A Warning to the Church — Part Two

Now I invite you to take your Bible, and we’ll turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 4, resuming our studies there. This, of course, is the great benefit in going through the Bible systematically and consecutively: nobody needs to be in any doubt about what’s happening next, nor what we do next. And since we left it at about 4:13, we know that we’re picking it up here in verse 14.

By way of summary and for those who may not have been present, from 4:8, Paul has been issuing a warning to the church—a warning to the church in Corinth which extends well beyond the circumstances of Corinth and down through the corridors of time to us even today. The Corinthian church was unhelpfully satisfied, self-preoccupied with its own spirituality, its leadership, and essentially the general quality of its life. And while on the one hand it was very satisfied, it was also blind to some of the harsh realities which it was facing. You only need to go on into chapter 5 and chapter 6 to read as to the nature of these issues.

And so Paul addresses them—and if you have a bulletin this morning, you will find the outline here—and he addresses them, first of all, in relation to the tension which they faced. This we dealt with last time, and it was essentially the tension between the perception which the Corinthians had of themselves and the actual condition in which Paul and his colleagues found themselves. In verse 8, the Corinthian church considered themselves to be rich and flourishing—or, as we said last time, they would have regarded themselves as successful, lively, mature, and effective. In contrast, Paul knew himself—and this is in verse 13—along with his colleagues to be regarded as “the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.” Now, if you let your eyes just jump between verse 8 and verse 13, I think you’re prepared to pick up something of the tension, right? Here is a group of people who regard themselves as successful, lively, mature, and effective, and Paul says, “We are regarded as the scum of the earth, the rubbish tip of the world.”

Now, we left it at that point, thus allowing the challenge of it to sink in, because, we said, a church that is foolish enough to boast in this way will be harmful to itself and harmful to others. Because after all, no church moving in the power of the Holy Spirit has anything about which to boast in terms of giftedness or effectiveness, because all of it comes from God. One may plant, another may water, but only God can make things grow.[1]

The Truth Paul Affirms

Now, that was the tension with which we dealt last time. We come now, in verses 14–17, to the truth which he affirms.

No church moving in the power of the Holy Spirit has anything about which to boast in terms of giftedness or effectiveness, because all of it comes from God.

It’s important for us always to hold on to the fact that Paul is not here writing a theological treatise. He’s writing a letter. And that is why you get these kind of changes in mood and changes in emphasis, even from verse to verse. There is no question that from verse 8–13, he has been ironic, firm, bordering on downright sarcastic. And now, as he goes into verse 14, you will notice that his tone changes. Sternness gives way to tenderness.

He’s addressed the problem (I like that about him), hits it straight up. Nobody’s in any doubt. Nothing goes under the carpet. “Here’s the issue,” says Paul. “Let’s just lay it out on the table.” Not easy to respond to, not necessarily easy to hear, not particularly easy to proclaim, either. And having laid that out, he then immediately says, “I[’m] not writing this to shame you, but [I am writing this] to warn you.”

Now, it is not—and we must be very, very careful here—it is not that we are able to assume that Paul finds no place for arousing shame. Shame is a powerful and painful awareness of guilt. And shame is not trendy. Shame is not in. And so some of us, immediately responding to verse 14, find fuel for our own gun, where we believe that anything that smacks of guilt or of shame must belong to some world out there, but it definitely doesn’t belong in the world of the church.

Paul didn’t have a problem with shaming people. He chooses in this case not to. Let me illustrate. Chapter 5 and in verse 2. He’s talking about the problem of incest within the church, and he says, “And you are proud!”[2] “You’re proud about this?” “Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?”[3] Chapter 6 and in verse 5, talking about the disputes which are amongst believers that would find them having lawsuits against one another, he says, “I say this to shame you.”[4] “I say this to confront you with the painful awareness of the fact that you are guilty.” In 15:34: “Do not be misled,” he says in 33. “‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.”[5]

So, for those of us who are immediately going to camp on 1 Corinthians 4:14 as adding fodder to our conviction that shame has no place in the Christian life, we are downright, flat-out wrong. Okay? And Paul is in the line of the old prophets, who spoke very clearly the word of God concerning this.

