The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The Corinthian church had a very different view of what it means to succeed spiritually. They were self-satisfied. They were rich. They felt privileged. And apparently, they were quite content with that.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and Internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

Dr. James Boice: In Corinth, there were the self-satisfied in the church. And then there were the apostles, chained to the chariot, fools for Christ, and during the ridicule of the world, dishonored, cursed, persecuted, and slandered.

Guest (Male): Listen now as Dr. Boice takes us inside Paul's thoughts as he chides the worldly self-satisfaction of the church at Corinth.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying First Corinthians together, and we come to the fourth chapter. There was a church, which as Paul says in the first chapter of this book, was enriched with all spiritual gifts and had a great deal of theological knowledge and other good things, but which was divided over loyalty to one leader or another within the church. There were people who said, "Well, we follow Paul." And there were others who said, "Well, we follow Apollos." And there were still others who said, "We follow Peter." And then there were people who said, "Well, we follow Christ." They thought they were the spiritual ones.

And Paul speaks in chapter three about those divisions. The central point he makes as he deals with that problem is that the ministers are servants of the church. Therefore, for the Corinthians to be divided up among the servants is just about as silly as a family that had many servants being divided up in loyalties over the people who they had hired to serve them. He pointed out that in the history of the church, using the outline John Stott developed in his book, One People, there have been three wrong views of the relationship of ministers to lay people.

There's clericalism, which is the view that the clergy is in charge and they should do it all. There's anti-clericalism, which is certainly understandable in view of the former. People who say, "We don't need the clergy at all. Let's get rid of them and do it ourselves." There's dualism where people say, "All right, the clergy have their role, and they have to stay within that role, and then the laymen have their role, and they should stay within that role, and neither one should transgress on the turf of the other." Three wrong views.

But then there's the right view, which is that the relationship is one of service. John Stott says in that book that at the time he wrote it, there was a popular saying in the Roman Catholic Church about the service that was involved. The Catholics that he knew used to say, "The bishops are the servants of the priests, the priests are the servants of the laity, the laity are kings with the servant problem."

Well, sometimes it works that way. It would appear from Paul's writing here in First Corinthians that the problem was the other way around. The difficulty, as he explains it, was not that Apollos was out of line. On the contrary, he affirms Apollos and his work, or that Peter was out of line, or that he was. In the chapter we're about to read, he says he was blameless before the Lord, though it's for the Lord ultimately to decide. It wasn't that. The problem was among the people, and Paul is trying to overcome that erroneous and unnecessary condition of divisions.

Now, in view of that, there are people who have said, turning to chapter four, that chapter four is somewhat unnecessary. Because after all, here in chapter four, he's talking about the ministry, and yet in chapter three, in dealing with the divisions, he has described what the ministry is. It's the ministry of service. And having said that, why does he have to say anything else in chapter four?

Well, he does for this reason. When he ends chapter three, he's talking about the ministers being servants of the people. That's very clear. "No boasting about men," he says. "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, all things are yours." He's making that very clear. He repeats the idea twice.

There is a point, you see, that someone might raise reading that. They might say, "Well then, if that's the case, if the ministers of the church, if the apostles, in this particular case, are our servants, then we have the right to tell them to do what we want. We can say, 'Go here, go there.' We can hire one, we can fire another. And if we choose to divide up among them, who's to say anything to the contrary?"

I think it's in view of that that Paul writes chapter four. Because in this chapter, without in the slightest repudiating what he said before, without saying that the ministers of the church are not servants, having just said that they are, or that they have a service to the people which he has just said they have, he does add a further dimension, which from his perspective, and the perspective of his authority, is all important. "Yes, servants," he says. "Servants of the people, but above all, servants of Jesus Christ."

What he's going to develop from that is that he ultimately is answerable to Jesus. And it's before him and his standards that the ministry of Paul stands or falls. And look how he says it. "So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God."

You say, "Oh, here he is. Now he said he was a servant, but now he's getting big ideas. He's going to exalt himself." Well, no, Paul doesn't do that either. It's marvelous how he keeps a balance. Paul wants to say here that he's a servant of Christ, and he's responsible to Christ, and he does say that, and he says it clearly, but as he says it, notice that he says he's a servant of Christ. And a minister, one entrusted with the mysteries of God.

We suffer from a weak translation at this point. I won't say a bad translation, certainly not a wrong one, but a weak one. Whenever you read that word "servant" in the New Testament, you know right off that it's a weak translation, even if there's nothing else to be said about it, because strictly speaking, in ancient times, they didn't have servants, at least not in the sense that we have in mind when we use that word. What they had was slaves.

So when you read in the New Testament about somebody being a servant, generally that word translates the Greek word *doulos*, which means a slave. So at the very least, you'd expect Paul to be saying here, "We are slaves of Christ." And that is certainly a stronger meaning than what we generally get when we read that word "servant."

Now, it turns out that in this case, the word that is there in the Greek language is not the word *doulos*, which means a slave, but it's a word which is even stronger than that. The Greek word is *hyperetes*, and it's a rare word. You don't find it very often. Put together of a couple parts in the Greek language. *Hyper* means under. So at the very least, it means not only a slave, but an underslave. It's the idea of the assistant slave rather than the slave who's in charge of the other slaves. You begin to see what's happening here. It at least means that.

