Stop Acting Like Babies

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. ^2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. ^3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? ^4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?

^5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ^6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. ^7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ^8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. ^9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

In my kid’s Taekwondo class all of the students are separated by the color of their belts. There is no question about your rank because your position in the class is brightly and clearly marked around your waist. Not only do you wear these neon indicators of rank, the higher the belt, but the closer you stand to the front. It is the perfect pecking order. I don’t have a problem with it in martial arts class, but what if the church functioned like this? What if you could identify everyone’s level of spiritual maturity by the color of the belt on their waist. Black belts would be the super Christians and they would sit in the front row. White belts would be the baby Christians sitting in the back and all the other colors would be ranked in between—yellow, green, blue and red.. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? But it really is not that far off from what the church in Corinth looked like. These believers thought they were super Christians. They believed that they had attained a higher level spiritual knowledge. This is why so many of them had a problem with Paul’s teaching—after all, Paul was on a lower spiritual plane and what could he teach them.

The Corinthian believers thought they were all grown up in the faith, but Paul had a harsh message for them which is summed up like this—stop acting like babies! Sometimes parents say something like this to their kids to motivate them to act their age. A twelve year old doesn’t want to be called a baby so the accusation may actually get them thinking about their behavior. It’s one thing to chastise children for acting like babies, but it’s another thing to accuse adults of acting like babies. Paul said, I could not address you as spiritual. This comment was the first surgical slice into their spiritual pride. They thought they were living the ideal spiritual existence, yet Paul said, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. They were actually the opposite of spiritual maturity. They were living a life of spiritual infancy. Why were they still spiritual babes? In v. 3 he wrote, You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Their poor character and awful behavior was more than sufficient proof to demonstrate their immaturity.

They really did see themselves in levels of maturity much like a Taekwondo class. We might expect that Paul would rebuke them for thinking of themselves in levels. Isn’t it divisive and prideful to put all Christians on a scale of maturity? That’s clearly wrong isn’t it?  Now here is the ironic part. Paul did not chastise them because they had different ranks of spiritual maturity because he was in full agreement with the concept of a ranking system. We know that Paul had his own spiritual ranking system because we can we can easily see it from the first verse of this chapter. Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly. There it is. The lowest level of spiritual maturity—we could call them “white belts”—were the worldly Christians and the highest rank were those whom Paul called “spiritual”. In a graph form, Paul’s system of spiritual ranking would look like this. On one side of the scale would be the babes in Christ and the other end is populated by the spiritually mature—the “black belts” in spiritual maturity. Paul was not rebuking them for using a scale of spiritual maturity; rather he was rebuking them for using the wrong scale of spiritual maturity. If you could ask them, where would the Corinthian believers have placed themselves on this scale? They would have been to the far right on the maturity scale, but the problem was that they were using the wrong standard of measurement. Their standard of maturity was to possess spiritual gifts like knowledge and wisdom but Paul was more concerned with the spiritual fruits of love and humility. These Christians had a severe case of jealousy and quarreling—behaviors that do not match what a spiritually mature person should look like.

Returning again to our Taekwondo analogy, here is what Paul did in this rebuke. It’s as if he walked into a Taekwondo class and approached the black belts in the front of the room. He then proceeded to remove their black belts, lead them to the back of the room and wrap a white belt around their waist. He took them from the highest level and knocked them down to the lowest. He turned their entire concept of spiritual maturity on its head. These Corinthians were not at the head of the class—they were just beginners—babies in the spiritual world. Now is there anything wrong with being a baby Christian? Of course not—baby Christians—like real babies—are an absolute delight to have around. But a spiritual baby who never grows up is an awful thing. These spiritual babies cannot and will not grow up in the faith. One of the worst things about a spiritual baby is that you can’t feed them. Paul wished that he could have fed them “solid food”—higher levels of teaching—but they still could not handle anything other than milk. What happens when you try to feed a baby solid food too early? You get the common spit-up on the shoulder. The same thing is true with a spiritual baby. When you try to give them teaching that is solid food—they spit it back up. Their system cannot handle it—it is like a foreign object in their spiritual stomachs—so their bodies reject it totally. Baby Christians cannot grow because they continue to vomit out God’s truth. It’s not a pretty picture but it is what Paul was describing.

It’s impossible to avoid the reality of a scale of spiritual maturity. In fact, every Christian lives his or her life somewhere along this scale. When you first became a Christian, you started on this scale as a baby. Some start to grow to spiritual maturity, but others get stuck and their growth comes to a screeching halt. Everyone in this room is somewhere on this scale. Like I have always said: it doesn’t really matter where you are at right now, it matters where you are going. If you are a spiritual baby then you need to start growing up. If you are a little stuck in spiritual elementary school, then you need to advance. It is not inherently better to be higher on the scale, but it is better to be moving up the scale. The Corinthians not only had the wrong scale, but they were using the scale in the wrong way. Their scale served as dividing lines between them and other believers. Recall from last week that they were divided into at least four factions—those who followed Paul, Apollos, Peter and Jesus. Their scale was based on pride, but Paul’s scale is based on humility. When you advance is spiritual maturity, it is impossible to think better of yourself than others. It is impossible to be jealous and quarrel because humility is inherent to the maturity process. You can’t move ahead in spiritual maturity and be proud about it because your pride would be proof that you have not advanced. Divisiveness was a sure sign of immaturity while unity was a sign of maturity.

Paul desire for them was stated last week in chapter one. I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. Paul wants all believers to agree and to be perfectly united in mind and thought. If you are not careful, you could draw some very strange and harmful conclusions form this phrase. I think we can better understand what Paul means by unity by first seeing what he does not mean.

