1 Corinthians 4

Transcript

All right. Well, good evening, everybody. Good to be with you online tonight. So the class this evening will be on 1 Corinthians chapter 4, and we'll do a little bit of bouncing around throughout the epistle. Now, if you asked me why I picked this particular text, I wouldn't be able to tell you, except I was reading it at one point and just was really struck by the power of Paul's writing, and it prompted me to look a little more closely. The more I said the passage, the more it affected me. So I thought I'd just share a few of the things I learned with you all tonight. So I think most of you would be familiar with the

first epistle of the Quarant that starts with the sense of urgency. There's some problems in the Eucharist and Ecclesia, and Paul doesn't waste any time kind of engaging with those issues. Does anybody remember offhand in the first couple of chapters what the key issue he brings up would be division between the brethren? And we see as the epistle progresses, it's certainly more than division between brethren, but you have the whole, I'm of Paul, I'm of Paul as Peter. Paul urges the brothers and sisters in Quarant to consider themselves as one in Christ and not divide into these factions. So that's chapter one. In chapter three, he explains that this factionalism, this division, the accompanying jealousy and strife between brethren, he explains that this is a product of fleshly thinking. And in chapter two, he contrasts this to the mind of the spirit. What seems natural and right to the natural mind actually produces strife and division. The solution is to adopt the mind of the spirit, but they're blocked up because the spiritual way seems like foolishness. It doesn't feel right.

Chapter two, verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, they are folly to him, they're foolishness. And I think that 1 Corinthians is a great book for immature Christians because Paul clearly loves these people despite their pathetically human thinking. Paul doesn't expect them to have it all figured out because spiritual thinking doesn't come naturally. We each start with the natural mind and by the grace of God, we fight to reject that way of thinking, but it doesn't happen all at once. So in Ecclesia, we're dealing with people who are at all different stages, each of us hopefully moving towards the mind of Christ, the spiritual mind. So hopefully we're moving in that direction, but usually it's in fits and starts and even the best of us kind of we revert and we can get pulled back into thinking along the mind of the flesh. I think that's okay. That's just part of what we're dealing with in the Ecclesia, right? That's what the Corinthians were dealing with. And they had big problems. Don't get me wrong about that. In fact, they were content to rely on their natural thinking. And if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards, right? Because they were content with mind of the flesh. That was clearly an unacceptable situation that Paul wanted to write to them about that. And I just thought it was really interesting that oftentimes when you think of first Corinthians, we think about proper moral behavior and

