CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 1:11.—“I hear; for, though you have written me about many things (1 Corinthians 7:1), yet you said nothing about this!” Them of … Chloe.—The bearers of the Corinthian letter? Or residents in Ephesus, who had heard from Corinth? Cannot be decided.
1 Corinthians 1:12.—“To speak plainly, I say that,” etc. Every one of you.—“You are all involved, all to blame.”
1 Corinthians 1:13.—Retain the question, “Is Christ [the personal Christ, not the mystical] divided?” For the exact meaning, choose between, (a) did each party claim the whole, and sole, possession of Christ? or (b) did they, less uncharitably, so rend Him in pieces among them [cf. the connected word used of His garment, Matthew 27:35] as to allow that all did possess a share, but proclaiming their own to be largest and chief? We may hope the latter. But the figure should not be overpressed. Paul crucified?—Contrast the holy horror here with the grateful recognition in Galatians 4:4, “Ye received me … as Christ Jesus,” i.e. “You could hardly have made more of me if I had been Christ Himself.” Paul too popular with one party!
1 Corinthians 1:14.—“It so happened that,” etc. “God so ordered it that,” etc. “I see now why. Thank God, only two of you—yes! [Stephanas and] his family also—can say, “Paul baptized me!”Crispus.— Acts 18:8. Gaius.—I.e. Caius (Romans 16:23), from whose house the Epistle to the Romans was written and sent. Two men whose conversion was of exceptional importance in the history of the work in Corinth, and so Paul baptized them.
1 Corinthians 1:16. The household of Stephanas.—The first souls he won in Corinth; the first handful of his harvest in that field, as he gratefully remembers that “Epænetus my beloved” was in that of Asia Minor (Romans 16:5). No happier memory for a minister than that of his first soul! No wonder that Paul did baptize Stephanas! [i.e. presuming that he did; he does not say so expressly].
1 Corinthians 1:17. Words.—Connect or compare with “utterance” (1 Corinthians 1:5) and “word” (1 Corinthians 1:18); same word, in singular number, in all three. Of none effect.—Void (R.V.); “emptied” of its power. If the words overlay the cross and hide it, if it be wrapped in, as it were, a non-conducting envelope of “wise” putting and rhetorical expression, the only real power in the message is nullified. (See the Homily for this, and more.) Note, Are being saved (R.V.).
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 1 Corinthians 1:10-17
I. There may be an over-valuation of men [ministers].
II. There may be an over-valuation of baptism [representative in this, perhaps, of Christian ordinances generally].
I. Men over-valued.—
1. All these deserved much esteem and consideration and affection at the hands of the Corinthians. Certainly Paul did, and his successor Apollos. To these, particularly to Paul, very many of the Corinthians “owed their own selves also” (Philemon 1:19). No other man can ever take quite the same place in a Christian’s memory and affection as does he who led him to the light, and to Christ. It is no wonder that the man who finds the ministrations of an Apollos—“eloquent, and mighty in the Scriptures,” and greatly filled with the Spirit—to be very effectual in the sustaining and education of his religious life, should set his Apollos on a high place in his thought and prayers and love. The grateful, intelligent love of those to whom a ministry is a perpetual grace and assistance, is a help to the minister himself, and a reward not to be despised, next to the smile of his Master. Even Cephas did a real and glorious work for the Church; in many respects complementary to that of Paul. No need to exalt Paul by disparaging Peter. All this affectionate, loyal bonding of ministry and people is a great blessing and a great help to both preacher and people. Paul very gratefully remembers in Galatia, with a remembrance not without a pang as he thought of the manifest and rapid change, “Ye received me … as Christ Jesus” (Galatians 4:14). If, that is, he had been the Master instead of the servant, he could scarcely have had a warmer welcome. [This loyalty and affectionate devotion may, similarly, and within the same limits, rightly be extended to the special branch of the Christian Church to which a man owes the awakening and the cultivation of his spiritual life. And, by a very natural application of the same principle, the special form of “Gospel,” or the special type of Truth, “under” which a Christian man has grown up to his present knowledge and strength of Christian character, may well call forth and gather to itself a devotion of grateful support, until a man proudly and affectionately ranges himself under the denominational banner of Calvin or of Wesley, of Cephas or of Paul.]
2. But they were receiving more than their due; though probably Cephas was as blameless as were Paul and Apollos, and not more responsible for the sinful partisanship which chose his name for its banner, than were they for the use made of their own. Certainly not even Galatians 2 gives any warrant for supposing any sort of personal feeling between the two men. That the Galatians should have welcomed Paul almost as if he had been Paul’s Lord, was one thing; that the Corinthians should exalt and fight for him or for any other human teacher as if it were for the very Lord Himself, was quite a different matter. It had been innocent and natural affection which, with a stretch of language easily understood, he had recalled so gratefully when writing to the Galatians. The partisan devotion which he so strongly rebukes at Corinth was such as could hardly have been greater if (horrescit referens) Paul himself were their crucified Saviour, or if their baptism had pledged them to him in covenant bond.