Unity is not “unity at all costs”. The Worldwide Council of Churches strives for unity, but theirs’ is not the kind of unity we want. To them, unity means believing that all paths lead to God. As one person described it to me, we are all spokes in a wheel with God in the hub of the wheel. Actually, you don’t even have to have ‘God” in the hub—just some manifestation of your higher power—essentially god in your own image. If we are al spokes in the same wheel, then by definition we are united. This is what I call tolerance on steroids. You can stand for anything because you stand for nothing. This kind of unity not only is wrong at its core, but it doesn’t work in the real world. A perfect example of this is the Episcopalian Church. One of their chief goals is unity and one of the ways to seek unity, in their way of thinking, was to allow same-sex marriages and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. This represented an open door of toleration and unity of all Christians. But their desire for unity has brought with it the massive fracturing of the denomination. The conservative churches have already formed their own informal denomination and the 2 million member denomination will officially be split in half next year. Do you see that it was their desire for a generic type of unity which has brought about even more division?

Paul was obviously not advocating unity at all costs. This point is obvious because there are many things which Paul did not tolerate. Paul did not tolerate speaking in tongues without interpretation. Paul did not tolerate the rampant sexual immorality in the church. Paul did tolerate divisions and divorce in the Corinthian church. If Paul wanted unity at all costs, then he would not have taken a firm stand on these important issues. Unity does not mean “unity at all costs.”

Neither does unity mean uniformity. I am sure you have noticed how groups of people begin to take on very similar characteristics. Students in high school all look similar because they are often trying very hard to conform to a certain standard of dress. They all buy the latest styles and therefore they look the same. Then you have the non-comformists that are a growing part of our community. The problem is that they tend to conform to their non-comformist style. Christians can fall into a similar trap of conformity or uniformity. Do you remember our friend I told you about who was searching for confirmation to get married by finding coins on the ground? I emailed her to try and learn more about this rather unorthodox method for discerning the will of God. My tentative conclusion is that she has learned this type behavior because she has spent her missionary career with YWAM. For almost 20 years she has been surrounded by Christians who all think the same and have the same basic teaching. Most YWAM’ers regularly practice “hearing the voice of God”. I can’t speak for the whole organization, but as a whole they may be more attune to God’s leading than the average Christian. But on the other hand, this same uniformity of practice has led to confusion and disappointment when things don’t work out. This same friend thought God told her she was supposed to marry a different guy over ten years ago. She confessed that she had to work through an enormous disappointment when she realized she was not hearing the voice of God. She claims that she will not make the same mistake again, but I’m not so sure about that.

The point is that our Christianity is so tied to our culture that sometimes we cannot tell the two apart. Much of what we hold to be sacred is nothing more than a theological hobby horse that we have been riding our whole lives or a culturally-based belief that is not found in Scripture. For example, somebody left our church because I did not believe strongly enough in dispensationalism. Many of you may not have any idea what dispensationalism is, but I was considered to be spiritually deficient because I did not see the truth of this particular theology. Many Christians conform to standards that are not found in the Bible and they mistakenly believe that all Christians must think and live as they do. This may be uniformity but it is not the same thing as Biblical unity.

Third, unity does not mean coercion. If a group of believers are completely united in mind and thought it starts to sound like some kind of Christian cult. Some churches achieve a strong sense of unity through a type of brain-washing. This kind of church borders on or crosses the line of spiritual abuse. They force their members to conform to very strict beliefs and practices and any questioning of authority is forbidden. The leaders in these churches are usually self-appointed leaders with lifelong positions. The leaders are not accountable to anyone but themselves. This is one reason I appreciate our denomination and its congregational style of government. In our church the leaders have an entrusted authority but they are also accountable to the congregation. At this past Tuesday’s elder meeting we affirmed the need to lead every step of the building project with full integrity. We discussed how we want to avoid both errors of leading too strongly or too weakly. If we don’t take some leadership then nothing will ever happen, but if we lead too strongly than we run the risk of manipulating or coercing the process. I confess that it is a delicate balance and it does not mean that everyone will be pleased, but as leaders we must never seek for unity through coercion. Even though Paul had a great deal of authority as an apostle, still he did not attempt to force correct behavior. He always tried to win people over by presenting the truth.

These are examples of what unity is not, let me give you two things that help define Biblical unity. Unity is an absence of cliques. We like to spend time with people who are most like us, which is normal and fine, but when we do it all the time it is called a clique. This is the powerful principle of homogeneity and it is what keeps us apart as believers. We are all one in Christ but we are divided by race, socioeconomic status and age. As believers we must continually fight against the homogeneity principle by hanging out with people different from us. This is the mission of Neighborhood City Church in La Crosse. Neighborhood City Church desperately wants to model genuine Christian unity, but in order to do so, they must spend tremendous amounts of energy hanging around people who are different from them. We don’t have an African-American population in Viroqua, but this principle applies to anyone who is different from us—especially fellow believers. Biblical unity means an absence of cliques.

Finally unity is characterized by an abundance of love. The Corinthians could only handle milk and not solid food, but what did Paul mean by “solid food”? I believe their number one problem was a lack of love, therefore “solid food” must have been teaching about Christian love. They had faith that could move mountains but they lacked true love. They possessed spiritual gifts but they lacked spiritual maturity resulting in more love. They were divided by their pride but Paul wanted them to be united by humility and love. Last week we declared that above all we seek a love-based building program. If we really can do that it will mean that we will be able to get rid of our spiritual diapers and start chewing the solid food of Christian love.

Rich Maurer

July 16, 2006