About this sermon
In a sermon preparing for the Lord’s Supper, Paul greets the church in Corinth as those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, together with all who call on his name. Every true believer is a saint now. Paul thanks God for the grace given them and assures them that God will sustain them to the end. Then he appeals for unity: no divisions, but one mind and one judgment. They are not to rally behind Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, for Christ is not divided, and they received baptism into him alone.
Sermon transcript
Congregation, please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. We’re going to take a little break from our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah to consider a passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, the opening passage, 1 Corinthians 1, verses 1 through 17, and you’ll find that on page 1131 in your Pew Bibles. When we consider this passage, especially as we anticipate celebrating the Lord’s Supper this evening, our OPC directory for public worship advises that it is a good thing periodically to preach suitable preparatory sermons on the Lord’s Supper, and so that is the intention of my preaching from this passage this morning. So let us hear God’s holy word, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 1 through 17. Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sostanese, 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 Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
Grace to you and peace from God our 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 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 Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our 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.
For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ 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 may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. 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. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of His Word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we stand in awe of Your Word, for it is like a two-edged sword dividing even between a soul and spirit, bone and marrow. We would pray that this Word that we consider this morning, that Your Spirit would take this portion of Your Word and apply it powerfully to our hearts. We pray, Lord, that Your Word would find a lodging place in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives. Help us to be attentive. Help us to see the relevance of this portion of Scripture, and use this portion of Scripture to build us up in our most holy faith and, most important of all, to build us up in faithfulness to You and in our unity, one with another, as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people’s said. Amen. You may be seated. A simple title of my sermon this morning is No Divisions, and there are quite a number of key words that you can listen for. I’d encourage the young people to listen for the following words in my sermon today, the words, unity, sanctified, holy, hope, blameless, division, and factions. Well, we are considering a portion of Scripture from the pen of the Apostle Paul, and my dear Christian friends, fellow disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, the letters or epistles of St. Paul the Apostle are deep and rich and weighty writings, and they had a profound effect upon the development and the spread of Christianity in the context of the first century Roman Empire, especially as Paul was called as an apostle to the Gentiles.
Through God’s sovereign hand of providence, Paul was raised up to be a theological genius, and from a very early date the apostolic church recognized Paul’s writings as bearing the marks of being specially inspired, breathed out by the Holy Spirit, and thus they have taken their place rightly as part of the canon of Holy Scripture, and are rightly recognized as being part of the written Word of God. Now, if you are familiar with the writings of Paul in the New Testament, you will realize that most of Paul’s letters are what scholars would call occasional letters, which is to say that Paul wrote his letters to address particular occasions or particular circumstances or problems in the life of the early churches to which he wrote. Paul’s epistles to the Corinthian church, known as 1st and 2nd Corinthians in our Bibles, are just such occasional letters.
In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul is writing in response to various issues and problems and questions that face the members of the church at Corinth. And while the Corinthian church was blessed with many spiritual gifts, many gifts of the Holy Spirit, it was also a church that was plagued with many problems and indeed plagued with many sins. These problems and sins included such things as divisions in the church, pride, litigation amongst its members, sexual immorality, idolatry, abuses of the Lord’s Supper, I mean there were some who were actually getting drunk at their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, and of course abuses of the spiritual gifts and so forth. Of these many serious problems confronting this first century church, it would seem that one of the biggest problems, the problem that Paul addresses right out of the gate here in 1 Corinthians was the problem of division and factionalism amongst the members of the church.
Throughout this epistle of 1 Corinthians, Paul makes it clear to the Corinthians and thus the Holy Spirit makes it clear to us that no divisions are acceptable in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. At least not the kinds of divisions that the Corinthians were experiencing and were guilty of. And certainly if division occurs because heretics cut themselves off from the church or apostates leave the church, that’s one thing the New Testament tells us to expect, those kinds of divisions. But divisions amongst those who hold to the same gospel and confess the same Lord, that’s another question, that’s another thing. Among the churches, no such divisions over the gospel are acceptable. Now Paul wrote 1 Corinthians while he was in the city of Ephesus. He probably wrote this letter probably sometime in the spring of either 53, 54, or 55 AD.