Let me illustrate how God was concerned about shamelessness on the part of his people from Jeremiah chapter 8. The prophet writes, and this is what he says. Jeremiah 8:12: “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct?”—speaking of the priests of the people. “No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” And whenever an individual gets in that precarious position, they are in deep trouble. The issue, you read back in Jeremiah 8, is very, very clear. Beginning in halfway through verse 5, the prophet says of the people of God,

They cling to deceit;
 they refuse to return.
I have listened attentively,
 but they do not say what is right.
No one repents of his wickedness,
 saying, “What have I done?”
Each pursues his own course
 like a horse charging into battle.
Even the stork in the sky
 knows her appointed seasons,
and the dove, the swift and the thrush
  [they] observe the time of their migration.
But my people do not know
 the requirements of the Lord.

And when that is the case, then there needs to be shame. And the absence of shame is an indication of a real problem.

However, having said that, in order to counterbalance any kind of notions which may wrongfully emerge, let us say what Paul is saying here: “I am not,” he says, “writing in order to shame you in this case, but I am writing to warn you”—and you will notice the intimacy of his statement—“I am writing to warn you as my dear children.”

Now, this was not rhetoric. This was reality. If you turn back to Acts chapter 18 and remind yourself of the founding of the church in Corinth, you will realize how true this was. You remember how Paul goes there. He begins to work. He’s preaching and he’s working. Silas and Timothy come down from Macedonia. They bring some cash. That means that Paul doesn’t need to go to work, so he can devote himself “exclusively to preaching” and “testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.”[6] And as a result of that ministry there, at the end of verse 8, you will read that the entire household of the ruler of the synagogue, Crispus, came to faith and “believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.”

So when Paul takes his pen, if he wrote it, or if he dictates it to his secretary and he reviews, he says to his secretary, “Read that last paragraph back to me.” And she reads it back, and he must have said to himself, “My, my! That sounds a bit scathing. I mean, that sounds kind of strong, doesn’t it?”

His secretary said, “Yeah, but I think you’re okay, Paul.”

“Do you think I should leave it?”

“Yeah, I think you should leave it.”

“Okay, well, I’ll leave it. But I tell you, this is what I’ll say: ‘Now listen, I’m not writing to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children.’”

And his secretary said, “That’s good. That’s good. That’s the right balance, Paul. That’s the balance!”

Because when he said this, this wasn’t a phrase that he learned in a book in seminary. This was a reality. His mind went back to Corinth, went back to the hard days when he worked all day and preached all night, went back to the phenomenal encouragement of Silas and Timothy walking into town and saying, “The folks in Macedonia said, ‘Use this so you can just preach and you don’t have to work.’”

That’s essentially what’s happened when you’re called to full-time pastoral ministry. You ought to be prepared to preach your heart out and work all day. And if someone gives you some money so that you don’t have to go and work, they’re giving you money so you don’t have to work; they’re not giving you money so that you can preach. You should be preaching whether you get any money or not. It’s a big difference! And when he remembered that—how he went in and he saw Crispus and his family come to faith in Christ, and then he saw one and another responding to the message of the gospel, and then he shared as people were baptized into the following of Christ—and as he thinks about the Corinthian church, how his heart is full, the way any pastor must, in absence from his people, feel regarding his fellowship. If there are not those genuine feelings, then there is no genuine relationship at all. “I warn you,” he says, “as my dear children. I love you the way a dad loves a child.”

And he says, “You know, you’ve had many instructors. You’ve had many pedagogues,” the word that he uses here. “Ten thousand guardians in Christ,” he says. “There are lots of people who have influenced you.” And that’s true for all of us. The pedagogue, or the guardian in this case, was one who was under the supervision of the father. He superintended the welfare of the children. He took the children to school. He generally looked after the children. But at best, this pedagogue was a subordinate to the father. He did not belong to the family. Though he may have loved the child dearly, he was not bound to him by a familial relationship.

I left one of my children behind this week in the guardianship of someone else. I entrusted them into their care. They will act in loco parentis, as it were. They will act in my stead. They will get on fine, I’m sure. But they cannot call my boy “my boy.” He’s my boy. They’re just his guardians for the week. And you all feel that about your own children, don’t you? You may teach the Sunday school class, but it’s different with your kids. You may be involved in ministry, but it’s different with those who are your own. And that’s what Paul’s saying here: “Don’t think that I’m lambasting you,” he says. “Don’t think that I’m coming down on you like a ton of bricks. I just want to warn you because I love you, because you’re my kids,” he says. “You came to faith in Jesus Christ as a result of the gospel being proclaimed. I proclaimed the gospel. You came to faith in Jesus.”

