1 Corinthians 4:8–16

But he strikes another blow, and this one is the sharpest irony. Isaiah did the same when he exposed the folly of idol-worship. Poor, even corrupting, doctrine always lowers practice. Without noticing it, the Corinthians had given up the place of sufferers with Christ. The apostle points this out witheringly. "Already" here means before the time. When Christ reigns, we shall indeed be at ease and fully satisfied. But now is the time to deny self, to take up one's cross, and follow Him, who suffered many things, indeed all things, here below. They were deceiving themselves: the time had not yet come.

This spirit had also led to self-satisfaction and a focus on material advantage. That focus practically made them reign as kings. They were filled up with earthly things (Corinth means "satiated"), and rich — but not in any practical spiritual sense. This display of material prosperity does not suit the character of the Church of God. His people trust a despised, rejected Lord. They wait for the time when He will be exalted and reigning.

They were full, they were rich, they had reigned as kings, "without us," adds the apostle. It is plain that the apostles were not reigning... they were a spectacle to the world for their sufferings, and to angels as well as men. What a false test, then, of a Christian's condition is what men would call his prosperity!

The thought that the church will one day reign without Christ is very harmful, though it comes naturally to man's heart! The Corinthian saints fell into it (1 Cor. 4:8) and were rebuked for its unspiritual, worldly character. What could be more opposed to the portion of the apostles, and of Christ? We are called to suffer now, not to reign... A loyal Christian heart could not enjoy, or even accept, a reign of saints without Christ, the Firstborn among many brothers.

No doubt it was with much anguish of heart that Paul wrote these words. Bad doctrine, as it always does, had produced bad practice. They had forgotten that the Lord's pathway through this world was one of suffering, shame and loss, and that theirs should be the same. Instead of suffering they preferred indulgence. Instead of trouble they preferred triumph. Instead of the world's curse they preferred its crown... Paul waited patiently for the time of reigning, so he could share it with his beloved children. But they preferred to reign without him.

At the crowning of a British king or queen, the lords and ladies who may attend Westminster Abbey bring their coronets with them. But they do not put them on until the crown goes on the sovereign's head. Today many Christians seem eager to put on their coronets before the Saviour appears, crowned with His many crowns.

They were full and rich, and reigning like kings, having a real "good time." Meanwhile their Lord was still rejected, and His apostles were sharing His rejection. There is a touch of holy sarcasm in Paul's words: "I wish you really were reigning, so that we might reign with you too." The saints will reign when Christ reigns, and the apostles will not be missing from their thrones.

First came the smaller fights, with men and beasts. The great spectacle was kept for the end. Perhaps it was some famous prisoner of war, some notorious criminal, or some fighter who would draw the eager eyes of the blood-crazed crowd. They would shout for his death till they could shout no more. "I think," said Paul, as it were, "that it is like that."

How movingly the apostle corrects their worldly-minded desire. Those whom He put first in the church He displayed last, as patterns of outward suffering. What could be plainer than the place God shows the Christian here below — a place of affliction, apart from the world?

This was the ambition of the apostles — if ambition can ever be holy. God gave it to them when He appointed them last. That place put them nearest to Christ, who went down into depths of suffering where no one could follow Him. But there are sufferings of Christ which grace does share with the Christian, and the apostles knew these best.

As far as this world is concerned, the apostles had much the same lot as the poor people condemned to death. The Romans kept them back for the last scene in their great public shows. The onlookers are not just a holiday crowd at an arena. They are the world, the angels and men. We do well to remember that the church is the lesson-book of the rulers and powers in heavenly places (Ephesians 3:10).

Man is not like the angels — glorious creatures, but kept unfallen by the power of God... In a certain way angels do need mercy, for no creature can even stand unless God upholds it. But they do not need redemption. Grace, mercy and love all come out in man. As Paul says, "we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men."

They gave themselves to Him, and so became a spectacle to the world, to angels and men. How right it will be that they are lifted up with Christ in the coming day of glory!

When God makes the counsels of the heart plain, people will get praise that is worth something, but now it is all a mere nothing.

The apostle writes with the finest feeling. There is sarcasm, but also real love that could use it for good. He sets out the true path of Christ: a path of suffering, but of victory over the world. Faith working by love can alone secure such victory.

The world viewed them as "fools" and "weak", and so "despised" them. But they were content to be thought fools "for Christ's sake". Sadly, like the believers at Corinth, we may often be tempted to use our knowledge of Christ to appear wise in the eyes of the world. We may use it to gain power and honour there.

