1 Cor 4:1-21

Fools for Christ

1 Corinthians 4:1-21

So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. ²Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. ³I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. ⁴My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. ⁵ 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.

⁶Now, 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. ⁷For 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?

⁸Already 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! ⁹For 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. ¹⁰We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! ¹¹To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. ¹²We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; ¹³when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

¹⁴I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. ¹⁵Even 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. ¹⁶Therefore I urge you to imitate me. ¹⁷For 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.

¹⁸Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. ¹⁹But 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. ²⁰For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. ²¹What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?

I am always on the lookout for Bible verses that are applied out of context—often with disastrous results. Here are some common examples. Matt. 7:1—Judge not lest you be judged. This verse is ripped out of it context by almost anyone to try to prove that you should never judge another person’s actions. The paraphrase is—“leave me alone you hypocrite!” A favorite of Christians is Matt. 18:20—“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.” I have never once in my life heard someone quote this verse and understand its true meaning. Let me give you a hint. Is God any less present when you’re alone? Yet another huge favorite of so many believers—especially among so-called Christian athletes is Phil 4:13—“I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” This has become the ultimate Christian self-help verse meaning that I can do anything I set my mind to, as long as Jesus gives me a little help. Sometimes these out-of-context verses are just sloppy applications but other times they can be taken to mean the very opposite of what they were intended to mean.

In preparing for this week’s message I found another one of these types of verses in 1 Cor. 4. “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” If you have taken the financial training course called Crown Ministries, this is one of their key verses on financial faithfulness. I love the Crown Ministries study and I think that this is a great application of 1 Cor. 4:2. God owns everything, including our money and possessions, so it makes perfect sense to apply this verse on faithfulness in the financial arena. But here is the problem with this verse and the way we study our Bibles in general. While application and life change is the goal of Bible study, too often we jump ahead to the application of a verse without understanding its true meaning in the context.

Let me illustrate with a story. A young man applied for a job as a farmhand. When the farmer asked for his qualifications, he said, "I can sleep when the wind blows." This puzzled the farmer. But he liked the young man, and hired him. A few days later, the farmer and his wife were awakened in the night by a violent storm. They quickly began to check things out to see if all was secure. They found that the shutters of the farmhouse had been securely fastened. A good supply of logs had been set next to the fireplace. The young man slept soundly. The farmer and his wife then inspected their property. They found that the farm tools had been placed in the storage shed, safe from the elements. The barn was properly locked. Even the animals were calm. All was well. The farmer then understood the meaning of the young man’s words, "I can sleep when the wind blows." Because the farmhand did his work loyally and faithfully when the skies were clear, he was prepared for the storm when it broke. So when the wind blew, he was not afraid. He could sleep in peace. There was nothing dramatic or sensational in the young boy’s preparations – he just faithfully did what was needed each day. Consequently, he had peace, even in a storm; just like Paul says "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful."

This is a good story about faithfulness. Every person in this room could take this general application about faithfulness and apply it to their lives. You could apply it to your finances because you may need to grow in faithfulness in your giving and handling of money. You could apply it to your marriage—not that you have been unfaithful as in adultery, but you have taken your spouse for granted and need to be more loving and attentive to him or her. You could apply this verse to your parenting role. It could easily be applied to your job, your housework, your service in the church. There is no end to the scope of personal application when it comes to the principle of faithfulness to the Lord. These are all good and necessary applications, but the most important question we need to ask is this: is this what this verse actually means? Was it Paul’s intention to write about faithfulness to he Lord in all areas of life or did he have something more important in mind?

Before we understand what this verse means we have already established our first principle—a principle about Biblical interpretation—always go back to the context. Say this with me. When studying the Bible—always go back to the context. Failing to consider the context is what gets Christians into trouble all the time.

Let’s take this principle and apply it to the verses I mentioned earlier. Matt. 18:20—“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.” When we read it in context we discover that Jesus did not mean that he shows up in a special way when two or three Christians come together. I don’t have time to tell you what it means, but only that is not what it means. The same goes for Phil 4:12—“I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” If you don’t go back to the context you end with a very bad—and all too common— interpretation.

So the first principle is—always go back to the context, and when we do that with 1 Cor. 4:2 we learn something very important. So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. ²Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. We already understand the part about faithfulness from verse two, but what exactly has been entrusted to Paul? Verse one tells us that he had been entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it’s all clear to you—isn’t it!? J The next question is, what are the “secret things of God”? That question is answered in chapter 2:7 ff. “No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” Has anyone figured it out yet? Paul is a steward of something very important which he calls the secret things of God in chapter four. In chapter two he calls it the secret wisdom of God. In Ephesians 3 he calls it “the mystery of Christ…which for ages has been kept hidden in God.”

So what is this most important thing Paul is describing? It is the gospel. Paul knew that he was a steward of something so valuable that its price equaled the very life of Jesus Christ. This is not a verse about financial faithfulness or marital faithfulness or faithfulness in your work, parenting or church life. This verse is about being a faithful steward of the most important thing in all creation—the gospel of Jesus Christ; the good news of salvation for all nations, peoples and languages; the precious gospel which Paul valued so highly and that the Christians in Corinth were treading in the dirt. They were not acting like good stewards of the gospel because they had become enamored with other things—namely themselves.

