EPISODE 112 1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 4 "Pulling at the oars"

Welcome to Share the Word. We are a Great Commission project, and we believe that the best way to learn about the New Testament is chapter by chapter. Today, if you believe your wealth and status are critical in this world, if you believe that you have what it takes to judge those around you, then you really need to listen to this podcast. First Corinthians chapter 4: Pulling at the Oars. How much do you care about what other people think about you? Most sane people prefer to be liked and approved, but I mean, how much does the need for approval, the desire to avoid being judged and criticized, affect what you do?

I was thinking, in that regard, it's hard to imagine a more difficult job these days than a professional football coach. I'm a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers because I grew up in the Pittsburgh area in the 1970s when the Steelers were the most dominant team in the NFL. I think everybody who grew up in western Pennsylvania during that era is a Steeler fan for life, and so are their children and their grandchildren. So to this day, even though I don't live there anymore and haven't for 30 years, I still follow the Steelers avidly. I read every story about them, about the team, about everything that's going on with them as the season is starting up. Every website I can find, I follow it.

I don't think there's many more difficult jobs in our society, though, if you need people's approval, if you can't deal with being criticized or judged, than being the head coach of a football team in the NFL. When your team wins, you're the king of the city. If you win the Super Bowl, you're the king of the world. So when your team loses a few in a row, the same fans are ready to run you out of town. If a season goes off the rails and you end up with an unexpected, embarrassing losing record, you're the scum of the earth. I know this because I not only read the articles, but usually read all the comments after the articles that fans post in that section.

And the armchair quarterbacks and the armchair coaches, wow, they can be brutal. As I write this, we're still in the preseason, and everyone is speculating how my team, which has had a large turnover of players since last year, is going to do this upcoming season. All the sports writers in the media are making their predictions and already handing out preseason awards before the first game has even been played. Pro Football Talk on NBC, one of the scores of football talk shows, was handing out their predictions yesterday, and I read that Mike Florio, the host of that show, named the Steelers head coach as King of the AFC North Division. That was his title. That kind of surprised me since another head coach in our division has been named Coach of the Year for the whole league twice in the last few years.

But I guess everyone knows who follows football that Mike Tomlin, the Steelers head coach, has never had a losing season since he was hired 17 years ago. Florio crowned him King of the North with these words: Tomlin is the quintessential football coach. He really doesn't care what anybody else has to say about him or about his team. He's got one mission: get his guys ready to play and get them ready to play better than their individual talents suggest they should. He just finds a way to win. That high praise from Mike Tomlin caught my attention because the passage I was studying for today's podcast had made me wonder, does Coach Tomlin really not care what anybody has to say about him?

He doesn't read any of the articles. He doesn't listen to any of the sports talk shows. He doesn't hear any of the analyst predictions. Maybe he doesn't, and if that's so, wow, he's got a lot of self-discipline and self-confidence. But in one respect, I have to disagree with Florio. I think there's one person whose opinion Tomlin does pay attention to, and that guy is named Art Rooney.

You know why? Because Art Rooney owns the team. Mike Tomlin works for him, and Mr. Rooney writes the checks. In chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul is responding to what he has heard coming back to him from Corinth about what some are critically saying about him. He's apparently being judged pretty harshly by some people in that church, possibly new leaders in that church, self-appointed leaders who are full of themselves.

Imagine thinking that you are qualified to disagree with the apostle Paul's teaching or critique his style of ministering. In the process of responding to this, Paul says some amazing things. He really exposes how he views himself and his ministry and how much others' opinions of him, as he carries it out, even matter. In the opening lines of chapter 4, he responds to what he has heard like this: This is how one should regard me, Paul wrote, as a servant of Christ and as a steward of the mysteries of God. Moreover, what is required of stewards is that they be found faithful. The word means trustworthy.

But with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself. I'm not aware of anything against myself, but that doesn't mean I'm acquitted. It's the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes. He will bring to light the things that are now hidden in the darkness, and he will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Then each one will receive his commendation from God. I've applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written. That means God's expectations of them in the Bible, so that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not?

Paul doesn't call out by name those who are criticizing him and challenging him in his absence. He certainly had the authority to do that as an apostle. He does that in other places, as we've seen. But he chose a different approach here. Speaking about himself and the other true apostles, Paul says here, This is how I see myself, and so how I would like you to see me too. You know how you see yourself has everything to do with how you live.

