1 CORINTHIANS - Chapter 4

1 CORINTHINS – Chapter 4

Sunday Evening Service – September 2, 2012, the Year of Our Lord

Pastor Carolyn Sissom

In this chapter, the apostle Paul condemns the haughtiness and arrogance of the Corinthian believers.  He also presents the standard by which God judges His ministers. 

4: 1-2:  “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man is found faithful.”

Paul is saying, “This is how you should view Apollos and I—think of us as servants of Christ”.  Because they were under the authority of Christ, they were His servants.  Therefore everything they did was not a matter of their own work, but of their Master, Jesus.  It was to Him alone they had to give an account. 

Paul is showing how he and Apollos have no independent stature of their own, but occupy a position of trust in the service of their Master.

The estate, over which Paul and Apollos serve as stewards, consists of the mysteries of God.  The mysteries are secrets which man’s wisdom cannot fathom or penetrate.  They can only be learned by revelation.  God must reveal them to His servants.  God has many secrets.  The gospel  itself is a mystery.  For example, how can a man receive eternal life by listening to some words and taken them to heart?  Or how can a man be born again into God’s family?  Man himself is one of God’s mysteries.  Consider:  How can a spirit-being---and that’s what man is---occupy a physical body and each have its own separate life?  Our Spirit prays and intercedes for us even while we are sleeping.

 There are hundreds of more mysteries which no one can lay hold of except by revelation.

Paul says, the one thing a master requires of a slave placed in a high position, is that he be trustworthy.  This means he does the same job whether his master is watching or not, and that the master’s goods are safe in his hands.  Paul says that is the kind of men God seeks to put in charge of the gospel message.

4:3: “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of any man’s judgment; yea, I do not even judge my own self.  For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified; but He that judges me is the Lord.  Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall every man have praise of God.”

That the Corinthians presumed to judge Paul with regard to his stewardship was the least of his worries.  If they investigated him, their findings would be meaningless since they had no jurisdiction over him. 

As a matter of fact, any judgment he made concerning himself would be irrelevant for there is no way for a person to know himself as God knows him.  Paul says even though my conscience has nothing to say against me, that doesn’t mean I am totally innocent.  There is a lot about myself I simply can’t judge. 

Only God who sees the secret motives can make a valid judgment.  Paul knew that if he attempted to judge himself he might censure himself too harshly or rate himself too highly.  So then, if a man can’t judge himself, how can someone else possibly do it? 

If the Corinthian church were to advance in the Lord, this dreadful practice of exalting some and putting down others had to stop.  So powerful was this evil practice, that the minds of the Corinthians were fully taken up with it, leaving no place for the Word.  In effect they were playing God.

4: 6-7:  “These things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that you might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up one against another.  For who makes you different from another?  What have you that you did not receive?  If you did receive it, why do you glory, as if you had not received it?”

We don’t know what Paul means by “what is written.”  Possibly he had left some written instructions behind at Corinth.  No Old Testament passage comes close to dealing with this, so he must have been referring to some other source.  In any event, the Corinthian go beyond what is written. 

It is the pride Paul is attacking here.  It seems the cause of this pride is the spiritual gifts they have received.  This problem still exists today in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. 

Later Paul will spend three chapters dealing with their spiritual gifts and how they were being abused out of pride.

Paul is addressing each of us with, “How are you different from anyone else?”  The answer is implied:  “You’re no different from any other Christian.  You’re just a sinner saved by grace like the rest of us.”  Any feelings of superiority you have are pure presumption and born out of pride.

John 3:27:  “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven”.

4: 8-9: “Now you are full, now you are rich, you have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you.  For I think that God has set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men.

How do you tell people who feel they reached the zenith of spirituality, to endure hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 2:3)?  In their present state, that kind of talk would be nonsense to the Corinthians.  So Paul resorts to stinging sarcasm.  He knows the Corinthian's feel they have reached higher spiritual ground than the apostles.

When a Roman general returned from a victorious military campaign, he led a triumphant procession through the streets of the capitol.  At the very end of the procession came the captured king and dignitaries all connected by ropes about their necks.  These were destined to go into the arena to fight wild beasts or be slain by gladiators, which was usually the final event on the program.  These captives were looked upon as discards or throwaways who were spared on the battlefield to provide entertainment for the spectators filling the coliseum.

Paul says he and the other apostles are nothing more than the captives at the end of God’s procession.  Their sacrifice is witnessed by men and angels, the spectators of God’s big event.

4: 10-11:  “For Christ’s sake, we are viewed as fools, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, you are strong, you are honorable, but we are despised.  Even to this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place;”

The apostle continues to show how foolish it is to measure God’s servants by human standards.  So he describes how ridiculous he and Apollos look when the human measure is applied to them.  That’s the way the apostles appear to the eyes of the world.  They were truly indigent, lacking in food, drink and clothing. 

4: 12-13:  “And labor, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; Being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are the off-scouring of all things to this day.”

The apostle is not complaining.  He says they are treated as the filth (or trash) of the world.  This is the same way they treated the Lord Jesus.  The abuse he receives in the world serves only to bring the best out in him.  His persecutions and deprivations helped to make him the great man that he was.  He worked hard with his own hands to pay his own way in the world, which the Greeks despised.  They wanted to use their minds only, shunning all labor with their hands.

4: 14-16: “I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.  For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ; yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.  Wherefore I beseech you, be followers of me.”

Paul exhorts the Corinthians to follow his example.  Paul’s example is a good one.  He has sought only to follow the example of Jesus Christ.  They should heed his counsel and follow his example.  No doubt there were many teachers who aspired to that position of “Father” and to act as their “Apostle”. 

4:17: “For this cause have I sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which is in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.”

It seems Timothy as acting as the advance man preparing the way ahead of Paul.  Since this church had abandoned God’s wisdom to embrace man’s wisdom, Timothy could bring Paul’s feelings and authority to bear on the matter of division in the church.   Far from following what was written, they let themselves be guided by their carnal instincts.  Influenced by the devil and false apostles, they were steadily moving into sin and immorality.

4: 18-21: “Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you.  But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.  For the Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.  So you decide:  Shall I come to you with a rod or with a gentle, loving spirit of meekness?

One of the Gifts of the Spirit which had the Corinthians thinking they had arrived was the “gift of tongues”.  Paul will address this later.  With the church divided and the spiritual focus gone due to fussing with each other, it was easy for certain ones with the supernatural gifts  to try to usurp the authority.  With lots of ignorance and their old superstitious ways, they were mistaking the gifts for maturity and Christ-likeness.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit are wonderful and part of our great inheritance and blessedness.  But the distribution of those gifts is not a measure of Christ-likeness and His designated authority.

Taught by:  Pastor Carolyn Sissom

Eastgate Ministries, Inc.

www.eastgateminstries.com