1 Corinthians 4
So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am 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 is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.
Now, brothers, 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 will not take pride in one man over against another. 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?
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings—and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you! For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are 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. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. Even though you have 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 am sending 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 will 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 what 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 whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?
MOST PEOPLE, at some point or other, dream of themselves becoming great leaders. What do their minds conjure up?
It depends a bit, of course, on the field. To be a leader in, say, basketball, does not demand exactly the same gifts as being a leader in the American Needlepoint Guild. Still, there are commonalities. The person who daydreams about being a leader in almost any field imagines what it is like to be the best, or at least to be better than most others—to succeed where others fail, to be stalwart where others stumble, to create where others merely perform, to win adulation and applause, perhaps after some initial hardship and rejection. To be a leader may mean fame, money, and some freedoms from the responsibilities and humdrum existence of ordinary mortals. To be a leader means to win respect. Only rarely do those who dream of leadership, but who have never experienced it, think through the responsibilities, pressures, and temptations leaders face. Almost never do they focus on accountability, service, suffering.
The opening chapters of 1 Corinthians have already introduced us to some elements of Christian leadership, although, of course, this is not the primary theme of the epistle. Throughout 1 Corinthians 1–4 Paul is primarily concerned to address the factionalism that was tearing the church apart with squabbles, jealousy, and one-upmanship. But because not a little of this quarreling arose from the habit of different groups in the church associating themselves with various well-known Christian leaders (“I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and so forth; 1:11–12; 3:4), Paul found it necessary to address several Corinthian misconceptions regarding the nature of genuine Christian leadership. These believers were adopting too many models from their surrounding world. They were infatuated with Sophist teachers, many of whom prized form above content, prestige above humility, stoicism above passion, an organizing philosophy (“wisdom”) above frank confessions of ignorance and the limitations of human knowledge, rhetoric above truth, money above people, and reputation above integrity. In that sort of environment Paul, as we have discovered, had to return to basics and explain what it means to confess Christ crucified. But he also had to disabuse his readers of the evil in their tendency to lionize certain Christian leaders and ignore others. Thus in 1 Corinthians 3 Paul insists, among other things, that Christian leaders are servants of Christ and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone. Indeed, as servants, they are accountable to God for the kind of ministry they exercise. Since God cares about his church, he holds its leaders to account. Indeed, he threatens judgment on all who destroy his church.
In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul is still struggling with the factionalism of the Corinthian believers. So when he talks about the nature of Christian leadership, he relates it to the question at hand: “Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit” (4:6). Even so, the fact of the matter is that in addressing the Corinthian tendencies toward quarreling and factionalism, Paul here gives us quite a bit of insight as to what it means to be a Christian leader, and it is from this perspective that we shall look at the chapter. Certainly this is not all that the Bible says about the nature of leadership that pleases God, but the principles articulated here are of capital importance. And they are all tied to the cross.
Christian Leadership Means Being Entrusted with the “Mysteries” of God (4:1–7)
Paul begins by telling the Corinthians how they ought to think of Christian leaders: “So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God” (4:1). Two elements stand out, and both are tied to things Paul has already explained. (1) Christian leaders are “servants of Christ.” The language is reminiscent of the agricultural analogy in chapter 3 (though the word for “servant” is different). Christian leaders do not try to be independent gurus, all-wise teachers. They see themselves simply as servants and want other Christians to see them that way, too. But they are servants of one particular Master: they serve Jesus Christ. (2) At the heart of the commission they have received from their Master lies one particular assignment. They have been “entrusted with the secret things of God.” The expression secret things (literally, mysteries) is the same one found in 2:7, “God’s wisdom in a mystery” (NIV, “God’s secret wisdom”). You will recall that in the second chapter of this book the nature of the mystery was explored a little. Paul is not saying that the gospel is “mysterious,” but that in some ways it was hidden before the coming of Jesus Christ and has now been revealed. The gospel itself is the content of this mystery, God’s wisdom summed up under the burden of Paul’s preaching: Jesus Christ and him crucified.
There is a sense, of course, in which all Christians are “servants of Christ” and all have been entrusted with the gospel, “the secret things of God.” Nevertheless Paul makes it clear that he is still dealing primarily with leaders. He will shortly write, “Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos”—both leaders—“for your benefit” (4:6, emphasis added), thus showing that he is still maintaining the distinction between leaders and others that dominates 1 Corinthians 3. It is not that Paul, Apollos, and other leaders are servants of Christ while other Christians are not, nor is it that they are entrusted with the secret things of God while other believers know nothing of them. Leaders are not in a special, priestly class. Rather, what is required in some sense of all believers is peculiarly required of the leaders of believers. There is a difference of degree. That is why Paul will be able to say, “I urge you to imitate me” (4:16).
