Scripture Daily

Context No. 1056 of 4322 · 1 Corinthians

Context · Reflection

1 Corinthians 4:6-13: in context

6Now these things, brothers, I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to think beyond the things which are written, that none of you be puffed up against one another. 7For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn’t receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? 8You are already filled. You have already become rich. You have come to reign without us. Yes, and I wish that you did reign, that we also might reign with you! 9For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men. 10We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor. 11Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. 12We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure. 13Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.

Paul is confronting the pride of the Corinthians, who have been puffed up, playing favorites among their teachers and imagining themselves rich, wise, and reigning like kings. He punctures it with a question: who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not? Then he contrasts their imagined glory with the actual life of the apostles: last of all, like men sentenced to death, a spectacle to the world, fools for Christ's sake, weak, dishonored, hungry, homeless, beaten, reviled, persecuted, treated as the garbage of the world.

The question at the heart of it dismantles all boasting: what do you have that you did not receive? Every gift, every ability, every advantage the Corinthians were proud of was given to them; none of it was self-generated, so boasting in it makes no more sense than a man bragging about a present someone handed him. If it was received, the credit belongs to the giver. That one question, honestly faced, deflates spiritual pride completely, because there is nothing we possess that we did not first get as a gift. And then Paul holds up the apostolic life as the strange opposite of the Corinthians' triumphalism: while they imagine themselves reigning, the apostles are last of all, hungry and beaten and reviled, and when cursed they bless, when persecuted they endure. This is the cross-shaped life, and Paul is not ashamed of it; he sets it against the puffed-up, comfortable Christianity the Corinthians preferred. The mark of the real apostle is not honor and comfort but weakness borne for Christ, and a heart that responds to reviling with blessing.

What am I quietly boasting in that I actually received as a gift, and does my life look more like the Corinthians' imagined reigning or the apostles' cross-shaped weakness that blesses when reviled?

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