The scholars debate which of those years he wrote this letter in which he wrote this letter. And one commentator writes that Paul’s goal in writing this epistle is that he, quote, wants them, he wants the Corinthians to drop their divisive one-upmanship, build up the faith of those who are weak and witness effectively to unbelievers. Well dear ones, in light of the fact that we are scheduled to celebrate the Lord’s Supper during our evening service coming up tonight, it is most appropriate that we consider the importance of the church’s unity. What does the Lord’s Supper have to do with the unity of the church you may say? Well one of the spiritual realities that is signified and symbolized by the Lord’s Supper is our union and communion with one another as members of the body of Christ.
Not only does the Lord’s Supper highlight and signify and seal our union and communion with our resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus Christ, it also symbolizes our union as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ for we all share in common in the Lord’s Supper. As our OPC form of government acknowledges in chapter four, section four, the chapter on the unity of the church, it says, the visible unity of the body of Christ, though not altogether destroyed, is greatly obscured by the division of the Christian church into different groups or denominations. Now you may wonder, okay pastor, what’s your real agenda in preaching from this passage? Let me just assure you that by preaching from this passage, I’m not at all meaning to suggest that Grace OPC faces the same kinds of challenges and issues that were faced by the first century church of Corinth.
We have our own issues, every church this side of glory has its issues and its problems and its struggles, but at the same time brothers and sisters, this epistle offers a great deal of wisdom and guidance for Christ’s church in all ages of church history, including the church today in the 21st century. And I believe brothers and sisters that we would do well to heed the divine instructions that are contained in this marvelous divinely inspired epistle. So let’s dive in and let me draw your attention to the opening three verses of this passage. And we learn from these verses, from this opening section, that our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as sanctified ones. That is to say, as those who have been called to be holy, called to be saints. This is the first point in your sermon outline.
Our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as sanctified ones, as those who have been called to be holy, called to be saints. Now Paul follows the typical practice of letter writing in the first century, which is kind of different from the way that letter writing goes today. I know nowadays actually writing a physical letter is not a very common practice anymore. But if you were to write a letter, how would you start it off? Well, you would say, dear, so and so. You would first address the recipient of the letter. And then you would probably have an opening greeting. And then you’d have the content of the letter. And then you would sign your name at the end. But the epistolary practice, the practice of letter writing in the first century was kind of different.
If you were writing in the first century, you would open up your epistolary, your letter, by first of all, identifying yourself. You would sign your name first. And then you would address the recipients. So that’s why Paul begins 1 Corinthians by identifying himself. He signs his name, if you will, right out of the gate. And he identifies himself as Paul, Paulos in the Greek. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother, Sosthenes. So how does Paul identify himself? Not only does he identify his name, he says that he has been called by the will of God. It has been God’s sovereign will that he be called vocationally speaking to be an apostle. Now, what is an apostle? We have folks today claiming to be apostles. Are they?
Are there apostles in the church today? Well, that term apostle can have sort of a generic use. It’s a word that can mean messenger or even missionary. So in that kind of informal, non-technical sense, yes, our missionaries are in that generic sense apostles. But Paul is identifying himself, I believe, as an apostle in the specific technical sense. An apostle in this specific technical sense was someone who had been directly commissioned by Christ himself to serve as his authoritative spokesman, his authoritative messenger. And one of the qualifications for being an apostle was that you had to have been an eyewitness to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Paul saw Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. He didn’t just have a subjective hallucination or vision of the Lord Jesus. Jesus actually appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, just as the resurrected Lord Jesus had appeared to the other 11 disciples after his resurrection from the dead.
So Paul was indeed an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ. And no one who claims to be an apostle today can claim to have been an eyewitness to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why we in the OPC believe that there are no apostles in the technical sense today. Now why does Paul, right out of the gates, identify himself as an apostle? Well, it’s likely that Paul begins this letter by identifying himself as an apostle of Christ because his apostolic authority was being challenged and questioned by some in the Corinthian church. So that’s why in identifying himself, he calls himself, he highlights his office and his calling as an apostle of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And then he is saying, he also acknowledges that he writes in cooperation with our brother Sosthenes. Who was Sosthenes?
