Unity, Leadership, and the Eternal Church (1 Cor. 3)

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Don Carson: Reading this morning from First Corinthians three, First Corinthians three, and I shall read the entire chapter. The Apostle writes, brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere infants in Christ, I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready. For it indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos. Are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos and what is Paul? Only service through whom you came to believe, as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed. Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters, is anything but only God who makes things grow, the man who plants and the man who waters, have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it, but each one should be careful how he builds, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved. But only is one escaping through the flames. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him, for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight, as it is written, He catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile. So then no more boasting about men. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

So reads the Word of God. There must be few passages amongst Paul’s letters that have been more abused than this one, there are large branches of Christendom that use this passage, for example, to teach a doctrine of purgatory.

And on the face of it, you can make a certain case. Look at verse 15, beginning at verse 14. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He Himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames, which might almost be taken to sound as if there is a kind of trial by fire, which purges you temporarily, and then you come out the other end, although we’ll see that that isn’t quite what Paul has in mind. More commonly in many evangelical circles, this passage is used to divide up the human race into three groups, The natural man, the carnal man and the spiritual man. At the one end is the natural person, the person that is who is simply an ordinary human being without the Spirit the. That makes a good tie with the end of the last chapter in chapter two, verse 14, the man without the Spirit, that is, the natural person, simply doesn’t have the spirit, and therefore does not understand the things of God. By contrast, verse 15, the spiritual person is simply the person with the spirit who has come to terms with the gospel precisely because of the gift of the Spirit. At the other end, then of this spectrum from the natural person, the person without the Spirit, to the other extreme, where you have this spiritual person who has the Spirit of God. In between the two, then stands the carnal person. Now the word, the choice of the word carnal, comes from the authorized version, which three times in the opening four verses, uses the word carnal, where we use the word worldly in the NIV today, brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as carnal, or again, in verse three, you are still carnal. The word carnal simply comes from a Latin root, which means fleshly. And in this breakdown of humanity, the carnal person is understood to be someone who is genuinely a Christian, but whose living is indistinguishable from the world. This is someone who is saved, who knows the Lord, who has received forgiveness of sins, we are told, who already enjoys the gift of the Spirit, but who nevertheless is virtually indistinguishable from the world and the flesh of the devil, and Who then is described in verses 14 and 15, that person is saved, but only as one escaping by fire. They have nothing to show for their work, but will shortly see that the person described as carnal or as worldly is not the same person who is in view in verses 14 and 15. Now to make sense of the passage and see how it bears on the announced topic, we must see that Paul himself is doing two things in this chapter. First, he is arguing a case that starts from chapter one, verse 10, and has to do with factionalism, with a divisive spirit. In 110 we read these words, I appeal to you, brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another, so that there may be no divisions among you, and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought, my brothers, some from Chloe’s household, have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this one of you says, I follow Paul. Another, I follow Apollos. Another, I follow Stephens, still another, probably the most supercilious of the law I follow Christ. And Paul’s concern all the way down to the end of chapter four is to deal with this massive factionalism, this divisive spirit that has crippled the entire Corinthian church that he is still dealing with this theme in chapter three, which concerns us today, becomes clear in verse four, are you not acting like mere Men? He says, For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos, are you not mere men? You see, he is still dealing with this same factionalism, the kind of factionalism that erupts when someone in the church wants to follow this leader and someone wants to follow that leader and then isolate the whole set of characteristics that blesses this leader and curses this leader, until finally, there is fundamental schism in the Church of God. So we must see that in the first place, that chapter three is part of Paul’s answer against factionalism in the church. The second thing that we must see is that Paul does not restrict Himself to talking about the evils of schismatic spirit of factionalism alone, but he relates them to two deeper things. The first is one that has grabbed our attention for the past two weeks. It has to do with the very nature of the gospel. That is what has concerned him in chapters one and two, the gospel is built on the cross of Christ, and when you stand beside the gospel, beside the cross, there is no room for arrogance. There is no room for supercilious