This is from a Bible study some friends of mine and I are doing on Friday nights at 8:00pm. We meet for dinner and then get into this stuff… Anybody and everybody is welcome to join us on Friday nights. I just need to know how much food to make, so if you’re going to come send me an e-mail at john.nicely@gmail.com to let me know, and to get directions if you don’t know where my house is.
Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1st Corinthians 1:1-3
In preparing to talk about Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, it’s my goal to do three things here. First, I want to give a brief overview of who Paul was, of who the Corinthians were, and why Paul was writing to the them. Second, I want to show what I think is a good partial explanation of why the Corinthians were struggling with the things that Paul wrote to them about. And finally, I want to talk about the relevance of the situation that the Corinthian church was experiencing in comparison to our own culture, because the church in America finds itself in very much the same situation. We struggle with the same sins, and we struggle with the same attitude, which is one of adoption of worldly wisdom to our own view of God, life, and scripture. We tend to view all of our lives through worldly lenses, instead of looking at life in terms of what God says about us.
Context
The Apostle Paul
Before his conversion to Christianity and the beginning of his ministry to the Gentiles, Paul was a Jew and a Pharisee who boasted in himself as being holy according to all the things that he thought indicated holiness. In his own words, he was somebody who had every reason to have "confidence in the flesh also". He says in his letter to the Philippians,
Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh - though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Philippians 3:2-7, ESV
Paul is saying here that before he knew Christ, he had every reason to count himself among the holiest of the holiest, for the reason that he was blameless according to the law, and because he was of the people of God.
Of course, we know that God wasn’t happy with this. In the course of doing the things that he thought were pleasing to God, Paul persecuted the church. Starting with Stephen and then the rest of the church in Jerusalem, Paul persecuted the Christians there, to such an extent that all the Christians in that city with the exception of the twelve apostles left to go elsewhere.
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
Acts 8:1-3, ESV
As Paul says of himself, as for his zeal, he went so far in serving God that he persecuted the church, killing many. Now, since the Christians left Jerusalem, I image that what Paul does next is a result of this fact. Having few left to persecute as blasphemers of God, in Acts 9, we’re told that Paul obtained permission from the high priest in Jerusalem to go to the synagogues in Damascus, find any who were followers of Christ, and take them to Jerusalem.
But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Acts 9:1-2, ESV
But while he was on his way to Damascus, Jesus appeared to him, blinding him and demanding that Paul explain himself. When Paul asked who Jesus was, Jesus told him: "I am the one you are sinning against by persecuting my followers" (Acts 9:4-5). Following this, Jesus commands Paul to go to Damascus, where Paul stayed for three days without eating or drinking. God told a follower of his named Ananias (who from what I can tell probably had a spiritual gift of healing) to go to Paul, and upon coming to him Ananias laid hands on Paul, and Paul had "something like scales" (Acts 9:18, ESV) fall from his eyes and he was able to see again. Following this he was baptized, ate, and became and adamant proclaimer of Christ crucified and risen again for our salvation.
That’s who Paul is. He later described himself when writing to Timothy, whom he called his son in the faith, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." (1 Timothy 1:15-17, ESV). Paul identifies himself as a follower of Christ, and his former life put him into a unique position because he was the chief of sinners. When somebody’s been at the bottom, they are in a unique position to relate to those who are close to where they were. The Corinthian church is just such a group of people.
Paul eventually became known as the apostle to the Gentiles, and the entirety of the rest of his life was spent preaching the incarnate Christ as fully God and fully man, who lived a perfect life, was crucified, and resurrected from the dead.
The Corinthian Church
Now, in the course of doing this, one of the churches and cities that he worked in was Corinth. I said that Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. What does the word "apostle" actually mean? An apostle, in one sense, is a messenger. There are other further distinctions that made Paul one of the apostles, but we can speak just as truly of him in the general sense of being an apostle and thus say that he was a messenger bringing the Gospel to pagan Gentiles who didn’t know God. In the process of being the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul made four missionary journeys, and it is in the second of these that he first visited Corinth. When he went to Corinth, Paul started, as was his custom, preaching first in the synagogue of the city where all of the Jews worshiped, telling them about Jesus. In the meanwhile, he also began working with two Jews who had come from Rome because the ruler had kicked the Jews out of Rome. These two individuals were Aquila and his wife Priscilla. He began working with them because they did the same sort of work, tent-making.