His affection for them was great. And no matter how much they profited from the ministry of others—and they would—they owed most of it to Paul. And therefore, they owed that they should heed his injunctions. And that’s really what he’s doing here. He’s drawing upon the relationship.

It is marked not only by intimacy, but it is marked by urgency. “Therefore,” he says, “I urge you to imitate me.” Is this conceit? No, he does it all the time. Turn forward a couple of chapters to 11:1. Notice what he says: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

There’s a gentleman down our road gives tennis lessons. He puts all these little kids in line, and he stands on the other side of the net, and he tells them, “Do what I do.” And that’s exactly what they do! They know that’s the beginning of it and the end of it. “Imitate me,” he says. “If you want to learn, imitate me.” That’s what Paul is saying. Is that presumptuous? No! It’s just regular activity. That’s what it ought to be. If we cannot say to somebody, “Imitate me,” then we have no example for them to follow at all.

In 1 Thessalonians, he does the exact same thing. When he introduces Thessalonians, he says in 1 Thessalonians 1:6, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord.”

It’s a long time since I quoted a country-western song, so here goes. (At least it seems long to me. It’s probably only a couple of weeks.) But Paul Overstreet’s song about fathers and sons, and he says as he writes the song,

I’m seeing my father in me,
I guess that’s how it’s meant to be;
And I find I’m [growing] more … like him each day.
I notice I walk the way he walks,
I notice I talk the way he talks,
I’m starting to see my father in me.[7]

That’s what Paul is saying here: “I love you. You’re my dear children. You’ve got lots of guardians, but you owe it first to me, under God, through the gospel. Therefore, on account of my relationship, because of the intimacy, I announce the urgency, which is to imitate me.”

Well, he must have said, “Now that’s something to say. But how are they going to do that? Because my memory may be dimming in their minds. I know what I’ll do: I’ll send somebody. Who will I send? I know who I’ll send: I’ll send Timothy. Why would I send Timothy? Well, when I wrote to the church at Philippi, I told them, ‘I have nobody else with a genuine interest in your well-being. All the others seem to be wrapped up in their own affairs.’[8] So Timothy is the one who will take a genuine interest in the things of the church in Corinth. Well, he’s the man I need.”

If you can’t go yourself and you send a substitute, make sure that the substitute that you send is in concurrence with your convictions, is in line with your lifestyle, is true to your parameters and purposes. It only makes sense. If you can’t call on a client and you’re going to send somebody in your place, you’re not going to send any clodhopper in there, are you? You’re not going to send somebody who doesn’t know the background of the client, who doesn’t know the product that is being offered, who is unable, if you like, to service the customer. You’re foolish if you do! And so you don’t, because you’re not going to be foolish.

“In the same way,” says Paul, “I want you to imitate me. I want you to heed my warning. I want you to remember how I was privileged to be used by God in your life. And so I’m going to send Timothy.” “Who’s Timothy?” “Well, he’s my son, not by natural affiliation but as a result of spiritual work.” He, too, had come to faith in Jesus Christ under the ministry of Paul: “My son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord.” Isn’t that a great statement to be able to say? These are the kind of people we need: sons and daughters in the Lord Jesus whom we love, who are “faithful in the Lord,” and who “will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.”

In other words, Timothy is not going to come to the church in Corinth and set up his little Timothy evangelistic enterprise gig. Timothy’s not going to come and say, “Now, I know you’ve had Paul here in the past, and I know that he established things, but, you know, I’m Timothy, and Paul, he’s really keen on me. And I’ve really done a lot of good things for Paul, and so I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be.” No, Timothy was very, very clear about what he was responsible for: he was to go and remind—not innovate, but to remind the church in Corinth of the way that Paul lived in Jesus and how how he walked and how he talked were interwoven.

You find this phrase, incidentally—that “my way of life … agrees with what I teach everywhere in [the] church”—he talks about teaching these same things everywhere he goes. For example, in 7:17, he uses the same terminology: “Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord [has] assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.” Somebody says, “Well, what right does Paul have to lay any rules down in any churches?” Because he was the apostle Paul! He was on a divine commission. As he spoke, God spoke through his word in the foundations that were laid down and given to us in the Scriptures. That is why we pay attention to what 1 Corinthians is all about: because it is an apostolic book possessed of the power which God intended.