The saints at Corinth were wise (not for Christ, but) in Christ; they were strong and they were honourable. There is a double meaning in this description. For them, as for their teacher, there is wisdom, strength, and honour in their Head. But the apostle truly grasped his own standing as a man in Christ, and this led him to live and work for Christ.

The world held them up to contempt and ridicule. They were a strange sight to angels and to men, willing to be fools in the world's eyes for Christ's sake. This was practical experience. The Corinthians would stop short at the position that was theirs as "wise in Christ." They did not choose to accept the experience of suffering with Christ that goes with it. In this real Christian experience the apostles were "weak" and "despised." The Corinthians wanted only the attractive side of the truth, with its strength and honour.

They were taking their ease, reigning as kings without us, he said. "And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you," that is, at Christ's appearing. Instead of that, God set the apostles last of all. He did not display them in fine clothes, feasting in luxury every day, though they were first in spiritual power and authority. He set them out as men doomed to death, a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.

How much Obadiah missed by pandering to the world, accepting ease and honour among the ungodly! … "You are held in honor," wrote the Apostle to the ease-loving Corinthians, "but we in disrepute." But Paul was happier than they. Yes, standing apart from the world system is loss, as men judge. But the spiritual gain in fellowship with God is immense.

From a worldly standpoint how foolish of Moses to leave the splendid place he had in Pharaoh's court! And so we might go on until we come to Paul and his companions, who were "fools for Christ's sake." What are we who profess the name of Christ? Have we fitted ourselves to the spirit of the age so well that we hardly know what reproach for Christ is?

They had despised the apostle. Yes, he says, we have been put to shame, despised, persecuted, in distress; you have been at ease, like kings. That reproach matched their own pretensions and their own reproaches. It cut them to the quick, if they had any feeling left. Paul and his companions had been like the rubbish swept off the earth for Christ's sake. Meanwhile the Corinthians were resting in comfort and ease. Even while writing to them, this was still his position.

As to circumstances, the Corinthians were "full" and "rich" (verse 8), but these devoted apostles had to face "hunger and thirst". At times they were naked and buffeted by the storms of life. They had to "wander without a home", and labour, working with their own hands to meet their needs.

To make the precious truth of God known, the apostles were willing to sacrifice every earthly advantage. They went as far as hunger and thirst, lack of clothing, hard knocks, and having no settled place to live.

Hardship and mistreatment came upon him; not because he sought them, but because they met him in the path of his devoted service. The world which had persecuted the Master did not spare His zealous follower. In doing His Father's will, the Son of God knew both thirst and hunger. Poverty was His usual condition in the world which He had made. And Paul resembled Jesus, in the way a vessel of divine grace can copy the Fountain which has filled it.

They were a spectacle to the world for their sufferings, and to angels as well as men. How false a test, then, of a Christian's condition, is what men would call his prosperity! As to the Church in general also, how false a test this would be! The Church at large has, as we know, followed the Corinthians in this way. It is reigning far more than suffering… Are we in communion with the apostles or not? They remained, as we know, until their end in martyr deaths, for the most part, in exactly the condition the apostle describes here.

What a crushing contrast — not for the Corinthians of that day only, but for the still more selfish and empty state of our own time, and in fact ever since!

No thrones for the apostles until the day of Christ. In this world they hungered and thirsted. They were naked and buffeted, reviled, persecuted and defamed. They were treated as the scum of the world, the refuse of all things (1 Cor. 4:11-13). So where do the thrones come from that the boasted "successors" of the apostles now sit on?

It pleased God to arrange things so that the great apostle worked at an honest trade to meet his needs, and did so in the wealthiest and most luxurious city of Greece. What a death-blow that is to clericalism on one side and to worldliness on the other! Yet, given the circumstances of both Paul himself and Corinth, this was exactly the course that was worthy of the gospel of the grace that sent it out.

They thought it far beneath a Christian minister to work with his hands from time to time — often poor, sometimes in prison, knocked about by crowds, and so on. They put it all down to bad judgment, and thought he could have avoided it. They wanted a servant of Christ to be respectable, in public and in private.

As to the treatment they received from the world, they were "reviled", "persecuted" and "insulted". Yet this treatment only drew out of them a witness to Christ. When reviled, they blessed. When persecuted, they submitted patiently. When insulted, they entreated.

Paul and his companions had been treated as the scum of the earth for Christ's sake, while the Corinthians were resting in luxury and ease… Patience and meekness were their only weapons.