condescension. There is no room for a kind of public philosophy that is divisive and that is full of arrogance that adds a public stance in the in the public arena to the gospel and makes it your particular brand of Christianity. Beside the cross, there is no room for that kind of arrogance at all. In fact, all that the world promotes is wise, and in this sort of regard, God condemns as foolish. He says. And again and again, we saw that God’s apparent foolishness in sending his Messiah to the cross is, in fact, his great wisdom, his wise plan in redeeming men and women to himself. So he’s dealt with the gospel. And now in these two chapters, chapters three and four, he deals, then, with the nature of Christian leadership, which comes to a focus in chapter four that we shall examine next week. What then does Paul have to say about these factionalists, whether in his day or hours, and what do they have to say to us today? First, Paul says that factionalists display marks of wretched, unacceptable, spiritual immaturity. That’s not what they think. Most schismatics that I know think that they’re particularly insightful, particularly mature. Usually, factionalists are busy commending themselves all the time because they have the inside track on the truth. They understand things particularly well. But as far as Paul is concerned, they are full of wretched, unacceptable, spiritual immaturity. Paul addresses them as Christians brother. He says For he does acknowledge that these people are believers. I could not address you as spiritual now. You will recall those of you who were here last week, but Paul ends the previous chapter by making the fundamental division between those who have the spirit and are therefore by definition, spiritual, and those who do not have the Spirit, those who are natural and do not understand God’s wisdom. He makes that fundamental distinction now he says I could not address you as spiritual, but yet he called them brothers. On the one hand, he says that they’re brothers. They have the spirit by definition. They’re brothers in Christ. Yet he says he couldn’t address them that way. Why not? Well, he says, he says I had to address you as if you were still worldly, carnal that is made just of human flesh, as if you were people without the Spirit. He says, although you have a spirit, I address you as brothers, yet I could not address you that way. That’s not the way I could talk to you as if you were full of insight into God’s throne, and then he immediately qualifies himself, lest they should think that Paul thinks they are not Christians at all. That’s not what he’s saying. He says, rather, I treat you as near infants in Christ. I couldn’t address you as if you really have the spirit. I had to address you as if you didn’t. But I’m not saying that you are not Christians. I’m saying rather that you were mere infants in Christ, I gave you milk. He says, not solid food, for you are not ready for it. Indeed, he says, You are still not ready. Now you mustn’t tell my children this story that I’m about to tell you, but it bears on this passage directly, and I cannot resist it. My wife, for our two children, was unable to breastfeed, so I did my share of overnight fees. My daughter, Tiffany was the dream. We prepared the formula in advance, and I could get her up in the middle of the night, change her that that little bottle of formula in the microwave, feed her all eight ounces down the hatch, and have her back in the crib in under 20 minutes. Every time it was routine, she was wonderful. Then along came number two.

Nicola was a different case. I could change him just as fast. The eight ounces were equally prepared, and the microwave took no longer, but I never got him down in under an hour and a quarter, and it regularly took an hour and a half. And the reason, of course, is because his digestive system was not so well developed. And if you fed him this formula too quickly, he could project this material back at you a wonderful distance. He had a most amazing capacity in projectile vomiting, so that every ounce or so you had to burp him and burp him and burp him, and after the appropriate noise, then you gave him another half ounce and burp him some more. And burp him some more. Burp him some more. Because you see, his digestive system simply wasn’t able to take anymore. An hour and a half, Paul says, I gave you milk, not solid food because you were not ready for it. There are some Christians like my son. You give them little doses of pablum, and it’s all they can take. You give them any more than that, and you get wonderful instances of projectile vomiting with mess all over the church. They just, they just throw everything back at you. There’s only resentment they look so in a. Isn’t but they come back at you and there’s mess everywhere. They cannot take any solid boot. They are mere infants in Christ. You have to treat them three quarters of the time as if they don’t have the spirit at all. They are worldly, mere infants in Christ. Now the thing to ask yourself is this, what evidence does Paul adduce to justify his accusation? It is very important to understand that these people that Paul judges worldly are not worldly because they never go to church. They do. It is not because they are particularly devoid of spiritual gifts. First, Corinthians. 