The Test Paul Applies

Well, let’s move, finally, to verse 18 through to the end of the chapter. The tension he addresses is between the condition he faces and the notion which the church cherishes. The truth that he affirms is that he’s not writing to shame them, but because he loves them as dear children, he wants to warn them. He has a unique relationship with them, and until he gets to them, he’s sending Timothy, because he’s sure that Timothy will do the job. Timothy’s ministry will not be innovative; it will be a reminding ministry, and he will remind the people that Paul is hanging tough in the things of Christ.

Finally, the test which he will apply. “Some of you,” he says, “have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you.” The problem in the church was that it was producing all these teachers, many of whom had swollen heads. They really didn’t like what Paul had done, and they didn’t like the prospect of Paul coming back, and so they were putting around the notion that they could just be listened to themselves, because Paul would not return. Paul says, “Don’t you believe it. I’m coming back.” Verse 19: “I’ll come to you, and I’ll come very soon, as long as the Lord is willing. And when I come, I will bring my plumb line. When I come, I will conduct the test. And the test will be to find out not only how these people talk but what power do these people have. For,” he says—laying down a principle which we’ve understood, at least since we took as our verse for the year, Zechariah 4:6—“because,” he says, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”

Children make outrageous claims for themselves, don’t they? You get a little boy on his own, and he’s perhaps near a lake or whatever it is, and he says—and he’s only about knee-high to a grasshopper—and he says, “I’m going to go out in the lake, and I’m going swim over to Chicago this afternoon.”

And you say, “Oh, is that right, honey?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going there, and I’m going to bungee jump off the Sears Tower. Uh-huh.”

“Yeah? Oh, that’s good, honey. Uh-huh. Well, isn’t that your mom calling you now for lunch?”

“Oh yeah, yeah.” And off he trails.

The fact is that he’s a kid. His protestations and his boastings can’t be matched by his actions. He couldn’t swim fifteen feet out from shore without drowning. He couldn’t spell bungee. But there again, neither can you. Neither can I!

And it is a sign of immaturity to be big on talk and short on action. And that was the problem in Corinth. They had all the talk. They had all the eloquence. They had it all down. Paul says, “But when I come, I’m going to use something different. I’m not just going to find out whether you folks, who are so proud of your newfound position in the church, I’m not going to just assess whether you are eloquent. I’m pretty sure you’re eloquent. But I’m going to assess whether you are able to speak in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” That’s the issue! Because the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk; it is a matter of action. It is a matter of life- transforming power. And somebody may speak, and they may be articulate, and they may be enthralling, and they may be interesting, and they may be funny, but at the end of it all, there is no accompanying sense of the Spirit’s ministry driving the Word of God home into people’s hearts. And that, you see, is just a futility.

It is a sign of immaturity to be big on talk and short on action.

So says Paul, “I love you as a dad loves his children. But when I come, I’m going to conduct a test. And it’s up to you: Shall I show up with a big stick to beat you, or shall I show up with a gentle spirit?” Any time a father is away from home and he looks forward to coming home, he desires to come in the spirit of love and a spirit of gentleness, not with a big stick. He doesn’t want to come in the door and go, “Okay, line up!” It really is a tyranny.

I can remember, as a child, living with the phrase from time to time “Just you wait till your father comes home!” So you had this horrible mixture of, on the one hand, anticipation, and then a sense of necessary fear. Paul says, “When I show up, when Dad comes home, what do you prefer? Do you want me to give you a smacked bottom, or do you want me to give you a hug?” What good is all the boasting of the Corinthian church—about their gifts, about their teachers, about their allegiances—when at the same time, the fellowship is disintegrating as a result of their unbridled passion and as a result of their unchecked lust?

John Calvin puts this so very helpfully. He says the crying need is for “that spiritual efficacy, with which those [who] are endowed who dispense the word of the Lord.” “With which those [who] are endowed who dispense the word of the Lord with earnestness.” I’ve got to read that again. I can’t even read my own writing. The crying need of the hour is for the “spiritual efficacy, with which those who are endowed who dispense the word of the Lord with earnestness.” It doesn’t make any more sense that time either. We’ll let it go. That is the most incomprehensible quote I ever gave you. Let me try another one: “For how small an affair is it for any one to have skill to prattle eloquently, while he [is] nothing but [an] empty [jangling].”[9] It’s a little better, not great.

