Keep sharing good news without ads.
Reading 1 Corinthians 4:15-21 where the Apostle Paul mentions being a father to them and encourages the church to imitate him as he is of Christ. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Whoever it was that shared the gospel with you and led you to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are your spiritual father or your spiritual mother with the intention of pointing you back to Christ when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in 1 Corinthians 4. I'll be picking up where I left off yesterday. So starting here in verse 14, and we'll go to the end of the chapter. This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason, I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and who will remind you of my ways, which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.
Now, some have become puffed up as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills. And I shall know not the words of those who are puffed up, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power.
What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? So we finished yesterday with verse 14, where Paul summarizes the things that he's been saying to them, this biting sarcasm that he had been using to show them just how prideful they had become.
He summarizes that by saying, I'm not trying to shame you. I'm not trying to lord myself over you, tearing you down so that I can feel better about me. I am to admonish you, to correct you with goodwill, that you may know the right way to go, that you would not continue on the path that you are on, sowing discord and division and creating factions among yourselves, but that you would be beloved children.
You would behave as one ought to behave in the family of God. Once children of darkness, once children of wrath of this world who were coming to destruction, children of Satan. That's who we all were before we came to Christ.
But now in Christ Jesus, we are children of God. We have been adopted into this family through faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul goes on to say here in verse 15, for if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers.
Who would be your father? Well, it would be the one who brought you to the Lord. We go back to this understanding of faith in Christ being a new birth. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John chapter three, that if you wanna see the kingdom of God, you must be born again.
And Nicodemus not understanding that concept took him quite literally. You mean to tell me I have to crawl up into my mother's womb and be born a second time? Jesus goes on to say John 3, 7, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So is everyone who has been born of the spirit. And Nicodemus says, how can these things be?
And Jesus said, are you the teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? Truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness of what we have seen and you do not accept our witness.
If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? So we understand that by faith in Christ, we have been brought from death to life. We were physically alive, but we were spiritually dead before we came to faith in Jesus.
But now having heard the gospel and put our trust in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of everlasting life, we have a new birth. We're no longer walking in the old ways that we were once in, but now in Christ Jesus, we've been given a new heart and a new mind.
Going back to something that the Lord had said through Ezekiel back in Ezekiel chapter 36, I will take out your old heart and I will put in a new heart. I will give you my spirit and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
We are born again. Our deadness is gone. That which was in rebellion against God, but was going after the ways of Satan. That has been buried with Christ and we've been risen with Christ now to new life.
We've been born again in Christ Jesus. And so being born again, who becomes our spiritual father? It's whoever introduced us to the gospel. It's whoever had shown us Christ and raised us up in the knowledge of him that we might be born again.
And this person that had introduced us to Christ through the gospel becomes our spiritual father in this way. My spiritual father happens to also be my biological father. And that may be the case with a lot of you that you came to faith in Jesus Christ because your parents taught this to you.
That's certainly a great way to come to know the Lord. And that is also by the blessing of God. It doesn't matter if you were raised in this faith or if you came to this faith somewhere outside your family or your upbringing, it is still by his doing, by God's doing, that you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Again, that goes back to 1 Corinthians 1 .30. So it's still by God's doing. But as I had mentioned to you some time ago while we've been in these first four chapters of 1 Corinthians here, that God uses people to accomplish what he has purposed.
So God has chosen you for salvation from before the foundation of the world. If you are a follower of Christ, you've become a follower of Christ because God had ordained for you to become a follower of Christ.
But it was through people whom God had appointed in various times and various places, they would come to you and share the gospel with you that you may know and believe. Now, maybe those people that God had appointed to share the gospel with you were your own parents.
Maybe it was somebody else, but it was still by God's providence that he would arrange that person in your life at that time that you may hear the gospel of Christ and repent of your sin and believe. And so Paul says, you've had many tutors.
There are many who have come speaking a word to you. We talked earlier about being a building, right? You remember the analogy of the building that is being built up into Christ Jesus. This was back in chapter three, verse nine, where he says, you are God's field, God's building, and then goes on to talk about how Paul had laid a foundation of the gospel and somebody else has come along and is building on it and says that each man must be careful how he builds upon it.
So these people that come along and they're building on top of the foundation that has been laid, this is who Paul would be referring to as those tutors. There are others that come along and they're helping to build you up, but I'm the one that came with the gospel and laid this foundation of Christ there when I was in Corinth the first time and had been preaching to you and you came to faith and believed.
So therefore I became your spiritual father. For in Christ Jesus, Paul says, 1 Corinthians 4 .15, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, as a father would instruct his child.
So Paul is instructing and exhorting the Corinthians. I exhort you, be imitators of me. As children, who are we going to imitate? First and foremost, who are we gonna imitate? We're gonna imitate our own parents.
