1 Corinthians 1

1 Corinthians 1:1-31

XIV THE – AND 1 Corinthians 1:1-31. In this discussion we commence with the salutation and thanksgiving as the second item of the analysis. The salutation Isaiah 1Co_1-3. The thanksgiving, 1Co_4-9. Let us look at that salutation: “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.” If we turn back to the salutation of 1 Thessalonians, we find that it says: “Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians.” But this one says, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.” The change arises from the objection that had been raised against him in the city of Corinth. Therefore from now on, he never commences a letter without affirming his call to the apostleship and his qualification for it.

One of the occasions for the letter was that a man from Judea, bearing letters of recommendation, had sought to undermine Paul’s influence by denouncing his apostleship, and now Paul puts into his letters a statement of his full apostolic claim: “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.”

The salutation, then, is from Paul and Sosthenes, who is the amanuensis. When we come to the end of the letter we will see that Paul grabs the pen and writes that anathema with his own hand. The only letter that he did write with his own hand throughout, was the letter to the Galatians. His eyes were very bad, and he wrote in great sprawling letters, about which he says, “See with how large letters I write unto you with mine own hand.” Because of this defect in his eyesight he employed a clerk.

Great fundamental principles are discussed in this letter, and it is addressed to them directly, but it was not intended to be merely a local letter. The expression, “With all that call, . . . ,” lifts it above local restrictions. We notice in the salutation his use of the words, “sanctified,” and “saints,” one indicating past time, and the other present time: “Them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” The two words come from a common root. Sanctification has three Bible significations: Primarily it means to set apart. God sanctified the seventh day and set it apart. Jesus said, “I sanctify myself,” that is, “I set myself apart to do the work I am to do.” In one instance at least, the word “sanctification” is used as an equivalent of regeneration, because sanctification commences in regeneration, and the passage is this: “The elect . . . according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit.” There, sanctification includes both sanctification and regeneration.

The third sense is where it is limited to what is called the doctrine of sanctification as distinguished from justification and regeneration. Regeneration is an instantaneous act of the Spirit of God, giving a holy disposition to the mind, renewing the man, applying to him the cleansing blood of Christ.

But sanctification, in its doctrinal aspect, is the progressive work of making completely holy that new life which is commenced in regeneration. And then it goes on until the man’s soul is made completely holy – as holy as God is holy. In justification Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us through faith; in sanctification, before the work is completed, or when it is completed, we personally are made righteous altogether. Sanctification of the spirit culminates in death. When the soul is separated from the body it is sanctified – made perfect. Paul says) “The spirits of just men made perfect.” Death is the last lesson in sanctification. He continues the salutation: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul’s salutations always consist, first, of “grace,” and then “peace,” because peace depends on grace.

In every letter that he writes, just after the salutation is a thanksgiving statement. He had hard work in finding ground for thanksgiving here, but he always finds it if it is there. He always gives his thanks to God for the good that there is, before he begins to point out evil. I take great blame to myself that I do not follow Paul with regard to thankfulness concerning the brethren. I am afraid many of us are addicted to censoriousness; because of the spirit of criticism we see but little reason for thankfulness in many of our brethren.

An old deacon of the church to which I first preached told me of one man who never condemned, who in every case found some good in whomsoever was mentioned. Finally they made a bet that even the deacon could not find a good thing to say about a certain man that was a notoriously bad character and who had just died. They told the old deacon about it and he stood a while and then said, “Brethren, we ought to be thankful that he was a good whistler.” He just wouldn’t say a condemnatory thing about anybody.

This letter of Paul to the church at Corinth was a sharp letter, and particularly when he criticizes the abuse and misuse of the miraculous spiritual gifts. I once heard a preacher say, “Don’t burn the ship in order to get rid of the rats.” So Paul does not discount the great spiritual gifts because by some people they were so abused and misused. These gifts were more widely diffused among the Corinthians than at any other place of which we have any account in the Bible. It was a great necessity at that place for these spiritual gifts in order to get a hearing. Referring to these gifts Paul says, “In everything ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift.” That is a new ground of thanksgiving that we have not found before.

With this brief prelude Paul launches at once into the discussion of the great questions that occasioned the letter. First of all were the eight ecclesiastical disorders. This ‘is what he says: “Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.” Let us see what kind of contentions, and how factions started in that church, and let us see if, so far as our knowledge of factions goes, that they arise from the same cause. I don’t suppose that there ever was a preacher who didn’t at some time or other see a divided church. There are men today with a great burden on their hearts because of divisions in the church where they preach.

We want to know how these factions started. He said, “Each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I am of Apollos; and I am of Cephas; and I am of Christ.” What then is the contention about?