12 through 14 is coming. This is the most charismatic church in the New Testament. It is not because they have no ability to praise. They are full of songs and spiritual spiritual hymns. According to chapter 14, everybody’s coming up with new hymns. It is not as if they don’t meet for the Lord’s Supper. They do regularly. They have good parties at them, somewhat divisive according to chapter 11, but, but it is not as if they forgotten the ordinances. What’s their problem? You see, these are not people who have started to live like the world in the flesh and the devil, so that they are indistinguishable from Christians, from, not from, from the world, indistinguishable from, from non Christians. That’s not the problem. The evidence for their immaturity is this. Verse three, there is jealousy and quarreling among you. Does that therefore not prove you are still worldly. Now there’s a slightly different word used. It has moral overtones. The evidence for the fact that you are living according to the flesh, living from a sinners point of view, living according to the old nature, living without the insight and power from the Spirit. That ought to mean that you are living from God’s perspective is that there is jealousy and quarreling among you and the evidence, the evidence that shows there’s jealousy and quarreling. Well, he says, when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos, are you not mere men that is acting like ordinary people without the Spirit full of thin no forgiveness, no vision of God and His centrality, no delight in Christ and His gospel, but now full of partisanship and hero worship and identifying yourself with public leaders and public philosophies. Are you not then carnal, immature? Do you see? The shocking thing for Paul is the quarreling, strife, jealousy, rivalry, one upmanship, factionalism. These are things that reflect the world’s twisted values. They are the things that reflect a world that does not know God, so they should not be seen in the church. As far as Paul is concerned, what is thoroughly unacceptable to Paul. What is shocking to him is to have received the Spirit which makes a person spiritual by definition, more than merely human, more than merely fleshly, and then to act as if nothing had happened, or to adopt the natural person’s value systems and Quarrel and divide over silly little things. Paul’s language is biting. It is deeply ironic. It does not sanction this as a permissive third option. It is rather a massive condemnation of all kinds of bickering and jealousy and rivalry, self promotion, factionalism in the church. Paul’s first point then is this, factionalists display marks of wretched, unacceptable spiritual immaturity. Paul’s next point is this, factionalists, he says, ignore two important truths. They ignore two important truths. This occupies the entire central section of the chapter, all the way down to verse 17. Let me tell you what those two truths are, and then outline how Paul gets at them. The two truths that factionalists Ignore are these. Christian leaders are only servants and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone. Christian leaders are only servants and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone. It is possible to elevate a Christian leader in our mind to the point where we are more attached to him than we are to God and His gospel. That’s the first truth they ignore. The second thing they ignore is this God cares about his church, and he holds leaders and everyone else accountable for how the church is treated. So God cares about his church, and he holds the leaders and everyone else accountable for how the church is treated. Now Paul makes these points by positing two analogies. He paints two quick pictures, two analogies, and then he asks the burning question. The first analogy is drawn from the world of agriculture. Verse five, Paul now has to deal with how you view leaders. What is a policy says, What is Paul? Only Servants through whom you came to believe as the Lord has assigned to each his task. And now the agricultural metaphor I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. Do you see what Paul is saying? There is no independent significance to planting a seed if the seed does not receive appropriate irrigation, if the seed does not grow, there is no independent significance to planting the seed, nor is there any independent significance to watering. You can water a packet of mud all day, but if there’s no seed there to grow, there’s no significance to the task. So although Paul may have this task, he planted the church, he planted the seed, and if Paul has another task, he watered it and made it grow. In point of fact, both tasks belong to a bigger task, namely bringing in the harvest. And in any case, the decisive factor there is God Himself, who alone can make things grow. He says

he provides all the nutrients. He provides the sunshine His providence and sovereignty extend over all of our work. And unless God blesses the field, it produces nothing. So he says these leaders are only servants. They belong to someone else. He assigns their task. In this case, Paul was the church planter. He was the one who planted the seed. Apollos was a church waterer. He did a whole lot of preaching and teaching there. But God alone makes it grow, and it is still his field that he says, the man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose. It’s really only one task, you see, even though there are breakdowns in particular gifts, they have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his labor For we are God’s fellow workers. This does not mean that God and I are fellow workers, as if God and I are on a par, sort of buddies in this past. What the original means is Apollos and I are fellow workers of God. That is how you should view the leaders. Apollos and I are simply fellow workers. So why do you divide us up? And in any case, we belong to God. So why do you give us maximum devotion? Only God should receive that kind of allegiance. We are gods. We belong to Him. We are his fellow workers. And you, he says, Are God’s field. For in this analogy, Paul continues to make a distinction between leaders in the church, we are God’s fellow workers, he says, and the church itself, you are God’s field. That is a very important distinction that runs throughout the chapter elsewhere Paul can insist that actual leadership in the church is itself one of the gifts that God gives to the church. Leaders in the church have no special priestly class, but in our help, in order to help the church understand the nature of leadership, Paul makes a distinction in his agricultural metaphor, we are the fellow workers who plant and water and ultimately