You bear their likeness physically. There are physical traits and characteristics that you have that have been passed on to you genetically from your parents. So you have certain things about yourself that look like your dad, and there might be certain things about yourself that look like your mom.
And then you get married and you have kids and your children look like you. Your children bear a resemblance to yourself and to your mother. And you may have, somebody will say to you at some point or sometime, oh, you look so much like your mom, or maybe think someone thinks you look a lot like your dad.
I bear more of a resemblance to my dad than I do my mom, but there's certainly some characteristics that carry over, right? And say with our children, you can tell which kids kind of look more like dad and which ones look like mom.
And then there's even behavioral characteristics. My son acts a lot like me. My second daughter acts a lot like her mom. So there's even behavioral things that'll get passed on. So just as this happens genetically, physical characteristics, maybe even some behavioral characteristics.
There's that whole nature versus nurture controversy. It's both. I think there are some behavioral things that can be passed on naturally. And there are also some behavioral things that can be passed on through nurturance as well.
So it's both. It's not either or, it's both, nature versus nurture. Anyway, so you have these natural things, physical characteristics that get passed on. You have certain behavioral characteristics that get passed on.
This is what we understand through a study of genetics or even through a study of genealogy. But Paul is saying here that there are things that need to be passed on spiritually as well. We should take on the spiritual characteristics of our spiritual fathers.
We have those who have taught us that we are to imitate. I had quoted to you last week from Hebrews chapter 13, where it says, consider those who taught you the gospel that you believe. Consider their way of life and imitate their faith.
So those who have been placed over you to shepherd you and guide you in an understanding of the word of God, consider the way that they live. They are qualified pastors, elders, and teachers. And if they meet those qualifications, according to what's laid down, for example, in 1 Timothy chapter three, one through seven, then they are exhibiting the qualities of a very mature Christian.
And so you should want to aspire to become mature in your faith as they are. So imitate those who have been placed over you in the Lord and grow up in maturity as they have also matured. They've followed examples before them.
There are others that came before them who were examples. We are to be examples to one another, even in the church. The pastor that is over you or the elder, the teacher, or whoever, whatever spiritual guide in Christ that you may have, they should be imitating the apostles.
The apostles were imitators of Christ. It all comes back to Jesus. So as Paul is saying here, I exhort you be imitators of me. He's using that parenting motif. If I am your spiritual father, be like your father.
Be as one who imitates the traits and the characteristics of his father. And in this case, in a spiritual sense, then they should want to and desire to be like Paul. Now remember, Paul has just laid down for them how he has been with them, how Apollos has been with them, and that they consider Paul and Apollos in a right manner, not to go beyond what is written, but to consider what Paul has said to them about himself and about Apollos, how they are fellow workers for Christ, for the benefit of his church.
So Paul has worked the field, so has Apollos. Paul has laid a foundation. There are others building on that foundation. Paul has been a good steward, so has Apollos for Christ Jesus. And now he's even comparing himself to being a spiritual father unto them.
So they need to imitate their father, who is an imitator of Christ, that they may grow up and be like Christ. Again, all coming back to Christ. Paul is not boasting in himself here, and once again is not lording himself over the Corinthians.
For he says, I don't write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children, as a father cares for his children, as he would even discipline his children. I'm gonna continue that concept here as we go on in chapter four.
But as he is instructing his children, we've been reading that in Proverbs on Thursday. We come back to our study of Proverbs tomorrow. Instructions from a father to his son. So Paul is instructing his children and saying, be imitators of me.
And it's not about himself, it's about Christ. For as he continues these instructions, this rebuke, this admonishing, which we're gonna see go on for several more chapters. We get to 1 Corinthians 11, one, and he says it again.
He says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. We're looking for even earthly examples of Christ that we may know what Christ should be like and imitate him. And we should have those examples in our own pastors, teachers, elders, maybe even our own earthly parents.
If you are blessed to have parents who raised you up in the teaching and the admonition of the Lord, we look to them for spiritual examples and then we follow their example to be examples of Christ, to follow the example of Christ.
Verse 17, for this reason, Paul says, I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. This is another one whom Paul has led to Christ. And so what should Paul's spiritual children look like as imitators of him, who is an imitator of Christ?
They should look like Timothy. What do I expect my children in the faith to look like? They should look like this one, this protege from the apostle Paul, who he is sending to them. I exhort you, Paul says, be imitators of me for this reason I have sent you Timothy, that you have an example.
This is what my children in the faith should look like. He is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. And who will remind you of my ways, which are in Christ. Again, not about himself. He's not puffing himself up here.
It's all pointing back to Christ. My ways are in Christ. Be imitators of me as I am of Christ. 1 Corinthians 11, 1. Just as I teach everywhere in every church. So the message that Paul says to the Corinthians is not unique to the Corinthians.