Well, Sosthenes, this is perhaps the same Sosthenes mentioned in Acts chapter 18 verse 17. And Sosthenes had been the synagogue ruler in Corinth when Paul first visited that city. So here again, Paul identifies himself and then what does he say? He then addresses, he then names his addressees. And he says in verse 2, to the church of God. Now that’s significant. Church of God. If I’m remembering my research correctly, this is one of only three times when Paul addresses the church as the church of God. Usually he just says to the church of the Thessalonians or to the church of Christ or what have you. But here it’s the church of God. Why does Paul identify the church to which he’s writing as the church of God? Well, I suspect that the reason that he’s doing this, and perhaps he has in the background of his mind the fact that this terminology is similar to the way that the old covenant church was spoken of.
Namely as a congregation of God. A congregation, a covenant congregation gathered together for the worship of God. In any case, he addresses the church of God, that’s a generic term for the church universal. But it’s not just the church universal, the church of God that is in Corinth. The church has an address. The visible church has an address, and it has a definite membership to it. And then he specifies, he gets more specific about those whom he is addressing. He says to those sanctified or set apart in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Here Paul identifies the intended recipients of his letter as the church of God that is in Corinth. This is a local expression of the universal church.
The universal church including all of those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. In verse two upholds what could be called the catholicity of the church. That term Catholic doesn’t mean Roman Catholic. The term Catholic is a perfectly fine term. It means universal. It’s referring to all true believers scattered throughout the world, all who profess the true faith of Christ united together in the worship of Christ as Lord and Savior. So again he starts off reminding us of the connectionalism of the visible church. Independence by the way is not a biblical form of church government. The churches of the New Testament were connectional. They were connected to each other and they recognized their spiritual unity with other local congregations of this universal church of God.
And then after identifying himself and identifying his recipients he pens those familiar words in verse three, the words of the apostolic salutation which you hear every week at the beginning of each worship service. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in saying this is Paul just saying wishing them well? No friends, Paul as an official spokesman of the Lord Jesus Christ declares authoritatively to the church of God at Corinth that God’s grace and peace rests upon them. And this is the importance by the way of the salutation as well as the benediction at the end of the service. The salutation is not just the pastor saying hey welcome on in, hope you’re all doing well. No it’s Jesus himself through his minister declaring to his people my grace, my peace rests upon you, you who are believers in Christ.
And so this is how he opens up the letter. Now what are some of the things that we can derive? What are some of the lessons we can learn from this opening section? Well first of all notice believers, brothers and sisters, we are already in principle, in position and by identity we are already sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints, set apart ones. Sometimes you hear folks say well I love Jesus, I try my best to be a faithful follower of Jesus but I’m no saint. Let me tell you this, according to the Bible if you are in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit you are a saint. You are a saint. You don’t have to wait until you get to heaven to be a saint. If you have been truly converted, if you are repentant for your sins and trusting Christ alone for your salvation, the Bible addresses you as a saint and you say well I don’t always feel like a saint, I don’t always behave like a saint.
That may be true but if you are in Christ you are sanctified, you are a saint. As you would see if you read first and second Corinthians carefully, the Corinthians did not always act very saintly but in terms of their position before God they were saints, they were set apart ones. This is what the theologians would call positional sanctification or definitive sanctification and that is the foundation of progressive sanctification where we grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. The challenge and adventure of discipleship is learning to live out in our daily practice what we already are in principle and by our spiritual identity before God. If Christ is truly your Savior from sin, if you’ve received and rested upon Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin, then you are already a saint, a sanctified or holy or set apart one.
Christian, are you living in practice like the saint that you already are in position and by your identity in Christ? And Church of God also consider that since we all share a common position and status and identity before the Lord as his saints, his holy ones, his sanctified ones, let’s treat one another as the brothers and sisters in Christ that we are, as brothers and sisters who share a common calling as saints. Let us not harm the communion of the saints through divisive behaviors, attitudes or actions. Instead, by the grace of God, let us manifest the holy status that God has graciously bestowed upon us by making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So friends, we have considered that our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as saints, as sanctified ones.