Those of us who want to be leaders in the church today, then, must begin by recognizing that there is no special, elitist qualification. This observation is entirely in line with the lists of qualifications for leadership given elsewhere in the New Testament. For example, when Paul in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 sets out the qualifications for an overseer (“bishop” in older English), the most remarkable feature of the list is that it is unremarkable. It contains nothing about intelligence, decisiveness, drive, wealth, power. Almost everything on the list is elsewhere in the New Testament required of all believers. For example, the overseer must not be “given to drunkenness” (1 Tim. 3:3)—which certainly does not mean that the rest of us are allowed to get roaring drunk (Eph. 5:18). Overseers must be hospitable (1 Tim. 3:2); but then again, so must all Christians be (Heb. 13:2). The only elements in the list of qualifications for overseers that are not somewhere applied to all Christians are two: (1) “not . . . a recent convert” (1 Tim. 3:6), which certainly cannot be applied to new Christians, and (2) “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), which is bound up with the peculiar ministry responsibilities of the pastor/overseer/elder.
So what we must recognize, both from 1 Timothy 3 and from 1 Corinthians 4, is that the demands of Christian leadership, in the first instance, do not set a Christian apart into exclusive and elitist categories where certain new rules and privileges obtain. Rather, Christian leadership demands a focus of the kinds of characteristics and virtues that ought to be present in Christians everywhere. That is precisely what makes it possible for Christian leaders to serve as models, as well as teachers, in the church of God.
In this context, then, the two elements of Christian leadership that Paul sets out are clear enough. Christian leaders are servants of Christ, and they are entrusted with the gospel, the secret things of God. If all Christians ought to serve Christ, how much more should their leaders do so unambiguously? If all Christians enjoy the secret wisdom imparted by the Spirit, how much more should leaders who have been entrusted with this great heritage handle it wisely?
It is important to think through what these elements mean. In fact, when they are properly understood, they merge into one. The expression rendered “those entrusted with the secret things of God” might more literally be rendered “[household] stewards of the mysteries of God.” True, the household steward held a position of trust, but in a society far more hierarchical than ours that position was commonly occupied by servants, even by slaves. The trust that is given them is given to them in their function as servants, as slaves; conversely, when they are called “servants of Christ,” the particular obligation laid on them as “servants of Christ” is the obligation to promote the gospel. It is everything that is entailed in being “entrusted with the secret things of God.” What it means to be a servant of Christ is to be obligated to promote the gospel by word and example, the gospel of the crucified Messiah.
That is absolutely fundamental. There is no valid Christian leadership that does not throb with this mandate. In the West, we must repent of our endless fascination for “leadership” that smacks much more either of hierarchical models (I am the boss, and, for all below me on the ladder, what I say goes) or of democratic models (give the people what they want; take another survey, conduct another poll, and scratch where they itch). All valid Christian leadership, however varied its style, however wise its use of sociological findings, however diverse its functions, must begin with this fundamental recognition: Christian leaders have been entrusted with the gospel, the secret things of God that have been hidden in ages past but that are now proclaimed, by their ministry, to men and women everywhere. Moreover, they must beware of politely assuming such a stance, while their real interest lies elsewhere. This will not do. The servants of Christ have a fundamental charge laid on them: They have been entrusted with the gospel, and all their service turns on making that gospel known and on encouraging the people of God, by word, example, and discipline, to live it out.
From this fundamental insight into the nature of Christian leadership, Paul might have drawn out many possible corollaries. In fact, he chooses to trace out just two.
Christian leaders must prove faithful to the One who has assigned them their fundamental task (4:1–4). Paul’s logic is easy to follow. He has just insisted that Christian leaders are “entrusted with the secret things of God” (4:1). Any thoughtful reader can imagine the entailment: “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (4:2). But to whom? Not, ultimately, to the church. Those who are servants of Christ, those who are entrusted with the secret things of God, do not see themselves winning popularity contests—not even within the church’s borders. That is what Paul means when he says, “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court” (4:3). There is only one Person whose “Well done!” on the last day means anything. In comparison, the approval or disapproval of the church means nothing.
It is not even your own estimate of your service that is important. Feeling good about your ministry may have some limited utility somewhere, but surely it has no ultimate significance. You may think more highly of your service than God does; you may think less of your service than God does. But if you are constantly trying to please yourself, to make self-esteem your ultimate goal, then you are forgetting whose servant you are, whom you must strive to please. So Paul candidly writes, “I do not even judge myself” (4:3). He does not mean that there is no place in his life for self-examination or self-discipline; his own writings contradict any such interpretation (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:24–27; 2 Cor. 13:5). What he means is that his own judging of himself cannot possibly have ultimate significance. As he puts it, “My conscience is clear” (4:4). That is, as he pens these words he is not aware of any sin or failure lurking in his life. Still, he does not know everything, even about himself. However clear his conscience, he could be self-deceived or grossly ignorant. Clear conscience, he writes, “does not make me innocent” (4:4). At the end of the day, there is only one opinion on his service that carries ultimate significance: “It is the Lord who judges me” (4:4).