And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.
Acts 18:2-3, ESV
The idea of being a "tentmaker" in its less-than-literal sense comes from what Paul did: while he was preaching the gospel, at the same time he plied his own trade to support himself financially. And the reason for this, as we will get into as we get further into First Corinthians, is that he didn’t want to make himself a stumbling block to any people in the city. Think of Benny Hinn, or Creflo Dollar. These guys are men who take advantage of people and their beliefs for their own monetary gain. Avoiding this impression of himself was one of the reasons that Paul worked to support himself.
But after a while, the Jews kicked Paul out of the synagogue and rejected Christ, and Paul says to them that their blood is on their own heads – and yet even the ruler of the synagogue came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.
Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household.
Acts 18:8, ESV
So what does Paul do next? As is his custom, he starts preaching to the Gentiles.
And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
Acts 18:8-11, ESV
The basic relationship between Paul and the Corinthians is that Paul himself had founded the church in Corinth. These people in the city of Corinth who are believers knew Paul personally, many of whom he had preached the gospel to, resulting in their salvation.
A further confirmation that Paul was at least very involved in the church, although not a sufficient proof of having founded it if we ignore Acts 18, is apparent from some of the problems that the Corinthian church was struggling with. One of these was that they were dividing themselves into groups who said, "I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Christ." In other words, some were sinfully identifying themselves as followers of Paul and Apollos with little regard for their nature as followers of Christ, and others were following Christ exclusively with little or no regard to the fact that nevertheless Paul and Apollos had authority to teach and command them. But this problem didn’t arise in a vacuum, and what I mean by that is that there is little reason for us to think that they magically began following Paul without ever having known him. So Paul can be seen to have founded the church (from Acts 18), and was involved in the life of the church:
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
1st Corinthians 1:10-17, ESV
He was now writing to people whom he knew very well.
Why Paul Was Writing to the Corinthian Church
Paul writes to the Corinthians to correct four major problems that the church was struggling with, and we want to pay careful attention to this because our culture and church struggles with the same things.
First, as I already mentioned, the Corinthians were struggling with division among their ranks. They were forming sects who were calling themselves followers of Paul and Apollos, or who were calling themselves followers of Christ. Now, let’s make it clear. Both of these groups had problems. It’s easy to see where the problem might arise with Paul and Apollos. If we’re following Paul and Apollos, are we following Jesus? Can we say that we’re serving and loving and honoring and glorifying Jesus? If our entire focus is on following Paul, then no. We aren’t following Jesus. But it might not be as easy to understand why it was an issue that some were splitting off and following Christ. What’s the issue?
This is the best explanation that I in my limited knowledge can provide. It seems to me that what Paul is addressing here, for all of the believers, is the same problem, operating at different, extreme ends of the same spectrum. That spectrum is the answer to the question "Who should we be following?" The answer is that we should follow Christ as the supreme authority, but we also should follow our elders as those who have been given to us to act as under-shepherds of Christ. Think of it this way: You work at a large company. At this large company, you have a direct supervisor that you report to. You are responsible to report to them, to do what they say, and you can be punished for not obeying what they say. But at the same time, you’re also under the authority of the owner of the company. If you don’t do what he says, his authority has much more weight. Accordingly, your chief responsibility is to follow the owner, not the supervisor - but this does not negate the authority of your supervisor, although it does mean that the authority of your supervisor is subject to the authority of the owner. The supervisor can be held accountable to the owner, and if the owner says one thing while your supervisor says another, your job is to listen to the owner.