But next, as we move on to the next section, which we’ll cover very briefly, verses four through nine, this opening Thanksgiving, we consider next that the hope we share in common is a hope that should strengthen our Christian unity as we make our pilgrimage to glory. The hope that we share in common as brothers and sisters in Christ is a hope that should strengthen our Christian unity as we make our pilgrimage to glory. We learn in this passage that this is the hope that God is faithful to sustain us to the end so that we might be found blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. As it says in verse four, as Paul again following that typical pattern of the way letters were written in the first century, he has his opening Thanksgiving.
And he says, I give thanks to my God always for what? Does he say to the Corinthians, I thank my God that you guys are so great, that you’re walking so faithful, so worthily? No, Paul’s going to have a lot of rebuke and pastoral correction to offer in this letter. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t mention that right out of the gates. He sets the tone of the whole letter by saying, I thank my God always because of the grace that was given you in union with Christ Jesus. Though the Corinthian believers have many problems and have many things that they a great deal of Christian growth that needs to take place in their lives and in their congregation, Paul still recognizes the grace of God that has been at work in their midst. And he thanks God for his grace.
And then he goes on to say, he thanks God for the grace that in every way. And this particular grace that he focuses in on is what we might call a serving grace. God had richly blessed the Corinthian church with many gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some of those gifts, of course, are gifts that we would not expect in the church today. The Corinthian church was blessed with many revelatory and signed gifts. They were blessed with words of wisdom and prophecy, as well as miraculous gifts, healings, speaking in tongues, and so forth. And we ought not to expect those gifts to be operating today because of the fact that we now have the full and complete canon of Holy Scripture. Yet the Holy Spirit does continue to gift God’s people in the church, even though we should not expect to be speaking in tongues or have the gift of faith healing, although we should certainly pray, we believe that God does sometimes choose to miraculously heal people in response to prayer.
And yet, nevertheless, the Holy Spirit gives so many gifts. There are non-miraculous continuing gifts that the Spirit continues to give to the church today. And in any case, the Corinthian church had a super abundance of these grace gifts from the Lord. And Paul thanks God for that. He says he thanks the Lord for the grace that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you. Now what is Paul referring to when he talks about the testimony of Christ, the testimony of the gospel being confirmed among them? There’s different views of what that could mean. Perhaps he’s speaking about the fact that these gifts of the Holy Spirit confirmed the truth of Christ that they had believed through the preaching of Paul.
But nevertheless, whatever that’s referring to, he goes on to say in verse 7, so that you are not lacking in any gift. They’re incredibly gifted. You’re not lacking in any gift as you do what? As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. What revealing is he talking about there? He’s talking about the second coming. And this is the stance of the church ever since the first century, that we await the glorious return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we live and operate in the church in light of that future eschatological glorious return of Christ at the end of this age. But then he goes on again to say this in verse 8, this Lord Jesus Christ, and again notice that he repeatedly says, our Lord Jesus Christ, he gives the full name and title of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the divine Lord, the God man, the Messiah, that this Lord Jesus Christ will do what according to verse 8, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This dysfunctional church with so many sins, so many problems, so many weaknesses, nonetheless Paul expresses gospel confidence that even in their case, God is able to sustain them to the end, faithful, even guiltless unto the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have here, this is a passage that underscores and bolsters our belief, our confidence in the security of the true believer in Christ. And then he goes on to reaffirm what he just said in verse 8, he says, God is faithful. You may not be faithful, we are often unfaithful, but God is faithful and it is by him by whom This is speaking of the saving effectual call, not just the general gospel call, although the saving call comes through the general call of the gospel, but God has sovereignly called you in grace into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
You’ve been savingly called into union with Christ, God who began a good work on you will carry it through to the day of Christ. He will carry through to completion unto the day of Christ in spite of all of these sins and problems and issues in the church. Beloved, not only do we share a common status and position before the Lord as his holy ones, his sanctified ones, his set apart ones, his saints, but by his sovereign grace, we also share a common hope, a common destiny. We who know Christ, we are all heading in the same eschatological direction. Now you may say, well wait a minute pastor, is it a hope or is it a certainty? Now when we use the term hope, and I’ve explained this before, but it’s good to be reminded of this, when we use the term hope, we often imply a certain amount of uncertainty.
