1Cor 2-4
I enjoy cooking! I like to try to recreate a dish or a flavor I’ve enjoyed in a restaurant, at a friend’s house or seen prepared on line. There have been dishes that I so badly wanted to recreate that I have made them 8-10 times to match the flavors living in my memory. I’m thinking of my sister in law’s spaghetti and meatballs. The recipe is simple, made with all fresh real ingredients. After following her recipe several times, I still couldn’t get mine to turn out like hers. I couldn’t figure out how I could screw it up so badly while using the same simple, real foods that she used. So I continued trying, tweaking my methods a little bit or a lot each time I made it. Eventually I got it right! Success!
Paul talks in 1 Cor 2-4 about his, Apollos’, and Timothy’s teachings and preaching the gospel in Corinth. See the people in the church in Corinth had some problems. They were questioning Paul’s right to be an apostle, taking each other to court, overlooking immorality, and fighting with each other over who’s teachings were more “right” instead of standing firmly together against their city’s immoral culture. Paul wrote this letter to the church to encourage them to go back to the beginning of their faith. He reminds them in chapter 2 that when he was first with them, he decided to forget everything but Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. “My message was very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied on the Holy Spirit.
I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God.”
Paul knew that the people in the church were getting sidetracked from the simple, pure message of Jesus. The Corinthians were fighting with each other stating, “I am a follower of Paul”, or “I am a follower of Apollos”. So Paul restated his case in chapters 3 and 4. “Don’t boast about following a particular human leader. Look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries.” Paul knew that Jesus was the One to be followed. He also saw that the church was confused and being pulled away from the simple truth of the gospel because they were making other things more important than Jesus in their faith. Their “ingredients” were wrong so the “recipe” for their faith was not turning out right. The Corinthians were getting bogged down by concentrating on the wrong things. They were arguing about issues that were not central to their faith and it was dividing them and causing them to lose their way.
Do you see similarities in the people of Corinth’s issues to our issues today? I do. It is easy within the church to get wrapped up in trendy books, political discussions, and popular teachers. While there is good in each of these, we cannot let them become the mainstay of our faith. Our faith is based on the gospel of Jesus Christ who gave his life as payment for our sin so that we could be made clean before God if we accept His gift. We can only have relationship with God because of Jesus’ power over death as He rose from the grave and sits at God’s right hand. This is what we all share as the foundation of our faith. This truth binds us as family with God as our Father. When we stray too far from Jesus’ gift and start to give too much weight to other ideas, we end up with the wrong “recipe” just like the church in Corinth did. As God’s family we are more effective in winning others to Him as a united front trusting in Him rather than when we are trusting in human wisdom. Let’s spend some time today thanking Jesus for paying for our sin and for His power over death. Can we pass every other theology, thought, and discussion through the simple truth of Jesus’ gift to us?