Sunday School: Addressing Divisions in the Church (1 Corinthians 1:4-17)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. First Corinthians is where we are, chapter 1.

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Last week we did our introduction to First Corinthians. We're going to expand that out, have a little bit larger section this morning.

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We'll be in verses 1 through 17. So I'll begin by reading this entire section and then we'll pray and then look at an overview of our lesson today.

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So we start just as we did last week with Paul introducing himself, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.

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And our brother Sostenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and in all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his

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Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you brothers by the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

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For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

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What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow

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Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?

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Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

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I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.

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I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

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For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this passage today, we recognize right away there are some divisions that are going on in the church in Corinth.

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And Paul is going to encourage them to be unified in the faith in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So likewise, we're hearing this morning in the sermon, in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6, about the unity that we have been given in the spirit of the bond of peace.

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And so as we consider these things together, what Pastor Tom is preaching, what we're studying today from 1

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Corinthians 1, may we understand the unity that we are to have in Christ Jesus, and maintain that, and grow that together in the spirit that we have been brought together in as the church of Jesus Christ.

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Guide this lesson this morning. May your words speak clearly to our hearts, and it's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.

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Back in 2015, in the church that I pastored in Kansas, we were going through a bit of a squabble.

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It wasn't the whole church, but there were some different factions in the church that were starting to develop.

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And it was mainly over the doctrine of predestination. Had God predestined or foreordained who was going to be saved before the foundation of the world, or did

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He just make salvation available to whoever would accept it? That was kind of the main gist, the typical

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Calvinism versus Arminianism types of discussions, although those terms weren't necessarily used, except by people who got really mad and were just like, oh, you

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Calvinists, oh, you Pelagians, you know, that's just kind of how it would get thrown around. But there was, at some point in that debate, kind of an argument over study

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Bibles, and that was really kind of the more humorous aspect of it, as I was kind of watching it from the vantage point that I had.

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There were some people who were of the more Reformed persuasion that had either the

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ESV study Bible, or the John MacArthur study Bible, or the New Reformation study

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Bible that had just come out from Ligonier. And everybody was excited about their new study Bibles, and so they'd talk about it.

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Oh, have you seen these notes in here? This is fantastic. It's enhanced my Bible study. They were just excited about a study

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Bible. But the other side of the debate noticed all those study Bibles came from Calvinists.

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Even the ESV study Bible was overseen by J .I. Packer, who is the main editor on that, and he's a

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Calvinist. And so they were like, look at all the Calvinists with their study Bibles. So the free willers, if you might call them that, on their side of the argument, decided, well, we need a study

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Bible that'll combat these guys. So I started seeing Ryrie study Bibles that were coming in the door, which was kind of funny because it's like Ryrie was more on John MacArthur's side,

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I think, than he was on you guys' side. It was funny seeing the Ryrie study Bibles coming in. And then the people who wanted you to know that they had a different study

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Bible than everybody else. I would see it in service. I would be preaching and somebody, quite literally, would just hold their

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Bible up like this and be reading from it like that. It got to the point where I had to confront a few people and go, look, this is childish, knock it off.

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But even when it came to the kinds of the translations of the Bible that we were reading or the different study

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Bibles that we had, there were divisions that were happening. My Bible is better than your

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Bible. And even that kind of debate, you can see Paul confronting here in this first admonishment that he gives to the church in Corinth with regards to the divisions that had developed there.

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Now, as we do an overview of this particular section, of course, we get to that part where Paul is confronting the division.

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That's verses 10 through 17. But we've got greeting before that, the salutation. And then we have

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Paul's expression of thanks. So the the main point of this lesson can't just simply be that Paul is confronting division since we also have to include whatever is thematically going on there in the salutation and in Paul's expression of thanks as well.