bring in harvest and so on. God makes things grow. And in this metaphor, you are the field, there is a distinction between the leaders and others in the church. That’s the first analogy, and what it teaches us, then is that leaders are God’s servants. They are given different tasks, they have common goals. They both have essential jobs, neither has independent importance. And in any case, God alone should receive final allegiance. Now the second analogy is architectural. Paul now moves from the country to the city. Verse nine, we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building, and he moves into an architectural metaphor by the grace God has given me, he says, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. Now the same sort of lessons are taught. They have different tasks. Paul was the church planter. He laid the foundation. He preached the gospel. He preached Jesus Christ Himself. Up, others have come along and built on this foundation. Now this was easier to understand in the first century when many, many buildings took decades to put up, and sometimes centuries. Most of the cathedrals in Britain took centuries to put up, and therefore it was never a case of one person claiming to have put up Ely cathedral. Rather, there was a foundation, and then another layer and another layer. And generations came and generations went, and each generation was responsible for the kind and quality of the work, according to the original plan to put up this magnificent edifice. That’s the kind of picture Paul has in mind. I laid the foundation as an expert builder. I planted the church in corn, and then others have come along and built more layers to it. But each one should be careful how he builds, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. Otherwise you have a different building. If you try and build on a foundation that isn’t the foundation laid. You have massive overhang if you build off that foundation entirely. It’s no longer the church. It’s no longer that building. It may call itself church, but it is no longer based on this foundation. There is only one foundation. Paul says, No. He says, If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light, it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. Now it is obvious that this six list, this six fold list of building ingredients, is on a descending scale, gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, straw, but Paul makes nothing of the descending scale. His distinction is very simple. It is this. Some materials endure conflagration and some don’t. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. All you ask. Surely, no one builds with gold, silver precious stones. There are builders in this church, I guarantee none of them habitually build using gold, silver precious stone, but ultimately, Paul is going to describe this building as a temple. Verse 16. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple? And although the old temple of Israel in Solomon’s day had granite at its core and limestone, yet it was overlaid everywhere with gold and silver and precious stones. In other words, it is a way of saying this building is a special building. It is not some shack for housing equipment. This is God’s temple, and it is built with wonderful materials, expensive materials, that endure the final conflagration. But now you see this architectural metaphor has gone beyond the agricultural metaphor. They are saying the same thing in that. In this case, too, all the workers have the one vision in mind. In the first case, the harvest. In the second case, this building, none of the workers have has any independent significance. They are all part of God’s plan. But this metaphor goes further yet. For here, Paul says, Let each worker watch how he builds. Watch the kinds of materials you use. There is no threat to the workers. In the first metaphor there is here, watch the kinds of materials you use. There is no threat to the workers. In the first metaphor, there is here, if you’re a leader in the church, Paul says, you make jolly sure what kinds of materials you’re putting into the building. The one foundation can’t be changed. That’s Jesus Christ and I laid that one that’s in the Gospel itself. Men and women redeemed by God by the death of God’s own dear son, I laid the foundation. But now it’s possible, he says, to build with incredible rubbish, and on the last day, he says,

none of it survives. When you read verses 14 and 15. It’s not the builder

who is being burned. It’s his work. It is not the carnal Christian who is being examined. It is the builder. This is a check on leaders in the church here. There is still this distinction between the leaders who build a building and the building itself, everybody else. Thus in verses nine and 10, you are God’s building. We are the builders. Or again, verse 16, don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple? Do you see the text is not here threatening every Christian who backslides now and then it is. Threatening leaders in the church who build the church with shoddy materials. And if what he has built survives, that is it genuinely is part of the Church of God. It is genuine regenerate men and women, the very temple of God. If it survives the final conflagration, then the builder receives his reward. But if, in fact, it is cheap, shoddy stuff that looks as if it’s part of the building, but doesn’t stand up at the end, wow, this Christian leader may well be saved himself fine, but he escapes only as one escaping through the flames. We are told now we need to pause and think through that very carefully, for it is a somber picture. It is a somber picture. The first thing that needs to be said about it is that this kind of vision of work and reward in no way jeopardizes grace, although some have taken it that way. Do you hear the language verse 14? If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward? But what you think we are not here talking about how to become a Christian. We are talking about Christian