But if we are to gain the blessing in a time of suffering, we must first give up all thought of taking our case into our own hands and getting revenge on those who wrongly oppose and abuse us. Whatever the suffering, the believer is to hold back from taking vengeance. When reviled, the flesh is always ready to revile back. When it suffers wrongly, it is ready to threaten, and it would love to take vengeance on everyone who opposes and insults us with hard words.

Other Scriptures make it clear that the Christian may "entreat," "exhort," and even "rebuke," but he is never to revile or threaten.

If people call you Beelzebub, you know very well why you should bear it, giving back blessing for cursing. To be like our Master is a privilege we have little of.

Those He put first in the church (1 Cor. 12:28) He put on show last, like the prophets before them, as examples of open suffering. What could be plainer than the place of affliction, apart from the world, that God marks out for the Christian here on earth? On no point is Christendom more at odds with Christ and His word to us.

Clearly those who misled the Corinthians, and the saints they misled, had made the church their world. Principles of the flesh had replaced the grace of Christ for their souls. They had their own schools and spectacles, just as the Greeks outside had. The apostle writes in a burst of the finest feeling. There is sarcasm in it, but also real love that could use sarcasm for good. He sets out the true path of Christ: suffering, but victory over the world.

When people reviled them, they answered with blessing. When persecuted, they endured it quietly. When misrepresented, they pleaded rather than defending themselves in anger. The world treated them as garbage to throw out, or unwanted residue to scrape off a pot. It is worth noticing the phrase "unto this day." This treatment lasts only through the present day of grace. What a change indeed when "the day of the Lord" comes!

This is what the church is called on to do among enemies it cannot set aside. If we are seeking God's glory, we will not want to justify ourselves. There may be pleading — "when slandered, we entreat" — but never proud self-vindication.

As far as this world is concerned, the apostle treated all its glories as loss and filth (Philippians 3:8), while the world, on its side, treated the apostles as filth and the off-scouring of all things. How blessed it is that these servants followed in the steps of their Master. In their own measure they shared in His sufferings at the hands of men. Christ weighs their faithfulness perfectly. In the day to come they will have His praise and share His glories.

They were reigning as kings, these people who could boast that Christ was theirs. Meanwhile Paul and his fellow apostles, men who fully owned that they were Christ's, were the refuse of all things. That is what we learn from chapter 4 of this letter. Paul could not reign where Christ was crucified; he had to be as his Lord.

Hold part of it back, make something of man, and you may be a popular preacher even in Christendom. Declare it fully — the truth of Christ's rejection, and of His glory at the right hand of God; the resulting end of man, and the judgment of the world in the cross… and you must still be counted "as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things."

As a whole this is impossible — not in this or that detail, which superstition can easily imitate, but as a whole — except through the constraining love of Christ, which makes those who follow Him like Himself. He cheers those who set out and go on in such a path with the bright comfort of reigning together with Him.

They had despised the apostle. Yes, he says, we have been put to shame, despised, persecuted, in distress; you have been at ease, like kings. It was a reproach that matched their own pretensions and their own reproaches. It cut them to the heart, if they had any feeling left. Paul and his companions had been as the refuse of the earth for Christ's sake, while the Corinthians were resting in luxury and ease.

This wonderful description of the power of Christianity, as seen in the apostles, must have shamed the Corinthians, as indeed it shames us all. Yet the Apostle does not write to shame them as enemies, but to warn them as beloved children in the faith.

If this did make the Corinthians ashamed, as it no doubt should, that was still not the apostle's object in writing this way. He was warning them, as a father who loved his children, about the dangers of living in self-pleasing and self-satisfaction. They were living for present advantage instead of in view of eternity, and so they were in danger of suffering loss at the judgment seat of Christ.

A false teacher flatters his party and attacks those who oppose his aims. The man who is faithful to the Lord loves the saints; but this very love makes him watchful, and gives him moral courage to deal with what offends Him. Yet his reproof is meant for the ears that need it. It is not meant for others, to lower in their eyes those who may be corrected.

These Corinthians were light-minded, and they had barely remembered the relationship. But the man who had laboured in birth pains for them could not forget that they were his own children. As a father, then, he would warn them. If his words were searching, it was love that spoke, and love is jealous over its own.

In ... 1 Cor. 4:14, 17 ... "children" (τέκνον) should be read instead of "sons."

From verse 14, though he bears everything, he lets them know he has power and warns them. Some said he was not coming, but he was, and he would show the value of their talk. He does assert his power, though very gently, and afterwards he was in fact afraid he had said too much.