things like church discipline, you know, how to correct and reprove. But like so much of Paul's writing, the true issue at hand is the conflict between the natural and the spiritual. First Corinthians is more applied, I would say, right? We're thinking about applications to behavior and moral teaching. It's more applied than say the book of Romans, but the theological component is really foundational. So in a way, the moral issue in Corinth, I think you know what I'm talking about, but this whole situation that we'll briefly talk about in a bit, you know, that moral issue was sort of secondary. Not to say it wasn't important. Paul had to rebuke the adultery, the moral misbehavior that was occurring. But that was more of a symptom than a root cause, I believe. So the true thing is to seek the spirit from God. And that totally changes the way we think. So I just wanted to share those few words by way of introduction, set up a little bit of the background to the book. Yeah, so all this is by way of introduction to chapter four. I mentioned we'd be kind of focusing on chapter four tonight. And in chapter four, Paul is powerfully contrasting these two groups of people. The first group, those who are still mired in that human thinking, and the second group as being those who are led by the spirit. And throughout the book of First Corinthians, pridefulness, arrogance is a key attribute by which Paul identifies fleshly human thinking. We see this in the first several instances here in chapter four, starting in verse six. First Corinthians four, verse six, I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. So I'm using the English Standard Version, unless otherwise indicated throughout in the slides. That's working for me these days. So this term in the ESV is translated puffed up. It's kind of interesting. Other instances where the ESV translates the same Greek word, it's translated arrogance. But the King James Version is pretty consistent about translating the word literally and kind of sticking with this terminology of being puffed up. The Greek word phusio, which Strong's dictionary defines as meaning in the primary sense of blowing to inflate, that is, figuratively, to make proud. And the figurative sense is, of course, what is meant here. These people were not somehow inflated. They were inflated with their own sense of ego. Paul's talking about the issue of pridefulness. So just for the numbers nerds here, if you want to see kind of the frequency of this terminology, the term appears seven times in the New Testament. And six of the occurrences are in 1 Corinthians. So I think it's safe to say that this is somewhat intended to be thematic in Paul's epistle. He's using this term deliberately and repeatedly, where it really doesn't show up that often throughout the rest of the New Testament. And so the idea of pridefulness being connected with puffed-upness, if you like, it likely comes from the sort of animal instinct to show dominance by making oneself big. When we want to be assertive, we fill our lungs with air and we stick out our chest, make ourselves seem larger than we actually are. And that's behavior that we often see in the animal world. I'll give you a couple examples. Here we see a frigate bird, which is a tropical seabird found in every continent except Europe and Antarctica. They have this special pouch, like a bladder, on their throat that they can fill with air to attract females. So exhibit A, puffed-upness is a show of sexual dominance and genetic superiority. Exhibit B, here we see a mountain gorilla, also pretty magnificent, displaying what the biologists call as agonistic behavior. He's beating on his chest, he's making himself looked off, he's probably trying to intimidate a rival, win the best mate, get the best scrub, all that kind of thing. Just look at how inflated his trunk is. Don't mess with me. That's the message that we're getting here from this puffed-up mountain gorilla. And then my last example, well, I think you get the idea here. These are all sorts of displays that we naturally accept as desirable according to the natural mind. They're physical representations of something Paul is connecting to pride. This is a phenomenon that Paul is concerned about what's happening in your mind, in your head. But these are kind of ways in which it's exhibited throughout the animal kingdom. So the term shows up again in verse 18 and 19. I mentioned how ESV actually starts translating the word as arrogant, even though it's still that literal idea of being puffed up. So you see the same idea kind of carrying through. Some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. And so this couple of verses here kind of reminded me of that expression, talk is cheap. If you've ever heard anybody say that, it's easy to say things. What really matters is what you do. So Paul's saying, I'll find out what they're talking about. I'll see if they actually have any power between their words. It also reminded me of this English expression we have to be full of hot air. It basically means to talk a lot, but have nothing of substance to say. Somebody like that we might describe as being full of hot air, full of empty words. But they keep speaking. Generally, this is somebody who's very loquacious. And they've deceived themselves into thinking that they have something of value to say, but they're just kind of word vomit. And Paul isn't invoking this particular expression, but he's saying that these prideful, puffed up people might not have the power to back up their words. So it reminded me of this expression to be full of hot air. I think this is actually an advertisement for spicy Pringles, but it seemed to fit the concept here. So I hope you like that.

The next occurrence of this Greek term, phousio, is in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 2, where Paul says, And you are arrogant. Art you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this to be removed from you. And here we can see that Paul is starting to explain the issues at hand. We're introduced to the situation with the man who's having relations with his mother-in-law. And somehow there are puffed up persons in the Ecclesia who are boasting of their acceptance of this illicit behavior. And they might have thought to themselves, you know, how open-minded we are, how truly loving we are to accept this non -traditional relationship. This has actually become a point of pride for the misguided kind of the Ecclesia. And as we approach the month of June, you know, this happens every year. It's really low-hanging fruit for me to point to the pride of Western culture in accepting depraved behavior, kind of the modern view, I should say the Western view of relations between mankind. It's believed to be enlightened, which is right in line with Paul's acknowledgement. He later says knowledge puffs up. We're a very knowledgeable society. We're living in a time when there's a lot of knowledge. And so our present age is puffed up with its own sense of self-righteousness. You know, and I wonder what Paul would say today. To the current things he says, you're so proud, but you should be mourning. He says, I do not rather to mourn. So I think that message is still fitting to prideful people today.