In Paul's case, he reveals his own self-concept. Here's how I see myself. I hope you see me like this too, as a servant of Christ, as a steward of God's mysteries. He didn't use the common word for servant there, by the way. Actually, he used a word reserved for slaves who did the most menial and difficult tasks. The word originated from the galley slaves who sat in the dank darkness below deck and rowed Roman vessels.

It was the lowest, most demanding physical job a slave could be assigned to. A drummer beat the cadence for the rowers, and they pulled and pulled at their oars hour after hour when the winds were too calm to move a ship forward. Pull! Pull! Pull! A steward was another type of slave who was entrusted with overseeing the household of a rich person or their estate.

Paul says he was a steward of God's mysteries, by which he meant the gospel and his ministry to share it, as he had been now for many years, traveling thousands of miles through Syria and Galatia, Rome and Asia and Macedonia and southern Greece. It was hard, and if you've been with us through Acts, you know how hard. Paul's only concern as a steward was what his master thought of him. Did his master, the Lord Jesus, believe he was faithful? Those who judged him in his absence at Corinth, who were they? Only God knows the motivations of his heart.

His judgment one day, he says, and he's referring to the judgment seat of Christ where all believers will be evaluated, that's the only judgment that matters because it will be before the only judge who actually knows what we've done and why we've done it. When Paul says, For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not? He's pointing up the absurdity of those in Corinth who were criticizing and judging and comparing him and other leaders like Apollos and Peter. After all, these people would have still been in pagan darkness if they had not tramped thousands of miles bringing the gospel to them.

What kind of unfounded pride would be motivating those in Corinth who had these attitudes? It's a good thing that Paul did not let such people's opinions determine his course, isn't it? He clearly saw himself as Christ's servant, carrying out the mission Christ assigned to him, and keeping his eyes on the only evaluation of himself that would matter in the long run. And that is what his master would have to say on the day of judgment when the rewards for faithful service are given out. This brings up a couple of good questions to me. One is, am I able to do what I believe God has called me to do, whether I get approval from people or not, as the Apostle Paul was?

Or am I easily discouraged by people's judgment or criticisms? I really want to keep Paul's perspective that I am a servant of Christ, and so pulling at the oars, pulling at the oars, I hope you do too. Fulfill your ministry faithfully, whatever that ministry is. Other people's opinions don't matter very much. On the other hand, turning this around, do I judge others out of pride, as the apostles were being wrongly judged, when I don't really know their hearts and I really don't know what they're dealing with? It's so easy to take potshots at those who are trying to do something for God, like armchair quarterbacks, isn't it?

When we really don't have any idea. When we really don't have the perspective to understand clearly what they are up against, the bottom line on this is to just stop the foolish, counterproductive, wrong judgment and criticism of others. It's rooted in pride. It's nothing but destructive. Speaking of perspective, the apostle of Christ now tries to give them some, starting at verse 8. And you won't be misunderstanding him if you think it sounds like he is using sarcasm to highlight what was wrong about some attitudes in Corinth.

Listen. I'm quoting now from a very literal translation, the New American Standard Bible. He says, You are already filled. You have already become rich. You have ruled without us. How I wish that you really did rule so that we could rule along with you.

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles last of all as men condemned to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you, you are wise. We are weak, but you, you are strong. You are glorious, but we are without honor. To this present hour, we hunger and thirst. We are poorly clothed, roughly treated, and homeless.

And we labor, working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure. When we are slandered, we try to conciliate. We have become the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even to this very day. Wow.

I think looking back on early Christianity, I sometimes tend to glamorize things. I imagine I would like to be on those missionary journeys on Paul's team. We have no conception of what that world was really like, much less the experiences of the apostles who carried the gospel to new places. The Corinthians, it sounds like, they were settled in a prosperous major city. Many of them were doing well. Menial labor, you know, working with your hands, getting dirty, that was considered beneath them as cultured Greeks and Romans.

That's why half the people in that city were slaves. The real people, the citizens, they spent their time debating new ideas, comparing and criticizing the teaching styles of Paul and Apollos and others. Paul, on the other hand, saw himself, remember, as a slave. He worked with his own hands, menial labor, the trade he learned from his father, so he could move from place to place carrying the good news without asking for financial support. He didn't own a home. He often was hungry.