This analogy will help us understand the error of the Corinthian church much more easily; it should be evident now, if we put it in these terms. When some said that they followed Paul or Apollos, I think the problem was that they were saying this as if Paul and Apollos were their supervisors and there was no such thing as this fabled "owner". They were ignoring the commands of the owner and instead paying attention to one particular supervisor. In this case, they were sinning because they weren’t keeping in mind the authority and lordship of Jesus. On the other hand, though, there were those who refused to see the supervisors as having authority from the owner himself, and so they ignored the supervisor while claiming to honor the owner. But this is obviously an error. You can’t refuse to obey a supervisor who has been given authority to rule by the owner. If you do this, you’re not obedient to the owner either. These people were in sin because in rejecting the authority of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and others, they weren’t following Jesus either. They thought they were, but they weren’t. This is the first major class of things that Paul addresses.
Second, Paul was writing to address issues of sin and immorality, which included, among other things, rampant sexual immorality; refusal to exercise sound, Godly discipline; and submitting themselves to Godless standards to resolve conflict among themselves, instead of submitting themselves to the authority of God and determining everything by his word.
Third, Paul was writing to impart wisdom on certain matters of practice, including wisdom regarding marriage, the sound practice of Christian liberty, how spiritual gifts should be used in the church, and what worship in the church should look like. All but the first of these I think can also be reduced to another, more basic sin that Paul was addressing, which was that the Corinthian believers were widely self-centered, and they were sinning by being self-serving. In the case of Christian liberty, the believers in Corinth were doing things that they knew they were free to do under God – eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols – without any consideration for other people in the church who may stumble because of their actions. In the case of spiritual gifts, they lacked wisdom as to how to use them correctly, and Paul teaches both them and us that these gifts should be used in public worship for the edification of the other saints. Finally, in the case of how worship should be conducted in the churches, he was responding to the Corinthian church being disorderly and unkempt, not practicing sound worship but instead everybody butting in during worship and be unruly and selfish towards the rest of the church.
Finally, Paul was writing to warn them to not even think about rejecting the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ. I’ll get into this later, but the short version is that Paul says that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, in particular Christ, is central to all that we believe as Christians. If we reject this, we have no hope for what we say and we are still living in sin, to be judged by God as sinners and condemned on the last day. Thus, if we truly believe that we have had our sin removed, we cannot also say that Christ did not live a perfect life, die, and resurrect from the dead. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity. Without Christ’s resurrection there is no salvation.
Why The Corinthians Were Struggling With These Things
One thing that sticks out about what Paul writes to the Corinthians is that so much of it is geared towards addressing sin that was arising from selfishness in the members of the church. This happens in two ways. First, John Calvin noted that when Paul writes to the Corinthians, he was writing to correct them on matters of doctrine where they had perverted the gospel and twisted it to their own ends. In the introduction to the first volume of his commentary on the letters to the Corinthians, John Calvin writes,
During Paul’s absence false apostles had crept in, not, in my opinion, to disturb the Church openly with wicked doctrines, or designedly to undermine sound doctrine; but, priding themselves in the splendor and magnificence of their address, or rather, being puffed up with an empty loftiness of speech, they looked upon Paul’s simplicity, and even the Gospel itself, with contempt. They afterwards, by their ambition, gave occasion for the Church being split into various parties; and, last of all, reckless as to every thing, provided only they were themselves held in estimation, made it their aim to promote their own honor, rather than Christ’s kingdom and the people’s welfare.
John Calvin, "The Argument" - Commentary on Corinthians, Volume 1
(click here to read this chapter on CCEL)
Now, I’m not sure if this is true of only those who were coming into the church from outside and yet were not saved, or if these people were also Christians and nevertheless were very spiritually immature. From the fact that Paul treats the church itself as if it is spiritually immature it seems that this is possible. He says, in 3:1-3, "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh." It is not difficult to assume that they were spiritually immature and so the believers were experiencing this kind of selfishness.
On the other hand, as I am inclined to believe, it could just as easily be said that these were people from outside the church who were coming in and perverting it. Calvin says that the people who crept into the church were seeking to glorify themselves and that they looked upon the seeming simplicity of the Gospel with contempt, and that this was happening because they prided themselves "in the splendor and magnificence of their address" and were "puffed up with an empty loftiness of speech". There is a notable difference between the Greek and American cultures that will explain the significance of this. Take this with a grain of salt; I gained this knowledge during a class on ancient Greek philosophy with Kevin O’Neill, and I can’t say with 100% confidence that this was still how things were in the time of the early church. But that having been said, it is possible that this explains very well what is going on in Corinth.