It is the same teaching that Paul exhibits everywhere. Same behavior, same actions, same spiritualness, same godliness, same Christ-like character that Paul demonstrated to the Corinthians is the way he is everywhere he goes.
Same message always. This is Christ who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
What have I been quoting to you there? Well, that's out of Philippians chapter two, verses six through 13. And yet what Paul said to the Philippians is also exactly what Paul said to the Corinthians. He teaches the same way everywhere in every church.
This example that he gives of Christ having taken on the form of sinful man and becoming obedient to God, even unto death on a cross, this is the Christ that Paul had proclaimed to the Philippians. It's the Christ that Paul had proclaimed to the Corinthians.
In every way, I teach everywhere in every church, Christ, that you may know Christ, be imitators of me and followers of Christ. Now then, Paul says, here's how we close this out today. And we're finishing up chapter four.
Some have become puffed up, Paul says, as though I were not coming to you. You're acting pridefully as if you can get away with it and nobody is really gonna witness how you behave and therefore rebuke how it is that you are treating one another.
But then Paul says in verse 19, and this should cause them to tremble because Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ. He comes with the authority of Christ. So for Paul to say this should make them tremble, recognizing that their sins will be found out.
Paul says, I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall know not the words of those who are puffed up, but their power. Do these people who are causing these factions who are lording themselves over others, who are saying that they're more important than somebody else because of this teacher or that belief or this gifting or whatever else, do they really have power?
Will they be able to demonstrate their power against mine? We will see, because where does their power come from? Paul knows where his strength and his power comes from. It comes from Christ. And this is humbly being submitted here.
Again, Paul is humbly submitting this, but he comes as a servant, as a slave of Christ, as an apostle of Christ, and he will demonstrate the power of Christ among them if they continue to go their way in disobedience and tear down the building of God.
Remember what Paul had said previously about that. If anyone destroys God's building, God will destroy him. And so if that be God's will upon those who are causing these problems in the church, that may very well what Paul has to bring along with him when he comes in a spirit of rebuke, or if that's the way he has to come.
It's almost like, well, I mean, it's not almost like it is. Paul is being gracious with them and sending this letter ahead of his visit that they may repent of their sin and go the right way in this, honoring Christ among themselves so that this kind of discipline does not have to be exercised or this kind of punishment.
We should probably put it that way. So Paul says, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna know not the words of those who are puffed up, but their power. What kind of power do they have in the things that they say?
We're about to find that out. For the kingdom of God, verse 20, does not consist in words, but in power. Now, hang on, didn't we come to the knowledge of the kingdom of God through the word that had been spoken to us?
Absolutely, that's the power of the gospel. Romans 1 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. And the Lord says in Isaiah 66 too, this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word.
So yes, the word of God absolutely does have power. What does Paul mean here then? The kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power. What sort of a life are these imposters demonstrating? Are they showing themselves to be someone who has been transformed from death to life, who have indeed been born again?
Is the power of the gospel being demonstrated in their lives or are they just big talkers? Their power will not be in their words, no matter how smart they think they are, no matter how lofty the wisdom they think they have, you're not gonna see any power in their words.
You're gonna see power in the life that is exhibited and the life that Paul lives in Christ Jesus as an apostle especially is gonna be demonstrated in these men and women if they do not repent. Verse 21, what do you desire?
Paul says, shall I come to you with a rod? Shall I come to you with strength? Shall I demonstrate the power of God among you and punish those who have been doing wickedly in this church or when I come, will it be with love and a spirit of gentleness?
So go back to the picture of a father caring for his children again. Which dad did you like better? Did you like the dad who had to punish you because you did something wrong? Or did you like the dad who loved you and cared for you in a spirit of gentleness and played with you and wrestled with you on the floor and played games and wept with you when your heart was broken and laughed with you when you guys were telling jokes together?
Isn't that the dad that you liked better than the dad who had to punish you when you did something wrong? Sure you did. I did, those are the memories I remember the most about my dad. Now, I remember those times I had to be punished that I might remember in my mind, this is sin, this is not pleasing to God.
So I know the right way to go and I won't walk in the sinful wicked way anymore. I remember those things, but the things that delight my heart were those wonderful times that I spent with my dad as well.
That's the side of your dad you liked the most. And so likewise, it's the side of Paul that the Corinthians should wanna see the most when he comes, not the side that has to punish them because of the wickedness that they persist in, but he comes recognizing a people who has repented of their sin, who is seeking after Christ and desiring to be imitators of him who is of Christ.
May we desire the same, not putting the Lord our God to the test, not grieving the Holy Spirit, not provoking the anger of Christ. And he is angry with those who disobey him, who continue and persist in pride.
I had read to you last week from Revelation 3, Jesus' rebuke of the church in Laodicea. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Amen.
You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .utt .com. Thanks for listening.