw Paul explaining that leaders who are corrupt, selfish, looking for personal gain, financial gain, or are sexually corrupt in the local church, will be severely judged by God on the Day of Judgment because it is such a big responsibility and so important that local church leaders are servants to their churches. You must literally lay down much of your own life and freedom, to be a local church leader. It is not a role you seek to gain status in society; it is a servant role. He made that clear in the last chapter. Now we are continuing to think about these things.

Christian Leadership

“This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it’s required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I’m judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It’s the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time, each will receive their praise from God. Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, ‘Do not go beyond what is written.’ Then you’ll not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

1 Corinthians 4:1-7, NIV

In this passage, Paul again says that leaders are servants. ‘You must regard Paul and Apollos,’ he says, ‘as servants to you’ - those who have been entrusted with a message; it is their job to communicate the message and serve the community. The idea of servant leadership is very difficult in many cultures of the world today, because leaders are those with a high status, who have much honour, often much wealth, and people give way to them and put them in a high position in all social circumstances - whether tribal leaders, cultural leaders, village elders, political leaders, military leaders, or business leaders. In most of our cultures, we give a lot of honour to those in leadership positions. Christian leadership is different from our cultural and secular forms of leadership. This is a constant challenge in every culture. Paul is alluding to this issue here. He is making it clear that the Corinthians have a wrong view of leaders. They are putting them into a higher position and not seeing them as servants.

But Paul is not making this idea up himself. He gets it from Jesus Christ. Jesus said, ‘I came not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many people.’ There was an occasion in Jesus’ ministry where there was a question of status amongst his own twelve Apostles. It is recorded in Matthew 20:20 onwards,

“Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons, and kneeling down, asked a favour of him. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked. She said, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right, and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”

Here was a very confident mother, who was pushing her children. I am sure you have come across such mothers in your culture. The sons of Zebedee are James and John the Apostles; the two brothers who are very important Apostles. She came to Jesus, knowing that he has already said that he is coming back in glory and power, and he is going to be the king ruling over Israel. She thought, ‘Here’s a great opportunity for my boys. Surely, they could be the most senior assistants to Jesus.’ To sit on the right hand and the left hand is a cultural sign of authority, respect, dignity and power. There were twelve Apostles, and they had been given a special role. Jesus had already made it clear that Peter was the senior Apostle, but she ignored all that. She said, ‘What about James and John, Jesus? What about my sons?’

“Jesus answered, ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink?’ ‘Oh, we can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right and my left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.’”

When Jesus says, ‘drinking of the cup’, he means suffering. He is saying that they are going to suffer. There is a cost of being a leader. There is always a cost to being a Christian leader.

“When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’”

This well-known incident in the Gospels makes us smile sometimes, because we see the humanity of the two boys wanting promotion and the mother wanting to push her children forward. We see that in our own characters, and in our own families, and friends.

Jesus is starting a new form of leadership here, and the church of Jesus Christ that is effective and powerful and filled with the Holy Spirit must have servant leaders who are not there primarily for status, or money, or power. Paul places this issue at the centre of his dealings with the Corinthian church. It appears that the leaders who were there were corrupted by power. He doesn’t name them, but he talks about the corruption of power and the risks of that in very clear terms.

Another thing that he says that helps us to evaluate leaders is seen in verse 6, where he says that they would understand the meaning of the saying, ‘Do not go beyond what is written.’ He claimed that the Christian message, the gospel message, is based entirely on the Old Testament scriptures, which were the Bible of the time that they were using in the early churches.

One way that you can test the quality of a church leader is their accuracy and depth of Bible teaching. 

An Emotional Outburst

“Already you have all you want! Already become rich! You’ve begun to reign - and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we might also reign with you. For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We’ve been made a spectacle for the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We’re fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We’re weak, but you’re so strong! You are honoured, we are dishonoured! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty. We are in rags, we’re brutally treated, we’re homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world - right up to this moment.”

1 Corinthians 4:8-13, NIV

In this passage, Paul’s emotions are coming at us. He is speaking in very strong language here to tell the Corinthians, that they were making a mess of things because their leadership structures were not working. They were coming into conflict with each other, and not showing real respect for the Apostles, or for Paul himself, who founded the church. Paul and the Apostles were suffering in their ministry, and the Corinthian leaders were making a mess of the local church situation. Paul felt very deeply about this. Sometimes when he feels deeply, his emotions come out and he makes very strong contrasts. He is trying to make them feel ashamed of how they are.

He said he was suffering. What was he suffering from? He was suffering by not having enough money for food and clothing; sometimes he was persecuted; he hadn’t always got a place to rest at night - he was homeless; and often, he was cursed. People cursed him for the message that he was bringing - particularly the Jewish people in the synagogues who often opposed him. He was constantly under pressure and suffering for the gospel.