In American culture, we have all kinds of bling-bling that we use to adorn ourselves and make people be impressed with us. Everything from braces to necklaces to clothing to cars is part of what goes into conveying an impressive image of the self to those around us. Not so in Greek culture. You had two major things that you could use to your advantage: your body, and your ability to speak. You gained popularity by being a drop-dead sexy naked guy, or by having an excellent voice. The ability to speak well was what gained Socrates a lot of popularity within his locale; he is widely attested to have been fairly ugly. So in this culture, it seems that it is possible that Corinthians from outside the church were either coming in from outside and seeking to promote themselves with their magnificent speech.
The reason I think that these people were from outside the church is that Paul says of these sorts of people in 1:18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." So Paul treats as perishing those who have found the Gospel a stumbling block because of its simplicity. This doesn’t necessarily confirm that these people weren’t members of the church, but it could point in that direction.
In any case, whether these people were members of the church or not, the overarching theme in their character is that of selfishness. If saved, they were still spiritually immature, divisive, and selfish; if not saved, they were selfish and ambitious in promoting themselves. This selfishness marked the culture and was obviously finding its way into the church.
The second thing that points to this problem of selfishness is Paul’s correction of the Corinthians in their use of their Christian liberty, spiritual gifts, and meetings for worship by telling them that all of these things need to be used to edify the church. Now, first a note on what edification means. The word in Greek is actually two words used together: oikodomeo. The two words used are oikos, which means "house", and domeo, which means "to build". So when Paul tells these people to do what we today call "edification", he’s telling them to build each other up, as if building a house. The reason he’s telling them to do this, is that until this point they have been separated and divided, each working against the others. This is one of the attitudes he’s correcting in chapter 12. He gives a picture of the church as a body, and then says that a hand can’t say to itself, "Well, I’m a hand… Guess I’m not part of the body." Likewise, he says that the eyes cannot say to the hand that there is no need for the hand. All the parts of the body are there for a reason, and they were selfishly saying that others were unnecessary and they themselves were of chief importance.
Our Culture
In closing all of this, I want to do the last thing I set out to do, and that is to show how we are very similar to the Corinthian church, in two ways: first, we are living in a culture that is similar to theirs, and second, we are responding to the culture in many of the ways that the Corinthian church did.
In Greece, Corinth was known for the general debauchery of the people of the city. They were recognized throughout Greece as being immoral. We see a glimpse of the sort of immorality that was present there in that city in what happened to the Corinthian church: they were selfish and they struggled with sexual immorality, even to the extent that some were doing things that even the people of Corinth looked at and said, "That’s insanely immoral." But Corinth had all other kinds of sinfulness. In chapter 6, Paul is going to list certain things that mark those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, what he elsewhere (Galatians 5:19) calls "works of the flesh": sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, theft, greed, drunkenness, and swindling. This list provides a good overview of the kind of sin that occurred in Corinth. And then Paul says,
And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1st Corinthians 6:11, ESV
This kind of sin marks our culture as well. Looking at our culture, this is where we are at. First, we’re very sexually immoral. Fornication, adultery, and homosexuality are hallmarks of our society and in some cases are even glorified and put into a position of honor. To a certain extent, we have even institutionalized sins like homosexuality, and the same thing is beginning to happen with adultery as well (for example, I’m thinking of dating sites that cater specifically to married individuals). In the case of adultery, I don’t think we even understand how widespread this is. Sure, a lot of people have sex with people other than their wives or husbands when they’re married. But as we’ll see later when we get into 1st Corinthians 7, when we have a divorce rate as high as 50% in America, a lot of that divorce is also adultery.
In our culture, greed itself is a way of life: in America, we see our chief task in life to be self-fulfillment, and the way that many of us try to accomplish this is through always trying to accumulate more wealth. This attitude is so prevalent that many individuals have even wrote books in which they use coined the term "affluenza" (from "influenza", an infectious disease, and "affluence", wealth) to refer to our obsession with obtaining and consuming material wealth (for example, see De Graaf, Naylor, and Wann, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic or James, Affluenza).
