United for Christ

I think it's good for us to do this occasionally because we need to be reminded that as we read the scriptures, we are hearing our King speak to us.

And so we stand sometimes in honor of the King speaking to us.

His word says, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

What I mean is that each of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ.

Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.

I did baptize also the household of Stephanus.

Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we stand in awe of you.

We stand to request of you your opening of our ears, of our hearts, of our minds, even of our eyes to have eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts that are receptive.

Teach us your word, we ask.

Enable us to make much of you this morning.

Amen.

Thank you.

You may be seated.

At first glance, we can clearly see that this church in this ancient city of Corinth had some issues.

And that might be putting it lightly.

Apparently, the conflicts were so intense and so disturbing that someone felt the need to report to the Apostle Paul.

The particular concern in this case is division within the church.

It was an easy transition then for the apostle to finish his greeting and then address the issue of conflicts.

It was an easy transition because of what he said in verse 9.

He said in verse 9, God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

As we saw last time, the faithfulness of God is connected to what even comes before that.

In verse 8, we saw there that the Lord Jesus will sustain his own to the very end.

We can trust that God will do that because he is faithful.

That faithfulness is then directed to those who have been called into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That last sentence there is important.

It's important because of the word fellowship.

Fellowship in its most basic sense means to share.

To share.

Or to share together, if you want to even emphasize it more.

There is a coming together, a spirit of love and brotherhood in Christ, to share in the one who called us to himself.

When we share, there is an implication of unity.

When we share, we demonstrate humility, and that humility connects us with one another in a unified way so that we are able to fellowship together.

For example, we have all seen children try to play together without sharing.

It goes well, doesn't it?

It may for one or two or three seconds, but not much more than that, right?

If children play together and they do not share, is there unified fellowship?

No.

Not at all.

If children don't share, there is no humility and there is no unity.

That toy is mine, mine, mine, not yours.

Don't touch it.

Right?

There's no unity there, there's no sharing there, there's no fellowship there.

The same principle applies to the church.

God's people are called by him to be united, to share with one another in everything that is in Christ, and to share together in him.

That was the Father's good intention.

Every single child of God is to be united with and to share with brothers and sisters in Christ in all of the richness and all of the blessing and all of the grace and the kindness and everything else that is found in Christ.

That is part of what we are called to be and to do.

The problem is that the Apostle Paul heard that the Corinthians were not doing that.

They were not fellowshipping in that united, others-centered mode driven by the Holy Spirit.

Rather than fellowshipping in a humble sharing way, they generated divisions.

You can just imagine his reaction.

So, parents of older children, imagine sending your child off to college and getting a negative report back from somebody else about your child.

Okay?

That's kind of the picture that's going on here.

The Apostle Paul hears from Chloe's representatives about the goings on in Corinth, and he would have hung his head just shaking it in unbelief.

It's even made worse because of what he taught the Ephesian church.

He taught the Ephesian believers that Christ was taking Christians, diverse people from all over and bringing them together and building them together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

But then he heard that the Corinthians were dividing what God was bringing together.

So from our human perspective, we might be ready to hear Paul launch into them, blasting away with all he had in his gospel repertoire.

In love, of course.

Because that's the excuse we give to do something we probably shouldn't do in the first place, right?

But that's not what we see here.

We see a father's encouragement rather than a steadfast, firm correction.

This is the loving coaxing of someone who truly cares.

This is an appeal.

It's a coming alongside of a church that he sought to nurture from a distance.

And his nurture took the form of a gentle reminder that they belong to Christ.

You'll remember that all along in this first chapter is a reminder of who we are.

We have been told that we belong not to ourselves, but to Christ.

We are sanctified in Christ.

We're set apart for him.

We are called in Christ.

God's grace is given to us in Christ, and we are called into fellowship in Christ.

Everything is in Christ because of Christ, and we are his.

That's why in verse 10 we see this appeal to the church is in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He's just continuing that same theme.

But even there, even there is that sense of fatherly love.

Notice the word our.

The Apostle Paul is joining with them, coming alongside of them to encourage them in their shared faith.

This is a demonstration of that sense of unity that ought to be in the church because we have a common Lord.

So if he is appealing to them, if he is seeking to encourage them, what is his encouragement?

Well, he says in verse 10 that all of you agree.

That there be no divisions and that there be of you be of the same mind and of the same judgment.

We'll hear more about this later on.

But the point here in verse 10 is quite obvious, isn't it?

They were not agreeing.

They were not on the same page.

There were divisions, and they were not of the same mind and united in the same judgment.

In fact, in the next verse, we see that they were quarreling.

To put it another way, they were not demonstrating that they were called into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me remind you more fully of what was written to the Ephesians.