Paul’s first corollary, then, is very simple. Christian leaders worthy of the name will constantly be aware that they owe fealty and devoted allegiance to only one Person: to the Lord who bought them. In derivative ways, of course, it is important for the Lord’s servant to try to maintain peace among the Lord’s people and to win their confidence and respect. There may be a place for an appropriate letter of commendation (e.g., Phil. 2:19). Still, a leader’s ultimate allegiance must not be to the church, or to any individual leader or tradition. It must be to the Lord alone and to the “secret things of God” he has entrusted to him or her. And if that sometimes means there will be a clash of wills between that leader and the church, so be it; the foolishness of Christ crucified must prevail, even when the church as a whole follows some fork in the road that takes it away from the centrality of the gospel. What is far more tragic is the sad spectacle of so-called Christian leaders trying so hard for the approbation of peers and parishioners that their focus is diverted from the gospel and from the “Well done!” of the crucified Messiah.
Those who follow Christian leaders must recognize that leaders are called to please the Lord Christ—and therefore they must refrain from standing in judgment over them (4:5–7). In other words, if it is important for the leaders to see themselves as servants of Christ entrusted with a magnificent commission, it is also important for the rest of the church to see them as ultimately accountable to the Lord Christ, and therefore to avoid judging them as if the church itself were the ultimate arbiter of ministerial success.
It is easy to bleed this passage for more than it actually says. No thoughtful reader can suppose that Paul is abolishing all functions of judgment in the church. After all, in the next chapter of this epistle, he severely reprimands the church for failing to take decisive disciplinary action in a case of immorality (1 Cor. 5). This disciplinary authority of the church extends even to leaders. In the last chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul clearly expects the believers in Corinth to exercise discipline over the false apostles before he arrives in town and feels constrained to take dramatic action himself. Casual gossip directed against the elders of the church should be ignored, but when critical reports prove true, there is a place for disciplining leaders (1 Tim. 5:19–20). Furthermore, surely no one can imagine that Paul here insists that Christians have no obligation whatsoever to “judge” themselves, to examine and test the reality and consistency of their allegiance to Christ. Although no Christian’s opinion of himself or herself has ultimate importance, that does not stop Paul from saying, in the right circumstances, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5).
If we roam more broadly through the Scriptures, it is easy enough to find passages that prohibit “judging” and then to discover still others that command it. For example, on the one hand we find Jesus saying, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matt. 7:1–2). On the other hand, he says, “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment” (John 7:24). This running tension is very strong throughout the New Testament. There is much that condemns what might be called “judgmentalism.” At the same time, chapter after chapter exhorts believers to be discerning, to distinguish right from wrong, to pursue what is best, to exercise discipline in the church, and so forth—functions that demand the proper use of judgment.
Getting the balance right in this area has never been easy. Perhaps it is rendered even more difficult today by the onslaught of pluralism. The brand of pluralism I am talking about teaches that all opinions are equally valid, so that the only opinion that is necessarily wrong is the one that says some other opinion is wrong. Applied to religion, no faith is permitted to say that some other faith is wrong; that is viewed as intolerant, bigoted, ignorant. In short, it is not pluralistic. Within this atmosphere, the passages in the Bible that condemn judgmentalism are regularly trotted out as if that is all the Bible has to say on the subject. In many circles today, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7:1) has become the best-known verse in the Bible, easily displacing John 3:16. What is regularly forgotten is that a few verses later Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs” (Matt. 7:6)—which presupposes that somebody has to judge who the dogs and pigs are. In other words, pluralism has invested a tremendous amount of energy and bias in only one side of the biblical presentation.
We may gain some poise and balance if we remember the kinds of people the two sides address. Prohibitions directed against judging have in mind self-righteous people who want to protect their turf. These people are usually fairly legalistic, have all the right answers, desperately want to elevate their “in” group above all others, and are constantly in danger of usurping the place of God. By contrast, biblical injunctions to be discerning or to judge well in some circumstance or other are directed against those who are careless and undisciplined about holy things, especially about the words of God. Such people regularly fly with the crowd rather than thinking through what allegiance to God and his truth entails in some particular cultural context. It is utterly disastrous to appeal for judgment when forbearance is called for, or to prohibit all judgment when judgment is precisely what is needed. Both errors seriously damage the church and usually reflect a mind that is unwilling to think its way carefully through the balance and sanity of the Word of God.