You might say something like, I really hope the American economy doesn’t face a depression. Now in saying that, you’re expressing a wish and there’s some question about whether or not that wish will be fulfilled. But when the Bible talks about the hope of the gospel, it’s not talking about something that is uncertain, rather it is talking about something that is an absolute certainty and yet still in our future. We who are in Christ, we have been saved, but will we be ultimately saved? Well what does Paul say? The Lord Jesus Christ will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ our Lord, and as Paul writes elsewhere in Philippians chapter 1, he who has begun a good work in you will carry it through to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
So our Christian hope is not an oh I hope I’ll make it in the end, no. Our Christian hope is the certainty of our final salvation, our eternal inheritance, and we can walk in confidence that as the scripture says in Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. If you are in union with Christ, you need not fear condemnation. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to get lazy in your walk with the Lord, not at all. In fact, this certainty should motivate you and spur you on to greater action and greater faithfulness. But you are secure, so live in the joy and confidence of that security. Well a couple points of application before we move on to the final point and wrap up our time. First of all friends, as we see, the Corinthian church was a very gifted congregation.
Many grace gifts, many gifts of the Holy Spirit. But the presence of abundant spiritual gifts in their congregation did not in and of itself produce spiritual fruit in the life of their church. This my friends is very instructive to us because it indicates that the presence of spiritual gifts, including gifts of the Holy Spirit, that’s what spiritual gifts mean, gifts of the Holy Spirit. The presence of such gifts does not itself guarantee spiritual maturity or the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We can praise God for the gifts that he gives, but we need to remember that the gifts of the Spirit are to be exercised in service to the fruit of the Spirit. Many today boast in gifts, their gifts, but oftentimes those who boast in their gifts are lacking, sadly lacking in the fruit of the Spirit.
Today we pray that God in his grace would not only gift us as a congregation, but would enable us to receive those gifts and use those gifts in a way that bears fruit in spiritual maturity and growth in grace. We also are reminded in this passage that we serve a faithful covenant-keeping God, a God who will complete the work that he has begun in us. Dear believer, hold fast your confidence that God will preserve you blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as he promises to. Grab hold of this promise and believe it and live your life in light of it. But finally, beloved, and we don’t have a lot of time to spend in this final section, but the final point I want to make based on verses 10 through 17 is that since Christ himself is not divided, we who are his body, his church, must not be divided by worldly things such as personality, cults, hero worship, or factions.
Christ, the God-man, the Word-made flesh, our all-sufficient Savior, he is not divided, he is one Christ. And therefore we who are his body, his church, we must not be divided by worldly things such as personality, cults, hero worship, or factions. Let me just read a couple of these verses here in this passage. Paul begins to start addressing some of the problems in the Corinthian church here in verse 10, and he begins not by harshly addressing them. He addresses them very pastorally with a great deal of love and with an appeal, not with an order, not say, I’m an apostle, you better listen to me and shape up. He does kind of get that tone a little bit later on, but he says here at the outset, I appeal to you, brothers, brothers, and you know, he includes the sisters as well in that terminology, he’s using it generically, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in other words, I appeal to you on the basis of who Jesus is and all that he’s done, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
And then he explains why he’s given this appeal, he explains the reason for this appeal in the following verses, for it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people, we’re not sure who Chloe’s people were, there’s debate about that, but he’s been given insider information that there is quarreling among you, my brothers, and then he explains the kind of quarreling he’s talking about, he says, what I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, and so you had the Paul contingent in the church, others said, I follow Apollos, Apollos was a great teacher in the early church, or I follow Cephas, that would be Peter, perhaps those were the Jewish Christians in the Corinthian congregation, say, well we follow St. Peter, being an apostle to the Jews, and some of them, apparently, claim to be above it all, well I follow Christ, I’m not schismatic like you guys, I follow Christ, right?