leadership and the kind of work that they do and elsewhere. Paul makes it very clear that even the kind of work we do stems from God’s grace. It is important to recognize that in the ancient world of paganism, it was common to make a divorce between religion and ethics so that you could be ever so religious. But how it affected your work, how it affected your life, how it affected your priorities, that was less than clear. And in the Western world, that is returning in many fronts. It is possible to be religious, to sing hymns, to go to church, to enjoy Bible studies, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re sleeping around. It doesn’t really matter if you cheat on your income tax. It doesn’t really matter if you have bad relationships with your spouse. It doesn’t really matter how you rear your family, provided you’re religious. In this corner, Paul won’t have it. The Bible won’t have it, New Covenant or old. There is the relationship between your faith and your conduct. Paul says here that there must be a relationship between the worker and the reward and the relationship is the work. But for Paul, reward is always according to grace, not according to obligation to USE his language in Romans four, four and five, or as he still says elsewhere in this epistle, in the 15th chapter, he says, By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me. You see, that’s the connection in Paul’s mind. Grace transforms. Grace enables us to work. Grace enables us to be fruitful. Grace enables us to be conformed to Christ. Grace enables us to build a church. So, yes, there is work, but we work because of God’s grace in us. Yes, there is reward, but it is reward not built out of obligation from God, but out of his grace. According to Romans four, that’s the larger framework that Paul has. For no way will he justify a doctrine of grace that means you can live like the world, in the flesh and the devil. God’s grace is effective in transforming men and women, and here it is effective in genuine leaders, in enabling them to build well. So what we must understand then is that Paul’s threat is against leaders in the church who are using shoddy materials. So in the second place, we must ask, what kind of thing does he have in mind? Do you see it as possible to build with shoddy materials in the church on all kinds of grounds? You can build a church on the basis of a wonderful personality. You can build a church with a lot of enthusiasm and organizational skill. You can build a church on the basis of cherished tradition. In time of discouragement or war or defeat, you can build a church on the basis of nationalism. You can build a church on the basis of a popular message that sounds wise according to the wisdom of the world. You. In some strands of evangelicalism more frequently in North America than here. I’m glad to say, for Britain, sad to say for North America, churches are built on the basis of getting people through the door and making some kind of decision. And all the life changing business takes place after that. All the life changing business takes place in the therapy groups and in the counseling session and in the small group treatment centers, instead of seeing that at the end of the day, the fundamental change comes with a gospel that converts men and women. So we have all these people who can repeat the formula and fight the Creed, but don’t really know God, what has happened? You’ve got builders building the church with wood, hay and stubble, and I’m not sure how much of it will last on the last day, whether we are leaders in the church at the congregational level or in a house group, in a Sunday school class, whether we’re working in terms of personal relationships or training children, this is an important lesson to learn. God holds his leaders accountable for how they build. Factionalists here have ignored two truths. The first truth is that Christian leaders are only servants and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone. That’s true. But the second truth is that God cares about his church, and he holds leaders accountable. Factionalists Ignore that too. They are so focused in on leaders, they lose sight of a larger picture. In fact, Paul seems to say in verses 16 and 17 that he not only holds the leader to account for how they build the church, he holds everyone to account. Don’t you know? He says that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple you see elsewhere. Paul can use this metaphor to describe the individual Christians body. That’s the way it is in chapter six, where he addresses individual Christians who are tempted to fornication. And he says, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? You are not your own. You are bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body. That’s true. Individual Christians are the home of the Holy Spirit, and therefore what we do with our bodies is the matter of some importance. But here, that’s not the picture. The picture is not of individual Christians, but of the church. The church as the Temple of God’s body, the temple of God’s Spirit, the church as the place where God’s Spirit dwells. And what God says is, you yourselves the church, the Corinthian church. You Your church, yourselves here in Eden, you are God’s temple. You are where God’s Spirit dwells and God loves the church. God’s Spirit lives in you. And If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. He has moved now beyond leaders to anyone. For God’s temple is sacred and you are that temple. Now that is part of an entire vision of the church that needs to be recaptured in our day. The church is not made up of individuals who are converted, and that is all. The church made up of converted men and women is together a functioning body, the body that is animated by God’s Spirit. Elsewhere, we read Christ loves the church and gave Himself for her. Here we are told that the church is God’s temple, the church is God’s Spirit, and if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.