So, what was going on in Corinth? It appears that some Corinthian believers were quite prepared to write off certain Christian leaders, simply because they preferred to follow some other leader as a guru. To elevate one leader and offer him or her the allegiance that belongs to God alone is bad enough; to write off all authority in any other Christian leader not only betrays a woeful lack of courtesy but places the self-appointed judge in the place of God.
Two further considerations ought to temper our tendency to stand in judgment of others. (1) We do not know the end of the story. Some who start well finish poorly; others who start slowly and hesitatingly finish with a flourish of triumph. “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes” (4:5a). (2) We do not know the motives of the people we are judging. That is a prerogative preserved for God alone. “He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts” (4:5b). There are some leaders who function competently and can please great crowds, but whose hearts are seething swamps of lust, arrogance, and ambition. There are others, less gifted perhaps, who struggle quietly and faithfully against major disappointments and pressures, but whose heart cry is, “Here am I. Send me. Make me as holy, as loving, as useful, as a pardoned sinner can be.” Should not hidden motivations be taken into account? And who can do so, except God alone?
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this paragraph of 1 Corinthians is how it ends. With the final day of judgment in view, Paul might have been expected to say, “At that time each will receive his rebuke from God.” But instead, he says, “At that time each will receive his praise from God” (4:5c). How wonderful! The King of the universe, the Sovereign who has endured our endless rebellion and sought us out at the cost of his Son’s death, climaxes our redemption by praising us! He is a wise Father who knows how to encourage even the feeblest efforts of his children. What this way of concluding the paragraph shows is that in this case, at least, God judges less sternly than the self-appointed judges in the church. Paul here presupposes that the leaders in question are not to be disciplined, shut out, ignored; they are bona fide Christian leaders, and on the last day God himself will praise them.
Of course, this does not mean that everything a Christian leader does is beyond reproach. Barnabas and Peter were less than consistent in Antioch (Gal. 2:11–14); Paul was less than patient with John Mark (Acts 15:37–40); Apollos needed more instruction to correct his preaching (Acts 18:24–28). In every case, some discernment, some judgment by fellow believers was called for. The principle for which Paul is here contending does not entail the conclusion that Christians are to be so wimpy that they make no distinctions whatsoever. Just because Calvinists have important things to learn from Wesley, and Wesleyans from Calvin, does not mean that both men were entirely right in all they said and taught. Paul is not here absolving Christians from the responsibility to discern, to test all teaching by Scripture, to pursue the best. Rather, he is roundly condemning that kind of judging that simply writes a Christian leader off because he does not neatly fit into my camp or because he appears to compete with my preferred guru or because he is not in my pocket.
This will not do. Christian leaders doubtless make all kinds of mistakes and say all kinds of daft things. But they are not pawns the churches are to hire and fire as if they were nothing but the churches’ employees. The church is not the head and the pastor the hireling. Both the church and the Christian leader have one supreme head—Jesus Christ himself. Ideally, both the church and the leader should be working in concert under the one Head. In practice, when the church falls away from the gospel, it may be necessary for the leader to take fairly drastic action (as in 2 Cor. 13). When the leader falls away, it is necessary for the church to take action. But both sides must recognize that there is but one Head. And in the Corinthian situation, Paul judges it particularly important for the believers to recognize that Christian leaders are primarily called to serve the Lord Christ; therefore the church does not have the right to stand in judgment over them.
Although Paul has been making his points fairly abstractly, apparently he has been thinking of the explicit factionalism in the Corinthian church. “Now, brothers, I am applying13 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’”(4:6a). Paul’s quotation is not a biblical passage. It was probably a common slogan in the early church, akin to “Keep your finger on the text.” By elevating criteria of personal taste to the level where they enabled the Corinthians to write some leaders off, the believers in Corinth were not adhering to biblical revelation, but going beyond it. One can as easily distort the truth and balance of Scripture by going beyond it as by denying some parts of it. If on these points the Corinthians will hew closely to the biblical line, they “will not take pride in one man over against another” (4:6).14 How could they? They will be much more interested in “taking pride” in Christ crucified: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1:31). One-upmanship among those redeemed by a crucified Messiah is repulsive.
In any case, Paul argues, if you have received some special help or insight or strength at the hand of one particular leader, is not this one of God’s fine gifts to you, rather than a cause for pride? Is this not true of everything we have of any value? Even if we have worked hard, is not the ability to work in large measure the fruit of good health and an upbringing that has bred discipline and responsibility? “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?” (4:7).
And thus Paul puts his finger on the nub of the problem. This kind of judgmentalism is prompted by pride. The irony is that this disgusting arrogance is being leveled against those who have been entrusted with “the secret things of God,” the gospel of the crucified Messiah, the good news by which these judgmental people are saved. How can any thoughtful person be arrogant beside the cross?