Let me illustrate this with a visit to the pet store. On Monday Alice bought a parrot. Why do people buy parrots—so they can talk, right? Unfortunately Alice’s parrot did not talk so she took it back to the pet store. “He needs a ladder” she was told. She bought a ladder, but another day passed and the parrot still did not say a word. “How about a swing? the clerk suggested on the third trip. So Alice bought a swing. The next day a mirror. The next day a miniature plastic tree. The next day a shiny parrot toy. On Sunday morning, Alice was standing outside the per store when it opened. She had the parrot cage in her hand and tears in her eyes. Her parrot was dead. “Did it ever say a word?” the store owner asked. “Yes,” Alice said through her sobs. “Right before he died, he looked at me and asked, ‘Don’t they sell any food at that pet store?’”

This is our problem in the church. We are all caught up with swings, mirrors and shiny toys and so we miss the most important thing—the gospel. The Christians in Corinth started out on a solid foundation. Paul himself preached to them and as he said in v. 15, he was their spiritual father. But years later something infected the church which was threatening to destroy the gospel. The insidious disease that was sickening the church was pride. The sin of pride is splashed all over the first four chapters of this letter. The Corinthians thought they were wise and mature. They rejected Paul’s teaching and authority as being inferior to theirs’. They took pride in certain leaders—“I follow Paul—I follow Apollos…” They believed they were ruling in the spiritual realm like wealthy kings.

Perhaps the verse that is most telling is v. 6. I will read it in the ESV to highlight the problem. “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor on one against another.” There’s the problem—they were “puffed up” with pride. That is the literal reading of the text—they were puffed up—just like this balloon with a sad face on it [blow as I talk] is puffed up. They were full of hot air. They were puffed up with their pride. They were puffed up with their divisions and their false spiritual maturity.

Here is where I made a big mistake in my understanding of this book. I started in chapter one where Paul begins the problems of divisiveness, but in the middle of the first chapter it appeared as if Paul was changing subjects by focusing on the power of the gospel as opposed to worldly wisdom. Here is where I went wrong. I mistakenly thought that Paul’s teaching on divisiveness was a separate subject from the teaching on the gospel because in his letters Paul often goes off into rather long tangents and then returns to the main point. I thought that’s what Paul was doing, but what I now realize is that his topics of divisiveness and the gospel were not two different topics, but one topic. Their pride was causing divisiveness which threatened to greatly harm the gospel message. If pride were limited to just a few people then Paul would not have been that concerned, but the real issue was that the pride of some was sickening the entire church and most importantly it was harming the very gospel which brought them salvation.

Let me go back to the parrot cage for a moment. Many churches are like that parrot cage—they are filled with all of the trappings of church—ladders, swings, mirrors and shiny toys. Churches like this may have a strong foundation on the gospel and will be very healthy. Others have a weak foundation on the gospel but can still attract people with their shiny toys. But what about us? We don’t have all of those shiny toys. All we have is the food—the gospel—the pure, glorious and powerful gospel. But pride weakens the gospel. When pride infects a church it is like lead poisoning—we become weak, slow and lethargic. We lack power and strength. And when this happens we become poor stewards of the gospel. After all, what is this passage about? It’s about faithfulness. What kind of faithfulness? Not faithfulness in work, home or finances, but faithfulness to the gospel. We fail to care for the most important thing God has ever given us to care for—his good news. The car you drive is the Lord’s car and so it’s important that you take care of it. The house you live in is the Lord’s house and you should be a good steward of it.

But above all earthly gifts stands the greatest gift—the gospel. When we become poor stewards of the gospel we cease being a true church. A church that takes good care of the gospel but lacks shiny toys will still be a strong church. A church that is not faithful to the gospel but has shiny toys will be an attractive church. But a church that is neither faithful to the gospel nor has shiny toys will be a sick church. Faithfulness to the gospel demands that we confront the sickness of pride. Faithfulness to the gospel requires that we deflate the hot air of pride form our hearts. But the problem is that pride is usually a hidden sin. We are blind to our own pride. As Proverbs 21:2 says—“All a man’s ways seem right to him.” When left to our own thoughts we imagine ourselves to be OK. It’s like wearing this eight inch button which announces—“I’m OK, you’re OK.’ The result is that we have these enormous puffed up heads of pride (balloon) while wearing giant buttons saying we’re OK. What is the answer to this problem? The rest of the Proverbs 21 reads—“but the Lord weighs the heart.” Are you willing to allow the Lord to weight your heart—to do an accurate diagnosis on the state of your heart? The other solution which I will be speaking about for the next 2-3 weeks is church discipline. Not just the kind of church discipline where we come down hard on habitual sin, but the kind of discipline which is gentle and loving correction; the kind which makes for authentic Christianity which gently roots out pride and hypocrisy. I know it may sound strange to you, but I am very excited about preaching about church discipline because it is not what you might expect. If done Biblically, it is for our benefit and for the sake of the gospel.

Rich Maurer

August 20, 2006