3. It was idolatrous.—No, there is but one HEAD and KING, ruling over all alike; “Christ is not divided.” There is but one PRIEST, He who is Priest and Victim, Ambassador and Intercessor, in unapproachable, incommunicable, dignity; “Paul is not crucified for them.” There is but one Teacher, into obedience to whom they were baptized; Paul and the rest are only teachers at secondhand, witnesses, reporters, of what they have first heard from Him. The special theological system of one’s Church, the favourite, or distinguishing, doctrine of one’s best-loved teacher, must not be exalted into unchallengeable, Divinely authoritative, dogma. It must always be held subject to its accordance with the teaching of the Highest Authority. Neither over the intellect nor over the conscience has any man the final authority which belongs to Christ alone, speaking in the Word and through the Spirit. And if belonging to any particular Church, or accepting its creed, and “sitting under” its orthodox ministry, should subtilely become to the soul almost a ground of hope or even of assurance of salvation, it would go perilously near to trusting in a “Paul crucified.” A faithful and wise minister of Christ will point his people to Christ and away from himself; he will stand clear of everything like strife and partisanship, even though he be innocently the cause of it, and an exaggerated desire to honour him be the occasion; he will keep the great object of his calling steadily in view, and not even “baptize,” if that be made to mean too much by over-zealous and very ill-advised friends (1 Corinthians 1:13-17). [One’s Church and one’s creed in like manner must be helps to Christ, and may not arrest on the way, and detain for themselves, devotion and allegiance which belong of right to Christ alone.] [Note how the Baptist was content to be nobody—only “a Voice.” “Listen to me, but look at Him; go to Him. Behold the Lamb” (John 1:23; John 1:36). “We preach Christ Jesus as the Lord; ourselves as your servants” (2 Corinthians 4:5).] [Note also that there may be a partisanship “for Christ,” forsooth, which is as narrow and unholy as that for Paul or Apollos.] [Allegiance to Christ unites the Church (1 Corinthians 1:10); allegiance to man divides it.]
II. Baptism over-valued.—The possibility of this is a matter of inference from what Paul states had been his own line of action. That man may be over-valued is matter of direct assertion. But it may be fairly gathered from his own declaration that he very rarely baptized a convert, that to him the ordinance did not occupy the place which some would give it—a thing necessary to salvation, and only to be administered by a man belonging to a special order. [Peter did not himself baptize the souls he had gathered in the house of Cornelius. “He commanded them to be baptized” (Acts 10:48). Indeed, they were hardly of his ingathering at all; the Spirit fell upon them and did His work, before Peter had scarcely more than begun his address (Acts 10:41).] For an incidental and purely personal reason, indeed, Paul actually “thanks God” that not many at Corinth could say that his hands had administered baptism to them. It must not be under-valued. Paul would not have left his converts unbaptized altogether. From no New Testament writer do we learn better and more fully the covenant theology which underlies baptism, and especially that of the children. It must neither be exalted into a necessary means of a real salvation, nor emptied of all significance except that of a mere dedicatory service with an element of thanksgiving. “Baptized into the name of Paul” (like “baptized unto Moses,” 1 Corinthians 10:2) would, if such a thing had been possible, have meant much more than that. The startling suggestion of such a parallel case may serve to expound what “baptized in the name of Christ” would mean to Paul. Every Jewish, or Mahometan, or heathen, father understands very well that to allow his child to be baptized means more than a simple dedication to the God of the Christian worship. Between the Lord of the Covenant and the subject of the ordinance it sets up a covenant bond, binding on both sides, officially recognising the rights, and (so to speak) registering the claim, of the baptized one to all the grace of the Christian scheme. The Master had said, “Go ye and make disciples … baptizing them … teaching them,” etc. Both are obligatory. But at least Paul clearly ranked the teaching before the ordinance, if for any reason (as was, in fact, the case at Corinth) choice must needs be made. He relied for tho fulfilment of the “marching orders” of the Church, for the execution of his own part of the work, rather upon securing the response of the intelligence and heart to the instruction and appeal of the preacher. A mere baptism of the unconscious infant or the indifferent adult, and much more the wholesale baptism of Saxons or Indians, are no fulfilment of the Church’s commission. No ordinance, however binding, or significant, or precious and really helpful, can take the place of such a “preaching of the Gospel”—in all the round of that by no means “simple” function!—as secures the attention, and wins the assent, and conquers the heart.
