1 Corinthians 4
McGeeCHAPTER 4THEME: Conditions of Christ’s servants constrain Christian conductThis is the final chapter in which Paul is dealing with the divisions and the party spirit which was in the church in Corinth. In this chapter, he speaks of the conditions of Christ’s servantsand that is what should constrain Christian conduct.
1 Corinthians 4:1
Let us pause to look at this wonderful verse. We are all “the ministers of Christ.” Every believer is a minister of Christ. Sometimes a member of a congregation will say, “There is my minister.” Well, I hope he is rather a minister of Christ because he is responsible to Him. And you, as a minister of Christ, are responsible to Him. We are all ministers. You are a preacher whether you like it or not. Now don’t get angry with me for saying that. There was a man living near our church in Pasadena, when I was pastor there, who was an alcoholic, a real sot. He lived with his mother who was a wonderful Christian lady, and she asked me to talk with him. One day when I saw him staggering down the street, I just sort of detoured him into my study.
He sat down and I told him what a sorry fellow he was. He agreed with every bit of it. Then I said to him, “Do you know that you are a preacher?” Well, he stood up and said, “Don’t you call me thatI’ll hit you!” He didn’t mind being called a drunkard or an alcoholic, but he surely didn’t want to be called a preacher! Well, we are all preachers. As I told him, “We preach some message by our lives. You are saying something to the world and to those around you by your life.
You can’t help it. I live my life unto you and you live your life unto me. It’s just that way. We have that kind of influence.” My friend, if you are a believer, you are a minister of Christ. What kind of message are you giving? Notice that a minister of Christ is a “steward of the mysteries of God.” In Paul’s day, a steward was the person who managed the household for the owner. He had charge of the house, the food, the clothing, and that sort of thing. He would give out things to the household as they needed them. Just so, a minister of Christ should dispense the Word of God to the members of the household. Here we have that word mystery again. Remember that mysteries are those things which had not been revealed before but are now made known. The mysteries cannot be understood by the natural man. It is only the Spirit of God who can take the things of Christ and show them to us. The “mystery” here is actually the gospel, the Word of God. Since we are stewards of the “mysteries of God,” we are to dispense those mysteries. After concluding His “mystery parables” in Matthew 13, “Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord” (Mat_13:51). I’m inclined to think that they didn’t really understand at that time; Jesus doesn’t say whether or not they understood Him. But He does go on to say to them, “…Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Mat_13:52). That is what a steward of the mysteries of God should be doingbringing forth out of the Word of God things new and things old. Folk sometimes say to me after a Bible study or after a sermon, “That’s old.
I’ve heard that before.” I answer, “Well, I am a steward to bring forth things both new and old. Today I brought forth a little of the old. It is my business to bring forth the old as well as the new.” That is the calling of a steward of the mysteries of God, and I can’t think of any calling higher than that.
1 Corinthians 4:2
Notice that it is not required of a steward to be eloquent or to have many gifts, only that he be found faithful. There are so many who will be rewarded someday, not because they did some great thing or had some great gift, but because they were faithful in what they did and how they did it. I learned over the years as a pastor of a church that there were always the faithful few. I could depend on them. And I knew where they stood.
1 Corinthians 4:3
These two verses actually present the three courts before which we all must appear. They may seem to be rather difficult verses, but actually they are not. They tell us that you have no right to sit in judgment on me, and I have no right to sit in judgment on you because we both are going to stand before a higher court.
- The first court is the lower court. It is the court of the opinion of others. He says, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.” Phillips, in his paraphrase, gives an excellent interpretation of this. “But, as a matter of fact, it matters very little to me what you, or any man, thinks of me …” (1Co_4:3, PHILLIPS). That is not a literal translation, but it is a good interpretation. This is a striking statement, and it may sound as if Paul were antisocial. However, Paul was not callous or contemptuous of the opinion of others. He was not immune to the expression and the estimation of those about him. He defended his apostleship with great feeling when he was challenged by his critics. He was always hurt by false rumors. Right here in this very chapter he made mention of it: “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day” (vv. 1Co_4:11-13).
You can see that Paul was very sensitive to the opinions of others; yet his life was not directed by them. They were not at the steering wheel of his life. Whether we like it or not, we all stand before the judgment seat of others. It is something that we cannot avoid. Abraham Lincoln said, “Public opinion in this country is everything.” Unfortunately, it is true. There is a danger to defer to the opinion of others, to yield to the criticism of our enemies and surrender to them. Many of our courts favor the popularity of the crowd instead of justicecertainly the politicians favor the crowd. Some will surrender principles and honor and reputation.
