You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings?
1 Corinthians 3:3-4 NIVUK
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.
Ephesians 2:14-17 NIVUK
While I was on my way to becoming a missionary, there were a few misunderstandings with some members of my church.
You see, my parents brought me up across three denominations. I started out in my local Baptist church. My parents had some issues there that I don't want to go into now, so they felt it was better for them to leave. My mother had lived a tough life and had been rescued from the streets by the Salvation Army, so my parents thought we could go there. So we did.
Later on, we drifted towards a charismatic church that met in our town – at least, the rest of my family did. I couldn't settle there. I saw a few things there that I wasn't happy with. So I returned to the Baptist Church on my own.
When I was at university, I joined the Christian Union. I mixed freely with people from many different Evangelical churches. I had no problem with that.
So when I started to dip my toes in short-term mission, I knew something for sure: I was determined not to go with only my denominational mission agency.
Not that I have anything at all against the Baptist Missionary Society. They are a fine agency.
But I had seen some incredibly narrow-minded people within all the denominations I had been a part of. I had seen incredible arrogance – as if they had the sole and exclusive copyright on the truth. And that itself was not true. I felt that if I went on mission with a Baptist agency and studied with in a Baptist theology college, I wouldn’t have a broad appreciation of Christians from other backgrounds. I felt like my growth would be stunted.
I felt like I needed a wider experience than that.
So my first overseas missions trip was with the International Federation of Evangelical Students. My second was with Operation Mobilisation, and I spent three years working with them. In between times, I served with Youth With a Mission and the Scottish Baptist Union's ‘Step Out’ missions.
I ensured I had a rounded exposure to missions.
But it didn’t go down well with everyone.
On more than one occasion, someone walked up to me and asked, ‘What are you doing going on mission with them?’
And that is precisely the problem. It was the problem in Corinth. Paul also dealt with it in Ephesus and in Philippi, not to mention Rome. It was endemic in a church that was founded from differing ethnic and social and linguistic groups.
God’s people had an ‘us and them’, adversarial relationship with each other.
Has anything changed?
Well, most of us don't wear togas or turbans to church.
But apart from that, not much.
You see, there were three areas where the Corinthian church was divided, and where the modern church is still divided.
The first is over identity. Take a look at this searing indictment from Paul:
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: one of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptised in the name of Paul?
1 Corinthians 1:10-13 NIVUK
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings?
1 Corinthians 3:1-4N IVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/1co.3.1-4.NIVUK
So even though Paul, Peter and Apollos were in the same ministry and had the same message, the Corinthian church was divided over which of them they should follow!
Do you think this is utterly ridiculous?
How many so-called Christians take great delight in forming themselves into little cliques and clusters and denominations, and then pledging their allegiance to some dead theologian or other? ‘I’m a Calvinist.’ ‘I’m an Arminian.’ ‘I’m a Lutheran.’
Or how many Christians are happier to wave the flag of their denomination like it's a nation and they are a patriot, but aren’t as excited to bear the name of Christ?
Paul destroys this notion. Absolutely obliterates it.
His argument is this: these theologians are nothing; these denominations are nothing; your labels of ‘evangelical’, ‘baptist’, ‘pentecostal’, ‘reformed’, ‘catholic’, ‘protestant’, ‘orthodox’, ‘salvationist’, ‘congregational’, ‘independent’... every single one of them is nothing. No, they are less than nothing – compared to the glory of naming ourselves as ‘Christian’.
Nothing else matters. Not one bit.
And it’s about time the church in the west realised it.
Have we looked through our stained glass windows for just one second? Have we not seen that our culture is not just on its way to hell, but holding parades to celebrate the fact? And while these parades pass by our churches, we’re arguing over people who only had a tiny fraction of the picture of what God is like and using their restricted vision as a means to feel superior over our brother or sister?
It’s time to wake up, before it’s too late.
If we identify ourselves firstly by any label other than Christian, then we are communicating to a watching world that this identity – whatever it may be – is more important to us than our identity as a Christian. And that will never do.
Secondly, they had a major issue over legality:
If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court – and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters.
1 Corinthians 6:1-8 NIVUK
We live in a highly litigious society. We live in a world where a woman can sue McDonald’s because her coffee was too hot and win $2.6 million.
Or where a man can sue Red Bull because their advert claimed it ‘gives you wings’ when it clearly does not – and Red Bull settled out of court for $640,000.
Or where two young guys sued the American railway company Amtrack because they trespassed on Amtrack land and were badly burned by electrical wires. The trespassers were awarded $24.2 million.
Next to this insanity, suing your brother or sister in Christ to resolve an agreement seems quite a sane thing to do. All least you’ll reach a legal settlement. So it can’t be that wrong, right?
Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
You see, Paul describes Jesus Christ as follows:
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Colossians 1:19-20 NIVUK
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:17-19 NIVUK
So the purpose that Christ fulfilled when He came to the earth was not just to die for our sins and save us as individuals, it was also to reconcile all things to Himself, and to reconcile us with each other.
That is why we see these words:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-28 NIVUK
It’s not that these identities and labels cease to exist; it’s that following Jesus means more.
So God works so hard that it costs His Son His life to unify us and bring us together.
Then we, His body, His church, decide to settle our differences in public in front of a secular judge.
How will that play out? What will the judge think? Or the jury? Or the world?
