City Life Starter

The Word: I Corinthians 1:10-17

10Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

11For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe’s people, that there are quarrels among you.

12Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”

13Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

14I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,

15so that no one would say you were baptized in my name.

16Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other.

17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

By Scott Fiddler

The church at Corinth had gotten off to an incredible start. Paul went to Corinth after leaving Athens. He settled in with some tentmakers and began preaching Jesus at the local synagogue. The Jews there eventually went off on Paul, Paul moved in with some folks who lived right next to the synagogue, and Crispus, the leader of the synagogue became a Jesus-follower. The Lord then spoke to Paul and told him to stay on in Corinth and promised no one would harm him there. See Acts 18: 1-17.

At some point, the Jews had had enough of Paul and brought him before the local Roman ruler, a chap named Gallio. Gallio was a pretty big deal. He was the brother of Seneca, a famous Stoic and writer, who just the year prior had begun tutoring young Nero—the same Nero who would become emperor five years later. We still have much of what Seneca wrote, and he is still being read now, after 2000 years.

When Paul appeared before Gallio, before he could even speak, Gallio dismissed the charges against Paul, confirming what the Lord had previously told Paul about no one harming him in Corinth. The crowd who was present for Gallio’s ruling then grabbed Sosthenes, who had apparently replaced Crispus as the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him right there in front of Gallio. Gallio did nothing to stop it. Remarkably, Sosthenes thereafter became a Jesus-follower. We know this because in the opening sentence of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he mentions that Sosthenes, “our brother,” is with him. I Corinthians 1:1. Could you imagine being in a church with such a rich, miraculous history?

After eighteen months in Corinth, Paul moved on. Then three years later Paul gets some disturbing news: this church with the miraculous history and apparent destiny has devolved into factions. Some church members are saying they are followers of Paul, others are saying they are followers of Peter, and some are saying they are followers of Apollos. They are also apparently bragging about who had baptized them as if that was more important than that Jesus had died for them. What’s even worse is the Corinthians had written Paul a letter with some practical and theological questions relating to how they were to live as Christians but they had mentioned nothing about these factions. Paul had to find out about the factions and quarreling through “Chloe’s people”—who were aptly rewarded, whoever they were, by being called out in a letter that people all over the world would continue to read until the end of time.

Application

Paul’s response to hearing about the factions and quarreling in the Corinthian church was to ask three rhetorical questions, “Has Christ been divided?,” ”Was I crucified for you?,” and “Were you baptized in my name?”  The answers obviously were, “No. No. No.” There wasn’t a Paul-Jesus, a Peter-Jesus, or an Apollos-Jesus. There was one Jesus, it was He who was crucified for their sins, and it was in His name the Corinthians had been baptized. Then in verse 17 of chapter 1 of the letter, Paul returns to the mission for which the church was founded: preaching the Gospel. Paul spends the better part of the next one and one-half chapters of the letter talking about Gospel.

In other words, the answer to factions and quarreling in a church is to get everyone focused back on Jesus and on the mission of reaching the lost.