In Ephesians chapter 2, we read, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

This might be familiar to you.

Then he goes on to say, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

In Christ Jesus, the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

That's construction language, right?

God is in the construction business.

He calls people to himself, saving them from their sin, and then they become materials in the house that he is building for himself.

Now, building a house is a metaphor to describe the spiritual work God is doing in bringing us together into a united whole.

Now think about the Corinthians.

God is taking all of these diverse pieces and he is assembling them together appropriately, properly, and functionally.

But when the Corinthian church gathered together for worship and fellowship and service, they started taking apart what God was assembling.

Have you ever had someone come behind you and undo what you just did?

Maybe maybe you turned the thermostat up or down.

Yeah, you know what I'm gonna say, don't you?

And then somebody comes right behind you and undoes what you just did.

I once had a boss who believed he was always right.

So when you when you did something, he would come behind you and correct it.

Even if you did the job correctly, but you did it in a different way than he would have done it, you were wrong and he was right.

And you had to redo it in the way he wanted it done.

Now that kind of thing is irritating, isn't it?

Kind of grates on the nerves.

It feels petty and self-centered.

Imagine it like this.

Genesis tells us that after God concluded his work of creation in the beginning, he brought all of the animals to Adam for him to give them names.

What a sight that must have been, right?

What a zoo.

Sorry, that was a bad joke.

That was a bad joke.

Now imagine as Adam is going through those animals and giving them names, imagine that he would have come to the ostrich and said, Lord, this creature here, I don't think you made it quite right.

Its shape is a little off.

It sticks its head in the ground.

The balance isn't quite what it should be.

Now that's more than irritating.

That's blasphemous, isn't it?

It calls God's wisdom into question.

It challenges his omniscience.

In fact, it even rebukes him for his decisions.

Now, what the Corinthians were doing is a passive way of doing that same thing.

They came to God and simply disregarded his purpose of bringing everyone together in Christ, and instead they began dividing themselves into groups.

In Corinth, there were the haves and the have-nots.

The rich flaunted their wealth in the face of the poor and worked to structure the church in their favor.

They separated into categories of comfort.

Certain types of people would make some people uncomfortable, so we would make sure that we're over here and they're over there.

They settled into cliques based on their favorite teachers and their favorite pastors, most likely for the purpose of getting a leg up on everybody else.

There were divisions in the church.

Paul chose the Greek word schismata for this, from which we get schisms.

It's a word that was used often in political contexts, much like we might use it today to show the divide between Republicans and Democrats, or even divisions within the same party.

There were schisms in the church.

Now, in that time period, they would not have had a beautiful building in which to meet like we do.

They would have met in several homes, perhaps coming together occasionally in one larger home to meet as the gathered church.

But if you think about that, you can easily see then how divisions would result.

The rich would tend to gather in the nicer homes, and the poor would feel pushed away from those homes.

Those who liked to hear Apollos teach would be in one place, and those who felt a kinship to Peter in another place.

Maybe all of them would argue over Paul, who perhaps didn't have the eloquence that Apollos had.

And of course, there were those self-righteous ones who would stand apart and say, I follow Christ.

Yeah, you know those people, right?

We face the same danger, don't we?

In a very simple way.

That kind of danger exists when we have multiple services.

We could be tempted, I'm not saying we do, just saying we could be tempted to separate into different categories of people.

We could be tempted to say, I'm a first service person.

Or, well, you obviously don't fit into the second service.

We can be tempted, can't we, to divide into categories based on dress, basic appearance, race or some other kind of thing.

But beloved, if if we do that, if that is what we do, are we not undoing the building that God is seeking to accomplish?

Are we not saying to God, God, this construction project, this assembling that you're doing, it's not quite right.

I think we can do it better.

If we separate into divisions, we do not demonstrate the sharing together in Christ that God intends.

And we undo then what God wants to accomplish.

He says we are to agree.

We are to be united.

When the Apostle Paul speaks of being united, he used a word that refers to proper functioning.

It means to take something that is broken or not working correctly and to restore it to proper function.

It was often used, this word was, in medical contexts, to refer to setting a broken bone.

Same word is used in 2 Corinthians 13 11, where the Apostle Paul commanded them, aim for restoration.

Restore something that's broken.

And in Galatians 6.1, you who are spiritual, restore such a one.

That is, take a sinning brother or sister and restore them.

Bring them back to be a functioning part of the body.

Here in 1 Corinthians, the apostle encourages them to cease the divisions that are formed out of preference and comfort and come together so that the spiritual building that God is constructing might be restored to a proper way of functioning.

Now, how does that happen?

How do we go about restoring something that's broken in the church?