Christian Leadership Means Living Life in the Light of the Cross (4:8–13)
Paul’s language is now steeped in biting irony. The Corinthians have become smug, self-satisfied, comfortable, proud. “Already you have all you want!”—with the result that they do not hunger for what they do not yet have. “Already you have become rich!”—so they do not seek spiritual wealth or heed Jesus’s injunction to lay up treasure in heaven. “You have become kings”—or, better, “You have begun your reign” (cf. NAB, “You have launched upon your reign”). Paul is not talking about the Corinthians’ status (“become kings”), but about their perception of their function (“You have begun your reign”).
This needs a bit of explanation. From the very beginning, Christians have been taught to look forward to the end of the age, when Christ himself will return. The New Testament closes with the Spirit and the bride (the church) addressing the exalted Lord Jesus and crying, “Come!” (Rev. 22:17). We wait for the consummation of the “salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5); we are “looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13). Nevertheless, Christians rejoice that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and has already begun his reign. All authority is his in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18). We have already been swept into his kingdom. God has “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). Paul describes the Spirit of God as the “down payment” and guarantee of the full inheritance still to come.
So in one sense Christians are oriented to the future and are awaiting the kingdom. This stance we may designate futurist eschatology. In another sense, Christians have already been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s Son. We are already in the kingdom. This stance is sometimes referred to as realized or inaugurated eschatology. And it is very important to get the balance between these two right. If you devote all your energy toward the future, all kinds of warps appear. You might, for instance, follow the example of some believers at Thessalonica, who apparently thought that Jesus’s return and the end of the age were so imminent that they could quit their jobs, sponge off those who were still working, and, amidst plenty of enthusiasm, generally begin to act irresponsibly. Alternatively, you may so focus on the future that you unconsciously minimize the great privileges and joys that are already ours in Christ Jesus. In this perception, everything here and now is dark and gloomy and gray, but when the End comes. . . .
On the other hand, you might err the other way and so emphasize the blessings Christians already enjoy that you overlook the fact that some of them are reserved for the future. You start applying to the present passages and themes that congregate around what life will be like after the Messiah comes again. Both Jews who looked forward to the coming of the Messiah and Christians who look forward to his return have insisted that his people will reign with him. The Corinthians, reading this back into the present, felt they had already begun to reign—“and that without us,” Paul says somewhat sourly. “How I wish that you really had begun your reign [NIV, had become kings] so that we might have begun to reign with you [NIV, so that we might be kings with you]!” (4:8). That would mean that Christ had returned, that the consummated reign of Christ had begun, and that all Christians were participating in it. But if Christ’s consummated kingdom had not yet begun, then the Corinthians were massively mistaken.
Historically, Christians have often messed up the biblical balance in this area by being too wedded to their times and therefore failing to listen carefully and thoughtfully to Scripture. In times of war, famine, or major social disruption, it is not uncommon for untaught Christians to cry, “It is the End!” They don their ascension robes and forget that Jesus told us that no one knows the time or the day or the hour or the season of his return. Alternatively, when things are going reasonably well, when society seems relatively stable, when there is no war on the horizon, when most people in our culture have enough to eat, and when the general mood is hedonistic and success-oriented, untaught Christians adopt their own form of triumphalism. They point out that God is their Father, he is the great King, and therefore (they argue) they should all live as princes and princesses.
Clearly the Corinthians adopted their own form of this over-realized eschatology. It was tied to their pride, their endless one-upmanship. Paul punctured their massive pretensions by assessing the status of the acknowledged leaders of the church, the apostles. “For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena” (4:9a). Probably the imagery was drawn from the triumphal processions of returning Roman legions. The senior military people would come first, then the more junior ones. Behind them, the prisoners would be dragged along, in descending order of rank. Among the defeated foes, the lowest classes and the slaves would bring up the rear, eating everyone else’s dust, knowing that they were destined for the arena. There they would die at the hands of gladiators or would simply be thrown to the wild beasts for the amusement of the populace. In fact, Paul says, since the stage on which the struggles of the church are being played out takes in the spiritual arena every bit as much as the physical, the apostles “have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men” (4:9b).
With stinging irony, Paul draws the contrast out. Alluding to the themes of chapter 1, he writes, “We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ!” (4:10a). Of course, if they have followed his argument at all, the real fools are the Corinthians themselves—precisely because that is not how they see it. Paul and other spiritual leaders are “fools” only because they have sided with the foolishness of the cross. “We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” (4:10b). The irony is still total. If Paul and his fellow apostles are “weak,” it is because they align themselves with the “weakness” of God that is in fact stronger than all human strength. If they are dishonored, they are dishonored by a world that finds the cross foolish, while the only honor the Corinthians have received is self-honor, plus, perhaps, the doubtful plaudits of a world that the believers have formally disavowed by becoming Christians.
