The Devil Divides, God Unites-1 Cor 1:10-17

The devil divides but God unites. A friend wrote, “𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒐𝒘𝒆 𝒎𝒆” are 3 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒖𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒍. “𝑭𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎” are 3 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆.

In 2010 I wrote a blog: Why Do We Have Divisions? My short answer was, “…because we have people.” To expand on this, divisions happen because church leaders are sinful and church members are sinful, and because church leaders and church members may be full of themselves! I read my blog again and found that I had summarized the first 4 chapters of 1 Corinthians which–God willing–I’ll preach on in the next few months.

When upset with others, do you deal with sin in yourself? Division sees the wrong on “the other side,” but not on “their own side” nor in their own heart. This leads to pride, ego, blaming, accusing, self-righteous indignation, finger pointing, and the desire to control, dominate, oppress and fix others to your own image. When I preach I can similarly use the Bible to dissect the issues of others and ignore my own sin of impatience, being easily angered, lust, desire for honor, praise, significance and recognition, competing and comparing with others, etc.

• “I appeal to [exhort, beseech, plead, urge, request] you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
• that all of you agree with one another in what you say [agree together, you all agree, have one speech, speak the same thing] and
• that there be no divisions among you [end your divisions, no divisions in the church],
• but that you be perfectly united in mind [perfectly joined together, one mind, united in thought]
• and thought [conviction, purpose, conscience, judgment]” (1 Cor 1:10).

Not conformity but unity. All agree with one another (not agree with ME). The fundamental theme of the letter is in 1 Cor 1:10. Everything that follows, esp. 1:11-4:21, must be understood as an elaboration of this appeal. Paul, writing to a community torn by divisions (schismata), calls for [perfect] unity [“firmly joined” NEB’s felicitous translation]–restoration to a prior condition; the same verb is used to describe the “mending” of fishing nets (Mk 1:19; Mt 4:21). Paul had left the Corinthian community in a relatively harmonious condition; now to his dismay, quarrels are splitting the church. This information is from “Chloe’s people” (1 Cor 1:11), who presumably were slaves or retainers of a woman named Chloe. She lives either in Corinth or Ephesus, but her emissaries travel between the 2 cities on business and brought Paul the disturbing news in the church.

Dissensions, arguments, divisions. The divisions are inchoate (rudimentary, just began, not fully formed) rather than clearly organized parties. In this volatile situation, they were rallying around the names of various preachers and leaders (1 Cor 1:12), which Paul thoroughly disapproves of–even of “Paul’s party” which he’d been unaware of. The slogans of who they follow–Paul, Apollos, Cephas, Christ–probably arose spontaneously within the church, without any direct encouragement from the leaders whose names were bandied about. Paul’s remarks suggest that the emergent factions may be created more by personal allegiance/preferences to particular leaders than by clearly defined theological differences.

Exclusivistic. Paul also disapproves of those who say “I belong to Christ.” Isn’t that what every Christian should say? In context, it’d seem that some of the Corinthians have been claiming Christ as their leader in an exclusivistic way: “We are the ones who really belong to Christ, but we’re not so sure about you.” Such a claim might be coupled with a boastful pretension to have direct spiritual access to Christ apart from any humanly mediated tradition. It’s not hard to see how some of them might have developed just such a position on the basis of Paul’s own preaching (Gal 1:11–12). Paul sees, however, that when “I belong to Christ” becomes the rallying cry of one contentious faction within the church, Christ is de facto reduced to the status of one more leader hustling for adherents within the community’s local politics.

A scandalous, absurd, ridiculous situation is how Paul regards the situation by posing a series of biting rhetorical questions (1 Cor 1:13). “Has Christ been divided up and parceled out?” is a more precise translation.  It’s as though Christ is treated as a commodity or a possession to be haggled over. Thus, the one body of Christ (a later image in the letter) has been fragmented into interest groups. The next 2 questions makes the point that no merely human preacher can ever be the basis for the church’s faith and unity. All the rhetorical questions demand a negative answer: “Paul wasn’t crucified for you, was he? Or you weren’t baptized in the name of Paul, were you?” The community‘s life before God depends entirely on Jesus‘ death on a cross (1 Cor 11:26; 15:1-3), and the Lord into whose dominion the community has been transferred in baptism is Christ alone. The church is saved and sustained only in the name of Jesus. When this truth is kept clearly in focus, petty rivalries and preferences for different preachers [political positions] are seen in their true light: Simply ridiculous.

Misunderstanding the meaning of baptism would explain why Paul is glad that he didn’t baptize many people at Corinth (1:14–16). Baptism doesn’t create some special bond of allegiance to the baptizer. Baptism as such is of such slight importance to Paul that he doesn’t even remember how many people he baptized, except for a few prominent community leaders such as Crispus, Gaius, and Stephanas. The “afterthought” functions rhetorically to emphasize how trivial who baptized whom is: “Well, all right, so I did baptize the household of Stephanas, but beyond that I don’t even know whether I baptized anyone else!” (1:16). Paul’s fundamental mission is to preach the gospel, not to baptize (1 Cor1:17a). In Paul’s apostolic work the ministry of the Word is all-important, whereas the ministry of “sacrament” has only secondary significance; they shouldn’t be divided by different sacramental practices, because its fundamental ground of unity lies in the proclaimed gospel. Perhaps they were splitting up into divergent house-church communities that placed undue emphasis on who had performed their baptisms; or perhaps all this is merely an elaborate rhetorical flourish on Paul’s part, a reductio ad absurdum of the Corinthians’ tendency to magnify the messengers and miss the message.