I'm glad you asked.

I'll show you.

You'll hear that again.

It comes about when we have the same mind and the same judgment.

Literally, it means to think the same way.

When we have the same way of thinking, we will have the same judgment.

Not thinking the same way results in, you guessed it, division.

This is actually emphasized here.

It's so important in the local church.

He says in verse 10 that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

You see, when we don't have the same way of thinking, we end up quarreling, which is a sinful characteristic of unbelievers.

You can see that later in chapter 3, verse 3.

It develops strife and contention and a wrangling for position.

Churches are not perfect places, are they?

That's not even our ultimate goal.

Our goal is not to be a perfect place.

We're not seeking to be perfect people in a perfect organization.

We are broken people, sinful people, simply seeking to be faithful to the Lord, right?

But that means self must die.

My preferences, my favorites, my associations, my comforts must be able to be set aside for the good of my other brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now let's face it, we all have our preferences, right?

We all like a certain style of preaching.

Hopefully it's mine.

Forgive me for that.

We have our favorite preachers and teachers, I do too.

We have our preferred songs to sing.

We have our place of comfort in the church.

We don't want somebody to sit in our pew, in our place.

We have our own ideas about what ought to be done and what ought not to be done.

We all gravitate towards certain kinds of people, and then we tend to drift towards others who have similar preferences and toward groups that are places of comfort.

And before you know it, another group of people that is different from me thinks differently or has done something that impacts me, and I get upset.

Am I wrong?

The youth do something that upsets the senior saints.

The senior saints do something that upsets the young people.

That's what happens when we get into groups.

Now, I hope I'm wrong.

I pray I'm wrong.

But I'm afraid it's all too true.

Beloved, we must not elevate pastors or leaders to the place where we side with one over another.

Let's not divide into groups so much that we are separated from those with other preferences or identities or characteristics.

And above all, let's not quarrel about our differences.

That point is driven home for us in verse 13.

Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?

Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

The answers, of course, are what?

No.

Christ is not divided.

Paul was not crucified for them, and they were not baptized in the name of Paul, but the church was acting as though the answers were yes.

If you looked at the church in Corinth, it would appear as if Christ could be divided into a group over here and a group over there and a group over there.

It would appear that Paul or Apollos or Peter were crucified for them.

And that their names were attached to their baptismal certificates.

Paul didn't even want to be associated with baptisms.

The only thing he wanted to be remembered for was the cross of Christ.

There's an interesting anecdote connected to the time when Martin Luther first heard that Protestants were being called Lutherans.

He protested, What is Luther?

The teaching is not mine, nor was I crucified for anyone.

And in his normal, rough way of speaking, he said, How did I, a poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?

That just goes to show you that we haven't changed much, right?

Like Luther after him, Paul asked, Were you baptized into Paul?

That's sort of a ludicrous question.

Of course they weren't, and neither are we.

We are baptized into Christ.

We are called into the fellowship of Christ, so why would we ever be divided?

You might say that the church in Corinth needed a new beginning.

And in a small way, the Apostle Paul was urging them to do just that.

The gentle reminder at the beginning of this letter is really composed of two simple reminders.

The reminder of who they are, that is who they are in Christ, and then a reminder of what is ultimately important.

Once they were reminded that they belonged to Christ, that he is the all-important one who called them to himself, then Paul could point to them and appeal to them through the name of Christ to simply live out who they were in him.

But in order to live out who we are in Christ, we have to understand first some priorities.

Because if we're going to live out who we are in Christ, you might say, I need to live out this, and I might say, I need to live out this, and somebody else might say, I need to live out that, and then pretty soon we're divided, right?

So we need to be thinking the same thing that results in the same judgment, and we begin with what is a priority?

The Apostle Paul demonstrated that priority in verse 17.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Is baptism important?

Yes.

It has to be because Jesus sent out the disciples at the end of Matthew with the command to make disciples as they were going, baptizing them and teaching them to obey Christ.

But the point here is that baptism isn't the priority.

So what is the priority?

What serves as the basis for our unity and fellowship in the local church?

It's the gospel.

Specifically, the cross of Christ.

This will be spelled out for us more fully in the rest of the chapter.

But for now, notice the two incredible contrasts in this statement.

The first contrast is a contrast of style and not with words of eloquent wisdom.

This is important to hear.

You will often hear the cry, and it can be a very loud cry, for the church to get caught up with the times.

To be relevant.

To be more like the culture.

Let me tell you about culture.

The culture of Corinth was such that the speaking skills of a person were highly valued.

In fact, it was next impossible, next to impossible, to hold any kind of public office without having excellent speaking skills.

