Connect Podcast Season 1, Episode 3
This passage teaches us about the power and the priority of unity.
1 Corinthians 1:10-16
10 I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose. 11 For some members of Chloe’s household have told me about your quarrels, my dear brothers and sisters. 12 Some of you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul.” Others are saying, “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Peter,” or “I follow only Christ.”
13 Has Christ been divided into factions? Was I, Paul, crucified for you? Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul? Of course not! 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 for now no one can say they were baptized in my name. 16 (Oh yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas, but I don’t remember baptizing anyone else.)
Paul is warning us about the Dangers of Disunity.
In the Corinthian church, the people had chosen their little cliques. They each had their own group. And each group thought they were better than the other groups.
He names four different groups. From what we know about these leaders, we can guess the preference of each of these groups:
- The first group, the Paul group, probably leaned hard into grace. Paul talked a lot about grace. The grace of God freely gives us what we don’t deserve. Licentiousness is what happens when you don’t call out sin.
- Then you had Apollos. And Apollos was a teacher, maybe he wrote the book of Hebrews, we don’t really know. But this group might have been the doctrinal truth group. They were probably the ones who brought their little notebooks to church to take all the notes and loved to study.
- The third group claimed to follow Peter. This could have been the more legalistic group that emphasized the importance of carefully keeping all the Jewish Old Testament laws.
- And then, of course, you had the Jesus group! They were probably the ones who Jesus-juked you all the time with, well, we’re the super-spiritual ones.
Were any of these groups totally wrong? No! They just had certain preferences and emphasized certain parts of the Bible. But the problem was that they let their differences divide them.
For some reason, we love to overlook what we have in common and debate our differences. And when we don’t want to look inward at ourselves and how we need to change, we point the finger at what’s wrong with someone else. And we attack others to make ourselves look better.
We love to play the “What About….?” game. Well, I know I don’t really love people very well, but their problem is that they let anything go, and those people over there aren’t following the rules.
So, here, Paul asks
3 Questions to Point Us To Unity
These are rhetorical questions where the answer is pretty obviously, NO!
The first question is:
Has Christ been divided into factions?
No, Jesus isn’t divided. In fact, the Bible teaches that Jesus is one with the Father and with the Spirit. That is the doctrine of the Trinity. He is One God in 3 persons. He isn’t divided, and so we shouldn’t be divided from each other.
Was I, Paul, crucified for you?
Of course, Paul wasn’t. He couldn’t have been, because he’s not Jesus. You see this problem all the time when we divide because we have different Christian heroes. And we put them on a pedestal. Be very careful about this. Pastors are people. And they will let you down. Your pastor, including myself, makes a very poor Jesus. And the same thing is true for super celebrity pastors. They may be incredible preachers and we can learn from them, but the greatest leaders have feet of clay. Over the years, I’ve seen many pastors crumble under the pressure of celebrity. But the bigger problem is that if they fall, many times people who follow them lose their faith too. People will let you down. Jesus will never let you down.
Jesus is the one who was crucified for you. The cross is what unites us!
Then, he asks,
Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul?
No. Paul baptized people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
There is One Name under heaven that saves us. It’s the name of Jesus. Jesus unites us as One.
Instead of looking at how we’re different, we have to start focusing on what we have in common under the banner of Jesus!