Drunkenness is fairly common and is elevated among college students to a position of honor, so much so that it’s practically considered a hallmark of college life. It doesn’t help that as a culture we banned alcohol for a while, because this just made the problem worse because this was also a refusal to honor God when it came to alcohol as well.
And finally, swindling. Swindling isn’t a word we use to describe this a lot, but it’s basically defrauding people of their assets. We have con-men, and unfortunately, some of them even obtain positions of power in churches or under the pretense of spiritual leadership. Benny Hinn, for example, is a swindler. He preys on people to obtain their trust by pretending to worship God, and then convinces them to part with their money. He’s an extreme example of this, but it’s happening in cities all across America as well. I know pastors who model this same attitude and are not only defrauding people of their money and possessions rightfully earned, but even their salvation by fooling their sheep (we must always remind ourselves that sheep can be very stubborn and unwise) into believing a false gospel. They lead people astray.
So it can definitely be said that not only are we embedded in the same type of culture, but that as the church we also have modeled our culture in much the same way that the Corinthians did.
What’s the problem here? The problem, I would argue, is not that we do these things. These things are just an outworking of sin in those who are yet unsaved by God, and in those who are, it is us conforming to our old nature rather than to the son of God who became human and died for us. And what leads us to this?
Christ is described by the apostles as fulfilling three offices, and I think that with many of the errors that we fall into as a church can be tied back to rejecting one or more of these three offices of Jesus.
- First, he is our prophet. This means that he speaks to us the words of God and they should be accepted as such. The typical person who models the rejection of this is the liberal guy who doesn’t believe that Jesus actually meant that he was God, or that he didn’t mean that there was actually a real Hell where the unsaved will burn forever, but that he just came to preach to us about free love and smoking the chibba.
- Second, he is our great high priest. What this means is that he acts as a mediator for us between us and God. When Jesus says of himself, "I am the way, truth, and life; no one comes to the father but by me", this is what he’s talking about. He’s saying: "I am the access to God and you cannot access God any other way." In doing this, Jesus does at least two things for us. First, he serves as God’s express image for us, so that we can see the character of God in a human like us, who is nevertheless also fully God. And second, in coming before God the father, we have the stain of sin on ourselves. But God is holy and just, and he can’t have anything to do with us. To accept us as we are would be a rejection of his own nature as just. But God is also loving and in his mercy he wants us to be with him and in his presence - but without being perfect we cannot do this, and this is such a problem because we cannot be perfect before God. We are stained with sin. But God himself came in human flesh and lived a perfect life, being given as a sacrifice on the cross for us. When we come to faith in Jesus, we are covered over with his blood and we are counted as righteous even though we have no righteousness of ourselves. So when God looks at us, he sees Christ and counts us righteous and allows us into his presence on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. That is the second thing that Christ does for us as great high priest, in mediating between us and God.
I didn’t realize this when I was first writing this up, but my friend Matt pointed out that the biggest way that we see the church rejecting Jesus as mediator is in the Catholic church. So many people don’t see Christ as their mediator and as actually accomplishing their salvation. Also, I think one could argue that Arminianism in some ways rejects Christ as mediator. If it’s our work of accepting Christ’s atonement that leads to us being justified, then Christ is only part of the story.
- Finally, Christ is our king. To call Christ "king" means at least two things, although these two things are far from being the sum of all Jesus does and is as sovereign king. First, Christ being king means that he has the right to say, "Do it" and have it be done. And second, not only does he have the right, but everything is in fact done by his command, as the apostle John says
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3, ESV
An even more clear statement of Christ having created not only all matter but also all time and history is found in Hebrews. The author says in Hebrews 1:2 that the Son is the one "through whom also he created the world", the word used here being the Greek aionas, which indicates the ages and all time, instead of kosmos as in John 3:16. So, using scripture to interpret and limit the meaning of scripture, when John says that through Christ "all things" came to be that were created, Hebrews 1:2 shows us that this "all things" doesn’t just mean the physical state of the universe at the beginning. It means all things: all matter, all time, all space, all histories, all allegiances, all nations, all of our actions towards or against God, and so much more… To be precise (and oxymoronic), everything. Even history itself was created through Jesus at the beginning of time, and this is what it means for him to be our King in the second regard. To summarize it, Christ is sovereign king in his rights and abilities.