The problem was that the speaking skills of the culture were orchestrated in a way to gain listeners and followers rather than to communicate a message that affected change.

In fact, one commentator records that orators became less concerned about the value of their message than about their approval rating from the audience.

To put it yet another way, the culture of Corinth demanded the most popular conference speakers, the most skilled orators, the speakers that would keep their rapt attention.

But Paul?

Yeah, not so much.

In his mind, focusing on the skills demanded by the culture, or focusing on the style demanded by the culture undermined the message he was seeking to convey.

To speak in a way that gained audience approval because of style and ability was not the right way.

Appealing to the unsaved heart and mind, or even appealing to believers in the church by means of style or skill is not the priority.

It was for Corinth, and you can see the result.

There was division.

I'm reminded of the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial after the Civil War.

Organizers didn't know if President Lincoln would be able to come to the event, so they designed it around Edward Everett.

Edward Everett was a big guy in the world, especially in the United States.

He had been president of Harvard.

He had been a senator.

He had even served as Secretary of State.

Edward Everett was known to be a polished speaker.

So on the day of the event, Mr.

Everett stood up on a platform built for the occasion as the main event.

People came from far and wide to hear him speak, and he spoke for two hours.

You'd probably get up and walk out on me, wouldn't you?

Apparently, he did that, all of that speaking from memory.

A Business Insider article described his speech this way.

He had every reason to believe he'd steal the show.

He wrote a two-hour speech full of beautiful language and logic.

His speech contained more than 13,000 words.

And a reporter that day recorded, I felt as when I looked at the orator as if he was some antique Greek statue, so beautiful.

That's the way the Corinthians approached their teachers.

President Lincoln then stepped to the podium to deliver a speech consisting of some 270 words that lasted approximately two minutes.

The orator has almost faded into oblivion.

The simple speaker has been remembered forever.

For Paul, as with President Lincoln, the important aspect of his speaking is not his polish, not his style, but his content.

The cross of Christ.

And that is the second contrast we see in this passage.

In that ancient culture, the power of a speaker came in his ability, in his style, in his charisma.

The ability to string together sentences filled with logic and insightful arguments and illustrations that captured the audience's senses, those were prized.

But to give into the culture, to be relevant, would have meant emptying the cross of its power.

No, let's be clear.

This is not a pretty picture.

This is not a beautiful cross hanging on a chain around a neck or hanging on a wall.

This is a roughly hewn, dirty, bloody instrument of execution.

More on that next week.

It is anything but glamorous.

It is repulsive.

But within the cross of Jesus is the power of the gospel.

And in that power of the gospel is the basis for our unity and fellowship.

When that ugly, painful, terrible cross is central to who we are, it leads to unity and fellowship.

When it is central to who we are, it leads to being of the same mind and of the same judgment.

When the cross is central to who we are, Christ is uplifted.

And when Christ is uplifted, instead of people being uplifted, divisions begin to disappear.

And instead of divisions, we begin to see the glory of God displayed in judgment in the gospel and in salvation.

And those things begin to shine through as the church proclaims the message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

It's not about us.

It's not about our preferences, our abilities.

It's not about whether we are sick or well, whether we are poor or rich, whether we are educated or not.

It's not about our programs, as helpful as those may be.

It's about the power of the cross.

The appeal of God through the apostle to us is to be a church of unified people.

A fellowship that shares together in the power of the cross of Christ.

To do that, we must set aside our preferences.

We must set comfort aside.

We must establish in our hearts and minds that God has called us together, regardless of our differences.

In the cross of Christ, we must agree to cross the divides of age, to cross the divides of nationality, of race, of desires and comforts to show the world what God does when he builds a family.

If we can work together towards that, we will be a church family who displays the power of the cross to the world.

Would you join me in that?

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we are not perfect.

In fact, there may be times in the life of our church where you stand among us like you did in the churches of Revelation and you communicate a message of judgment.

We do not want that, Lord.

We do not want to be the church that is undoing your work.

We ask for your amazing power to build us together.

Really, truly together, to be a family that thinks the same thing and has the same judgment.

Lord, we ask that you would do something beyond anything that we can ask or imagine in bringing new people into our family.

That you, by the power of the cross and our proclamation of it, would bring people to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and build them together with us so that we might display the glory and the power of the cross to a watching world.

We want you to be lifted up among us.

Grow our love for one another.

Grow our like for one another.

Grow our patience, our forgiveness, and our grace as we seek to love one another because you loved us.

Amen.

Would you stand with me, please?

From Philippians chapter 3, only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

The Apostle Paul says, For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you, even in tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction.

Their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with mindset on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven.

And from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies into things that are like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to even subject all things to himself.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm thus in the Lord beloved.

Amen.