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1 Corinthians 1:17. The Kenosis of the Cross.—[Literally, “should be made empty”; same verb as in the important Philippians 2:7, “He emptied Himself” (in connection with which see how Paul, for his own salvation’s sake, “emptied himself,” Philippians 3:4-10). See also the thought of this second member of 1 Corinthians 1:10 expanded and homiletically dealt with under chap. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.] Paul folt the danger of—
I. Scholastic preaching.—[Which met the demand of “Greek” type of mind for “wisdom.”]
1. Such as aims at the intellect rather than the heart; and gives no satisfaction to the man who wants practical direction and help how to live righteously; and deals with speculations and discussions “which minister” [provide and excite further “questions” and discussions in endless evolutionary succession] “questionings, rather than a dispensation” [var. lect., for “edification”] “of God which is in faith” [1 Timothy 1:4].
2. Such discussions of “the Cross” and Christianity have their time and place and value. As things are, Apologetics are a necessity, and the apologists need to be furnished with all wisdom of words and thought. As men’s minds are, oven “the saved” will speculate in reverent pondering upon themes which indeed touch them most closely where the Christian system tells of, and brings to them, immediate safety, peace, holiness for a guilty, unholy man, but which also in other directions broaden out and reach away into regions of almost illimitable vastness. At one end the Gospel answers promptly and distinctly the urgent question, “What must I do to be saved?” At the other it touches questions wide as the whole created universe. [E.g. What is the relation of the Incarnation and of the Cross to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, to the unnamed and unknown (possible, probable) inhabitants of other worlds than ours? (Ephesians 3:10). How widely has Sin diffused its effect? (“Peace in heaven,” Luke 19:38, may only have been a not very intelligent or significant cry of the populace. But Colossians 1:20 speaks expressly of “reconcitation” of “things in heaven.)]
3. The urgent matter is salvation. To the preacher and to the sinner this must stand first. The wisdom of scholastic preaching “makes void the Cross” when it takes the first place, or is the only thing offered by the preacher, or desired and welcomed by the man. [Illustration.—A company of Israelites in danger, or actually bitten by serpents, though not yet feeling much of the effect of the deadly bite, are standing around the serpent uplifted by Moses in the wilderness (John 3:14). They ask, “Tell us, Moses, what is the exact connection between that brazen thing up there and these serpents down here, and between it and the poison in our system, which is to be healed by looking at it. Tell us, analyse for us, the modus operandi of our looking and of the curative action of that up yonder.” (They want “a theory of the Atonement,” and an exposition of “the connection between faith and pardon or holiness.”) “Tell us something about this poisonous substance which has been injected into our veins. What is its action? How did the serpents secrete it? Where did the serpents come from? Why did the Creator make or tolerate such creatures?” (They want “a Doctrine of Sin,” and to hear something about “the Origin and Permission of Evil.”) If Moses had gratified this intellectual curiosity, and engaged in long, subtle discussion in the direction of their desire, there would have been the danger that his hearers should have dropped one by one and died, at the very foot of “the pole,” died in sight of God’s symbol, and pledge, and means, of Victory over death, and of Healing for the poison. Thus they and Moses together would have made “the Uplifting of the Serpent of none effect.” (Cf. the related thought, not word, in Galatians 2:21, “then Christ is dead in vain,” gratuitously.)] “Look to the Cross first, and be saved; then speculate to your heart’s content, if only it do not divert your attention from the Cross.”
4. For the danger is not at an end when the soul has been to the Cross and found salvation. The natural heart loves the discussion and the speculation. [See how the Samaritan woman at Sychar was no sooner closely pressed about the sins of her past life, than she turned off the conversation to a speculative topic, an interesting matter of discussion, which this “prophet” could perhaps resolve for her. “Ought men to worship on Gerizim, or ought we all to go to Jerusalem?” (John 4:18-20); anything rather than sin, her own sin, its guilt, its peril!] And whilst the work of faith and of the Cross is only begun when the soul has first found it “the power of God unto salvation”; whilst “salvation” is a continuous thing, needing a continuously renewed efficacy of the Cross and its atonement; there is ever the danger lest the heart should fly off to speculations and inquiries which please the intellect, and do not offend the pride of the sinful heart, or disturb its peace. The professor of apologetics, the student of that Christianity which is the grandest of all philosophies, “the widsom of God,” may do their work, and may lay it under noble contribution for the service of the Gospel. But the preacher has in hand a narrower, more immediate and urgent, affair. He dares not ordinarily deal with such “wisdom of words,” lest he keep his dying sinner speculating, instead of believing, as he stands at the Cross, and so the Cross and its Offering for sin have been for that man “emptied” of all efficacy. Bishop Butler, with his Analogy and even his Sermons, are wanted. They strengthen the faith of those who do believe, and turn aside for them many an intellectual assault, giving them the helpful knowledge, moreover, that they are not believing in some scheme of teaching unworthy of the mind of man, not to say, of God. But Bishop Butler must not arrest the sinner on his way to the Cross, nor steal away his attention and interest in it, after he has found his way there. [It is hardly within any fair extension of Paul’s thought, to take in the very real case where the Cross is “emptied” of its meaning as a reconciliation, or a propitiation, or a vicarious sacrifice.]