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Now the name of our Lord Jesus Christ comes up many times. We talked about that last week with certain phrases, repetitions that we will see

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Paul talking about how he's been called to be an apostle at the very beginning and that even those who are in the church in Corinth, they've been called to be sanctified along with those who call upon the name of our

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Lord. So you have that reference to calling. Then you get to the thanksgiving and what is something like four times, four or five times the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ comes up. The grace of God was given to you in Christ Jesus in every way you would be enriched that the testimony about Christ would be confirmed among you that that at the revealing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, he will sustain you until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son,

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Jesus Christ, our Lord. And then even when we begin the next section, which is Paul's admonishment of this church.

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How does he start? I appeal to you brothers by the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's the theme that we see throughout this entire section.

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And every time that Paul says it in those three sections, the salutation, the thanksgiving, and then when he has to admonish the church in all three of those sections, you will find the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because what does he have to do when he gets to the confrontation? He says, some of you are saying,

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I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas. They're all attaching themselves to names.

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They're all justifying their selves themselves according to a certain teacher's teaching.

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And that name is over this teaching. And Paul is going, you're missing the point. We've all been called in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so that even the ministries of Paul and Apollos and Cephas, they're all pointing to Christ.

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So it is this name that we wear. It is in this name that we have been saved and baptized and are being sanctified.

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And so see that as we go through this section of 17 verses here today, that this is all directing us to the name of our

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Lord Christ. Now you'll notice again, the section kind of breaks up very evenly into the salutation.

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We looked at that mainly last week in the three verses. I'm just kind of doing a review of that today. Then we're going to go on to the thanksgiving, which is verses four through nine.

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And then you have that confrontation of divisions in verses 10 through 17, but always looking for that theme of drawing the

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Corinthians back to the understanding of the gospel that was proclaimed to them from the very first.

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And so that Paul is even going to wrap up with that. Look again at verse 17. He says, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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At the end of the section, he directs them right back again to the gospel. It is the gospel that you heard, the thanksgiving that Paul gives.

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That's all in light of the gospel that they have heard and turned from sin and believe in the Lord Christ. And so verse 17 even teases out where we're going to go next, what we're going to look at next week, where Paul says in verse 18, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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That's the power of God among us is the gospel, not in whose teaching is the best, but the gospel of Christ by which we have been saved.

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Now what is Paul's aim here? What is Paul telling them to do? There's a real complicated instruction here in first Corinthians one, one through 17.

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And that complicated, that complicated instruction is this fix it. What your problem is.

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He shows them exactly what it is. He addresses kind of the main gist of the divisions that exist among them, which is even a picture of other divisions that he's going to have to confront over the course of the letter.

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There are other ways in which this body is divided from one another, but this one here that he confronts in 10 through 17, this is kind of the picture of everything else.

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And he's going to spend the next several chapters, especially on this one. And so this problem that you have, here's the divisions that exist.

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You should be unified, but you're not. You should be mature in the faith, but you're still infants in the faith.

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Chapter three, verse one, still in the flesh. And so identifying the problem and showing them the problem, the direction he gives to them is fix it.

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But of course they don't fix it by their own merit. We've already seen what they're doing by their own merit.

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Any ability to fix this problem is going to be by the power of God. Notice again in verse nine,

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Paul saying, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. It is in Christ that you've been brought into this unity. It is Christ who's going to keep you.

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And it is by the power of God that we're going to correct these problems that you're in as you're still acting in your flesh and come to a mindfulness of Christ in his spirit.

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So the central proposition here, the main thing we're looking at over the course of this lesson is going to be in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, do not be divided, be unified.

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So let's begin with, uh, we've looked at the greeting again. That was last week versus one through three.

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Let's move on to the Thanksgiving section. So look at verse four, Paul says, I give thanks to my

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God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.

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Why is Paul thankful for the Corinthians? I mean, these guys are causing problems.

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They're not unified with one another. Paul is vexed in his spirit over this.

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In fact, he even talks more about that in second Corinthians where he says, uh, he talks about the daily anxiety that he has for all of the churches, the burden that is upon his heart to pray for all of those churches that have come to faith, that they would hold onto that faith, that it would not be snatched away from them by Satan, but that they would continue to hold fast and continue firm in that faith.