Oh, it may not take place immediately. But what this passage tells us is that we must have care how we build a church, how we treat the church. God does not look lightly upon a schismatic attitude or a back biting attitude or a spirit of jealousy or malicious talk. He does not look lightly upon those who want to use their power in the church, because it’s their particular power base, or those who cannot walk humbly in the church. He does not look lightly about any of those things, because if it threatens the church where God has placed his temple, God threatens judgment. He. And that brings me to my last point. Factionalists Ignore the wealth of the heritage we have as Christians. Factionalists Ignore the wealth of the heritage we have as Christians. Paul says, verse 18, do not deceive yourselves. Don’t kid yourself. He says, If any one of you thinks he is wise, by the standards of this age, that is a perennial factionalist attitude. Factionalists, schismatics, always think they see things clearly when others don’t. They think they are so wise. If any one of you thinks he is wise, he should become a fool so that he may become really wise. This parts back to chapter one and the message of the cross. Which which pictures God Himself in His son coming to us in ignominy and shame. How can any of us stand beside the cross and pat ourselves on the back for our great wisdom and understanding things? No, no, no, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight, as it is written, He catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile. Who can teach him anything? We must stand under his wisdom. So then he says, no more boasting about men and their particular stances, their particular guru, selection of formulae, no boasting about men as if they are the fount of all wisdom. No partisan politicking, no party spirit, no factionalism, as if all wisdom ends and closes with Calvin or with Wesley or with Lloyd Jones. None of that. No for

all All things are yours. He says, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours. And you are of Christ,

and Christ is of God. Do you see what he is saying? He is saying that factionalists regularly are reductionistic. They focus down on just one leader. All my truth stems from Calvin. I don’t need to learn anything from anybody else, because all of my truth comes from Calvin, but doesn’t Wesley have anything to teach you? Nothing. Nothing is all. Isn’t there anything to learn anything? Anything is all from Arminius or bar this is not to say that everything that Arminius taught was right. It is certainly not saying that everything that Calvin taught was right, and I’m a Calvinist. What it does mean is that you do not get all of God’s truth with Paul. You do not get all of God’s truth with Peter. You do not get all of God’s truth with a polis, and you don’t get all of God’s truth with Calvin either or Lloyd Jones or Roy Clements, certainly not Don Carson. And therefore, if you boast about an individual leader and make all of your allegiance go one way. You are, in fact, robbing yourself. You are robbing yourself of the great heritage of Christian truth. This is not to say that there’s no place for discernment. There are other passages that insist that there are this is not to say that everyone who calls himself a Christian leader really is, because blatantly, that is not the case. It does say, however, that where you have genuine Christian leaders whose work has been blessed by God, even if they are wrong on many points, there may be some things to learn from them and not to see that is reductionistic. It cuts you off. And this is true in the local church, if all of your allegiance is to this particular group, or this Study Fellowship, or one particular elder and the others, you just don’t have time for them, because they don’t contribute anything. They are not as organized as you or they are not as gifted as you are. They are not as this or that or the other. Isn’t there? Is there nothing that you can learn from them?

All things are yours, whether Paul or Paulus or Cephas, they belong to Christ. They are His servants. And to cut yourself off from them all, except one, is finally profoundly reductionistic, and then Paul opens up the horizons even more. It is not just that Paul and Apollos and Cephas are yours, he says, but so is the world and life and death and the present and the future. What does he mean? You see, what Paul is doing is lifting five of the fundamental tyrannies of humankind. You. The world. It squeezes us into its mold, into one little bit of culture and history. The world squeezes us into one lifestyle. We are English, or we are Welsh, or we are Canadians. This is our particular path. The world wants us to become like this, not like this in Victorian ages, or like this in Puritan times, or Elizabethan times, or the Tudor period, but like this right now, the world squeezes us into one little patch. It constrains us. It’s a tyranny. Life. Life itself becomes a tyranny. We want the best national health service so that we can prolong life in it, as far as possible. We want life, whatever else goes we want to have life, but we rarely think in terms of eternal life, death itself. The third entry hit the tyranny. It marks the limit of our three score years in 10 plus or minus a wee bit it is the fundamental taboo in the Western world. It is a tyranny. And so we either avoid thinking about it, or we do all that we can do to circumvent it. Yes, it is an ugly thing in the Scripture. Yes, it is the last enemy. But, but for modern human kind, death is worse than that. It is a it is a tyranny. The present is a tyranny. Do we not constantly talk about all the things we’ve got to do, all the pressures on our time? We don’t know where the time went, all the things we have to do today or this week, and we don’t know how to squeeze it all in. We don’t know how to prioritize ourselves. The present is a