The next reference doesn't actually include the word Lucio or puffed up, but I thought it aligned well with the concept. Paul connects the boasting of the Corinthians with the way that yeast acts to produce carbon dioxide bubbles inside a dough. This is what happens when you make bread. First Corinthians five or six, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Some of you may have made bread. I've never tried it. My mom used to make bread by hand. So she had this big ceramic bowl. She'd get all the ingredients, mix it up. She'd fold the dough and she would knead it with her fist. She'd punch it. I don't know why, but that was apparently important. She'd take the dough and she'd round it into a lump, cover it with a dish towel, and slowly the bread would begin to rise. And it looked something like this. I found a time lapse video of this. So just take note of how small the dough is initially. And hopefully this is not glitching. You can kind of see the effect. It's really filling the bottom of the bowl there. In the end, you see just how inflated it is relative to where it began, right? So this is popped up in this at work. This is the power of yeast or leaven. And this is great in baked bread, right? It only takes a pinch of yeast. All of a sudden you have this nice fluffy loaf of bread. There was nothing better than mom's homemade bread, fresh out of the oven. You cut a big slab of it, put some butter on, drizzle some honey on there. It was just amazing. It just takes me back thinking about it. But yeast in the Ecclesia is not so good. It takes just a small number of sort of enlightened blow hearts, a minority faction of yeast particles in the Ecclesia to pop the whole Ecclesia up with prideful ideas. So this is what Paul's warning about 1 Corinthians 5. So we've looked at the first four of six instances where the term puffed up appears in 1 Corinthians. It's all in chapter four and five, and we'll come back and we'll look at the last two examples towards the end of the class. So let's hold the thought for a moment. We'll continue to see how Paul confronts the Corinthians in chapter four. So if you have your Bibles open, feel free to turn to 1 Corinthians 4. We'll go through the text in a little more detail. I'll have on the screen as well. Sometimes the context helps. So in 1 Corinthians 4 verse 8, Paul writes, Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. Without us you have become kings, and would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we've become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. When I first read this, just for a moment, my reaction was to take the idea of becoming rich, becoming kings with things that Paul talks about in his epistles to Timothy, being rich in good works, reigning with Jesus. No positive things, but that's not at all what he's talking about here. This is clearly intended to be ironic. Paul doesn't actually want to share the rule. He's contrasting the manifestation of worldly wisdom versus spiritual wisdom in the life of believers. He's saying the impact of your worldly or spiritual thinking, you know, whether you're in this worldly thinking camp or the spiritual thinking group, it's a big difference as if there was between being, say, the president of the United States and being a death row inmate. You would become kings, but we are like men sentenced to death. That's how far apart Paul saw himself from the Corinthians. And this is just beginning a section that's really staggering in terms of the power that Paul is exerting. He's not mincing words at all. He's saying it exactly how it is and maybe even too excess to make a point here, right? Paul goes on in verse 10, We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we're poorly dressed, buffeted and homeless. And we labor working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. Now we might think, well, hang on, Paul, aren't you being a bit dramatic? I mean, this is pretty extremely describing, but everything he's telling us squares with what we read about his experience in the Book of Acts. His work as a tent maker. His many experiences of bodily injury and persecution, he lists them all out in 2nd Corinthians 11. Shipwrecks and beating slogans being stoned. He says here, we're poorly dressed. And it reminded me of that comment he makes in his Epistle to Timothy to bring a cloak with him. Remember that jacket I forgot? Can you bring it with me, with you? He can just go out to the mall and buy one because he was an itinerant preacher. He didn't have a lot of extra money. He was a very low station in life. And so one commentator I was reading remarks upon the abased position Paul's driving. Referring to the things in the passage on the left, this commentator says, all these things were distinctly at odds with the prevailing pagan idea of the Greek gentleman. The man who could command respect. Particularly was manual labor despised by the free citizens, which Paul was. Slaves who took care of all hard and servile work. Paul and the converts. Paul did not always accept it as he worked at his trade as a tent maker. All of this was diametrically opposed to the idea in the first century of the sort of life a man of repute should lead. As we consider the way Paul describes himself in the Apostles, I think it is important to remember Paul was once a man of repute. He was a high ranking Pharisee. He rubbed shoulders with influential people. He had considerable authority. He had a rank. But he gave all that up so he could follow Jesus. He became hungry and thirsty and homeless. All these things that the society he lived in found despicable. He accepted so that he could grow more deeply in fellowship with Jesus. And just to depart from First Corinthians, we might think of that passage in Philippians 3 verse 10 where he says, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share, or need a fellowship, that I may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. It's, oh man, it gives me shivers just thinking about how powerful this is. But not just as words, but as a life that was totally devoted. Paul gave up a lot to do what he was doing. I don't think this was something he tended to boast about, but it was enough to stir his audience in Corinth. And just to go on to the next verse, as if this wasn't enough, the next verse includes some of Paul's most spryden language yet. The terms he uses here are just really degrading. Reading in verse 13, we have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. Now that does sound bad, but there's some interesting cultural context to the specific terms that Paul uses here. So just take note of these terms for scum of the world and refuse of all things. It's perikatharma and periksema. And they're in fact connected to a Greek ritual where the problems of society were essentially focused on a single unfortunate individual who was rejected from society to placate the gods. This is something that the Corinthians would have been familiar with. It was someone who was practiced and well attested to in Greek culture. It's most well known as pharmacos, although we'll see in a moment that the two terms we just saw Paul used to describe himself are also associated with this practice. So you have here Wikipedia's description of the ritual. Basically, it's the scapegoating of society's ills on victims who be sacrificed or exiled to the gods for the good of the community. And it was part of the harvest feast to Apollos. So definitely a pagan ritual. Wikipedia specifically mentions the practice occurring in Athens, which was relatively close to Corinth, about 50 miles away. But the Apollos harvest fest was practiced throughout the Greek world. And at least awareness of the pharmacos ritual would have been similarly widespread. So here's another victim, excuse me,

