Spiritual Fathers Required

1 Corinthians 4:14-21 and the Need for Spiritual Fathers

Our scripture passage today, 1 Corinthians, the 4th chapter, 14th verse through the end of the chapter, verse 21. The great old apostle, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says to us, I'm not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children.

For you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don't have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. This is why I have sent Timothy to you.

He is my dearly beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you about my ways in Christ Jesus, just as I teach everywhere in every church. Now, some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.

But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk, but the power of those who are arrogant. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power. What do you want?

Should I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness? Let's pray. Father, we're bowed, and whew, what scripture challenge comes to us today, to walk in the ways of Christ Jesus. And Lord, what comes to my mind is what this old apostle Paul writes to the church at Galatia, to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

And the fruit of that spirit is love, joy and peace, patience, goodness and kindness and gentleness, and faithfulness and self-control. Lord, help us as we hear your word, penetrate our hearts and affect the way we think, and the way we talk, and the way we walk, that we might do so in a way that are the ways of Christ.

And we know that's only possible through your spirit. So we pray that we might abdicate the throne, take ourselves off of the throne and submit to the spirit, that we may live in a way that honors you, that exalts Christ, and draws men and women, boys and girls, to him for eternal life.

Lord, use your messenger today to teach us, give us ears to hear and hearts ready to obey. In Christ's name, amen.

Recapping Corinth’s Pride, Factions, and Church Discipline

So we come today to a capstone of the first part of the letter. And most scholars agree that chapters 1 through 4 are a section that makes up the introduction to the deep instruction and correction that Paul is going to prescribe to the church in Corinth.

So it's important this morning, we took a week out of Corinthians last week, and so I do think it's very important to have a recap of the first four chapters. So here's what we've seen. In chapter 1 and in parts of chapter 2, we saw a theme of the wisdom of man and the foolishness of God.

The wisdom of man is found in the debaters of the age who think about all the deep philosophical truths, who look at the nature of man, who look at the nature of the deities. But the foolishness of God has put to shame all the wisest of the age, because the conception of a God who dies to make a way for his people is so blindingly foolish to the scholars that they can't understand it, but to those who are being saved who understand their sin, who understand the death sentence of our sin, then the death of Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God.

We've seen that the church was the universal church of God. The church of Corinth is one that will join around the throne with us today. We will see that church, we will rejoice and worship the king with them.

So the words that are written to the church in Corinth are timeless. We gather much application from them. Many of the problems that still exist today are the problems that the church at Corinth was facing.

And I think we're going to see today that it's much more close than we would like to admit. We've seen as he made the turn that he was really focusing on the wrong that was going on in the church of pride and dividing into factions out of pride.

This would take on the form of collecting their own favorite teachers and aligning themselves in factions beneath the banner of these teachers, setting people who were perfectly aligned in the gospel against each other, whether it's Paul or Peter or Apollos or Jesus himself.

We know from scripture and canon that all of these men, and especially the Lord Jesus Christ, are not divided in any way, that they preach the same gospel, that they have been given the faith that's delivered to the saints.

But the church can make a mess of even really good teachers and good elders. We can hold them up as banners. We can destroy those who are outside of our camp of our favorite teacher. And we know that there are teachers that are at odds with each other on some doctrinal issues.

And then it gets a little bit deeper. We see the sin, as we rounded into chapter 4, the grievous sin of the church, judging one another as though they were God and forgetting that they were merely humans.

And this is the sin of judging motivations, assuming motives, judging associations, and that is throwing off the biblically prescribed system of church discipline that's given to us. We don't get to make up our own laws.

We are not a law unto ourselves in the church. We have to do as Christ commanded us. And it was not an extra thing that came into play in Matthew 18. The system of government and how we handle disciplinary cases is given to us as far back as the Pentateuch.

It has always been the way that people were judged. In fact, our whole American legal system comes from the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty. And in order to be proven guilty, it takes more than one witness.

Not one person can accuse you and send you off into exile. It takes more than one witness. So as we get here, I want us to look back a little bit, because Paul begins this section that we've broken off to cap off these first four chapters.

