In the fifth verse of the third chapter, the Apostle had asked, “Who then is Apollos, and who Paul?” and answered, “ministering servants, through whom ye have believed, and as the Lord has given to each” (N. T.).
This they were, truly, and not to be exalted as though they were the sources rather than the channels, through whom salvation, and the blessings of the believer had come to once darkened souls in Corinth.
But the solemn considerations that have been before us in the later verses of the third chapter are fitly followed by the opening verses of the fourth,
“Let a man so account of us as (official or appointed) servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1 JND).
They were to be looked upon as Christ’s servants, commissioned by Himself, not by men; and as stewards of the mysteries of God-of the things which in other ages were not made known to the sons of men. In Deuteronomy 29:29 we read, “The secret (or hidden) things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things that are revealed, belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this, law.” What God then kept to Himself, He revealed after the cross of Christ, as is abundantly shown in Ephesians 1:9; Colossians 1:26-27, and kindred passages. The ways and purposes of God are unknown to the world, but have been revealed to His saints.
It will profit the young Christian much to turn to Romans 11:25; 1 Corinthians 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; Ephesians 5:29-32; Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 4:3; 1 Timothy 3:8,16, and Revelation 10:7, and prayerfully examine these references to the things now made known to believers, which were held secret in the counsels of God from eternity until revealed to the Apostle Paul for the church.
The responsibility of any servant or steward is to his master; he must be faithful to the trust reposed in him. If this is true in regard to a man’s responsibility to his employer, is God’s standard lower? By no means.
The third chapter has shown us the solemn issue before the servants of Christ in regard to their work (1 Cor. 3:13-15). They are His servants, not men’s; not the servants of the Church, but responsible to their divine Master alone in the exercise of their service. This is true of all who serve Him, though many do not believe it, and in a large part of the Christian profession, the rule is that the Church regulates the ministry-an open disregard of the Word of God. As saints, the servants of Christ are, of course, subject to discipline for bad conduct, and bad doctrine, just as any other saint, but in their service, apart from such evil, they are responsible to Christ alone.
Accordingly, the Apostle goes, on to say (1 Cor. 4:3-4), “But for me it is the very smallest matter that I be examined of you, or of man’s day. Nor do I even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing in myself, but I am not justified by this; but He that examines me is the Lord” (JND). The reference here is really not to judgment; but to a preliminary inquiry or examination. The believer will never come into judgment (John 5:24 JND), but will give account of himself to God (Rom. 14:12); will appear (or be manifested) before the judgment seat of Christ, and receive according to the things done in the body (2 Cor. 5:10). How important it is that we, young Christians and old Christians alike, should maintain always a good conscience before God! (1 John 1:7; 2:1; Titus 2:11-14; Col. 2:6-7).
The Apostle says that he was conscious of nothing in himself, yet that he was not justified by that; the conscience may be dulled by self-will and other things, if we are not careful to test everything we allow in our lives by the Word of God. “He that examines me is the Lord”, and His discernment is as perfect as Himself. If I am in a right state of soul, I shall quickly learn His mind in regard to the things I am going on with; but in any case I shall learn it fully in eternity.
The believer, then, is to judge nothing before the time, or prematurely, until the Lord shall come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall the praise be to each from God. We are not to impute motives (the counsels of the heart), or to speak or act upon what we do not know, on supposition. This is safe, and needed, to prevent discord easily occurring between saints of God without due cause. The Lord will at His coming, when trials and difficulties are forever behind His people, expose in the light all that was done in the dark so as not to be seen, and will make evident the counsels of the hearts that are not known now. Then, if there be found that which is praiseworthy, each will have his praise from God.
1 Corinthians 4:6-7: The Apostle, in discussing himself and Apollos, had in mind the leaders who had set up themselves at Corinth to the damage of the saints there. He has shown what God’s servants ought to be, and as to himself and Apollos at least, what they actually were. How wrong it was to be puffed up, one against another!
“For who maketh thee to differ (or, who distinguisheth you?) And what hast thou that thou didst not receive.” But if what you have, you received, why boast as not having received? Thus does the Holy Spirit proceed to expose the folly of these saints at Corinth.
But there is more: “Already ye are filled; already ye have been enriched; ye have reigned without us; and I would that ye reigned, that we also might reign with you” (1 Cor. 4:8 JND). Through bad teaching at Corinth the true place of the Christian in the world had been lost, the present is not the time for reigning, but for following Christ in His path of rejection here. When He reigns, we shall reign with Him; it is of that time that the Apostle wrote, “I would that ye reigned, that we might reign with you.”
Shame surely must have mantled the faces of the Corinthians when they read what immediately follows, telling them of the place the apostles, and most of all Paul, had-the very opposite of their own attitude in the world.
“For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last” as appointed to death-a spectacle in the amphitheater of the world, unto angels and unto men. Christ crucified was the first and supreme spectacle: God’s Son rejected and cast out when come in grace, He who knew no sin being there made sin offering for us that we who believe might be made righteousness of God in Him. In his path of suffering the apostles trod, fools for Christ’s sake; weak; in dishonor; knowing hunger and thirst, nakedness, buffeting; become homeless wanderers, laboring, working with their own hands; railed at, persecuted, insulted, become as the offscouring of the world, the refuse of all. Nor had the passage of time, nor the gradual spreading of the gospel brought a change for the better to the Lord’s servants, for the circumstances to which the Apostle alludes continued, as he says, “even unto this present hour” (1 Cor. 4:11), and “unto this day” (1 Cor. 4:13).
And has the world changed, think you, since the Apostle’s days? Should the servants of Christ now court its favor, or seek a high place in it? Are they worthy of their Master when they do?
Paul has been called the pattern-servant of Christ, because he trod so closely in the path of his Master; because of his untiring devotedness, and the deep affection he bore to all the children of God. How tenderly he writes to the Corinthian saints, as in this chapter, concerning their faults! O, for more like Paul today, to seek out and restore the wandering sheep, to minister Christ to hearts growing cold toward Him!
Not to shame or chide them, did the Apostle write contrastively of the widely different positions in the world occupied by the Corinthian believers and himself; but as his beloved children he admonished them. For if they should have ten thousand instructors (child-guides, as it is in the Greek, which is here the origin of our English word pedagogues) yet not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus he had begotten them through the gospel, Therefore Paul beseeches his beloved children to be followers, or more exactly, imitators of himself.
For this reason he was sending Timothy, his beloved and faithful child in the Lord, who would put them in mind of Paul’s ways as they were in Christ, according as he taught everywhere in every church (assembly). Of Timothy we first read in Acts 16:1-3, and to him was the Apostle’s last inspired letter written (2 Timothy) when his martyrdom drew near. Both this young man and the Corinthian Christians were called Paul’s “beloved children”, but in addition of: “faithful” was made in Timothy’s case, not in theirs; the reason for the omission in speaking of the Corinthians is not hard to seek.
May you, dear young Christian, be to God both a “beloved” and a “faithful” child, keeping His Word in heart and ways.
Some at Corinth had been puffed up, concluding that the Apostle shrank from coming there again; but he tells them that he will surely come, and quickly, if the Lord will; and he will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power, for the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. What did they desire? that he come to them with a rod, or in love, and in a spirit of meekness? In the second epistle, Paul tells the Corinthians that to spare them he had not yet come there (1 Cor. 1:23).