The apostle begins now to touch one of the evils which particularly dishonored the Lord and injured the saints at Corinth. Their party spirit was a sore grief to his heart. Not only did it hinder mutual comfort of love in their midst but the testimony they owed His name before the world.
Compared with what has followed since, or even what the New Testament elsewhere discloses, it might seem but a little beginning, but it was the beginning of a great evil. For the allowance of such fleshly preferences and the consequent formation of parties lets loose the activities of the natural mind and feeling, goes out ward into passionate zeal or dislike, and well if it end not in helpless heterodoxy and open insubjection to the Lord.
“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all say the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be made perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been shown to me concerning you, my brethren, by those [of the house] of Chloe, that there are strifes among you. But I say this, that each of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized unto the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, that no one should say that ye were baptized unto my name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas; further I know not whether I baptized any other.” (Ver. 10-16.)
Apostle though he was, and the one who had not only instructed them in Christ, but begotten them through the gospel, he appeals, to them here by that “name which most intimately deals with the believer, and most solemnly even with the professor, the center of unity, as the Holy Spirit is its bond. By that name, if by any means, would his exhortation come home to their souls. He is jealous of the honor of Him, their Lord, whom their discords compromised. Where was the witness to men in these rival schools with their misguided chiefs, to the fellowship of God's Son? He exhorts them therefore that they should “all say the same thing.” For the Philippian saints he earnestly desired that they might “think the same thing,” and this by thinking one thing. Of these, as being more experienced and in a more spiritual state, he could not but expect more. Nor is it the like-mindedness one toward another pressed on the Roman saints.
Would the apostle then have been satisfied with the same uniform confession outwardly? By no means. With this he begins, according to the wisdom of the Spirit which directed him; for it is surely unbecoming in reformers or men who can easily follow reformers in what was wrong, to criticize an inspired writer or presume that they can draw nicer distinctions or arrange the truth better, than Paul Then he adds “that there be no divisions among you,” of which, their party-ties were the expression; and lastly he beseeches that they maybe “made perfect” (see Eph. 4:1212For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: (Ephesians 4:12) as well as 2 Cor. 13:99For we are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection. (2 Corinthians 13:9)) or wholly united,” in the same, mind and in the same judgment.” Not that he means by this exactly the will, so that there should be a complete division of the soul, the first referring to faith and this second to love, however important all this may, be is its place; for νοῦs signifies mind viewed as intelligent faculty, as γνώμη the opinion or judgment it form?. He wanted them to have a nicety of intelligent opinion. They were defective where they were proud, as men generally are.
Nor does the apostle hesitate to write on the information which he had received (and indeed it was too plain and precise in its character to doubt its accuracy), nor to tell them its trustworthy source. A godly woman's household might be a particularly good means of ascertaining; as it also gives warrant for another day. It is the same apostle who, if he reprobates silly women laden with divers lusts, shows how a Phoebe: or a Persis, a Prisca and a Mary, an Euodia and a Syntyche, should be valued and cared for. He can: here write with full confidence of what he had learned from Chloe's household.
The divisions were as yet within the assembly, not rents from it, but they tended to this end, as we are expressly told in 1 Cor. 11:18, 1918For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. 19For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. (1 Corinthians 11:18‑19). No conclusion can be less well founded than that the separation into denominations is lawful, while an evil spirit within is the sin; for this schismatic working is evil most of all because it leads those who are heady and unsubject to that worst result. It is assumed here that the assembly has not compromised by unholy tolerance of false doctrine or any such evil as would make it a duty to disown those who would retain the title when they have forfeited its true character.
Alas! at Corinth the saints seem to have been largely infected with party spirit. “But I say this that one saith I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ: “this last to my mind as intelligible as any of the others; for the wrong was not in any of those named, but in such as set up their names out of their own vanity and love of opposition. And the worst of all, I doubt not, was that party which plumed itself on its superior spirituality. They had done with men. Paul, Apollos, Cephas, were beneath their aspirations. Not the servants, but the Master was their watchword. They disliked the high claims, especially of Paul. For their part they would cleave to the Lord's own precept: one is your teacher, one your leader, and all ye are brethren. Thus not unfrequently does self-exaltation among Christians disguise itself unconsciously (and unconsciously, because the state is bad, and the heart too long away from the Lord in practice); whereas it is evident that he who really loves and bows to the Lord does for this very reason honor His servants for their work's sake, and according to the place He has set them in. The corruption of the best thing is truly said to be the worst; and so it was here where the specious plea of such as abjured all but Christ might seem to be the only thing right and spiritual in Corinth, divided as the assembly was. How important, it is, and now as then, to judge righteous judgment, not according to appearances!