With verse 14, he says, I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. I do not write these things to shame you. You'll have to indulge me for a moment. I scarcely can imagine sitting in a church and hearing a letter like this read aloud.

It had to have been extremely difficult, because everyone in that body knows who is being talked about. And further than that, people who are convicted by the Holy Spirit know how they've wronged one another.

The people who were saying, I'm of Apollos, knew who they were. And they knew who was saying, I'm of Peter, and I'm of Jesus. And so this rebuke is coming in strong. And you would react in one of two ways.

We see this in the church today, right? You're going to react, if you have not been given the conviction of the Holy Spirit for your sin yet, you will react angrily and defensively. And you'll think, yeah, maybe, but did you see what they did to me?

Have you heard what they've said about me? And that is the hard-heartedness of not being convicted of your sin yet, while others would be pierced through to the heart, and they would understand this and be falling apart, and both types would be in this church at the same time.

And so Paul twists the dagger in deep, and he's going to twist it in even deeper as we go into the practical application of what's actually going on in Corinthians that starts in a couple of weeks with chapter 5.

But he has been extremely sarcastic. And I'm going to ask some questions about tools that come from the pulpit this morning that I think we have to grapple with. So here's what Paul did. We saw it two weeks ago.

He was sarcastic, and he harshly critiqued the attitudes and behavior of individuals in the church. You are already filled, already rich. You are prudent in Christ while we, the apostles, are fools. You are strong.

We are weak, the apostles. You are glorious. We are without honor. We are persecuted and endure while you bask in riches and puff yourselves up. This is what Paul told them in the preceding part. He has talked to them about their factions.

He has talked to them about their sinful pride. He's about to start talking about individual sins that every person in the congregation knew were going on to their shame. And I wonder, he says that he does not write these things to shame them.

And I would ask the question, well, what would you write if you were trying to shame them? Would it be much different? The intentionality is the important thing here. What is Paul trying to do? It's not the words that he uses.

These words would undoubtedly shame those who they were aimed at. Can you imagine thinking yourself great, thinking you've figured out this Christian walk because of your riches and your comfort, and thinking that maybe you've reached a level higher than what the apostle Paul did, because he's suffering for the faith while you've got it made over here in this rich church.

That is what people were really thinking. And we see it in his second letter in Canaan to the Corinthians, that some are despising him and saying that he is not a real apostle because he's being persecuted.

Because would God not bless you if you're really his man? Have we reached a level that is higher than Jesus? I think in 21st century Christianity that we truly in the church believe we have. I think that we believe that we have found the right combination to blend in, to love others with our words, to in wisdom keep our more caustic thoughts and doctrines to ourselves, so that what we can do is we can be true faithful Christians without ever being persecuted.

We, ladies and gentlemen, are smarter than Jesus Christ. If only he could have figured it out. If only he could have figured out how to blend in with the wisdom of his age. How to go into the temple and bend the religion of the day to his will.

What glory could have happened in Israel? But no, that's not the way it works. Because Jesus came to die. Jesus came to suffer. And his people are called to suffer in the same way Jesus himself said, if the world hated me, they will hate those who are mine.

That doesn't mean that we constantly die, that we constantly look like masochists for torture. But it does mean that if we bring the dictates of Christ's law into the public sphere, we are going to be maligned and hated for it.

The question, as Peter would write, is whether we are going to be rightly accused or wrongly accused. If we're wrongly accused, then we are blessed by Christ. But friends, we are in a time right now where we have not many fathers.

And so there is a lot of errant stuff going on. So I ask the question, how do you balance this kind of rhetoric? If Paul was not trying to shame them, what would he have said differently? I don't know.

Here's what we have to understand. And I know that sometimes, I will say on the sliding scale, I think that sometimes I go a little bit too hard. And I look for messages sometimes to be more encouraging and to bind up.

I really do love you people. And if I could say this, I would say like Paul does, I want to, I aspire to be a father to this church. It's a difficult thing. But what we have to understand as a church, if you're going to hear letters like this, if you're going to hear the word of God exposited rightly, then it requires maturity of the man who is delivering the message, so that it's never about personal things.