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So here you have the Corinthians that are divided with one another. I would be tempted if I were writing a letter to this church,

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I would be tempted to be like, guys, come on. I was having a good day and then I got this report from Chloe's people.

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What's the matter with you guys? Now I have to get a writer's cramp writing out all these words to you here.

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Well, Sostenes does. Sostenes has a writer's cramp, thanks to you guys. That would be, that would probably be my attitude from my flesh.

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If you guys would just straighten up and stop sinning, I could have a better day. But Paul expresses thanks to them in the letter that he wrote to the

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Galatians. He was even more harsh with them. He said, I feel like I'm having to go through the anguish of childbirth again for you.

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He's not nearly that harsh with the Corinthians. He expresses thanks, but his thankfulness for them is not in their merit.

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Notice again, the thankfulness is to God because of the grace

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God has given you. If you'll remember back to the thanksgiving that Paul gave at the start of his letter to the

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Thessalonians, he said to them that I'm thankful for you because,

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I'm kind of paraphrasing this here, but you're a demonstration of the fact that the gospel of Christ has gone to the

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Gentiles. I'm thankful to God for you because you've remained steadfast even in the midst of persecution and suffering, demonstrating that the transformation that's happened in you is real.

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The Holy Spirit is working. You are Christians and you are confirming the prophecies that have been made from of old.

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That the gospel would go out to the nations and God would call the nations even to himself.

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That's the nature of Paul's thanksgiving to the Thessalonians. I believe it's the same thing with the Corinthians as well.

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Though he doesn't say anything about, hey, you Gentiles have been brought into this faith. Notice that the thanksgiving is because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ.

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And as I mentioned last week, though, Paul has got a lot of things that he has to confront here, a lot of problems that are going on in this church, stuff that would make us shake our heads at the church down the road.

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Man, can you believe the stuff that they're doing down there? How can they even call themselves a church?

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Take the sign off, shut their doors. It might make us reply that way, but that's not the way

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Paul acts. He's very pastoral here, very loving of this church. And he confirms to them, though he has some confrontations to make, he confirms to them, you are a church, you're

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Christians, the Holy Spirit is among you. And he is confident that because the

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Spirit is there, not because he knows those people real well and they're just a very agreeable kind of people, clearly they're not.

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Because the Spirit is there, Paul knows that when he gives this instruction, it's going to convict hearts.

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And they're going to turn from that sin back to the gospel that they're supposed to be unified in.

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So he's grateful to God for the grace that is there among them. Verse 5, that in every way you were enriched in all speech and all knowledge.

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Even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you. Now the interesting thing about this reference to speech and knowledge, you've been enriched in all speech and all knowledge.

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If you have a pen, if you've been taking notes, just underline those two words. Underline speech and underline knowledge.

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Because you're going to see those two things come up over the course of 1 Corinthians. And I'm just going to set this upon you here because I may not remember to draw this back to your attention as we go through 1

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Corinthians. But look for those occasions because you'll see speech and knowledge right there next to one another.

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Where Paul says something about speech and knowledge. The most prominent place is in chapter 13.

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How do we begin the love chapter of 1 Corinthians? If I had all knowledge and could fathom all mysteries, but if I have not what?

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Love. Then I'm nothing but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

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If I could speak the tongues of men and of angels, but have not what?

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Love. Then I am nothing. Right there at the beginning where Paul has to confront the

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Corinthians about their lack of love. What are the two gifts he mentions right at the very start?

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Speech and knowledge. You have those gifts,

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Paul is saying to them, but you're not exercising them in love.

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You've been enriched in all speech and all knowledge. I just kind of have to wonder if as Paul is opening the letter with that, if the

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Corinthians are hearing that, they're going, yeah, how about that? Listen to us. We're enriched with all speech and all knowledge.

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And yet he's going to drop the hammer on them and say, but it means nothing if you're not exercising those gifts in love.

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And everything Paul describes of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is not him being ooey gooey affectionate there.

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Everything he says about love, the Corinthians are doing the opposite. And so though they have been given these gifts, there is a humility there that is lacking.