Paul’s emotions come out here, and he desperately wanted them to sort out their local church situation and not destroy the work that he had built.

Spiritual Parenthood

“I’m writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I’ve sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. But I’ll come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking but whose power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod of discipline, or shall I come to you in love and with a gentle spirit?”

1 Corinthians 4:14-21, NIV

Paul speaks here of arrogant people in the church. It is obvious, from this passage, that when he received a message from the church, from Chloe’s household, which is referred to in 1: 11, telling of all the problems, one of the things they identified was that there were some people in the church who were against him.

The arrogant are saying, ‘Oh, don’t bother about Paul. Let’s do things a bit differently here.’ Behind this passage is a lot of pain, because Paul put eighteen months of his life into developing this Christian community, and when he went away, other people were undermining what he did. Imagine it in this way: imagine you are the father of a happy family with five children. One day you are called to go and work in another country for a year. You say to your wife, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go, and I have to work in another country. We’ll get some good money. I’ll be back at the end of the year.’ After about three months, you hear, when you’re in the other country, that another man has come into the household as a friend, an uncle, and he is influencing your children. He is visiting every day, and he is taking the older children to start drinking and things like that. Imagine how you would feel. This is your family, but you are in another country. You can’t get to them. You can’t be the father that you want to be. The mother is really struggling and there is this influential man in the village who is promising money and support and getting the children to do things they shouldn’t be doing. You feel so upset because you are in another country. Can you imagine that kind of situation? That is how Paul felt. These arrogant men were messing up his family, his children. Paul says, ‘I’m the spiritual father and you are my children.’

He draws a distinction between guardians and fathers. This is important. ‘You can have many guardians, but you only have one father’. A guardian in the ancient world was like a schoolteacher or tutor. When you think of this, it makes sense of what Paul is saying. There can be many people teaching, giving knowledge away, but Paul was their father, and he gave them not only knowledge, but life. They had a unique relationship with Paul because he brought them to Christ. He wanted to stress to them that other people may come teaching all sorts of different things, but they had a totally different relationship with him. We find that the relationship of church leaders and pastors, and in Paul’s case an Apostle, towards the church can be understood quite meaningfully in a family analogy, as a father and children.

In fact, Paul also says in 1 Thessalonians 2 that he acted like a mother to them as well, using the parental analogy again. 1 Thessalonians 2: 7b - 8, ‘Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel, but our lives as well.” He said his role is principally a father, but also like a nursing mother - a mother with a newborn child who is feeding the child and caring for its every need.

The interesting point emerging from this very emotional passage is that healthy churches should be seen primarily as families. The role of pastors primarily is a role of spiritual fatherhood, where you are not only teaching but your example, experience, maturity and encouragement is bringing life to the younger Christians. They are literally growing up because of the relationship they have with you, as well as the truth that you are teaching them. That is a very profound reality. The test of a church leader in this context is whether they can be that sort of person. This is not somebody who controls the church, or who prevents young children from growing up and becoming strong. That is not good fatherhood. Good fatherhood is to help people grow stronger and to be able to stand on their own feet, and become more and more capable - releasing them and strengthening them. That is what Paul wanted to do, but he couldn’t do it because he was so far away. Meanwhile, arrogant people were coming in saying, ‘Oh, forget about Paul. We’re going to change the doctrine here and we’re going to do this and change that and don’t worry about all these moral issues that are developing in the church. We can have a 'free for all' when we worship together. We don’t have to have things in order.’ All these things we are going to hear about later in the letter.

Reflections

You, as an individual believer, and I, have a need for spiritual parenthood - people to nurture and encourage us, and lead us on. Male role models, female role models and leaders are tremendously helpful. All the way through my Christian life, I have always tried to have a mentor or a friend, who I see as a spiritual father, and until this day, I have usually one or two people like that in my life, who I will meet and talk to and pray with and ask questions to help me. I believe it is very important and especially if we are new Christians.

The responsibilities of church leadership are very great. We focussed on some of the criticisms Paul made of the leaders in Corinth but let me now turn this around as we conclude. How can we, if we are church members, support our church leaders? This is the other side of the issue. There are three things that we can do that will make our church leaders stronger. First of all, we can humble ourselves. If we are in a church, we should adopt an attitude of humility towards leaders. 1 Peter 5: 5 says, “In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders.” Secondly, we can pray for our church leaders. They are not perfect. They make mistakes and they need our prayers. Please pray for the leaders in your church regularly. And thirdly, ask yourself the question, ‘What ministry, or work, can I do in the local church which supports those leaders?’ So, we can humble ourselves, we can pray for our leaders, and we can participate in the ministry of the church to make the church a stronger place and support the leaders that we have.

Every episode in our study of 1 Corinthians is challenging. There are difficult texts and there are difficult emotions that Paul brings to the surface, but they are very helpful because they shed light on important issues that we feel and experience as members of local churches, or as leaders of local churches today.