The 3 persons named by Paul were all wealthy or prominent, or both, in the community. Gaius is “host” to Paul (Rom 16:23), and to “the whole church” in Corinth. This means he had a large enough house to accommodate gatherings of the community. Crispus was a “ruler of the synagogue” (archisynagImagesgos) converted by Paul’s missionary preaching (Ac 18:8). Stephanas, head of the 1st household of converts in Achaia, is a leader whom the other members of the community should recognize and serve (1 Cor 16:16–17). Apparently Paul, after baptizing a few such converts, entrusted the subsequent performance of baptisms to these prominent persons. 2 significant observations follow: 1st, Paul has no conception of baptism as a sacrament that must be administered only by specially ordained persons, nor does he have any proprietary interest in regulating its administration. 2nd, the church at Corinth preserved and reproduced—apparently with Paul’s implicit blessing—many of the status distinctions and household authority structures that were already present in the Corinthian social setting before Paul’s arrival. Later in the letter, this recapitulation of socioeconomic status distinctions within the church had begun to produce problems that Paul needed to confront (11:17–34).

His commission from Christ is “to proclaim/preach the gospel,” in contrast to the ministry of baptizing. This proclamation is to be carried out “not with eloquent wisdom” (literally, “not in the wisdom of a word”). The antithesis posited here sets unadorned gospel-preaching over against a “wisdom” presented with rhetorical skill and flair. To Paul such slick presentations would have the effect of making the cross of Christ “empty” (1:17b). This contrast between rhetoric and gospel becomes the theme to which Paul next turns his attention (1:18–2:5).

REFLECTION. The thematic introduction of this letter (1:10–17) is also addressed to US. Sadly, the church in these days finds itself no less riddled by conflict than was the Corinthian congregation. We are “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed” (“The Church’s One Foundation”).

Discern the parallels between the Corinthian divisions and the church’s present disunity. Embrace the foundation for unity that Paul identifies: the cross of Jesus Christ and baptism into his name. Paul doesn’t appeal to them/us to stop bickering in the name of expediency or humanitarian tolerance. Instead, he points to Christ as the one ground of unity. Ephesians offers an authentic exposition of Paul’s theology at this point: Christians are called “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” because their identity is defined by “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:3–5). Any attempt by the community to define itself in other terms—whether in the names of leaders or doctrines or good causes—will promote schism in the church and make our actions into a ridiculous parody of the faith we confess.

No doubt our denominational divisions perpetuate the sort of fragmentation of Christ that Paul deplored. Each one of us says, “I belong to Luther,” or “I belong to Calvin,” or “I belong to Wesley,” or “I belong to the Church of Christ.” The division of the Christian communions is a scandal, and we should hear in Paul’s letter to Corinth a reproach to ourselves for perpetuating this tragic state of affairs.Cults of personality in the church. Paul’s indictment hits home when the charisma and ambition of the preacher looms larger than the gospel of the cross. Something is dreadfully wrong and a red flag should go up when we start to align and define ourselves in terms of a particular leader or agenda. This can happen on a large scale, as with TV preachers, or on a small scale, as when “groupies” gather around the pastor in a local congregation. Paul forewarns us about the potential of such movements to divide the church.

The local congregation is where Paul’s warnings are most pertinent. It’s easy to deplore the brokenness of the church universal, but it is a hard thing to attend carefully to the ways in which factions and quarrels damage the daily life of our own congregations. This is the hard thing to which Paul’s letter calls us. Wherever we see tears in the fabric of our congregational life, we need to recall 1 Cor 1:10–17 and draw the appropriate conclusions: We are called to work and pray diligently for the healing of our divisions. Keeping this passage in focus as the keynote of 1 Corinthians will help us see that.

  Paul’s basic concern throughout the letter is the wholeness and integrity of the community. Paul doesn’t write this letter to address the atomistic problems of isolated individuals at Corinth. Rather, he calls on the community as a whole to take responsibility for relinquishing rivalry and overcoming divisions. In our time, divisions in the local church may arise more often over “issues” (homosexuality, abortion, social agendas) than over the personal appeal of particular leaders. Either way, Paul’s calling to the church is clear: unity in Christ. Only when that unity is kept in sight will we be able to work in good faith to be “united [restored] in the same mind and the same purpose.”

Reference: Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.

Sermon Divisions:

1. Always Thank God (1:1-9) [1 Cor 1:4].  Cosmic Epic Calling [1 Cor 1:2].
2. All Agree (1:10-17) [1 Cor 1:10]. No Divisions. Perfect Unity.
3. Foolish Cross (1:18-25) [1 Cor 1:18].
4. What You Were (1:26-31) [1 Cor 1:26]. No Boasting  [1 Cor 1:31].
5. Christ Crucified (2:1-5) [1 Cor 2:2].
6. Mature Wisdom (2:6-16) [1 Cor 2:6].
7. Field Laborers (3:1-9) [1 Cor 3:5].
8. Construction Workers (3:10-15) [1 Cor 3:10-11].
9. God’s Temple (3:16-22) [1 Cor 3:16].
10. True Self (4:1-5) [1 Cor 4:4].
11. Become Scum (4:6-13) [1 Cor 4:13].
12. Final Warning (4:14-21) [1 Cor 4:19].