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That they would die to themselves and consider the needs of others ahead of their own.

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And that's what Paul needs to direct them to. Yes, sir. Yeah, so that's where I'm a little concerned about.

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It's because of verse seven, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. So speech and knowledge are kind of grouped in there as gifts. Yeah. So, so the question in case you didn't hear it was, are these really talking about gifts or is it talking about an enrichment?

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It's both because as we understand the giftings of the Holy Spirit, this, this can be gifted to us in one of two ways.

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You could have had a particular ability or gifting, we might call it in a very crude sense, right?

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There was a certain ability or talent or gifting you had before you came to Christ.

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And then you become a Christian and still with that gifting now enriched by the

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Holy Spirit, you use that gift as a benefit to the church. Paul will talk about that when we get to chapter 14.

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You have these gifts for the betterment of the church, for building one another up in love. So that's one way that we are blessed with spiritual gifts.

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It's something God has given us even beforehand, even before we knew him. And then when we come to know

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Christ and we have his Holy Spirit, that gift is enriched for the purpose of serving the church.

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A second way that we receive the gifts of the spirit is when we come to faith and when we grow in the knowledge of God, he gives us a gift by his spirit.

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Something that we did not have before. Like for example, discernment is often the one that I use because we didn't have good discernment before we came to faith, right?

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But now with the spirit of God in our hearts and having renewed our minds according to his word, we read the word, we know the truth, and now we can discern truth from error where we couldn't do that before.

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So that's an example of a gift that the Lord may give you after you become a Christian. But then again, there's also those gifts that we may have by God's providence.

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He blessed us with them when we were born. And then we are enriched in those gifts as we grow in the spirit, as we grow with one another in the body.

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But thank you for that. That kind of brings us back into the context of the Thanksgiving here. So you're not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of your

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Lord Jesus Christ. Something else Paul is saying to this church is that you have the equipment, you have the tools, you have everything that you need to fix the problems that I'm about to confront.

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Now he didn't say that explicitly there, but that's really the tease. That's really what it's leading up to there.

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That you have been given everything. Once these confrontations now come to you, I've already affirmed for you that you have the tools, you have everything that is necessary for you to correct these errors and come back into the oneness that you should have in Christ Jesus.

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So then going on to verse 8, he will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is very similar to Jude 24, which says that God is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.

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The understanding here is that you have been saved by God and he's the one who keeps you saved.

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He saved you, he keeps you saved. This is not by your work, it is by the work of God.

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Going back to the conflict that was in my church in 2015 that I mentioned to you, there was one young man who was brand new in the faith and he was kind of watching this squabbling that was going on.

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There was a guy that was on the more Arminian side of his soteriology that this young man really admired.

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And yet he did not agree with the Arminian's arguments.

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So he's listening to this man, he's hearing his arguments, he really admires this man, but when he looks into the scriptures he's going,

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I don't know that I totally agree with that, but I don't know why, I can't understand why.

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So he invited me out to lunch and he said, I've been hearing these different arguments that are going on in the body and I just want to sit down for lunch,

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I just want to ask some questions about it. And I said, okay, would love to meet you for lunch. So my usual spot, I would take somebody for lunch, they had great burritos there,

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I'm ready to talk about faith, but I love a good full stomach at the same time. So we sit down at an outside table and I'm thinking he's going to ask me some questions.

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He's got a notebook full of arguments. And so he opens that notebook and he just starts laying into arguments and he starts saying, you

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Calvinists say this, that, and the other. And I listened to him go through all of Tulip, if you're familiar with the five points of Calvinism.

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He went through every point and argued with every single one of them and I let him just talk for about 15 or 20 minutes.

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He just ran through these arguments and said, I just don't agree with this and I just, I just don't get this and so on and so forth.

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And I let him get to the end of that. And I said, well, I don't really want to sit here and argue

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Calvinism with you. I really don't. I mean, if you've got these problems with the doctrine,

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I understand that. If there's questions you have about it, then maybe I can help you to understand the doctrine a little bit better.