He wore clothes that were worn out. He endured unjust treatment time and again in place after place. There was nothing glamorous about his life. He said sometimes he felt that Christ's apostles were like the captured soldiers a Roman general would parade chained through the streets after a victory. This is actually the meaning behind his term here, spectacle. The healthy ones would be enslaved, but the wounded and sick at the end of the line would be taken to the arena to die at the hands of wild animals or gladiators for spectacle.

The apostles' deaths were like that, humiliating, a spectacle for the world to mock. Their lives seemed foolishly spent to people in their culture and their time. They were seen as, as Paul says, the scum of the earth to many. Now, tell us how you really feel, Paul. You know, in that culture, which Corinth was kind of the pinnacle of, humility was seen as a sign of weakness. Being humble was for those who were conquered, for slaves.

The Greeks believed that humility was a shameful trait. Plato said, It's never the trait of great men. How wrong could they possibly be? No one has ever been so high and stooped so low as Jesus, who left his throne in heaven to serve us and to become our Savior by dying like a criminal on a cross, a spectacle. As Paul wrote in another place, That's why God has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name. And how many times had Paul himself been publicly humiliated?

He just wanted to be like Christ, to be able to say, Imitate me, for I follow Christ. He knew that how God looks at things and how the people in this world look at things is often completely upside down from each other. Jesus had taught, hadn't he, that in the future, after his return, the first would be last and the last would be first. So Paul didn't need men's approval. He didn't need wealth. He didn't need a life of ease.

He didn't need to be a celebrity. He just kept pulling the oars, pulling the oars, pursuing the ministry God had assigned to him, convinced that Christ, who was his judge, was all whose approval mattered. He was truly a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. This chapter is a stern rebuke to those in Corinth or any place else who are to full of themselves, who are thinking just like the people of this world, whose selfishness and carnality is messing up a church, in this case a church Paul had worked hard to plant. At verse 14 and following he says, I'm not really writing to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For you may have many countless tutors in Christ, but you only have one Father.

For in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ. I don't write these things to shame you, he says. Well, maybe a little. But mostly Paul was, as he says, trying to admonish them, confronting them with these wrong attitudes in order to try and turn them around.

Like a good father, he was calling them up short. Over the last several years, they apparently had many come through their church or arise from their midst, wanting to be leaders who taught and modeled very different things than Paul had. He compared them to tutors hired to look after little children. But he was their spiritual father. He had first brought them the gospel and labored in their city for 18 months to try and root them in the Christian faith. No one cared about them in the way that he did.

So he says he has now sent Timothy. We can assume that's who carried this letter, and Timothy would remind them of the foundational things that Paul had taught while he was there and about his deep love and concern for them. But he warns, if what he is writing and Timothy's visit do not work to straighten things out, that he will do his best to get back there in person. And then he says there will be a reckoning with these critics, these false leaders who Paul realized were causing divisions and confusion in this church. It's up to you, he ends this section. Shall I come to you with a rod and with the authority given me by the Holy Spirit, or in a spirit of love and gentleness?

He cared way too much about these people and God's work in Corinth to let the problems he heard about go on unchallenged and unresolved. One thing I know for certain: when Timothy arrived with his letter from Paul and it was read on a Sunday during their assembly, some in attendance that day had to be squirming. Some were probably really embarrassed and maybe even angry. But then again, Paul doesn't care very much about their opinion. He's not beholden to them. He's going to do as an apostle of Jesus Christ what he believed God expected him to do.

He only answers to one master, because in the right-side-up world that's coming, he wanted to hear, Well done, Paul. You've been faithful. You stayed true. You kept after the difficult ministry I assigned to you. Well done. Would that the church of Jesus Christ these days had more humble, courageous, completely sold-out servants of Christ leading like that man.

If God has called you, be one of them. Keep pulling at the oars. Fulfill your ministry. If you're in a good church with leaders that are doing their best to follow Christ and faithful to their calling, support them, encourage them, be thankful for them. If you are faithful to Christ, the ministry is often hard work, and there's often unjust criticism coming your way. But it's the most crucial work if the Bible is true, and the Bible is.

This is Paul for Share the Word. As always, another great episode. To all of you who've been listening faithfully and have made Share the Word your traveling companion, your group study program, or strengthening your faith with all of us here, thank you. Every one of us at Share the Word are passionate about what we're doing, and we know we can't do it alone. As you travel throughout your day, think about the fact that you may be the only connection to Jesus for those you meet. Let us know how we can support you in spreading the Word.

Simply email us at info at sharetheword.org. Thanks again. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.