It's never about grudges. It's never about this person annoyed me, so I'm going to passive-aggressively flag them from the pulpit. It can't be that. At the same time, it can't be afraid. It requires investment and follow-through.

If you're going to talk to the church the way Paul talks to the people at Corinth, it requires investment and follow-through. Paul can't be making empty threats about coming. Paul has had to have a lot of investment in this church for them to listen to this sort of rhetoric.

Today, friends, we have a lot of pastors and a lot of elders who do not follow these things. We have many tutors today and not many fathers. It requires true love from the deliverer to the hearer. And hear this, the tools that Paul uses in Corinthians to address the church, to address the sin in the church, are tools that should not be abandoned by elders today.

We have to rebuke where rebuke is needed, but we have to do it with the idea and the goal of not shaming, but of admonishing. And in order to do that, you have to have spiritual fathers, because what the tutor does for correction is slap the hand, give a stern look, and then go off to his own place.

There is no idea of future generations and lineage with the tutor. He is a paid educator who comes in to try to raise the child in the paideia, or the worldview, the culture of the time. That's what these tutors were for.

He is not a real father. If that's what it requires of the speaker, if we're going to use the rhetoric of Paul, if you're going to preach hard, if you're going to go after the specific sins in the congregation, it requires true love, it requires maturity, it requires some balance, but it also requires being willing to use the tool.

But the listener also has a responsibility, and the people of Corinth have a tremendous responsibility when they hear this letter. This asks something of them, does it not? They have to judge the message of a fallen man, which is what Corey and I do every week.

We deliver a message from fallen men, but you have to judge it alongside the teaching of Scripture. And where are you getting your teaching of Scripture? From the fallen men who are delivering it to you, that you're being asked to judge.

So we have to reason together. For you as the congregation, you have to pray for spiritual sight. This is what hopefully the people of Corinth are going to do, and we encouragingly learn from later letters that they do, that they do follow through, that there is a completion to this church discipline, and that they pray for conviction, they repent of their sin, and they are graced with a terrible man who is in grievous sin coming back into the fellowship.

What an amazing thing. What a glory to God that there is no sin that puts you out of his reach. But also the listener has a responsibility to do this. Do not puff yourself up. Do not get defensive. But also, don't fake apologize and move on.

Let your apologies be real. Let us speak the truth. But don't get defensive. You have to examine yourself. If a rebuke is not well received, then it takes maturity on both sides to reason it out, and to not walk away from the table.

So this is what it requires, and this is how Paul has set it up. He does not write these things to shame them, but to admonish them. And then he gets into the meat of this passage, which is verses 15 through 17.

And we talk about tutors versus fathers. I've already cheated a little bit. We're going to read that section. If you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. The Greek there says, if you were to have 10 ,000 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 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.

We get another appeal to the universality of the church. What Paul is writing to the church in Corinth applies to every church ever conceived, ever meeting. So the message to Corinth, it applies particularly to them, because it's to a situation that's going on.

But it also applies to us. And so when we get this idea, he sets up two groups. He sets up tutors, and he sets up fathers. This is specific to the audience that he has, because the church at Corinth was wealthy.

Corinth was a very wealthy city. And what would happen in that time, in these days, is that the wealthy would have tutors for their boys. There would be a tutor who would follow the boy around, who would teach him, who would give him all of the knowledge, the philosophy, the world smarts, all of the street smarts, and would live in the house many times, would grow alongside this boy.

But at the end of the day, he is a paid employee of the family. He is running the household in many ways, but he is doing it as one who gets paid. He's a steward of a child, but he's not a father. And understand that one would not, in any way, there would be affection between the tutor and the child, to be sure.

But there would never be a miscommunication. There would never be an idea that the tutor is the father, because the father has the inheritance. The father owns the house. The father owns the lands. The father owns the vocation.

The tutor can't pass anything down to the student. The father passes something down. The father has the fear, the lineage, the riches, all of it. Do we have tutors today or fathers? I ask you. I think this church at Corinth, what they're in danger of doing is throwing overboard their fathers, because they had all the tutors.

The idea is this, right? We do not recognize Paul's specific inheritance in this church. We're going to allow people to come in that speak against Paul, that try to diminish his ministry, and we will amass the tutors and look at the spiritual gifts that we have flowing out.