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But why don't we just open the word and read it? Do you mind if we do that? And he said, sure, that would be great. So I said, open to first Corinthians.

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I don't know why that day I was led to tell him to open to first Corinthians, but I did.

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That was, you know, the Holy Spirit just giving that inspiration to me, I suppose. We weren't even studying first Corinthians at the time in our church.

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We were in Romans, in fact. And I said, open up to first Corinthians. Let's start there. And he said, all right. So I opened up first Corinthians chapter one and I just,

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I just said this. I said, Paul, called by the will of God. And that's it.

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I didn't even finish the sentence, even had the little catch in my voice, like I'm planning on continuing.

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And he just interrupted me and he went, well, that's it. And I was kind of startled by that.

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And I said, that's what, what do you mean? That's it. And he said, called by the will of God. That's, I don't have any argument to that.

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And, and I, and I said, so, so that I understand you, right. You understand now that this is all by God's will and not our own.

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And he said, yeah, says it right there. And I'm thinking in my mind, it's not this easy. It's not supposed to be this easy.

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And I said, okay, fine, but let's, let's keep reading anyway. So we kept reading through it and over and over again, he's just nodding and he's just going, yep, yep.

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Right there. Yep. Right there. It's by God's word. It's not by our ability to come up with the best arguments and argue somebody over to our side, come back to the word.

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What does God's word say? And let the word convict and let the Holy spirit move in a person's heart.

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And so Paul says, God is the one who is faithful, where he's going to move you in your sanctification, in your understanding of him in, in your being able to fathom the mysteries of God's word.

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This is all by the blessing of God. In Romans 12 three, it even says that God gives us a certain measure of faith.

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So how is it that pastor Tom has all this maturity in the faith and you might see this man who's grown in all these things and you think to yourself, how can

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I never get to the place where Tom is? We'll ask the Lord. The Lord gives you a measure of faith.

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He is the one who is faithful and by whom we have been called into the fellowship of his son, by his grace, by his doing, we've been called into this fellowship.

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And again, this is the nature of Paul's Thanksgiving here. It's not because the Corinthians are our great people and man, you guys are fun to play games with and watch movies with.

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These people, Paul is thankful for because the grace of God is among them. By him, you have been called into this fellowship with his son,

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Jesus Christ our Lord. So he's the one who saves us. He's the one who sustains us to the end.

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He's the one even who is growing us in this faith that we have in Christ our

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Lord. So that's the Thanksgiving section, still kind of in the introduction to 1

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Corinthians here. Are there any questions about that before we move on to the next part? As Paul gives his first admonishment.

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Okay, let's continue on. Verse 10, I appeal to you brothers. Now when you know the rest of what's coming in this letter, you can hear the urgency behind that.

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It's not just a transition phrase. Paul is making a strong, impassioned appeal.

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I would have loved to have been there in the room with Paul and Sostenes. As Paul is dictating this and Sostenes is writing it down, what were the emotions coming from Paul that only

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Sostenes was there to witness in person? How vexed he was in his spirit because this body whom he loves, remember he was with them for a year and a half.

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He loves this church. This body that he's been with and so concerned over the divisions that he's now heard about.

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Makes this impassioned appeal and calls them brothers and says once again, by the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, I appeal to you that you agree.

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And that there would be no divisions among you. Now as I mentioned to you in the beginning,

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Pastor Tom is preaching on Ephesians four, one through six today, where you have

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Paul talking about with the Ephesians, the unity that we have in the spirit of God, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of us all who is over all and through all and in all.

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But the nature of this unity that he talks about with the Ephesians, like a totally different approach than he's making here with the

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Corinthians. The church in Ephesus was unified and they were maintaining this unity.

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He just encourages them all the more to maintain that unity. With the Corinthians, different set of circumstances.

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This church is divided, but still the instruction is the same. The instruction, and Tom will talk about this if you haven't heard the sermon yet, but the instruction that we have in Ephesians four is maintain unity, not come up with it, right?

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Invent some unity and you guys be unified or find some unity or find some common ground for you guys, for goodness sake.