tyranny. The president is not infinitely flexible. There are only so many things we can squeeze into our 24 hours. When my father was a young man, he complained on one occasion, I don’t have enough time. An old Mr. Blair, his godly Sunday school teacher, when my father had been a boy, who, by that time was pushing 90, patted him on the shoulder and said, My dear Tom, you have all the time there is the way we speak. The present constrains us. It’s a tyranny, and the future is an even greater tyranny, for we can’t control it. We don’t know what it’s going to bring. Maybe you will be ill next year. Maybe some of us will be dead next year. What will happen to our children? How will we pay for their education? Maybe they will make it into university. Then what will they do? This one’s a late bloomer. This one’s too quick. This one’s sexually active. This one’s retarded. What do we do with our children the future, if it strains us and frightens us until we don’t we don’t know how to respond. We cripple ourselves with fears about things we can’t control all the or are they No. Paul says they’re not your race. They’re all yours. That’s what he says. They’re all yours, all yours. Why? What? Because they’re Christ’s Christ is God’s Christ controls this world. All authority is given to me on heaven, in heaven and on earth. He says, there’s nothing that takes place in this world that is not Christ. Must I be constrained to my little cultural patch, my little world? Can’t I learn from other worlds? Can’t I learn lessons from the Tudor period? Can’t I belong to several cultures? Can’t I belong to a heavenly culture? Do I have to be squeezed into one little mold? This is Christ’s world. It’s not the world’s world and life itself. He is the author of life, and he promises eternal life. We are focused not only on our three score years and 10 we are getting ready for all eternity, death. Yes, death is the last enemy. But should it be so fearful an enemy when we remember one who has come back from the dead, one who was already declared death dead, one who was already foundationally destroyed? The present? This is God’s present. He’s given me work to do today. He has given me biblical principles as to how to prioritize my my life I must live for His glory now and whether in whatever I do, whether I eat or speak or drink, this is God’s world. It is God’s present. And all I do must honor him in my relationships, in my family and my work, in my church, it is God’s present in the future is this so open ended. He brings his own future to pass. He controls all things. So I may not know the future, but I know I know him. And if I am his child, and he owns it all, I own it all too. It’s yours. Paul says, he uses shocking language. He says, all are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or steepest or Calvin or Wesley or Lloyd Jones or the world or life or death of the present or the future, all are yours. He says, simply because you are Christ’s, and Christ is God. Now that’s a holistic vision to destroy factionalism. You. For you see, at the end of the day, instead of building little partisan parties, we’re interested rather in belonging to Christ, who owns it all, and if he owns it all, then, in principle, it’s ours too. And to try to corner one little part of it, in fact, is only to rob oneself, because the whole heritage is ours. The whole heritage is ours. Isn’t that? What Paul says in Romans chapter eight, you are sons of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. You aren’t only part of the heritage. Faction let’s ignore the wealth of the heritage we have as Christians for to see what is at stake here is a is a breath of vision. It’s a breath of vision that destroys all party politics in the church. It is this breath of vision now that gives new life and death and understanding to what we mean by the people of God. The church of God, Paul does not address this to everybody in the universe. He addresses this to believers, to the church. So he has not only told us then, he has not only told us that the church is God’s temple, which he would protect, threatening destruction on those who try to destroy. He’s not only told us that in verses 16 and 17. Now he tells us that the Church, His people, own the whole show simply because he does and they are his. So we may live in times when Christians are despised, but from eternity perspective, that doesn’t matter very much. We may live in times when Christians are persecuted. But in 3 billion years, that won’t seem too significant, we may go through periods in our life when everything seems to be falling apart, where our our lives are are a confusion of bereavement and and loss and disappointment and and failure at work and and unemployment and lack of resources and endless kinds of temporary things. But at the end of the day, this is God’s world. It is God’s truth, and Christ is God’s and we are Christ’s. So it is our world.

This presents a vision of the people of God that makes the church the only significant institution in the world. Do you realize that it’s not that the other institutions have no significance? Of course, they do, but the church is the only institution with eternal significance, the only one the kingdoms of this world, Revelation tells us pass away, all of our organizations and societies and some groupings. They all disappear. They all are dissolved. The empires come and go, all of our parliaments and our bureaucracies and our technocracies and our structures, they all fall away. But the church, the church, the church is God’s blood bought people. The Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The church lives for eternity. The church because it is Christ’s owns the lot, and therefore it is essential that Christians live not only with profound gratitude to God for being part of God’s church, but with a sense of expectation, enthusiasm, thankfulness, industry and love for the church.