The members of the church are partial toward spiritual leaders. After Paul left there, Apollos, of Alexandria, an eloquent rhetorician, came there, and he was a mighty orator, and the people were led away by his eloquence, and later there came these brethren from Judea who thought that Peter was a great man. Apollos himself was not to blame; he had nothing to do with it. But a faction rallied around Apollos, another around Peter, another rallied around Christ. Some held to Peter and some held to themselves, and said, “I am a ‘Christ-i-an,’ " others, “I am Apollosite,” “I am a Peterite,” or “I am a Christite.” While Paul was away Apollos came there and preached, and being a very eloquent man and a rhetorician, with all of the arts of polished speech, with well-rounded periods) his speech so very fine that admiration for the rhetoric of it led some to disregard the matter of it, so that to them the speech was lost in its oratory.

At various conventions I have heard men remarking on certain speakers. One said concerning a certain address, “That was the most logical, best rounded, and of the most homiletic art,” showing that they were studying the manner and casting of the speech more than the preaching itself, just like discussing a woman’s dress instead of the woman.

The gravest factions that ever agitated the churches of Jesus Christ have come up around persons more than doctrines, politics, or measures. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, rows in the church come up around preachers. Laymen as a rule don’t like a fuss in a church, but the preacher oftentimes makes a great deal of harm, intending really to do good instead of evil, and yet because he doesn’t know how to do certain things, and particularly how to handle delicate cases of discipline, there will be a scene, and directly the cause of a splitting of the church wide open. Generally we can get men to compromise, and by reasoning and prayer, we may bring them into doctrinal agreement, but the hardest men to harmonize in the world are those who are contentious about men. That is why we should never seek after a “stack-pole” unification, i. e., stack around a man. He may die, and then what becomes of our unit?

It was a grief to Paul because people had made his name a cause of faction. Let us carefully and prayerfully make the application to our own hearts, and note the great arguments Paul gives against these factions. He says, “Is Christ divided?” i. e., is our Lord Jesus Christ to be cut up and parceled and measured out, one piece to one man, another to another man? So long as Christ is the center of our unification, kingship, priesthood, there should be no division about men.

When I was a schoolboy I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Union, though when my state seceded, I entered the Southern army and remained in it four years. In my last days at school I stood on a goods box in the streets of Independence under the last Star-Spangled Banner ever lifted to the sun of Texas before the war, and with a great mob gathered round to pull down the flag, I commenced my oration by repeating the poem: Think ye that I could brook to see That banner I have loved so long, Borne piecemeal o’er the distant sea, Divided, measured, parceled out, Tamely surrendered up forever, To satisfy the soulless rabble? Never, never!

I have to confess that I changed my conviction about the right policy of secession, after I saw that they had to secede. There was not anything else to be done, but I am just showing how here in measuring, parceling out, the thought is just the same.

Notice Paul’s next argument: “Was Paul crucified for you? You say you are for Paul, Cephas, or for Apollos: is any one of these your Saviour? Was Peter judged before Pilate? Was it Peter that entered the three hours of darkness and cried out, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Was it by the shed blood of Paul that your sins were forgiven? If none of these men was crucified for you, then in the name of consistency, why name them as rallying points? When you came up and testified for Christ’s sake that God had forgiven yours sins, and when you were led into the water, and the preacher lifted up his hand over your head, did he say, “Upon your public profession, I baptize you in the name of Peter”? He makes his argument still stronger, saying, “I thank God that I baptized none of you save Crispus and Gaius – and the household of Stephanus.”

Never shall I forget one of my earliest controversies. A man came to my town and was affirming that baptism was essential to salvation, like repentance and faith. I stood up before him and said,

“Will you tell me then, why Paul said, I thank God I baptized none of you save Crispus and Gaius? You say baptism is essential to salvation; Paul said, ‘God sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel.’ " Notice how he puts baptism in opposition to the gospel.

Then further, if there were no other words in the Bible than the words we have here, they are forever fatal to the doctrine of baptismal salvation.

Those who were converted were usually baptized by other ministers. Perhaps he baptized these when he first reached Corinth and was by himself. But soon after Timothy, Titus, and Silas joined him and performed the rest of the baptizing. Christ never baptized at all, but Christ saved men, therefore his baptism was not essential to salvation.

It was Peter who opened the door to the Gentiles, and they through faith received remission of sins. He commanded them to be baptized; he did not do it himself. Baptism is a commandment of great importance, but it is not a condition of salvation. Paul says, “I thank God I baptized none of you lest somebody, in saying, I am of Paul,’ should give as a reason I am better than you are because Paul baptized me.’ " I can understand that one who is to be baptized would prefer that a dear friend should perform that ordinance, just as people marry and want some dear friend to perform that rite; but it is not necessary that a particular person should do it. If it is a fact that a certain person should not do the baptizing, then that should be made no ground for division, or from the fact that there are three denominations at least who recognize us as proper subjects of baptism, but who refuse to recognize it because we were not baptized by the bishop or some person high in church position.

Notice the continuation of Paul’s argument: “For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. And the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe.”