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No, it's maintain unity because unity's already been given to them.

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It's been purchased by whom? By Christ. Christ by his blood has given unity to every church that is in his name.

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We don't manufacture unity. When we try to manufacture unity, we really mess it up.

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And you can see like the different philosophies and things like that going on in our culture and in the world today that people are grabbing a hold of and trying to use that to unify the church and it ain't working, is it?

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Stuff like critical race theory, intersectionality, the identity politics in our culture.

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Well, we need to figure these things out first and then we'll be unified. No, you're already unified in Christ.

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Maintain that unity. If you focus on skin color, you're always going to be divided on skin color.

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If you focus on the translations of the Bibles that we're reading or what our study Bible is, you're always going to be divided over your different study

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Bibles. You can decide as a church, we're all going to read from just this translation and that's it.

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You guys get together, get it on the same page, stick with this translation and now we're unified.

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No, you just have Bibles with the same labels on it, but in your hearts you're still divided from one another. The unity's been purchased by Christ.

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We don't make that happen. Christ is the one who has reconciled us to God and to himself.

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And if we have peace with God, then surely we're going to have peace with who else? One another.

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If we have peace with God, we'll have peace with one another. I stole that line from Pastor Tom.

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So Paul says, I appeal that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment.

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Very similar thing that Paul says to the Philippians, Philippians 2 .5, let this mind be in you, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

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How can we possibly be of the same mind? That's ridiculous on any kind of natural level to think that all of us here in this room could be of the same mind.

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There's a lot of push in our culture toward empathy. You don't hear so much about sympathy anymore.

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Have you ever noticed that? When was the last time you heard somebody in a cultural context use the word sympathy?

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I hardly ever hear the word sympathy, but there's all kinds of a push toward empathy. What's the difference?

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Does anybody know? What is empathy? Yes, ma 'am.

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You can put them in their shoes to feel what they're feeling.

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Right. Yeah. Exactly. Right. So you use sympathy in there, but empathy is feeling what they feel, right?

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Is that possible? No. How can you possibly know that? Even if let's use, let me borrow an example here.

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Say that you know somebody who's lost a child and you've experienced that before too.

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I know what it's like to lose a child. And so you go to that person and you say, I know what you're going through.

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There's a certain level in which that might be true, but you actually don't. You don't know what they're going through because we're all connected in totally different ways.

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The way one event affects one person may be completely different than the way that it affects another person.

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Like when you see a national tragedy that happens, like 9 -11, for example, just recently, you know, last week, uh, it was the 21st anniversary of the remembrance of the terrorist attacks that happened in our nation.

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And you hear the stories of different people that went through that. They were there in New York city. Everybody's story is different.

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They could even be in the same proximity from the location of the twin towers when they fell and yet their response to that situation is different than the person who was next to them.

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So there's a certain sense in which we can relate to one another, but you're never going to exactly feel what another person feels.

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Empathy is impossible and, and, um, factually the word empathy itself doesn't even appear in your

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Bible. I don't know that there's any English translation of the Bible that the word empathy appears. What we do find is sympathy and we are told as the body of Christ that we're supposed to sympathize with one another.

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So what's sympathy? We can't feel what they feel, but we are supposed to share their burden.

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That's a completely different instruction. It's not possible for you to feel what another person feels, but to share that the, the burden with another person.

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And then we understand the instruction like is given in Romans 12 to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

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It doesn't mean you feel what they're feeling, but you share the hurt that they are in so that we might build one another up so that a person who feels low like that, we might encourage them in the word of Christ so that they feel uplifted and they know their hope is not in our circumstances.

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Our hope is in Christ who has conquered death, who has given us the promise of eternal life.

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If Jesus has overcome death, he can overcome everything else that's going on in our lives. This mindfulness that we're supposed to have, this shared mind that we're supposed to have in Christ Jesus only comes by the power of the same

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Holy Spirit that is dwelling within every one of us because naturally we're disconnected with all these different minds and all these different experiences.

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We can't naturally be of the same mind. This is something spiritual that Paul is talking about.

