WWUTT 1412 I Am of Paul, I Am of Apollos, I Am of... (1 Corinthians 1:12)

The Corinthian Factions and the Call to Unity

Some divisions had come into the church in Corinth. Some people were saying, I am of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, and I'm of Christ. But they weren't really acting of Christ when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 1 Corinthians. And as with yesterday, I'll be reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. This is 1 Corinthians chapter one, beginning in verse 10 through verse 19.

Now I exhort you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brothers, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you.

Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel, not in wisdom of word, so that the cross of Christ will not be made empty. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. This is the word of the Lord. Where we read at the beginning of this particular section, I exhort you brothers by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, calling them to action, calling them to a response.

And he says that you must be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. There must be no divisions among you, but you must be like-minded. And in the same judgment, this is to say, you need to be able to see the things that I am going to confront among you the same way that I see them, or more specifically the way that Christ sees them.

Having the mind of Christ and being of the same judgment is to recognize where they've gone wrong, where they have been out of step with the gospel so that they might repent of their way and come back to the path of righteousness, the path that God has set forth by his will, according to his word.

This is the mind they need to have, and they need to share in a like judgment according to, really according to Paul. But in saying that, it doesn't mean that, you know, Paul's word is superior to Christ's.

He is an apostle. So the word that he says is Christ's word when he gives this instruction to Christ's church. To go against what Paul has to say to them in confronting their wrongs would be to deny the word of God itself.

So Paul says in verse 11, that I have been informed concerning you, my brothers. So again, showing this affection for them. He's not saying, well, you guys are, you're definitely from a different family.

You are not my spiritual brothers and sisters. What's the matter with you? And he calls them brothers so that they see this is coming from like an older brother correcting a younger sibling. I've been informed by Chloe's people.

Now, I think what's very important about the way that Paul expresses that, he's received word from Chloe's people, is to say that I know what's going on among you from a trustworthy source. Chloe's people are apparently full of integrity.

They are trustworthy. They have a good reputation. A good reputation by the Corinthians and from the Apostle Paul himself. So this isn't a matter of gossip. It's not, I heard from this person who told me through this person who da, da, da, da, da, and I'm inclined to believe them.

You know, juicy bit of gossip. I know you guys, you're inclined to do stuff like this. That's not what Paul is saying here. But Chloe's people care deeply and affectionately for this church. Paul cares for this church.

So he says to them, I have heard by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you. He says, there must be no divisions among you. But what I'm hearing is that there are quarrels among you. Paul would later instruct Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .23.

He says, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels and quarrels cause division. And that's what's going on here in this church. Now, and then he says specifically, this is what the quarrel is.

Now I mean this, verse 12, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ. And notice here that Paul doesn't, he doesn't honor the ones who say I am of Christ as though to say, see, you guys got the right answer.

You said I am of Christ and that's really what you should say. That's not Paul's response because they're not using Christ as a cause for unity. They're using Christ to show themselves to be intellectually or spiritually superior to their brothers and sisters in the Lord.

So the name of Christ is being used in vain and that's blasphemy. That's very serious. So Paul is confronting that. It's going on in this church. Each one of these persons are different factions that are going on in this church.

The cliques that have divided up the body, they are uniting themselves with specific names. One saying, I am of Paul. Another saying, I am of Apollos. Now, Paul writes some very weighty words with his letters.

Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 3 .16. Paul writes some heavy stuff in his letters, which the ignorant and unstable twist his words as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. Paul was an incredibly intelligent man.

As I think R .C. Sproul, I heard him talking about the apostle Paul and saying, could have very well have been the most intelligent man on the planet. But as smart as he was, I think I said of Paul a couple of weeks back that he may have had the entire Old Testament memorized.

That's how much of a rockstar he was among the Pharisees. But as intelligent as Paul was, he did ignorance. He talked about this in Philippians 3. All the things that I could count as gain, I count as loss, they're rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ the Lord.

Paul was ignorant as smart as he was because he was persecuting the church of God, the followers of Jesus Christ. Had he continued in that course, didn't matter how smart he was, even as knowledgeable as he was of the greatest knowledge that men on earth could have.