We don't need a father. We have tutors. Tutors are easier to deal with than fathers. You're not afraid of your tutor. None of the teachers that I ever had in school could inspire even a tenth of the fear that my father could inspire.

And there's reasons for that. It's not because my father was a harsh man. It's because my father had the love of a son. The teacher never had the love of a son. I had many teachers I respected, many teachers who poured into my life, many teachers who were important to me.

But there was no confusion about where they stood in the pecking order. They did not hold any of my future or my inheritance. And so it is a stupid thing to throw fathers overboard for tutors, but we have done that this day.

We have, friends, many tutors in the church today. We have countless podcasters who will train Christians without any fatherly affection. And the reason there's no fatherly affection is not because these podcasters aren't good men.

It's because it's not possible. They have no stake in your future. They have no stake in what you grow into. You are not their spiritual inheritance because you don't build or are involved in anything that they are building or are involved in.

They can teach you doctrine to be sure, but they cannot order your household. And they certainly can't order your church. These tutors are plentiful, but they can't set the church to rights. And we have seen that over and over today, have we not?

We have many, many, we have tens of thousands of tutors, but very few fathers, very few fathers. The reason why is because being a tutor is quite easy. I'll let you guys behind the curtain. To those who are gifted to teach, teaching is not really that difficult.

The difficult part is being a father because that requires time. It requires patience. It requires a lot of effort. It requires a lot of gentleness. It requires a lot of wisdom and discernment. And what I always say at school, I have high school students aplenty, and they can tell when somebody is faking it.

They can tell when you just want away from them. They can tell when you really respect them, there's a sense in them. And so it is with church members also and people in the church. You can tell when the elder wants to be away from you, and you can tell when he loves you.

And it's important that elders are not playing a role, but are working, working to shepherd their flock. And that requires boots on the ground, dirt under the fingernails ministry. It's not about putting on nice clothes and teaching publicly.

It's not about firing the microphone up and running podcasts. It's not about peerless doctrinal purity. It's about being in people's homes. It's about knowing what's going on with your sheep, and it's about loving them.

And that is a thing that is hard to build, and it's hard to leave. It's a slow building thing. You see, Paul calls to himself in his language here what he is talking to the church about, is that he has become a founding father of the church at Corinth.

He's more than just a father as an elder, he's a founding father. He's the one who went into the synagogue, who stole away the leader of the synagogue for the Christian way, and he becomes the planter and the founder of this church.

It is doubly grievous to turn your back on the founding fathers. We see that in public discourse today, as one side of our nation tries to denigrate the men who gave us all the things that we enjoy in this country.

They are our founding fathers. They were men with flaws, men with tremendous flaws, but they were men to be revered. They were men of courage, who wrote laws that we stand on today, who kept evil in restraint with their Christian view, and we should not be ashamed of them.

You see, what Paul did to become a founding father is that he preached the gospel to this people, and many were saved through his preaching. He was like a builder who laid a foundation. He was like a farmer who planted the seed, and then Apollos watered, and then the growth happened.

Did Paul cause the growth? There is nothing he could have done to cause the growth, but he did put the conditions together for the growth. He sacrificed for this church at Corinth. He led the church by example, and he cared for them.

He spent time with them. He's been in their house. He's been fed by them. They relied on each other, and the church would do well to look at Paul as their father, and to take on the morals and the life of Paul.

This is the thrust of how Paul is going to leave chapters 1 through 4, and he gives a very simple but difficult command. It's an urging. I exhort you to imitate me. That's an astounding thing to say, is it not?

It hurts our pious ears today. I have lived off this, and I know that it's true. I know in my gut that it's to be true. That if Paul was not canonized, we would look at him as a heretic. I don't think Paul would make it long in our churches today as a pastor.

He really had a lot of controversy in his churches in his day. But this is one of those things. Our pious ideas rages out like, why, Paul? Why would you say that? Why would you not say, imitate Christ?

That's surely what we would say, is it not? You know you would. It is a bold thing that Paul says to imitate himself. Paul, who calls himself the least of all the apostles. Paul, who was the one who persecuted Christians.

