Scripture Daily

Context No. 1375 of 4322 · 1 Corinthians

Context · Reflection

1 Corinthians 1:10-19: in context

10Now I beg you, brothers, through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you 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. 11For it has been reported to me concerning you, my brothers, by those who are from Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you. 12Now I mean this, that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and, “I follow Christ.” 13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so that no one should say that I had baptized you into my own name. 16(I also baptized the household of Stephanas; besides them, I don’t know whether I baptized any other.) 17For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Good News—not in wisdom of words, so that the cross of Christ wouldn’t be made void. 18For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing.”

Paul has heard that the church in Corinth is splitting into factions, and he appeals to them urgently to be united in mind and judgment, with no divisions among them. The quarrels have formed around leaders: one says I follow Paul, another I follow Apollos, another I follow Cephas, another I follow Christ, each attaching himself to a favorite name. Paul is appalled and answers with three questions: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? He is glad he baptized almost none of them, so that no one could claim to belong to him; for Christ sent him to preach the gospel, the message of the cross, which is the power of God.

The divisions at Corinth grew up around personalities, around loyalty to particular leaders, and Paul treats this as a serious corruption of the church. People had begun to define themselves by which teacher they followed, forming parties around Paul or Apollos or Peter, and in doing so they had fractured the one body of Christ into competing camps. Paul's questions cut to the root: Is Christ divided? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? The answer exposes the folly. No human leader died for them; no one was baptized into Paul's name; they all belong to Christ alone, and to split into factions loyal to this or that servant of his is to forget whose they actually are. There is a warning here that the church has never outgrown. It remains easy to attach our loyalty to a favorite teacher, a tradition, a personality, and to let that become a banner under which we divide from other Christians, as though we belonged to the leader rather than to Christ. Paul will have none of it. The leaders are only servants; Christ alone was crucified for us, and we are baptized into his name, not theirs. To make a party out of loyalty to a human leader, however gifted, is to divide what cannot rightly be divided, the one body that belongs wholly to Christ.

Do I attach my loyalty to a favorite teacher or tradition and let it divide me from other Christians, forgetting that no human leader was crucified for me, and that I belong not to any servant of Christ but to Christ himself?

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