Divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.
START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
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OBSERVE:
Paul gets down to nitty gritty details with the Corinthians. He hears reports that this church, that means so much to him, is dividing into factions. He appeals to the church:
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.
There is evidence here of one of the distinguishing characteristics of the early church — the house church. Paul speaks of hearing reports from Chloe’s household about the contentions in the Christian church. Household church meetings for prayer and worship are regarded as the prototype for Christian ecclesiastical life in the early church. It may well be that Chloe’s household was such a house church.
But this is incidental to Paul’s real concern, that there are factions and divisions that are developing. The factionalism falls along the lines of loyalty to various Christian leaders:
Now I mean this, that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and, “I follow Christ.”
The last group, claiming to follow Christ seems odd. Paul, of course, was the founder of the church at Corinth, and their first teacher. Apollos was a gifted preacher who also had preached in many of the same churches as an evangelist that Paul had founded as a missionary. Cephas, of course, is known more familiarly as Simon Peter, who became in time the de facto leader of the early church with the exception of James the brother of Jesus, who presided over the church in Jerusalem.
Were they not all followers of Christ? Perhaps the group claiming to follow Christ was staking out a sense of superiority, that they were in fact the true followers of Christ? As we see throughout Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, there was a faction within the church that had a superiority complex.
Paul’s response to this factionalism is impassioned. He asks a series of rhetorical questions which each suggest one clear answer — no:
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?
Paul’s insistence is that the church is to be centered around one person — Jesus Christ — not around Paul, Apollos or Cephas.
Paul elaborates on his own role as a missionary to the Corinthians for the sake of clarity:
I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one should say that I had baptized you into my own name.
The issue for him is not whether or not he had baptized anyone — he remembers baptizing the household of Stephanas, but can’t remember baptizing anyone else. Rather, the issue for Paul is that he doesn’t want followers! His only mission has been to preach Christ. Paul seeks to make followers of Christ, not followers of himself:
For 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. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
Although Paul is careful not to criticize Apollos or Cephas, there may be a subtext that only an insider would get. He says that his role was not to preach the wisdom of words, but only the cross of Christ. We know from the book of Acts that Apollos was an Egyptian Jew from Alexandria — which was renowned as the second greatest city of the Roman empire after Rome itself, and a center of commerce and of Hellenistic learning and culture.
Apollos was already famous for his eloquence (cf. Acts 18:24), and his bold preaching in the name of Christ. However, it became necessary for him to be instructed more accurately about the details of the Gospel:
He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside, and explained to him the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26).
Note that Paul isn’t deriding Apollos’ eloquence, but he is stating very clearly that the message of the cross doesn’t require eloquence. The cross seems like folly to those who fail to grasp their own sinful nature and helplessness, but those who are saved recognize the cross as the powerful means of grace and salvation.
APPLY:
We are wisely cautioned about over-idealizing the early church. Although it was a time of heroic risk and bold proclamation, the early church has much in common with the church today — it was comprised of people!
Many of the same issues that confronted the Christians in this young church in Corinth also confront us today. And the issue that Paul addresses in this passage is just as relevant to us. Paul decries the factions that have begun to appear. These divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.
His solution to the factionalism and divisiveness that he sees is the same that ours must be — Christ is not divided, and we shouldn’t be divided either.
We must focus on the central message of the Gospel that unites us as Christians — the cross of Christ.
RESPOND:
This passage seems all too relevant to many of our churches today. The Christian church, though comprised of perhaps 2.2 billion people — a third of the world’s population — is divided into a confusing number of denominations and non-denominational groups.
My own church is facing a possible schism in the next few years. Issues of Biblical interpretation, doctrine, mission and morality are tearing at the very fabric of my denomination.
My response to these divisions is somewhat layered and nuanced:
First, I advocate the same response that Paul does to the possibility of division — Is Christ divided? The answer, of course, is no. We are told in Ephesians 2:13-16:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby.
What Paul describes here is the radical work of Christ to break down the divisions between Gentiles and Jews, and to unite both as one through his redemptive ministry. However, I believe this unity transcends the divisions in the early church, and applies to the union of people of all races, nations, tribes, and even denominations. If we can come together in Christ, we will find the true unity that the Scripture tells us is our destiny.
Second, there is the reality that there are often serious differences of interpretation among Christians. Sometimes those differences are, sadly, irreconcilable. I cleave to an ancient formula for the sake of reconciliation — “Unity in the essentials, liberty in the non-essentials, love in all things.”
However, there are times that the differences are so great that Christians cannot simply ignore those differences with integrity. Curiously, though Paul decries the divisions that threaten the Corinthian church, he also recognizes that such divisions are inevitable, and may in fact have a beneficial effect:
For first of all, when you come together in the assembly, I hear that divisions exist among you, and I partly believe it. For there also must be factions among you, that those who are approved may be revealed among you (1 Corinthians 11:18-19).
The word translated as factions is the Greek word hairesis — which is the etymological word often translated as heresies.
So, although we may seek unity in Christ, there are threats to the faith that must be addressed. Jude 3-4 puts it this way, when he writes of threats to the faith:
Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into indecency, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Christian unity cannot come at the expense of doctrinal truth and moral integrity.
Lord, the forces that tear at the church today come not only from the outside but also from the inside of the church. Keep us focused on you and your truth, and enable us to always speak the truth in love. Amen.
PHOTO:
“small wheel thrown vase – 2008” by Zhao Shouren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.
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