Where do we go wrong with our culture when it comes to this? Ultimately, the problem is that we are constantly turning back to our sin nature and refusing to acknowledge and live according to our identity in Christ. But this still leaves us with the explanatory task of how we get from there to our particular sins.
In the evangelical church, which makes up a lot of the church in America, we do not so much struggle to see Jesus as a prophet or as a priest. This struggle is there, but for most of these churches we refuse to see Jesus as king. I think that this was true of the Corinthians as well. They not only forgot, ignored, or denied that Jesus does ordain all things by his decree, but they also refused to acknowledge that he had the right to make all such demands upon us for our allegiances, loves, actions, and attitudes – everything that we are and they were. It is no small wonder, then, that they lived as if they were not children of the King. And how do we explain why do we fall into so much sin against King Jesus? Because we ignore or deny the "King" part.
In closing, I want to add one additional thing to these layers of sinful attitudes that lead to us rejecting Jesus as King. I first heard this idea preached about by Al Mohler in a sermon during the conference "Together for the Gospel" in 2006, and I think he probably nails the central issue here (you can listen to that sermon, "Preaching With The Culture In View", by clicking here). Our problem is more fundamental than not seeing Christ as king. This idea arises from another, more simple idea that gets us closer to the central issue of not realizing the spiritual reality that Christ has declared of us in our atonement.
Mohler talks about Augustine’s view of culture, which is basically that in all things, there is a city of man, which is the earthly city in which we are born, live, and die. But at the same time, for those of us who are followers of Christ, there is also a spiritual, heavenly city that we become citizens of when we become disciples of Christ. The problem that leads us to not view ourselves as subjects of Christ, and consequently causes us to not view every act of sin as treason against his demands, is that we are constantly viewing ourselves as citizens of the city of man. We treat this place as our home. But this is a faulty view of culture and life. In chapter 3 of 1st Corinthians, Paul writes,
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1st Corinthians 3:5-9, ESV
What is underlying Paul’s view of our life here is that we are citizens of a heavenly city, which is our home. Our culture is not our home. It is God’s field, it is God’s building. We are here to be the means of harvest from God’s field, to be the means of the building up of Christ’s kingdom. If we are followers of Christ, we absolutely must view everything through this lens. We are not citizens of the earthly city, we are God’s subjects.
This raises two important questions: "Why are we here, and what should we do?" The answer to this is that we are to live and work within this earthly city of man because this is where find those who do not know God. On the one hand, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, but the implication of this is that we are put here to do God’s work. But part of this, evangelism, can only be done where the sinners are, and this is the earthly city. We are here because we are born citizens of the earthly city; we remain here until death because there are other citizens of the city of man who must be made citizens of God’s kingdom.
This is what Paul is writing about. He says that he and Apollos are both God’s fellow workers, and the people in Corinth, and everyone else, are God’s field, God’s building. One of the reasons that Paul wrote to the Corinthians was to correct their view of life and culture. He wanted them to realize that this is not our home, that this is not our permanent dwelling place.
So these are the things that I want you to keep in mind as we go through First Corinthians. Paul is correcting them in matters of practice, but he is also correcting them when it comes to their view of culture. If we want to faithfully live in the world and serve Jesus, we need to obey his commands because he is our prophet and priest, and ultimately, our king. A good summary of this can be found in Colossians 1:28: "Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ." We and the Corinthian church both need to be mindful that in all things we proclaim Christ as Lord and live accordingly.
Much thanks to the following individuals for informing what I said here:
- Mark Driscoll, for his exposition of the three offices of Jesus in Vintage Jesus.
- Al Mohler for his sermon “Preaching With The Culture In View” at Together for the Gospel 2006.
- John Calvin’s Commentary on Corinthians, graciously provided for public use on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website.
- Arthur W. Pink’s commentary on Hebrews, Exposition of Hebrews (particularly chapter 3, where he comments on Hebrews 1:2). My understanding of the word for “world(s)” in Hebrews 1:2 came from here. You can read this chapter on my website.