John Milton said, “The last infirmity of a noble mind is the love of fame.” Unfortunately, that is what many go out to seek today. Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune said, “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today will curse tomorrow, only one thing endurescharacter.” Someone else has said, “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” I’m afraid that is true also. Although Paul was sensitive to the opinion of others, that opinion did not become the guiding principle of his life. “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.” 2. The second court is a higher court. It is the court of one’s own conscience. “Yea, I judge not mine own self.” Is conscience a safe guide? Paul says that it is not an accurate guide. We are to be led of the Spirit. We have already studied about the age of conscience in the Book of Genesis, and there we saw that it ended in the judgment of the Flood. Christians should have an enlightened conscience. When it rebukes us and tells us that we are wrong, we should obey it. However, our conscience can also approve our easygoing ways and can appeal to our vanity and can flatter us. Then we should beware of it. We all stand or fall before this court. It was Longfellow who put it like this: “Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.” An honest man will not be guided by the opinion of others, but he will do what he thinks is right. It is a brave formula. It is a noble rule. Yet Paul said that he didn’t follow it: “…I don’t value my opinion of myself …but that doesn’t justify me before God” (1Co_4:4, PHILLIPS). It wasn’t that Paul knew some bit of evidence against himself. On the contrary, he says he knew nothing against himself, but that still didn’t clear him before God. It is characteristic of our human nature to be harsh on others and very lenient with ourselves. That was David’s problem. He could see the evil in someone else, but he couldn’t see it in himself. How about us? When others hold tenaciously to some opinion, we call them contentious, but when we do it, we are showing the courage of our convictions. Others cause divisions and make trouble, but we are standing for the right. Others are backslidden when they forsake God’s house, but we have a good reason. You know we are not very apt to be severe upon ourselves. We always like to cast ourselves in a leading role, and generally we distort it. No, we do not stand or fall before ourselves. God may reverse the decision of this second court, the court of our own conscience. 3. There is a third court before which we must stand"he that judgeth me is the Lord." The supreme court is of the one and only Master; it is the bema or the judgment seat of Christ. Paul says that he is going to stand someday before the judgment seat of Christ. Each one of us will appear before that judgment seat. (He will say more about this in chapter 5 of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians.) What is going to be judged there? We know that we shall not be judged for our sins because a believer’s sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west (see Psa_103:12). Our sins are under the blood of Jesus Christ and God remembers them no more. The believer will be judged for his stewardship. All our physical possessionsour bodies, our material resources, our givingthese are the things that will be brought up for judgment. So you can see that being a faithful steward is very important. After all, we own nothing. We have learned before that all things are Christ’s and that we belong to Him. We are in partnership with Him. We saw at the close of chapter 3 that all things are ours. Paul is ours and Apollos is ours. Calvin is ours and John Wesley is ours and Martin Luther is ours. This world we live in is ourswe can enjoy the beauty of its scenery, the mountains, the trees, the ocean, and life itself. (I wouldn’t want to be dead today, would you?) But even death is ours! Dr. Parker says, “Death is yours. It belongs to you. Death is not to master you, you are going to master it.” Death is yours. How wonderful that is. When we belong to Christ, all things are ourspresent and future. And we are stewards of all He has entrusted to us.
1 Corinthians 4:5
He is the One who will judge. If we sit in judgment on someone else, we are taking the Lord’s place. This is why we need not react to insult or criticism by fighting back. God will judge us fairly, and He knows all the facts. (Anyway, we probably know worse things about ourselves than does the person who is criticizing us!) The hidden works of darkness are going to be brought out into the light in the presence of Jesus Christ. He will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. This is why we should be very careful how we live today. Then there is this remarkable statement: “then shall every man have praise of God.” I believe that He is going to find something for which He can praise every saint of God. In the Book of Revelation Christ has a word of commendation for each of the seven churches of Asia Minorwith the exception of Laodicea, which probably was not really His church anyway. He had words of commendation for the churches in spite of their faults. And I think He will be equally gracious to each individual saint. A dear little lady in a church years ago always had something good to say about everybody, especially the preacher. One day they had a visiting preacher who delivered the most miserable sermon they had ever heard. The people wondered what in the world the dear little lady would say about such a sermon, and they gathered round as she went out. She smiled and shook hands with the preacher, then she said, “Oh, pastor, you had a wonderful text today!” And, my friend, I think our Lord is going to find something praiseworthy in each of us!
1 Corinthians 4:6
THE APPLICATIONRemember that one of the problems in the Corinthian church was divisions. So now Paul says that he is using this for an illustration for them. Paul and Apollos were friends; they both belonged to Christ, and Christ belonged to both of them. Both men were exercising their gifts.
1 Corinthians 4:7
Do you have a gift? You may have a very outstanding gift, but you have nothing to boast about because God gave it to you. You are not the originator of your gift. We ought to thank God for our gifts.
1 Corinthians 4:8
The apostles in that great martyr period of the church have been set before the world as a spectacle. Not only are they a spectacle to the world but also to angels and to menand I think that refers to us today. Other men have labored, my friend, and we have entered into their labors. Now Paul will tell us what he had gone through in order that we might have this epistle and be enjoying the study of it right now.
1 Corinthians 4:10
You and I can’t imagine how the apostle Paul suffered in order to get out the gospel of Jesus Christ. He evangelized Asia Minor. We are told that in the province of Asia everyone, both Jew and Gentile, heard the Word of God!
1 Corinthians 4:14
Paul was the missionary who led them to Christ. It is a wonderful thing to be the spiritual father of someone whom you have led to Christ.
1 Corinthians 4:17
We see here the personal esteem Paul had for Timothy.
1 Corinthians 4:18
Paul says that he is not so much interested in their talk, but he wants to know whether or not there is power in their lives.
1 Corinthians 4:21
Their attitude and action will determine how Paul shall come to them. Will he need to come with a “rod” of correction, or can he come in love and in a spirit of meekness?