It is well to note that the evil at Corinth was the converse of what the apostle meant in his address to the Ephesian elders. (Acts 20:3030Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20:30).) For in the one it was the sin of the disciples,” in the other of the rulers. Our only security is in that subjection of heart to Christ, which estimates what is of Him wherever it may be, and walks in dependence on Him, come what will. I had made the reflection before noticing that Calvin fell into this very confusion. Perhaps in Presbyterianism, as being of a democratic character, it is harder to see that the mass of the disciples have their snares no less than those who guide. It is however as sure from scripture as it is evident in experience. No thing, nor person, escapes the vigilance of the enemy. How blessed that all are under the eye of perfect love in our Lord: may we be guided by it!
“Is Christ divided?” asks the indignant apostle. Is He not the Head of that one body the church to which they all belonged? It is a whole Christ to whom all His own belong and. who Himself belongs to all. To think of dividing Him would be as irrelevant as absurd. They might divide, not He: what an inconsistency if they valued Him! But this is followed up by the further query, “Was Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized unto the name of Paul?” To state the question was to render the true answer certain and necessary to the Christian; yet how many since have overlooked both! So blinding is the influence where the first man is allowed to take the place of the Second. Apostles and others have died, yea, been crucified, but Christ alone for as, as it is to Him we have been baptized, not to the twelve, still less to other men.
Far different was the loyalty of the apostle to Christ. Therefore does he not scruple to express his gratitude to God that he had baptized so few personally at Corinth: an impossible subject for thanksgiving, if baptism be the means of new birth, for in this case he who loved God and man must rejoice the more, the more he baptized. On the other hand there is no real slight put on Christian baptism as our burial with Christ unto death; the appointed outward sign of subjection to Him who died for us and rose again.
Its solemn import is derived from the objective truth signified by it, not from the position or power of the baptizer, nor from any qualities of the baptized, whatever be the Lord's will as to either. But the apostle owns the good hand of the Lord in ordering things so that in fact Paul had baptized only a very few out of the many Corinthians who, on hearing the gospel, believed and were baptized (Acts 18:88And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized. (Acts 18:8)): had he actually baptized the mass, it might have given a more tangible excuse to those who affected his name at Corinth. But there can be little doubt that those he did baptize were among those who stood comparatively faithful to the Lord there.
It may be mentioned here that Professor Olshausen notices it as a surprising circumstance that the apostle should not have reasoned on the import of baptism itself in order to cherish his argument, but rather on the providential history of the facts as to it, so far as he was concerned. Dean Alford also urges the last clause of verse 16 as important against those who maintain the absolute omniscience of the inspired writers on every topic which they handle.
Do the two divines seem to write with enough of reverence? Both forgot, if they seriously knew what it is to believe, that the Holy Spirit inspired Paul. Does He not know better than any when to urge this topic, when that? And as to the inspired writers, I know of no sober believer who holds their omniscience, but that of Him who employed them to communicate the truth. It is common, but incorrect, to speak of their infallibility; whereas evidently none can be said to be infallible but God.
The true statement of inspiration is not that the writer became omniscient or infallible, but that the Holy Ghost so controlled his writing as to convey the truth without admixture of error and perfectly for His own design. Hence He might with perfect consistency withhold absolute recollection on a given point here, or a distinct command from the Lord on another point, as in chapter vii.
But all this leaves unimpaired the divine authority of what He does convey or command as from the Lord. Those orthodox as to inspiration may be incorrect in phrase or a shade of thought; but this in no way lessens the seriousness—indeed sin—of enfeebling inspiration, especially in these perilous times, when God's word is the grand resource of the faithful. For the simple but firm faith that it is His word is not only a truth in itself clearly revealed, but it is the basis and support of every other. Weaken inspiration, and you jeopardy all else that concerns God and man, and may end with nothing better than human ideas.