Do the Corinthian believers, then, need to get a better glimpse of what true Christian leadership entails? All right, Paul says, here’s the picture: “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are 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. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world” (4:11–13).
It is not necessary to unpack these shocking lines in detail, but a few comments on them will accentuate their bite. The phrases to this very hour and up to this moment are probably Paul’s way of drawing attention to the eschatological situation. Paul and his fellow apostles are still suffering, up to this moment, even though the eschatological kingdom has been inaugurated by the triumph of Christ. The Corinthians, in other words, are skewing their theology while ignoring the evidence staring them in the face. The deprivation of itinerant ministry (“hungry,” “in rags,” “brutally treated”), the very stuff of apostolic life, culminates in “we are homeless”—precisely because their “home” is not tied to this world. At first glance, “We work hard with our own hands” is out of place in this list. In fact, because teachers in the Hellenistic world thought manual work beneath them, while Paul frequently supported himself and his team (and sometimes insisted on doing so) through his craft as a leather worker, it was easy for the Corinthians to write him off as an inferior specimen of the teaching profession. But what they despise, he holds up as exemplary. And as for the way to respond to the jibes and taunts of a skeptical world, Paul offers this testimony as a model: “When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly” (4:12–13)—thus echoing in his own practice the teaching (Luke 6:28) and example (Luke 23:34) of the Lord Jesus himself. To sum it all up, Paul says, he and his fellow apostles “have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world” (4:13), everyone’s castoffs, everyone’s offscourings, everyone’s garbage—all that is despised in a society of beautiful and successful people.
Suddenly, we can no longer ignore Paul’s model—not the model he himself was for others, that is, but the model he chose for himself. For we are reminded again and again of the cross. The prophet wrote of the suffering Servant, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:2b–3). Paul testifies to the Philippians that he wants to experience not only the power of Christ’s resurrection, but also the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings (Phil. 3:10). Indeed, elsewhere he writes to the Christians in Rome and tells them that believers are “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom. 8:17). If Paul insists he is a model for others, telling them to imitate him (4:16), it is because he himself follows the example of Christ (11:1).
Paul is not so naive as to think that every Christian should, ideally, suffer the same amount. In fact, in one passage he testifies to his willingness to take on a disproportionate share of sufferings so that others might be relieved. But what is at stake, for Paul, is a fundamental stance, a way of looking at things. We may summarize it with three points.
We follow a crucified Messiah. All the eschatological promises regarding the new heaven and the new earth, all the blessings of sins forgiven and of the blessed Spirit of God, do not negate the fact that the good news we present focuses on the foolishness of Christ crucified. And that message simply cannot be effectively communicated from the haughty position of the triumphalist’s condescension. Until the end of the age, we will take up our cross—that is, we will die to self-interest daily—and follow Jesus. The less any society knows of that way, the more foolish we will seem and the more suffering we will endure. So be it; there is no other way of following Jesus.
Leaders in the church suffer the most. They are not like generals in the military who stay behind the lines. They are the assault troops, the front line people, who lead by example as much as by word. To praise a form of leadership that despises suffering is therefore to deny the faith.
In measure, all Christians are called to this vision of life and discipleship. Paul is about to say, “I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending 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” (4:16–17, emphasis added).
We must frankly recognize that this stance is alien to much of our experience in the Western world. Until fairly recently, even the unconverted in the West largely adhered to Judeo-Christian values. However, that consensus is eroding rapidly, and as it does there will be more and more overt opposition to any form of Christianity that tries to maintain allegiance to the Bible.
But part of the reason why Paul’s stance seems alien to many of us is that we have unwittingly become more like Corinthian Christians than like Pauline (that is, biblical!) Christians. Many of us are well-to-do and comfortable, with little incentive to live in vibrant anticipation of Christ’s return. Our desire for the approval of the world often outstrips our desire for Jesus’s “Well done!” on the last day. The proper place to begin to change this deep betrayal of the gospel is at the cross—in repentance, contrition, and renewed passion not only to make the gospel of the crucified Messiah central in all our preaching and teaching, but in our lives and the lives of our leaders as well.
Christian Leadership Means Encouraging—and If Necessary, Enforcing—the Way of the Cross Among the People of God (4:14–21)
It is not enough for a Christian leader to have many people following. After all, this leader may be building with sloppy materials and inferior workmanship (3:12–15). The Christian leader must not only preach the message of the cross and live life in the light of the cross but must foster genuinely Christian living. Mere orthodoxy is not enough; Christians must live out their creed. The gospel of the crucified Messiah must transform not only our beliefs but our behavior. And where deviations from the way of the cross are sufficiently notorious, that leader may have to resort to some form of discipline.