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This can only happen on a spiritual level, that with the same Spirit of God within us, we can sympathize with each other.

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We can love one another. We can consider another's needs ahead of our own.

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Our hearts actually break for each other. And it's not about how can this person help me or do something for me.

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It's rather our approach becomes, what can I do for this person? How can

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I sacrifice? How can I love and give for somebody else that helps to build them up, that grows them in their faith, that encourages their hearts?

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And this is what Paul is urging the Corinthians toward. As we remember back to the themes that I mentioned last week, humility being one of those themes, there was a lack of humility in the church in Corinth.

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And Paul is telling them to be humble, be of the same mind and the same heart toward each other.

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There must be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

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Now the interesting thing is that in the Greek, these words are pretty much identical. So you could translate it, that you be of the same mind and the same mind.

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Or you could translate it, you be of the same judgment and the same judgment. Basically, what Paul is telling them is you need to think the same and you need to know how to think the same.

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What to think and how to think needs to be the same. And we know what to think according to God's word.

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We know how to think according to God's word. So there's the similarity there. Be directed again, your focus be on the gospel of Christ that was first proclaimed to you.

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Being of the same mind and the same judgment. Verse 11, for it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you my brothers.

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Now, as I said last week, we don't know exactly who Chloe was. It could have been one of the households that was there in the church in Corinth.

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It could have been the house where the church in Corinth was meeting. But this past week when all of us teachers were meeting on Wednesday night, we were going through this lesson together.

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It was Doug Turner that said, you know, at that point, everybody in the church was looking over at Chloe's people.

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Oh, really? Paul has heard from Chloe's people. Thanks a lot, guys.

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But this was not the word that has come to Paul from Chloe's people was not gossip.

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It was not coming to Paul like in this exasperated, oh boy, Paul, you ought to hear what's going on in the church in Corinth.

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And then like laying this all out as though we're all going to laugh about it together. Our understanding here is that this church was deeply concerned about the things that were going on in Corinth and they didn't know where else to turn.

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We can't seem to fix this. So what needs to be done to heal these divisions that exist among us?

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And they come to Paul and they appeal to him who is in Ephesus at this time saying we have we have a big problem.

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I mean, for somebody to travel from Corinth to Ephesus to share these things with the apostle

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Paul, this was not, hey, let's go have a good laugh at the church in Corinth's expense. This was deep concern for this church.

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This is a people who sympathizes and Paul sympathizes with the problems that are going on there.

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There's quarreling among you, my brothers. And then he says, here's what I mean. Example of this.

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What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul or I follow

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Apollos or I follow Cephas or I follow Christ. Now this, this statement,

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I follow Christ is not, hey, you guys, you guys are following the wrong people,

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Paul, Apollo, Cephas, I follow Christ. Let's all follow Christ. No, this is a game of one upmanship.

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So it's like the person who will sit in a meeting where there's some doctrinal disputes and then we'll speak up and we'll say, hey, no creed, but Christ.

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I just follow Jesus. I just want to read my Bible. And they don't really mean that from a genuine heartfelt sense.

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They just want to one up the next guy. Oh yeah? Well, I follow Christ. Hear this verse in my head every time

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I pass by a church of Christ. Oh, really? You're the church of Christ.

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Okay. You know, maybe I don't need to have quite that, that, but they've got some problems they need to work on, but I don't need to have that mindset anyway.

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So verse 13 is Christ divided. Now that's more profound than you might think it is on the surface.

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When Christ died on the cross, was he divided? In fact, the prophecies about him said in the

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Psalms, not a single one of his bones would be broken. So Christ was whole when he went to the cross and he was whole when he was taken off the cross and buried in his death and placed in a tomb.

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So literally Christ was not divided, nor is he divided spiritually in any way. Christ is not divided from the father.

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He didn't have a separate will from the father, nor does the Holy Spirit have a separate will from Christ. Christ is not divided.

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And so you should not be divided either. Was Paul crucified for you?