The application is this: One of the factions of that Corinthian church arose out of the great dialectic skill of Apollos in his preaching and in his argument. That, says Paul, can be no ground for a faction in the church of Jesus Christ, because true preaching holds up the cross only as a means of salvation, and not the oratorical manner in which one talks about the cross. He goes on to show why it was in his preaching that he refused that oratorical method. He says, “I came, not relying upon the wisdom of the world and argumentation. I came in weakness, fear and trembling, praying that your faith should not stand in man, but in the demonstration of the Spirit, and I held up nothing before you but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If a church is to be divided on a question of rhetoric or philosophic training, then I propound Paul’s questions, “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world?” God had poured his contempt upon the whole of it.

The world by wisdom knew not God. All the wise men of the world were never able to find him nor to devise a single plank of the bridge of salvation that spans the chasm between hell and heaven.

He continues to argue: “Not only is this true, but I appeal to your experience, For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that were strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are; that no flesh should glory before God.” If salvation is dependent upon the eloquence of preachers, the logic of Aristotle and wisdom of Socrates; if the number of converts are to be measured by the preacher’s acquaintance with flights of fancy, and with great epic poems that he has either written or read, then, indeed, might one make that a ground of contention, but the very highest estimate that one can put upon any of that is that it is merely a scaffolding.

I have oftentimes seen a great sermon fail to convict because it was too ornate, too delicate, too polished. It did not deal directly with the naked souls of men.

That was a shrewd thing in Paul to appeal to their experience: “Look at yourselves! You were a ragamuffin crowd – thieves, murderers, adulterers. Did rhetoric come to you in the mud, and wash you clean? Was it the power of the orator that could charm you from the degradation of sin, and could lift you up and put your feet upon the rock? O brethren, it was the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! The cross of Christ is the only true thing in preaching that saves men, and here you are splitting up the church because one preacher is more eloquent than another.”

I feel pressed in spirit to enforce upon the minds of preachers the subject of contention. Let them beware that there should come death unto the church of Jesus Christ on their account. Though a Christian cannot be lost, the church can be destroyed. Because that church organization is the temple of the Holy Spirit, God says, and Paul brings out the statement of God in this letter, “Him that destroyeth the temple of God will God destroy, and his temple are ye.” That does not mean that the preacher loses his soul, but that on account of his church he may be stricken and temporarily destroyed so that he will never get over it; his usefulness gone and his name on record as the man who divided the church, and the light was put out, and all because “him that destroyeth the temple of God will God destroy.”

What graver lesson does Texas need than she has had? Some years ago all our work was paralyzed on account of hypercriticism, until at last the brethren saw that there could never be a forward move, the people of God could never advance with banner unfurled, and from the very day that they drew the line of demarcation until now, there has been one colossal stride after another toward greater things. Let us go back in our mind over the list of ministers who have lost their hold on congregations, not as Christians, but as preachers, and have made shipwreck of their lives. There was a man that destroyed a certain church of Jesus; he came in as a ground of faction; he worked up a party of division around himself, and the power of the church was lost. When he did that he signed his death warrant as a useful preacher.

1. What constitutes the second item of the analysis, and what the scripture for each division?

2. What particularly distinguishes the salutation of this letter from the preceding salutations in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and why?

3. What expression lifts the letter above local restrictions, and why should this letter not be so restricted?

4. On the phrase, “sanctified, called to be saints,” what the several New Testament meanings of the word “sanctify,” who could the sanctification of the Corinthians be past, present, and future, what the particular meaning of the word expressing what Baptists call the doctrine of sanctification, and how distinguish it from regeneration and justification?

5. What the relation of “grace” and “peace,” and how is this relation indicated?

6. What was Paul’s habit in writing his letters, and what the lesson on censoriousness? Illustrate.

7. What the new ground of hi? thanksgiving here?

8. Were the gifts mentioned in this thanksgiving the ordinary graces of the Spirit or those miraculous endowments of the Spirit constituting the “baptism in the Holy Spirit”?

9. What passages in the letter show the extent and variety of the miraculous endowments bestowed upon the Corinthians?

10. In view of their misuse and abuse of these gifts, what the explanation of Paul’s thankfulness for their reception of them? Illustrate.

11. What is the first ecclesiastical disorder, and what part of the letter discusses it?

12. What is the occasion of this disorder – persons, doctrines, or discipline, etc.?

13. If persons, were they laymen or preachers, and who were they?

14. What proportion of church divisions now are caused or occasioned by preachers, and when thus occasioned are the preachers always to blame?

15. What is Paul’s first argument against factions, and what the present-day application?

16. What is his second argument and its application?

17. What is his third argument, how does he reinforce this argument, and what is its bearing on baptismal salvation?

18. What is the fourth argument, and what the application to the Corinthians?

19. What is the fifth argument, and what the special application to the Corinthians?

20. What is the sixth argument, appealing to their personal experience, and what illustration from modern Baptist history?

21. What is the meaning of “if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy”?