And that was a knowledge of the law of God. The very word of God is delivered to the prophets. As smart as Paul was about that word, he was stupid and would have gone to his own destruction because he persecuted the followers of Christ.

Did not see that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets. So he may have been quite the intellectual from the perspective, even of the people of God, those who were descended from Abraham.

Paul, look at how smart this guy is, a Pharisee among Pharisees, and yet he had persecuted the followers of Christ. It would have been to his own destruction if Christ had not intervened, appeared to him on the road to Damascus, revealed himself to him, and then it's in knowing Christ.

All the things that he had as gain, he counts as loss, that he would know Christ and proclaim his gospel. Now that's significant too, as Paul is gonna be confronting the Corinthians on some of the knowledge that they say that they possess because that was among the Greeks to just look really smart, deeply intellectual.

And I've got the new philosophy on the scene, so I've got something that you don't have. They would even boast among one another about things like that. And here they're doing that with Christianity. It's the new kid on the block.

It's the new hip trend. It's the great thing and I've got it and look how smart I am as a result of it. But this is not the way that we're meant to know Christ. Again, the cross is foolishness to the world.

They're not gonna look at you and think that you're some sort of intellectually superior person because you believe in a carpenter who was crucified on a thief's cross. They're not gonna think that's somehow high and mighty.

It's foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And that verse, as we get to it, 1 Corinthians 1 .18, that really is kind of the thesis statement of what Paul has to tell to the Corinthians here over the course of this letter.

In the meantime, confronting these divisions, he himself is not flattered by the fact that there are groups in the church that are uniting themselves with Paul and saying, yeah, I am of Paul. In 2 Corinthians 10 .10, Paul says of himself that he's really quite weak in speech.

He wasn't a great orator, but he wrote some really powerful words and that's what the Corinthians recognized about him. He writes such weighty things, may not be that great a speaker, but then there were others, they loved powerful speakers.

It's how they were so easily led astray by the super apostles that Paul confronts in the next letter in 2 Corinthians 11 is where he talks about those things. So you had some that loved gifted orators.

Apollos was one of those guys because as it talks about Apollos in the book of Acts, he was very gifted in speech, very, very smart guy. But again, like Paul, as much as Apollos knew, he only knew of the testimony of Christ up to the baptism of John.

So he didn't know about the crucifixion and did not know about the resurrection of the dead. And then you had Priscilla and Achilla who came to him, took him aside, filled him out on the rest of his understanding of the gospel.

There was more to the story beyond the baptism of John. And then once Apollos understood that, now he was actually able to proclaim the gospel. And he did so with gifted speech and words was quite the orator.

And the Corinthians loved him for that. Probably their favorite Christian missionary out there. You know, like if they had missionary trading cards, the one that would have been going for the highest value would have been the one with Apollos on it, all his stats on the back and all this kind of thing.

That's who most of the Corinthians loved. Paul mentions himself first because he's writing. And there are some who loved Paul because of the weighty things he put in his letters, but others loved Apollos because he was such a gifted speaker.

And in fact, with the Corinthians, Paul will later say that I'm not gonna send Apollos to you. I have asked on your behalf if he would come to you and he said, no. And the reason might be because there are things that the Corinthians need to learn and they need to learn them from someone other than me.

Apollos saying that about himself. They need to learn from someone other than me because they're just after, you know, they just think I sound great. Well, it doesn't have anything to do with my voice or my ability to be a gifted speaker.

It's the message. That's what they need to hear. That's what they need to be convicted by. Not because they got good goosebumps listening to a gifted speech, a speech giver, but rather that they heard the message of the gospel.

People were convicted of sin and repented and believed. So in that case, as Paul had asked Apollos to come to them, Apollos says, no, probably in his wisdom, decided to decline and Paul would come to them instead as he talks about in his next letter.

So he says, some of you are saying, I am of Paul. Some of you are saying, I am of Apollos. And some are saying, I of Cephas. Who was Cephas? Well, that was Peter. Peter comes from the Greek word Petra, meaning rock.

So Peter was his Greek name. Cephas was his Aramaic name. And it also means rock. But they're saying, I am of Cephas. Now, this was the guy who became the head of the Jerusalem church before it later went to James, who would be Peter's successor.