And then he asks the question in verse 13, is Christ 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 may say that you were baptized in my name, Paul’s focus when he was with the Corinthians was preaching the gospel to them, not administering the sacraments, and then he has, we have here a divinely inspired record of apostolic memory lapse, as Paul goes on to say in verse 18, parenthetically, well I did also baptize the household of Stephanus, beyond that I do not know whether I baptized anyone else, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, that was another thing that the Corinthians were into, is wisdom, but he did not make it his goal to preach the gospel in fancy terminology, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Apparently there were factions in the church and people that would attach themselves to their favorite preachers and perhaps their favorite apostle, perhaps the one that had baptized them. In any case, we see the problem here, division, factionalism, but Paul reminds us Christ is not divided, we should not be either. Now friends, back in the earlier days, and I’ve shared this story before so forgive me if it’s repetitious to you, but in the earlier days of my ministry when I served in orthodox Presbyterian mission work in New Jersey, I remember during one of my sermons offering some criticisms of a popular television preacher for some serious doctrinal errors that he was promoting in one of his books, a book that I happened to have in my pastor’s library, and so I mentioned this man and his teachings and I was critical.
Now a dear sister in Christ in the congregation at the time got very upset with me that I would dare to offer public criticism of this particular preacher, this popular celebrity preacher. I criticized him by name and she was just really upset by that. Now if you’ve sat under my preaching for any length of time, you know brothers and sisters I don’t usually make a practice of criticizing other preachers by name from the pulpit, but in this particular case I was convinced and I believe I was right at the time, I believe I was justified to offer a warning about the particular false doctrine that this man was teaching in his book. I wasn’t saying that everything that this man taught or preached was bad or wrong, much of what he preached was edifying and helpful, but in this particular book he was teaching false doctrine that really struck at the heart of the gospel, so I felt the need to warn the congregation.
I admit I probably could have been a bit more diplomatic or nuanced, maybe not pounded the pulpit quite so much when I made the criticism, I get it. I was young in the ministry, but what struck me brothers and sisters about this dear sister’s reaction is that it seemed to me to be a symptom of a really big problem in the American church, the same problem apparently that was found in the Corinthian church, and that is the problem of cults of personality and devotion to celebrities, in our case celebrity preachers. Just as the world has its celebrities, especially actors, musicians, entertainers, and nowadays social media influencers, well friends just as that’s the case in the world, so we in the church, we have our own celebrities don’t we, let’s be honest. The danger here is that our devotion to our favorite celebrity preacher can tend to outweigh our devotion to the truth of God’s word, and this is similar to what was going on in the Corinthian church, but Paul says in verse 10, brothers I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you.
When he says all of you agree, that could literally mean say the same thing, in other words avoid party cries, be united, the Greek indicates be mended. And so what can we learn from all of this? Many things, but let me just mention as we close our time in the word a couple brief points of application. First of all friends, we can certainly be thankful for the gifts of teaching and preaching that God has given to his church, and we can be thankful for the teachers and preachers that God raises up to lead and to instruct his church. We stand on the shoulders of giants, we can learn from the great theologians and Bible scholars of the past, and we can appreciate the preaching gifts of those whom God has raised up in the present church as well.
But at the same time, let us be warned against factionalism and against exalting any man above Christ, even if that man’s name happens to be, oh I don’t know, Martin Luther, John Calvin, J. Gressam Machen, John Knox, Cornelius Van Til, Gerhardus Voss, or even R.C. Sproul. Brothers and sisters, these are great men of God, incredibly gifted in their theological gifts, we can learn much from them, let’s appreciate them, let’s use them, let’s learn from them, but let us also avoid becoming factionalists. Let us avoid the, well I’m of Calvin, or I am of Machen, or I’m of Van Til, or I’m of Gerstner, or I’m of Sproul. Let us be of Christ. And finally, take to heart the fact that gospel-grounded Christian unity in the church is not an option for we are one in Christ.
Paul is not saying be united for unity’s sake alone. He’s not talking about unity for unity’s sake alone. He’s talking about unity in Christ, unity in the truth of the gospel. We must maintain that unity. May God grant us the grace to do so. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that we are one in Christ by your spirit and through the word. We thank you that we are sanctified, set apart ones. We would ask that you would help us, Lord, to walk together as brothers and sisters in Christ, to study the word together, to confess Christ together, to live out our callings, our vocations together faithfully. We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. As we close our time of worship, let’s rise and we’ll sing together hymn 488, May the Mind of Christ my Savior, 488.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.