Encouraging the Believers (4:14–17)
Paul begins with the gentler alternative. Despite the biting irony he has just deployed in the previous paragraph, Paul now insists, “I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children” (4:14). At one level, of course, he certainly is shaming them. But that is not the reason he writes as he does. He writes, rather, to “warn” them—or, more accurately translated, to “admonish” them, to correct them, to encourage them in the right way. On some points that Paul will later bring up, the Corinthian behavior is so shocking that Paul then does openly try to shame them (6:1–6; 15:34); but not here.
Still using the gentle touch, Paul reminds them that he is the one who led them to the Lord in the first place. He casts his appeal in terms of a comfortable, first-century family. With understandable hyperbole, Paul tells the Corinthians that even if they had “ten thousand guardians in Christ” they have only one father. The guardian in the first-century Hellenistic household was usually a trusted slave who was put in charge of the child, bringing the child (usually a son) to and from school and generally supervising his conduct. Such guardians exercised a certain authority over the child, of course, but it would never equal that of the father. Paul was the one who first brought the gospel to the Corinthians; in that sense, he alone became their “father,” a fact nothing could change. Paul is careful, of course, not to give the impression that he himself effected their conversion, almost as if he had some magical power. Far from it; he became their father “through the gospel” (4:15). He preached the gospel to them. In God’s grace, the gospel transformed them, for it is the gospel that is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). Even so, his relationship with the Corinthians is something that can never be duplicated or displaced. Paul sowed the seed; others watered it. Paul laid the foundation; others built on it. Paul “sired” the Corinthian believers through the gospel; others have served as guardians.
“Therefore,” Paul writes, “I urge you to imitate me” (1 Cor. 4:16). The logic implied by the therefore may escape the modern reader, for in our families there is no pressure for the son to imitate his father. In fact, many of us are such rugged individualists that we often sport our independence as a badge of honor. But in the first century—indeed, in virtually every preindustrial culture—sons were expected to “imitate” their fathers. Vocationally, if the father was a baker, the son would likely become a baker; if the father was a sheep farmer, that is what the son would almost certainly become. The son was expected to carry on family values, family heritage, the family name. With that cultural expectation controlling his analogy, Paul argues that if he became the “father” of the Corinthians, therefore they ought to imitate him.
In the context of these chapters, of course, what Paul wants them to imitate is his passion to live life in the light of the cross. He does not expect them to suffer in exactly the same way he does; he does not demand that they all become apostles or plant churches in distant lands. What he does expect of them is that they will imitate his values, his stance with respect to the world, his priorities, and his valuation of the exclusive centrality of the gospel of the crucified Messiah.
Paul cannot say everything in a letter. So he resolves to send Timothy, “my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord.” Doubtless, Paul commends Timothy so heartily because he wants the Corinthians to receive him and treat him warmly. Paul tells the Corinthians exactly why he is sending his younger colleague: “He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church” (4:17).
There are two stunning elements in this commission. First, Paul is not sending Timothy simply to lay out doctrine, but to remind the Corinthians of Paul’s “way of life in Christ Jesus.” Biblical Christianity embraces both creed and conduct, both belief and behavior. Sometimes the elementary truths of Scripture are not understood or believed, and it is necessary to go over the basics again. Here, however, Paul gives the impression that the biggest problem with the Corinthians is that they are not living up to what they know. Judging by these first four chapters of his epistles to them, many of the Corinthians were not even making the connections between what they believed and how they should live. They would be the first to insist that Jesus died for their sins and rose again, but they could not grasp how this historical reality, this supreme moment in God’s redemptive purposes, not only achieved their salvation but must shape the way they live. So Paul sends Timothy to remind his readers of his “way of life”—a way of life that agrees with what Paul teaches.
This suggests that the Christian leader today not only must teach the gospel, but also must teach how the gospel works out in daily life and conduct. And that union must be modeled as well as explained.
This is a vision of what Christian leadership must try to do that we badly need to recapture. The need is evident even at a confessional seminary like the one at which I teach. Increasingly, we have students who come from thoroughly pagan or secular backgrounds, who have been converted in their late teens or twenties, and who come to us in their thirties. Not uncommonly, they spring from dysfunctional families, and they carry a fair bit of baggage. More dramatically yet, a surprising number of them cannot easily make connections between the truths of the gospel and how to live.