Paul, who has the thorn in his side that God says that he will not remove, lest Paul would get proud. This is the man that he says to imitate him. And then he sends an emissary, his son in the faith, Timothy, and the exhortation is going to be the same.

How are you going to imitate me, church? I'm going to send you Timothy, who is going to teach you my ways. And so what you should do is imitate him. If you imitate Timothy, you will imitate Paul. And if you imitate Paul, you are imitating Christ.

Do we have elders like these today? I don't like these passages. I'll just tell you, I don't. They make me deeply uncomfortable. They make me realize what an egalitarian I am. They make me realize how difficult the balance is of humility but also trusting in God to give you the gift of an elder.

There are many people in this church who know the absolute worst of me. Many. Because my family is here. And they know the worst of me. They have seen me in my worst positions. There are people that have known me since I was a child who are here.

And the call is to say, as an elder of this church, it's like Paul starts this with Apollos, right? In chapter 3, he talks about, we have come to you. And the idea is this, is that there is a succession.

Not like the Catholics perceive it, but there is a succession of elders. The apostles appointed elders. The elders over every church. The elders are to be men of character. Not because that's a checklist, but because you cannot fulfill the office if you're not a man of character.

Because what an elder must do is not only preach the word of God, the elder must stand up in front of the congregation and say, you need to look deeply into my life. You need to look deeply into what's going on in my family.

Into what my reputation is in the world. And you need to try to be that way. It's a difficult thing to say. But Paul says it of Timothy, does he not? Paul says, this young man, Timothy, he is like me.

In character and in method. Timothy is going to be a living example of what Corinth can become. We should shorthand it and say this, if the church at Corinth would act like Timothy, they would get a letter like Thessalonians.

If you haven't read Thessalonians, I encourage you to do that this week. There is a quite different tone between the letters. Because if you would act like Timothy, you get the gentleness. And the loving kindness.

But Corinth needs another kind of loving kindness. They need a different kind of discipline. And so Paul, because he is their father, he is going to warn them. See, what we have to understand is that Paul's stuff works.

Does it not? Paul's stuff works. Paul's doctrine works. If you do what Paul says, you will be godly. It's really that simple. We should follow Paul. We should follow Timothy. And we should demand that our elders be able to say the same.

That the deeper you look into my life, if you were to have full access to my bank account, to my internet history, to all the people that work with me, to my family, both extended, to my friends who have known me for years, if you have deep access into them, then what they should tell you is this.

Josh is not a perfect man. Not close. But if you do as he does, you will be godly. It's a high bar. And it's deep and integral to the mission of this church. How is the church to work? We sit in many ways in the ash heap of the church in America today.

Look around, right? I've said this before. I'll say it again. We get so myopic in the Reformed world that what we do is focus on all the infighting between the Calvinists when what we don't understand is that we're less than one half a percent of people who call themselves Christians in America.

If you throw a dart and hit a Christian, you're going to hit somebody that's more like Joel Osteen than like us. Way more likely. A hundred times more likely. Are there many good Christians in Joel Osteen's churches?

I would assume yes. Righteous Lot lived in Sodom. We have to be more willing to take the tension that goes on in the kingdom of God. Now, does that mean that those churches should not be rebuked sharply?

It does not mean that.

They should be, right?

But what we do have to understand is that the church is in the state that it's in today because it has many tutors and very few fathers. The church doesn't know what to do because there's no father to put the church in order.

Why do you think God calls himself Father? Because he is the author of all creation. He puts everything in order. The son proceeds from the father because the son goes, as he says over and over in John, he says, I come to do the will of him who sent me.

Abide in me and you abide in the father. There is a hierarchy in the trinity that cannot be escaped. There is also a hierarchy in the church that cannot be escaped. But when you try to escape it, you get a dumpster fire.

We don't know which way is up and which way is down. The church requires a father to show them. Let me tell you some lies. You'll hear them. It does not involve you and your Bible alone. It does not. You will not be a good churchman if it's just you and your Bible alone.