By and large, this morning, you see, men and women here in this church, as in Corinth, you know what you ought to do. You don’t ultimately need somebody to stand up here and tell you what you ought to do. The Bible is full of that. You have your Bible. You can read it! What do you need? You need the power to do what you ought! So the ministry of the Word of God is not to be some cerebral lecturing, but it is to be accompanied—in the strange, strange way that only God fully understands—it is to be accompanied in such a way that when the voice of a mere man opens up the powerful Word of Truth and individuals such as you and I sit underneath it, not only do we find the guideline along which we are to walk, but we also discover in the ministry of the Spirit to our lives the enabling to do what we’re called to do. And there’s all the difference in the world between mere talk and the transforming power of the gospel. “So,” says Paul, “I’m going to come and conduct the test.”

A Few Lessons

Let me draw this to a close by noting for you just one or two lessons, at least that I wrote down in my own notes.

As I thought about all of these verses and this whole warning, I said, “I think it would be important for us as a church to check for evidences of pride in our church, especially at this point in our history, when so much is encouraging.”

Secondly, I thought that it would be important for me and for others, too, to beware of the tyranny of unreality and of living in a kind of Christian illusion, believing that we are powerful and effective and dynamic and skillful and knowing nothing of the refuse pile of the world.

Thirdly, that it would be important for us to recognize, as does Paul, that life is not all a bowl of cherries, that everything isn’t fantastic, that we do struggle—and some of us are struggling—and therefore, to be prepared to acknowledge that struggling before others so that we may find encouragement from them and, in turn, encourage those who need it.

Fourthly, that we would assess our effectiveness in spiritual fathering. Do you have any spiritual children this morning, believer? Have you ever led anyone to faith in Jesus Christ? Have you reproduced yourself even once so far? How are we doing as a church? The question is not “Do people come from other churches to visit us?” The question is “Are we seeing biological growth, people born from darkness into marvelous light, non-Christians becoming new Christians in Jesus and finding fellowship here?” Not “Are we moving people around from this church fellowship to that church fellowship?” That’s not church growth; that’s just church movement. What is the role of the spiritual father?

The Bible was not given simply to increase our knowledge but to change our lives.

Fifthly, that we would recognize that to be given the privilege of being a Timothy is to be given a great privilege. Sitting a few Sunday mornings, listening to someone preach, my mind was wandering, started to look around the church building, and it had a lot of things you could check out, and it had plaques with people’s names on it. I began to read the plaques. I came across this one: it said, “Erected by the friends of Thomas Powell on the 17thof June, 1899, whose memory, still fresh in their hearts after twenty-seven years, they now commit to marble.” Twenty-seven years later, Thomas Powell’s friends still remembered him. What did they remember about him? “He was a man of humble spirit who walked with God and had the esteem and confidence of men. His integrity, labors of love, and constant generosity will live long in grateful remembrance.”

Oh, to be a Timothy! Oh, for somebody else to say of us, “I’ve got no one else like him, who would take a genuine interest in your welfare.[10] If you get Timothy, you get my best.”

Sixthly, remind ourselves that the Bible, as we study it week by week, was not given simply to increase our knowledge but to change our lives.

Seventhly, to commit ourselves to living out the truths that we’re discovering in this book before our families; that there may be justification for being able to say to our children around the breakfast table or as they come home in the evening, “Honey, I want you to imitate me.”

And eighthly, that we ought to continually thank God for his Word, so that we don’t have to wonder about what we’re going to do on Sundays, nor wonder about what we’ll say when we stand before the congregation, nor wonder about what we’re going to hear when we take our place in the fellowship of the believers, because “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”[11]

[1] See 1 Corinthians 3:6–7.

[2] 1 Corinthians 5:2 (NIV 1984).

[3] 1 Corinthians 5:2 (NIV 1984).

[4] 1 Corinthians 6:5 (NIV 1984).

[5] 1 Corinthians 15:33–34 (NIV 1984).

[6] Acts 18:5 (NIV 1984).

[7] Paul Overstreet, “Seein’ My Father in Me” (1990).

[8] Philippians 2:20–21 (Phillips).

[9] John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1848), 1:175.

[10] Philippians 2:20 (paraphrased).

[11] Psalm 119:105 (KJV).