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Rhetorical question. The obvious answer to that is no. Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

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We celebrated Bella Hone's Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving baptism. I don't even know where that came from.

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We celebrated Bella's baptism in first service this morning. This young teenage girl who now wants to express to her church this faith that she has in God and doing this in obedience to the command to be baptized.

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She has testified before this body that she is buried with Christ and risen again to newness of life.

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We're buried with Christ. We are raised in his baptism. We're baptized in his name.

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And it doesn't matter who it is that does her baptism, whether it was me or Tom or Andrew or David or any of the pastors.

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It's the same baptism because the baptism is in the name of Christ, not in any person who does their baptism.

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But what was happening in the church in Corinth is that some of them were boasting in their baptisms. I've got a better baptism than you because I was baptized by Peter.

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He was right there with Jesus for those three years of his earthly ministry. Apollos didn't even know

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Christ. Oh yeah, well, I'm baptized in Paul's name and he got to see the vision of Christ there on the road to Damascus.

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I mean, that's even better than Apollos got. Now, Paul says in verse 14,

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I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one may be able to say that you were baptized in my name.

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I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I don't know whether I baptized anyone else.

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This really, I mean, this testimony here from Paul, this really flies in the face of the attitudes of most

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Baptists, right? This humbles me because what is our tendency to do as Baptists?

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How many baptisms did we have this year, right? We love to harp on our numbers.

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You go to the Southern Baptist Convention and that's what you hear all, this year we had such and such many baptisms, such and such many confessions of faith, so on and so forth.

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And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I think it's important that we keep track of that because we know who has testified of their faith and baptism before this body and who still needs to be baptized, you know, things like that.

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It's good to know who we need to check up on, who is our responsibility to see that they're continuing to walk in this faith.

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And it is such a joy to see so many numbers of people that come to be baptized.

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But what was happening here is the Corinthians were boasting in something superficial rather than boasting in the

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Lord who does these things. This man or this man did this, or I did this, or we've done this, rather than look at how

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God is moving among us. As Paul will say at the end of this chapter in verse 31, let he who boasts, boast in the

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Lord. And the Corinthians are boasting in themselves. And then

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Paul, once again, as I mentioned to you earlier, brings this right back to the gospel. You're losing your focus.

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You don't have your eyes set on the right place. You're still acting like infants in the faith, like you are of the flesh instead of understanding this.

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For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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Paul's not saying baptism is unimportant, but baptism very plainly here, according to what

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Paul is saying. Baptism does not save us. We are saved by the grace of God through faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's exactly where Paul directs them back to here.

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Now, as we've been reading through this, as we've been going through 1 Corinthians 1, 1 through 17, all of this seems to be climbing to this particular point, and we end on that point.

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Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Focus again on the gospel, and even though in this lesson, we've kind of been ascending to that place, we just keep right on climbing from here.

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So for today, we're stopping partway up this hill, and then next week we continue to climb as we look into the joyful ascent of the gospel of Jesus Christ that has been proclaimed to us, even through something that the world might consider to be foolish, the cross, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, and that's where we pick up next week.

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Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here in 1

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Corinthians, and I pray that we would be convicted of heart. If there's any divisions among us, if there is any way among us that needs to be confessed, that we would confess it first to you,

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Father, and then if there's any way we need to be reconciled with somebody else, that we would seek out that person and desire to be reconciled.

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If there is any confession that needs to be made, may we be humble enough to acknowledge where we've been wrong and confess our sin to another and ask for their forgiveness.

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As it says in James 5, there's great healing in this, that we confess our sins to one another.

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Lord, may we be unified in your spirit, not just because we want unity or we try to obtain it through some means of ours, but because you've called us to this.

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You have purchased unity for us by the death of Christ on the cross. May we look to the cross, and it's all of us looking to the cross together, kneeling before Christ in worship of him, that we humble ourselves, we are at peace with God, and therefore we know we can have peace with one another.

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May we maintain unity in the spirit of the bond of peace. It's in Jesus' precious name that we pray, and all

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God's people said, amen. Thank you, and go with the Lord. Amen.