We have to reason together. We have to not despise those who have gone before us, but we also do not despise those who are of different traditions than us and puff ourselves up. We have to reason together.

Have you reasoned with the Catholic? They have abhorrent doctrine to us. Truth, right? They have a picture going around of Mary stomping the head of the snake. That is disgusting to Protestants. I'm not going to pretend it's not.

But at the same time, we are called to reason together, to not puff ourselves up, to not build pillories and straw men of each other, but to engage with what the arguments truly are, and then to pray to God that we would be able to take earthly thoughts captive and to put them subject to the will of God, to His Scripture.

We have to look to those who are entrusted as leaders to lead, and there has to be accountability for them. The church is in hierarchy with Christ as the head and leaders leading in the mission with their behavior.

The words are easy. We get this, right, as we end the chapter. The kingdom of God is not about words. What's a curious thing for Paul to say when the entire revelation of God to His people is in the form of what?

Words.

What is Jesus?

The Word.

But He is not merely the Word. And the Word of God is not like the Word of man, because the Word of God creates out of nothing. The Word of God is powerful, living, sharper than any two-edged sword. The Word of God takes down kings, raises up new empires, raises up the church.

The Word of God is powerful. The Word of man is not. What we have to understand is our church, we have to be connected with history, but not puffed up with our individual ability to interpret Scripture in a vacuum.

We do not have to accept as fact everything that the church fathers believed, but we should be slow and careful to disagree with our betters who have gone before us. And likewise, church, those of you who know me well, you have to be slow and careful to disagree with your elders.

Does that mean that I get every doctrine right?

No.

But I will tell you, I think that I get every doctrine right. Otherwise, I wouldn't say it. I don't say that as an arrogant thing. I preach what I believe to be true. But I have to know, I have to know that I've got things wrong.

I would not want to get in a debate with John Calvin. Okay? He would destroy me, to use YouTube slogans.

Alright?

Calvin destroys Peon Rice. I still think I'm right in several areas where he's not. He has not convinced me. But what I don't want to do is I don't want to despise those who go before me, and I don't want to despise those who are contemporary with me.

What we should do is reason together. We have to recognize where the gifts of interpretation come from. God, before the beginning of creation, ordained you to be his servant, right? To be his child. We know that as far as salvation.

Do we think that that applies only to salvation? Or did God, before the beginning of time, ordain that this church would exist, and that Corey and I would be elders at this church? Of course he ordained that.

Now what's scary for Corey and I in that is that he could have ordained that for our wrath and destruction. Or he could have ordained it for us to be told one day, well done, good and faithful servant.

I sure strive. I sure strive for the second one. I don't want the first one. That's the kind of thing that can keep you up at night. Some scripture is very difficult. Do you guys know this? Some of it is quite simple.

And some of it's very difficult. What do we do with the difficult stuff? We have to be humble and we have to reason. And at the end of the day, if you have a father as an elder, you need to trust him.

Does that mean you just need to be the echo chamber and agree? Cooper and I have no more tabletop arguments. Brian just throws away his Presbyterian tradition. No, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that.

What it does mean is that we can follow those who are leading. And we should trust them. So let me leave us with this. I've got just a few minutes left. So here's the deal. As we look through it, what's going on?

Corinthians, they are puffing each other up into factions. They are ignoring blatant sin while cloaking themselves in holiness saying that they can't be doing anything wrong because look at all the great things that are happening.

It's like if this church is housing a bunch of adultery and we're growing leaps and bounds.

Right?

We're building a new building across the street, but we've got five homewreckers sitting there that we're not doing anything with. Look at how God's blessing us. We see this all the time. Understand that the external idea of God blessing a place is not really what the fruit is based on.

Fruit is judged over a long period of time. A church getting big does not mean they're blessed by God. It could mean that. A church having lots of money does not mean they're blessed by God. It could mean that.

It could be giving them lots of money so that they become an even greater spectacle when they burn to the ground and it warns God's enemies of what it's like to play church. It's a dangerous thing. And then he tells them, you need fathers.

And you need to have a father where you're going to imitate. And I'm going to send you a real-life example in a young man. Why has he sent Timothy? It's not only because Timothy is one that knows Paul's ways.