A couple of years ago a student who was about to graduate was called in by one of our faculty members who had learned the student was planning to return to computer science and abandon plans to enter vocational ministry. The student was pleasant, with a solid B+ to his credit. But as the faculty member probed, it became obvious that this student had not put it all together. He could define propitiation but did not know what it was like to feel forgiven. He could defend the priority of grace in salvation but still felt as if he could never be good enough to be a minister. He could define holiness but found himself practicing firm self-discipline rather than pursuing holiness. His life and his theological grasp had not come together.
Mercifully, this particular faculty member was spiritually insightful. He took the student back to the cross and worked outward from that point. The student began to weep and weep as he glimpsed the love of God for him. Today he is in the ministry.
Faithful Christian leaders must make the connections between creed and conduct, between the cross and how to live. And they must exemplify this union in their own lives.
In the second element of Paul’s two-part commission to Timothy, he says that what Timothy will convey agrees with what he teaches “everywhere in every church” (4:17). In 1 Corinthians Paul repeatedly makes the same point: he is consistent in his teaching and life, and expects the same substance to be lived out in every church (see 7:17; 11:16; 14:33). This suggests that the Corinthian church was constantly trying to prove how independent it was. Paul is saying that there is a kind of creativity that takes one outside the orb of faithful Christianity everywhere.
Warning the Believers (4:18–21)
Paul is the first to recognize that not every problem will be cleared up with one letter. In this case, the sad state of affairs in the Corinthian church is traceable to a segment of the church that Paul labels “arrogant.” In most institutions, a relatively small number of people largely shapes the opinions of virtually the entire body. In this case, these arrogant, self-appointed opinion makers had not only swayed the congregation, but were openly banking on Paul’s absence: “Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you” (4:18). Paul cannot give a definite time when he will show up, but he promises to come “very soon, if the Lord is willing” (4:19). He recognizes, with James, that plans for the future must always be subject to “If it is the Lord’s will” (James 4:15–16). When Paul comes, he will “find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (4:19–20).
To understand this threat, it is important, once more, to remember the flow of the argument. What Paul says, literally, is that he will find out “not the word of these arrogant people, but the power.” Immediately we are reminded of the discussion in 1 Corinthians 1. The Corinthians had become intoxicated by the “wisdom of word,” but were thereby emptying the cross of Christ of its power (1:17). They were so enamored of form and rhetoric that showing off with eloquence became more important to them than the gospel, which is displayed in its greatest power when it is not running noisy competition with people more interested in promoting themselves than in God’s power (2:1–5). When Paul comes, however, he will not be impressed by their “word”; he won’t really care “how these arrogant people are talking,” no matter how eloquent their rhetoric. No, he will be interested in only one thing: What power do they have? In the light of 1:18–2:5, this is the power of the gospel, the power to forgive, to transform, to call men and women out of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Mere talk will not change people; the gospel will. So Paul is going to ask for their credentials: What people has your eloquence genuinely transformed by bringing them into a personal knowledge of the crucified Messiah? He is going to expose them for the empty, religious windbags that they are.
It is possible that Paul’s threat goes deeper yet. At the beginning of the next chapter he deals directly with a man whose sexual sin cries out to be confronted by the discipline of the church. He expects the church to hand this man over to Satan (5:5). But there is evidence elsewhere that where the church is unwilling to exercise this sort of discipline, Paul will take action by himself. In Ephesus, for instance, were two men who had “shipwrecked their faith,” Hymenaeus and Alexander by name, “whom,” Paul writes, “I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20). In a later epistle to the Corinthians Paul warns that he might have to be “harsh” in his use of his apostolic authority, if they do not get their house in order (2 Cor. 13:10).
In other words, bringing the people of God to consistent Christian living in the light of the gospel of the crucified Messiah is so important to Paul that he will not turn from this goal. If he moves people in this direction by encouragement and admonition, all to the good; if severer discipline is called for, he will not flinch. So Paul offers the Corinthians a choice: “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?” (4:21). He does not mean, of course, that if he comes with a whip (literally, a “rod” of correction, continuing the father/son metaphor) he will not love them. The contrast refers to the manner or form of his coming, not his motives. But spankings still hurt, even from a father who insists that he is spanking his son because he loves him. It is much better for the son to change his behavior so that the manner of the father’s coming will be not with discipline but with a gentle spirit.
In short, Christian leaders dare not overlook their responsibility to lead the people of God in living that is in conformity with the gospel. That is why Paul urges people to live a life worthy of the calling they have received (Eph. 4:1). It is why Paul prays that believers may live a life worthy of the Lord, the crucified Messiah, and may please him in every way (Col. 1:10). And if the people of God dig in their heels in disobedience, there may come a time for Christian leaders to admonish, to rebuke, and ultimately to discipline firmly those who take the name of Christ but do not care to follow him. The sterner steps must never be taken hastily or lightly. But sometimes they must be taken. That is part of the responsibility of Christian leadership.
Questions for Review and Reflection