another author's description of the pharmacos scapegoat ritual that I think Paul's referring to here. This term pharmacos, we'll no doubt recognize, kind of sounds like the modern world word pharmaceutical, which is a medicine. That would sound like a good thing. But in ancient Greek times, this author describes both the mysterious workings of a medicinal drug

and the action of a poison were similarly considered to be magical. They didn't know how it worked, right? It kills you, it makes you better, it's magic. In fact, we have a Greek word pharmakia, which appears in Galatians 5 verse 20 and is translated as witchcraft or sorcery. So you kind of get that there's a, there was this magical component to pharmakia. And so the idea here is that just like pharmaceuticals or drugs or poisons had magic powers, these individuals who were scapegoated, who were called the pharmacos, would be cast out of society like a poison that was being expelled from the body. So there's this whole idea of kind of purgation. Like if we get rid of this thing that's bringing us bad luck, it's bringing evil to the community, things will be better. So yeah, this is a pretty well tested concept. This is well documented in the primary sources. Even ChatGPT knew about it. I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of a pharmacos. And here's what it came up with. I thought this was pretty interesting. You can see all of society rising up against the object of their problems. You can see the isolated figure in the center, an outcast about to receive the abuse of the mob. In the background, you can see a volcano erupting, I think perhaps representing the calamities that the society, the ancient civilization was experiencing. And just think about that, think about those themes as I share with you a few examples from the scapegoat ritual. These were compiled from primary sources by a Dutch researcher called Jan Bremer. Bremer writes that one group states that in exceptional times, such as during drought or famine, certain ugly people were selected and sacrificed. In Abdera, a poor man was led around the walls of the city and finally chased over the borders with stones. In Massilia, another poor devil offered himself during a plague. In Lucas, a criminal was cast off a rock into the sea for the sake of averting evil during a festival of Apollo. And then Bremer goes on to state, another notice reports that every year a young man was cast into the sea with the words, be thou our off scouring. And notice here that the source Bremer references uses the same term, paracema, that Paul uses to refer to himself. In fact, the King James version translates the end of verse 13 as the, the off scouring of all things unto this day. So Bremer goes on to connect both the terms Paul uses to describe himself with the scapegoat ritual. He says, we find the poor, the ugly, the criminals, who only occur in the historical rites. This must have been a recurrent feature of the scapegoat rituals that the words used to denote the scapegoat. Pharmacos, catharma, pericatharma, and paracema soon became words of abuse. So he's saying that because of this ritual, the words described to describe those poor people that were outcasts from society, those words actually took on like a life of their own, and they became terms of abuse. He's suggesting they're curse words. These are slurs which would have invoked the pharmacos ritual, the worthlessness of the fellows who were the poison of society and had to be disposed of. So another author says,