II. Rhetorical preaching.—[Such as meets the demand of the “Jews” type of mind for a “sign.”]
1. Paul knew his Corinthians; he knew man’s heart. There is something not unworthy about the Intellectual, Scholastic preaching, though it may ensnare souls and hold them back from making the most urgent use of the cross of Christ. It does at least bear witness to a Godlike capacity, which is the honour of man, and to which it endeavours to make response. But the preaching that is only words, words, words, beautiful words, words which please the love of beautiful sound, words which are the lovely clothing of perhaps a meagre or imperfect Gospel, or even that clothe very beautifully nothing; the craving for beauty of presentation first, and at all events, whether the thought be true, or poor, or perilous; both are distinctly on a lower level. He is snared by the very nobility of human nature whom “wisdom of thought” turns away, or keeps back, from the cross of Christ. But he is of smaller calibre to whom little or nothing matters if only the preaching be “well put.” Never mind what the song is all about, if only the preacher “have a pleasant voice, and can play well on his instrument, and the song be lovely” (Ezekiel 33:32). They have no serious purpose to “do the words.” Woe to the preacher of the Cross, who to please them, or to please himself, makes more of the manner than the matter; who never presses home the lessons of the hearers’ sinfulness, but is content if he can engage their attention, and please their fancy. He may even so “preach the Cross”—not by any means leaving it out altogether—as that the one thing which makes impression upon his hearers is the beauty of his preaching. [So Louis XIV. shrewdly discriminated between his two great pulpit orators, one of whom made him think of the preacher, whilst the other made him think of himself.] Few preachers will deliberately lay themselves out thus to win applause for their sermons. But all should keep in view the danger to their unsaved hearers. And the danger to themselves also; for the preacher’s own heart would naturally love the reward of human applause; it is more pleasant to have men’s good word and goodwill, than to hear that they say: “He is too good, too earnest, too strict for me. He is always preaching about sin. ‘I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil’ (Ahab, of Micaiah, 1 Kings 22:8).” Every man will use his own gift; but an Apollos will need to take care that himself never stands before and obscures Christ, or arrests on the way to Christ the soul which urgently needs “the Cross” and its salvation. Intellect and oratorical gifts, both may indeed be gloriously used as consecrated means to a sacred end. But the human heart tends, in preacher and hearers, to make them the end, and to ask for no more, but to rest in these. [“The wisdom of which St. Paul speaks appears to have been of two kinds: speculative philosophy, and wisdom of words—eloquence. Men bow before talent, even if unassociated with goodness; but between the two we must make an everlasting distinction. When once the idolatry of talent enters, then farewell to spirituality; when men ask their teachers not for that which will make them more humble and Godlike, but for the excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian progress.… St. Paul might have complied with the requirements of his converts, and then he would have gained admiration and love—he would have been the leader of a party, but he would have been false to his Master—he would have been preferring self to Christ” (Robertson).] [This is no new danger: “In an age of decadence the form of the idea is esteemed far more highly than the idea itself. The surfeited soul, like the surfeited palate, craves the piquant, the highly dressed.… The noblest thoughts pass unheeded, unless surcharged with ornament. The Fathers of the Church have repeatedly pointed out this intellectual epicurism as one of the great obstacles to the progress of Christianity. The noble language of the pagan philosophers seemed to Justin Martyr a bait which would decoy many souls to death. Celsus … heaps his most biting sarcasms on the vulgarity of the form by which, according to him, truth is degraded in the Gospel, on the incorrectness and barbarisms of the style of the Sacred Writings, and on their want of logical force. He exaggerates, … yet he represents the repugnance of the ‘Greek’ to a book, which, like the lowly Redeemer whom it revealed to the world, made no pretence to the glory or excellency of human wisdom. Greece had drunk draughts too intoxicating to appreciate the purity of the living water. Those only who were thirsting for pardon and peace drew near to the Divine fountain. It had no charms for the epicureans of philosophy and art” (Pressensé, Early Years. The Martyrs, 7, 8).] Christ emptied Himself that He might save. Paul emptied Himself that he might be saved. Scholastic preaching may so empty the Cross of meaning, or divert attention from its meaning; rhetorical preaching may so deaden all the force of its appeal; that the Cross cannot save.