‘This Christianity is full of nonsense. They say Jesus reconciles all things to Himself. Well, here are two of His followers and they can’t agree! I guess it doesn’t work, then.’
That is what they will say.
Then tell me this: in what part of this shameful nonsense is Jesus Christ glorified and the Gospel communicated? At what point in this sorry mess is the Kingdom of God extended?
Let me tell you: it is not.
The Bible lays down the means for Christians to be reconciled (Matthew 5:23-26, 18:15-17). That reconciliation does not involve the civil courts. Christians who resort to the civil courts prove that they value beating the other party more than they value the Gospel.
The Corinthian church was also divided by morality. Paul details a shocking sexual sin that was being condoned by the leaders of the church (1 Corinthians 5:1-13).
And nothing much has changed. Sure, the nature of the sin might have changed, but the sinful nature has not. Still today, there are church leaders who tolerate sin. They believe that since God is love, He must therefore accept those who sin, regardless of their attitude towards it.
Paul is absolutely firm against this:
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Romans 6:1-2 NIVUK
You see, in Romans Paul followed an argument that goes like this:
We are sinners.
Christ died for our sins.
His death was an act of grace.
Therefore we should sin all the more so that His grace towards us will increase.
Paul’s answer to this? By no means!
Nowadays, people have a different argument. They say God is a god of love. Therefore He is tolerant. Therefore He must tolerate our sin. Therefore sin is not a problem.
This is also completely wrong.
God is a god of love, but how can He love something that harms and destroys His creation? He hates sin. He must hate sin. Otherwise He would be a terrible Father, an awful Creator and thoroughly unjust.
That doesn’t mean, as some rabid right-wingers have alleged, that ‘God hates gays’ or ‘God hates liberals’ or ‘God hates Democrats’.
That’s nonsense.
That’s projecting your hatred onto God and that will not do.
The God who loved the world (John 3:16), who sent His Son to die for us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8), cannot be said to hate sinners – and that includes homosexuals, liberals and Democrats.
But boy, does He hate sin!
To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behaviour and perverse speech.
Proverbs 8:13 NIVUK
‘For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
Isaiah 61:8 NIVUK
You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.
Psalms 45:7 NIVUK
As we saw earlier, a pattern has been set in place by Jesus Christ Himself to deal with sin in the church, and that pattern must be followed. We cannot divide the church over it.
There is a fourth source of division which wasn’t really an issue for the Corinthian church but was for many of the others. That source of division is ethnicity.
The Corinthian church was mostly Greek, so they didn’t have to deal so much with the acrimonious divisions between Jew and Gentile caused by what came to be known as the ‘Circumcision Group’ (Galatians 2:12-21). These were Phariseeical Jews who insisted that the Gentiles must follow their route to Jesus: first become Jews through circumcision, then become Christians.
This is something the Council at Jerusalem dealt with (Acts 15). Since God Himself had intervened to bring the Gentiles to faith (Acts 10:1-11:18), who were they to put further obstacles in their way?
You see, this issue with ethnic division manifests itself in two ways.
Firstly, there is segregation: where racial groups are kept apart. This is sometimes justified because a particular church caters for the needs of a specific ethnic group – such as an Iranian church or a Chinese church or a Filipino church or a Romanian church or a Polish church. These normally are found among immigrant or expatriate groups and are a good way of keeping culture and language alive.
Worse – way worse, in fact – is segregation expressed through racism. And let’s not kid ourselves: this is still a huge issue in the church.
For example, when I was young, I looked up to the Southern Baptist Church. They produced some great songs and discipleship studies and theology. They had a big influence on my spiritual growth when I was younger.
Imagine my horror when I found out how the Southern Baptists were founded.
They split from the mainstream Baptists because the mainstream Baptists turned against slavery, but the Southern Baptists wanted to retain it.
In some parts of America, this heinous thinking is still strong. Even in churches.
If anyone tries to argue in favour of segregation, let them read these verses:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’
Revelation 7:9-10 NIVUK
Every tribe, tongue, nation and language will praise God in Heaven. If you want a taste of how that will feel, ditch the petty poison of racist segregation and step outside the unintentional segregation of single ethnic group churches and worship together with people who are not like you.
The second way is imposition. It’s where we assume that our race, or group, or church has everything right, and every other group is therefore wrong. So we impose, or try to impose, our ways onto them.
This can be as ugly and divisive as racism. It’s this that the ‘Circumcision Group’ were trying to do. It’s precisely this that Peter is commanded not to do and that the Council of Jerusalem chooses not to do.
God has made us one (Ephesians 2:14-22). The people who disagree with us on minor points of theology are as much a part of the Body of Christ as we are. The people who come from other ethnicities are as much a part of the Body of Christ as we are. We have no right to treat them otherwise.
So we have seen four causes of real division and issues in the Corinthian church: identity – who we define ourselves as; legality – demanding our rights and making them more important than our witness; morality – our sin; ethnicity – where we come from.
Why have I gone through these in detail?
Because, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that nothing much has changed.
Our modern church still battles with these same issues.
We might even struggle with them ourselves.
And that makes our studies in 1 Corinthians particularly relevant.
Questions
1. What issues raised from 1 Corinthians do you see in your church? What can you do to resolve them?
2. Has this meditation challenged any attitudes you have towards other people? How can you put this right?
3. How can you pray for the global church to overcome these issues?
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