and I apologize, this is the last couple of references I have, but I thought it was interesting. Another writer says, the words translated here in 1 Corinthians 4 verse 13 as scum and refuse are fairly vulgar in the original Greek. Their closest English equivalents would offend so many people that modern translations use euthanistic language like this indeed. And Thistleton says, the lowest, strongest, most earthy language. So what's the point of all this? Well, when Paul is describing himself as a scum in the world of refuse or off scouring of all things, he's directly referencing a cultural custom familiar to the Greeks in Corinth. He's invoking like really abusive language, not the sort of thing would be heard in polite company to describe himself. And I just mentioned this to help us all appreciate the fully loaded weight of these terms that Paul is applying to himself. I do think this was intended to shock his audience, to really jolt them out of their complacency and really make that dichotomy, right? The present United States versus the death row inmate. Like, there is a massive gulf between those who have the mind of the spirit and the natural mind. Yeah, I think we often kind of see ourselves on more of a spectrum. You know, sometimes I'm thinking spiritually, but then I, you know, I'm not paying attention or when I, you know, I hadn't done my readings, maybe I start thinking more naturally. I think Paul's saying that really has to be more than that, right? This has to be something that we're totally obsessed with, with seeking the mind of the spirit, or we're devoted to our fleshly thinking. You can't kind of teeter on the brink and sometimes use one, sometimes use the other. Yeah, so let's see here. I think I have one more thing to say about this and I'll open it up to comments. And that last and final point is that when we start the first epistle, right, we see that the dichotomy is between Paul and Paulus and Cephas and, you know, these different groups of people. What Paul has in mind here is that the only true distinction is whether you have the mind of the flesh or the mind of the spirit. That's what matters, you know. Okay, maybe you resonate with Paulus with some of the things he's saying a little more. Maybe Peter's, you know, you're more of a Jewish background and Peter's teaching is what appeals to you. What he says is you need to be transformed in your mind. You can't have this kind of puffed up attitude. It's better to be the lowest, the lowest, the paraktharma than being puffed up. So I just wanted to get that out. If anybody's interested, here's kind of the side-by -side comparison of how Paul describes it.

You know, I'm much more likely to identify in the left, but

Paul says in verse 16, I urge you then be imitators of me. He says the same thing in chapter 11, verse 1, except he says as well, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. Right, so that brings us back to, I think, Rich, you originally made the point about Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem and how it was a lowly entrance, you know, on a donkey, not a big war horse. So this is all supposed to bring us back to the example that Christ laid for us. But to just look at the final two instances of that expression being puffed up, 1 Corinthians 8, verse 1. Let's see if I can bring it up. Concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. And we don't really have time to do the subject justice. I think we know what was going on in 1 Corinthians 8. You've got a brother who will eat the meat offered to idols. You've got another brother that won't eat it, right? He's worried about the association, pagan religion, and he chooses to abstain. Now the brother that will eat it has chapter and verse, right? He knows that God is one, that an idol isn't anything. He can cite the scriptures to make a point for why it's actually okay to eat the meat offered to idols, whereas the other brother's making more of an emotional decision, I would say, than a knowledge-based one. And Paul's advice is to actually abstain if it causes your brother to stumble, right? So to forego that knowledge, to have the knowledge, it's not that knowledge is a bad thing, but it has to be paired with love. It builds up the brother. It doesn't cause him to stumble. Knowledge puffs up, certainly has the potential to puff up and be associated with arrogance and pridefulness and all these other things. It doesn't have to be that if it's paired with love, because love builds up. I had some stuff on Dun & Kruger, which is kind of fun, but we're going to skip through that. And let's

see. Our final verse for the night is 1 Corinthians 13 verse 4. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or ghost, is not arrogant. And that word arrogant is puffed up. The King James Version actually says charity is not puffed up. And this is one of the most well-known passages in scripture, right? 1 Corinthians 13, it's read at weddings. It's like Psalm 23 and 1 Corinthians 13 are maybe the two passages people would know if they're not very familiar with their Bible. I think understanding the pride problem in Corinth really makes this verse so much more impactful, right? This term only appears seven times in the New Testament, and six of the occurrences are in 1 Corinthians. So the theme of puffed-upness is definitely something that Paul has deliberately chosen for his epistle. He's carried it forward to make this final powerful point. When we choose to love, we totally neutralize the risk of arrogance and pridefulness that comes from knowledge, potentially. These are dangerous elements that could be produced by knowledge. But when we choose to love, it allows us the freedom to learn and to know all these wonderful things God is teaching us with immunity from the harmful effects that

we see in a lot of prideful but also knowledgeable people in the world. I don't think Paul was trying to teach us that it's wrong to have knowledge or that it's preferable to remain in ignorance. That's definitely not the case. In the very first chapter of Corinthians, I don't have the reference with me, but he talks about growing in the knowledge of Christ, right? So there is many examples in of the fact that it is desirable to have knowledge, but it can also be dangerous, right, as the example of the meat offer diet tells us. So there's certainly a lot to unpack there. We're not going to do that now, but the takeaway should be that in our knowledge, we should combine it with love because all of these things will pass away. Prophecies, tongues, knowledge will pass away, but love never ends. That's the takeaway from 1 Corinthians 13. So hopefully when you read 1 Corinthians 13, it will bring you back to 1 Corinthians 4 and chapter 5, where Paul is really laying the foundation. He's a masterful writer. The themes that he has wonderful continuity, wonderful connections from

beginning to end.