Peter is the, he's like the foremost apostle, right? This guy actually paled around with Jesus. Of these three guys that are mentioned, Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, Cephas is actually the one who knew Jesus personally.

In his life, in his death, in his resurrection. And then as ascended into heaven, it becomes like the first and foremost apostle. So therefore, they're those who are gonna say, hey, look at who I am of.

I'm of the apostle that was right there with Christ. So I'm of somebody that's of even greater importance than you. But who's the last name that Paul drops? Some of them are saying, I of Christ. It's actually humbling of Paul on Paul's part to mention himself first, because you actually see kind of like a certain ascension that's going on here.

There's Paul, and he considers himself the least of the apostles. Talks about that in chapter 15. And then he says, I of Apollos. Apollos was a stronger speaker than Paul. He acknowledges that. Cephas, Cephas was a greater apostle, at least in the eyes of the Corinthians, because this was a guy who actually walked around with Jesus.

And then Christ, ah, Christ himself. This is like the ultimate Jesus juke, the piety punch. I am gonna name Christ, and you can't name a name higher than that. So I'm going to the name above all names, folks.

I've even got all of you beat. I am of Christ. We don't do this today though, do we? Yeah, no, we don't have our names and our clicks and our groups and our distinguishing doctrines and theologies that we say is better than somebody else's.

We don't do that, do we? Yeah, we do it all the time. We do it with denominations. We do it with doctrines. You have Calvinism, Arminianism. Of course, Arminians never really call themselves Arminians, do they?

They always have other names for themselves, provisionists, the traditionalists. You've got independent fundamentalist Baptists. You've got reformed Baptists. You've got Presbyterians. And then there's the truly reformed.

You Baptists are not really reformed. You Presbyterians are not reformed enough. So we're truly reformed. The TRs as they're called. Independent fundamentalist Baptists, boy, they've got their list. They'll even go down the list.

I'm not this, I'm not this. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. You've got the differentiation regarding different eschatologies, dispensationalist, classical or historical premills, amillennial, postmillennial.

Oh boy, we've got our labels. We've got our lines of demarcation. We love to draw them sometimes. And even in such a way, not so much as to say, well, here's what I believe. Here's what I think that the scripture says.

This is my conviction, according to how we interpret some of these things regarding covenant, the return of Christ, so on and so forth. So we don't approach that in a humble way. Rather, it becomes the real boastful.

I'm better than you. I'm smarter. I know more because I am this. And you'll even have those who will eschew labels altogether. They will say, I have no labels of any kind. I am just a Christian. I am of Christ.

And they don't say that with humility. It's that false piety or to virtue signal, which would be to take the name of the Lord our God in vain, not to exalt his name, but to show ourselves as being better than somebody else.

I'm better because I don't use all the labels that you use. I've shared this story before. There was a man in my church. He was one of my teachers. This was a church that I pastored in Kansas. And he had started up some division in the church.

He had actually begun emailing people behind my back. And he got caught because the people that he was emailing trying to unite to his side on certain issues knew what he was doing. And so they would tell me about it.

Like, hey, did you know I got this email about this? Were you part of this email loop? No, I didn't get that email. So I had to confront him about it. We went out to lunch one time and I sat down with him to talk with him about some of these problems that were going on.

And one of the things he said to me was, well, see, I'm not like you. And I'm like, okay, I have no idea where this is going. But like, okay, what am I like? What do you mean that you're not like me? And he says, I do not ascribe to any doctrine that is named after a person.

Now, he never actually said, you claim to be a Calvinist and I'm not a Calvinist. So I don't follow any doctrine named after a man. That's what he was getting at, but that's not what he said. As I said to you at the beginning of our study of 1 Corinthians, I don't personally ascribe the label Calvinism to myself.

I just don't find it useful. I love the doctrines of grace. I believe in the sovereign election of God because it's what Ephesians 1 plainly teaches. 1 Corinthians 1 even, as we talked about that going through the very beginning of this letter, stated in John 6 and 8 and 10.

I think it's there, sorry, Revelation 13, 8. Go read that verse. Over and over again, I think that the scripture clearly states that God has predestined from before the foundation of the world, his elect whom Christ redeemed with his death on the cross.

