Now this I say. — Better, What I mean is, that, &c. The following words, “every one of you saith,” show how party-spirit pervaded the whole Christian community. It may be well to mention here briefly what we may consider to have been the distinctive characteristics of the factions which called themselves respectively the party of Paul, of Cephas, of Apollos, and of Christ.
1. ST. PAUL places first that section of the Church which called themselves by his name — thus at the outset showing that it is not for the sole purpose of silencing opponents, or from a jealousy of the influence of other teachers, that he writes so strenuously against the disturbances in the Corinthian community. It is the spirit of separation and of faction which he condemns — rebuking it as strongly when it has led to the undue exaltation of his own name, as when it attempted to depreciate his gifts and ministry as compared with those of Apollos or of Cephas. He thus wins at once the attention and confidence of every candid reader. The Pauline party would no doubt have consisted chiefly of those who were the personal converts of the Apostle. Their esteem for him who had been the means of their conversion, seems to have been carried to excess in the manner in which it displayed itself. This would be increased by the hostility which their opponents’ disparagement of the Apostle naturally excited in them. They allowed St. Paul’s teaching of the liberty wherewith Christ made them free, to develop in them an unchristian license and a mode of treatment of others essentially illiberal, thus denying by their actions the very principles which they professed to hold dear. They “judged” and “set at nought” (Romans 14:10) brethren who could not take so essentially spiritual a view of Christianity, but who still clung to some of the outward forms of Judaism.
2. APOLLOS was a Jew of Alexandria — “an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures.” He came to Ephesus during St. Paul’s absence from that city, and taught what he knew of the “things of the Lord.” While here, he was instructed further in “the way of God” by Aquila and Priscilla, he having previously only the inadequate knowledge which was possessed by disciples of John (Acts 18:24-28). Having preached in parts of Achaia, he came to Corinth. That he came there after St. Paul we may conclude from the Apostle’s reference to himself as having “planted,” and Apollos having “watered” (1 Corinthians 3:6), and again to himself as having “laid the foundation” (1 Corinthians 2:10). To Corinth Apollos brought with him the arts of the rhetorician, and the culture of a Greek philosopher; and while preaching Christ crucified, these gifts and knowledge rendered him more acceptable than St. Paul had been, with his studied simplicity of style, to a certain class of intellectual and rationalising hearers in Corinth. When Apollos left, a section of the Church unduly magnified the importance of his gifts and of his manner of teaching. They did so to the depreciation of the simplicity of the gospel. This all led to the development of evils which we shall see more in detail in our examination of 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and 1 Corinthians 2. It ought to be remembered that Apollos was in no sense “the founder of a party.” It was the exaggeration and perversion of Apollos’ teaching, by some of the converts, that really founded the party. To the end he and Paul remained friends. He was probably with the Apostle while the Epistle was being written, and (1 Corinthians 16:12) refused, even when St. Paul suggested it, to go so soon again to Corinth, lest his presence should in the least tend to keep that party-spirit alive; and when, ten years (A.D. 67) later, the Apostle writes to Titus, he exhorts him “to bring Apollos on his journey diligently, that nothing be wanting to him” (Titus 3:13).
3. The third faction in Corinth professed themselves followers of ST. PETER — or, as he was always called, “Cephas.” This was the name by which our Lord addressed him in Matthew 16:18, and by this name (and not by his Greek name, Peter) he would have been spoken of by the Apostles and early Christians. In the New Testament writings he is designated most frequently Peter, as his Greek name would be more intelligible to the larger world for which these writings were intended. This faction of the Corinthian Church still clung to many Jewish ceremonial ideas, from which St. Paul was entirely free. They seem not to have quite passed through the cloud. They exalted St. Peter as more worthy of honour than St. Paul, because he had personally been with Christ, and been called “Cephas” (rock) by Him. They insinuated that St. Paul’s supporting himself was not so dignified as the maintenance of St. Peter and others by the Church, in accordance with their Lord’s command (1 Corinthians 9:4-6; 2 Corinthians 11:9-10); and they unfavourably contrasted St. Paul’s celibacy with the married state of St. Peter, and of “the brethren of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 9:5). It is probable that their animosity towards St. Paul was not a little increased by the knowledge that there were certain matters in which he considered St. Peter to be in error, and “withstood him to the face” (Galatians 2:2). To the detailed difficulties and errors of this section of the Corinthian Church reference is to be found in the 1 Corinthians 7:1 to 1 Corinthians 11:1.
4. There was still one other party or faction which dared to arrogate to themselves the name of CHRIST Himself. These over-estimated the importance and value of having seen Christ in the flesh, and despised St. Paul as one who had subsequently joined the Apostolate. Contempt for all human teachers was by them exalted into a virtue. Their greatest sin was that the very name which should have been the common bond of union, the name by the thought and memory of which the Apostle would plead for a restoration of unity, was degraded by them into the exclusive party-badge of a narrow section. We do not find any very definite and detailed allusion to this section in this Epistle, though in the second Epistle a reference to them can be traced in 1 Corinthians 10:7. There is no need for such at any length. Their condemnation is written in every chapter, the whole of the Epistle is a denunciation of the spirit of faction — of the sin of schism — which in their case reached a climax, inasmuch as they consecrated their sin with the very name of Christ. Such, briefly, were the four schisms which were rending the Corinthian Church. We might call them — 1, The Party of Liberty (PAUL); 2, The Intellectual Party (APOLLOS); 3, The Judaizing Party (CEPHAS); 4, The Exclusive Party (who said, “I am of CHRIST”).
(12) I of Christ. — It has been suggested that this is not the designation of a fourth party in the Church, but an affirmation by the Apostle, “I am of Christ,” in contradistinction to those referred to before, who called themselves after the names of men. But in addition to the fact that there is no change in form of expression to indicate a change of sense, we find evident traces of the existence of such a party (1 Corinthians 9:1; 2 Corinthians 10:7).