An admirable example of tenderness and of authority! His authority was sure enough of itself, on God's part, to act with perfect tenderness towards those who were thoroughly dear to him. He hoped he would never have to use it in another way.

The truth is that when the apostle speaks of ten thousand "instructors" in Christ, he does not mean the teachers. He means the meddlesome talkers at Corinth, and he gives them the mildly dismissive title of paidagōgoi (as in Galatians 3:24). That was the name for the slave who led the child to and from school — a boy-minder, not his teacher. Paul had the affections of a father toward the Corinthian saints.

Notice that this does not run Christian teaching or teachers down as worth less than gospel work, which is what the older English translation hints at. It is an appeal to the love that should bind converted souls in a special way to the one who was the means of bringing them to God. It is not a formal comparison of the value of one gift against the other.

Some of these might favour the law, others philosophy; but they all wanted to keep the believers who listened to them dependent. They had little enjoyment of, or confidence in, the grace that is in Christ Jesus, so they steered the thoughts and ways of their admirers, as guardians do with the young put in their charge… A guardian like that gains by keeping his charge under control as long as possible, while a father's joy is to see his children grow up intelligent as well as loving.

He was not simply acting as an "instructor," as so many tend to do — passing on knowledge without a true interest in the state of the souls they teach. A thousand of these are not worth one man of God who has a father's heart. And having begotten them in Christ Jesus through the gospel, he would not stop caring for them.

"You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you," says the Lord in John 15:3. "In Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel," says the apostle in 1 Corinthians 4:15 — in the same letter where he thanks God that he baptised none of them except a few people! So James tells us that the Father "of His own will brought us forth by the word of truth."

God used the word spoken by His servant to give life to sinners dead in their sins. We may add that in this way a special tie of spiritual affection bound the apostle to those he was used to reach — a tie that will be recognised in eternity.

Something in Paul strikes me very much. We may find it at the bottom of our own hearts too, perhaps, but it has a character of its own — a claim he feels upon the affections of the people, and of the strongest kind. "You have not many fathers, but in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." In the state of the church now, we cannot have that kind of claim of relationship in the same way.

A false teacher flatters his party and abuses those who oppose his aims. The one who is faithful to the Lord loves the saints; but this very love makes him watchful, and gives him moral courage to deal with what is offensive to Him.

This wonderful picture of the power of Christianity in the apostles must have shamed the Corinthians. In fact, it shames us all. Even so, the Apostle does not write to shame them as enemies, but to warn them as beloved sons in the faith. They may have ten thousand instructors, but only one father in Christ. So he begs them to be imitators of their father.

This is an appeal to the love that ought to bind converted souls to the one who was the means of bringing them to God... Some of these favoured the law, others philosophy. But all wanted to keep the believers who listened to them dependent, like small children... Such a guardian gains by keeping his charge under control as long as possible. A father's joy is to see his children grow up intelligent as well as affectionate.

Beyond dispute, God uses His word in converting souls now as always. So the apostle tells the Corinthian saints, "In Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15). Not otherwise. Speaking of the source, James 1:18 teaches, "Of His own will He begot us (or brought us forth) by the word of truth," not by an ordinance.

We must read his plea in verse 16, that they should be followers of him, in its context. He was not just seeking followers for himself. He urges them to copy his willing self-sacrifice for Christ's sake, instead of living for themselves.

The young converts had only one way to see how Christianity could change men's lives. They saw it in the lives of the men who brought them the message... Would that be modest language for a servant of Christ to use today? And yet it was right for the apostle Paul to use it, and he used it with a deep sense of the grace of God. The Corinthian believers lived in a city known everywhere for its immoral living. People even had a saying: they called a young man who fell into wickedness "Corinthianized."

Paul as a man counts for nothing here. What is worth imitating in Paul is only what is of Christ in him... Understand that in truly following Paul we are following Christ, and not Paul except as he followed Christ. Doing this delivers us well from the spirit that says, "I am of Paul."

It is not a question of what one man says, what another did, or what a third wrote. It is a question of the Word of God shaping our conscience... If I find that someone followed the Lord in a certain matter, it is a joy to think of it. I imitate their faith — but not because they did it. Faith led them to do something that is according to Christ, and I do it because I see it to be of Christ. The apostle says, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." That is our rule.

If he wants us to imitate him, it is only so far as his ways are in Christ... Further, Timothy would witness that the Apostle's "ways which are in Christ" were the same in every assembly. Men have brought into their self-made systems ways that follow their own ideas. For anyone who bows to Scripture there are no other ways than those the Apostle taught "everywhere in every assembly."