Now we don't know who the elect are. God knows who they are. So that doesn't mean we don't go out and share the gospel. Christ commissioned us to go out with the gospel, but it's those whom God has chosen before the foundation of the world who will truly come to faith and believe.

So that's what I believe. I clearly teach it from the scripture exactly as the scripture says. I don't say I'm a Calvinist and here's why, but there are people who will hear me say things like that and teach on those particular doctrines and they'll say, well, you're a Calvinist.

That's what this man was doing in this particular encounter. He didn't even say that, didn't even call me a Calvinist. He just said in his passive aggressive way, I am not going to unite myself to any kind of doctrine that is named after a person.

I said, okay, fair enough. And so then we continued talking because he's a teacher at my church. He was a teacher I inherited from the previous pastor. I did not appoint this guy a teacher, but anyway, as he continued sharing, I said to him, well, I need to become familiar with the way that you teach.

It's fine that you say that you're not like me, whatever that's supposed to mean, but you still have to submit to what this church has decided regarding the teaching. And I, as the pastor, I'm overseeing the teaching.

So how is it that you're going to teach? He says, well, I don't teach like you. You do that exegetical verse by verse sort of a thing. I don't do that. It takes too long. I'd rather do an overview of it.

I said, okay, that's fine. So what method of teaching do you use? And he goes, well, I prefer the Socratic method. And I about fell out of my chair. Like I really had to try and contain my laughter. I said, what was that again?

You prefer what method? And he said, the Socratic method. And I said, Socratic. And he said, yes. And he responds like I'm being stupid. Like you don't know what the Socratic method is. I said, Socratic, as in named after Socrates.

And he said, yeah, I prefer the Socratic method. And I tried in my passive aggressive way to show him that he just contradicted himself, but I couldn't get him to see it. He said, I'm not going to ascribe to any kind of doctrine named after a man.

I'm going to prefer the Socratic method named after Socrates. This man would eventually leave my church. Hated what it was I taught so much that he left and he didn't leave quietly. He wrote a 9 ,000 word document, which he published on several websites, two of which on Facebook, one of which still exists.

If you know where to find it, you can actually go find this particular document and read all the horrible stuff that he had to say about me. None of it was true. But one of the things that he said about me in this particular document, or one of the things he said of himself is that I am not ascribing, he said it again.

I do not ascribe to a doctrine that's named after a person. I am a Christian. And the way he spelled that in the document was capital C-H-R-I-S-T, lowercase I-A-N. I mean, was so full of himself in the way that he would even express that he's a Christian.

I'm even going to capitalize Christ in this word. So you know who I am for, and this guy who I'm going to slander in this document is not of Christ. That was the inference. And that is divisive. And I don't know what became of that man after that.

I did not follow where he ended up going, even moved away from the city, moved to another place. I don't even know where he went. Well, I take that back. I do know where he went because I got a letter from his next church asking me for a change in membership.

But then I don't know where he went after that. Anyway, but this guy puffing himself up, using the name of Christ to make himself look great. I pray for his soul. I pray that he repented of that kind of behavior because one of the things that says in Proverbs 6 is that the Lord hates one who sows discord among brothers.

The Lord does not take that lightly. And here there was discord being sown among the Corinthians and Paul is warning them here, but exhorting them to repent of the divisions that are being sown among them.

One of you says, I am of Paul, another I of Apollos, another I of Cephas and another I of Christ. Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? And Paul's making the point here that Paul, Apollos, Cephas and Christ are not after different things.

He says to this church, you need to be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. You know who is of the same mind? Paul, Apollos, Cephas and Christ. Not you guys, but these who have been going out, who have been teaching you, have been sharing the gospel.

We're not in competition with one another. We're all after the same thing. And it's not to make much of ourselves, but to make much of Christ. We're not trying to be rock stars here. And we're out there getting beaten and persecuted for the sake of the gospel of Christ.

So we're not divided. Therefore, you who are the offspring of the gospel that has been proclaimed by these men, by Paul and Apollos and Cephas, you need to follow the example of your teachers. You need to follow the example of Christ and be of like mind with one another, not divided, no divisions among you, but be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Amen. We'll pick up on these things tomorrow.

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