And then, you know, I get curious about these things and sometimes I dig out the lexicons and begin to look up and see where the word really came from. And if the first part of it, *hyper*, means under, I want to know what the second part means. Well, I notice in the common lexicons that students of New Testament Greek use, lexicons that are very strong in giving us the *koiné* Greek, the common Greek of Paul's time and of Jesus' time, generally the word is simply translated as an assistant slave or an assistant servant, something of that nature.

But in the big lexicons, the really good ones that go back in the history of the Greek language to the way Homer used the word, and the great writers in the Greek language, sort of the way the Oxford English Dictionary, that masterpiece of the English language, does with English words, you find, if you look at it carefully enough, that the word actually means an under-rower.

Now, what does that suggest to you? An under-rower. Well, you may know that the way they got around in those days in the water was by slave ships, galley ships. They were called triremes, the big ones. That meant they had three rows of oars. And I would think in that kind of context, with that kind of reference, an under-rower must be the rower who operates on the lowest tier.

I think that means down just about as far as you can get. And here is Paul, you see, saying, "I'm a servant of Jesus." Not even in this case, "I am a slave of Jesus." Not even in this case, strong as that may be, "I am an assistant slave of Jesus," but saying actually, "I am an under-rower in the galley that is bringing men the gospel of life." And that's pretty strong.

And so, while it is true that Paul, speaking of himself as a minister, is saying, and saying clearly, that he is a servant of Christ. He wants them to know that, because his point is he is responsible to Christ. He's nevertheless at the same time not giving himself some exalted position, as if among all those servants of Christ, there is Paul right up at the pinnacle, somebody really important. No, he's saying, "I am an under-rower in this galley of the gospel."

The next word he uses is not quite as colorful, but it does convey a wealth of meaning of its own. We read the translation, "those entrusted." Actually, it means a steward. The Greek word is *oikonomos*. We get our word "economy" from that. The steward was the one who managed the household economy. That is, he took care of the business for whoever owned the house. He was a servant too.

While this word doesn't come across to us as vividly in terms of position as the first word, being an under-rower, it does speak perhaps in a little more dramatic way of the kind of responsibility that Paul nevertheless had. He had this responsibility of management, managing for Jesus Christ, as a steward who had to give an accounting to him who was his master.

When I look at these verses that talk about the ministry, I find that Paul, though he probably wouldn't have used these terms, really is writing about it much the way we would write about a position in a corporation today. You're talking about a position in a corporation, you talk first of all about a job description, and then you talk about performance standards, and finally you talk about accountability. Who are you accountable to in the position to carry out that work according to those standards? This is exactly what Paul is saying. You want the job description? An under-rower and a steward.

You want the performance standards? He gives it in the next verse. "It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." That's the standard. And then you want accountability? The accountability is to Jesus Christ. He's the boss of the corporation, and Paul maintains, and maintains rightly, that he's accountable to him. Isn't it interesting that he says that the performance standard is faithfulness? Not the way we would write it, you know. That's not the way we write performance standards.

We say, "Well, you've been marketing Alpo this year, and you've sold five, ten, I don't know, twenty million dollars worth of the stuff. Next year we want to improve that by 15%." So that's the standard that you're going after. And you meet that standard? Well, then what they do is they raise it next year. We think in those terms. We think of success in terms of quantity and volume and all of that.

In the Christian life, it isn't quite the same thing. It's not to say that God isn't interested in numbers. We come to the book of Revelation, and we read that in that final day, gathered around the throne, there is going to be millions upon millions. The old versions say myriads upon myriads of people from every tongue, every nation, gathered around the throne, singing praises to God. God is interested in that.

But you see, when he gives you a job to do as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he does not say you have to have 33 conversions this month. Oh, and it may be that by his grace, you'll be effective along those lines. And it may be that if you're only seeing 33, you're not being very faithful because he's giving you gifts and opportunities where you could see much more.

But you see, it isn't spelled out in numerical terms for us. What Paul says is it is required that we be found faithful. And that means if you have to hang in there year after year and decade after decade and see very little results from your labor, well, you are not a failure in the service of Jesus Christ. That is faithfulness. And God will reward that and honor it in his own time.

I am far more impressed with the kind of work that begins slow and lays the groundwork and builds into people's lives the great principles, the great foundational doctrines of the gospel, and is not trying necessarily to get a conversion every week, but is trying to build that. I'm far more impressed with that, because in time it will grow. And moreover, when it grows, it'll remain, it'll be that fruit that remains, about which the Lord Jesus Christ himself spoke.

And if that's to happen, you see, the standard, as Paul spells it out here, is faithfulness. Now he does speak of a number of areas in which we're to be faithful. One is handling the mysteries of God right, the secret things of God, verse one. That's the gospel. We know from the earlier chapters, when Paul speaks of mysteries here, he's not speaking of mysteries in the same sense as the Greek mysteries.

The Greeks had all these religions that in certain forms have even been revived in modern days. They were called mysteries because the things that the worshipers did and believed were hidden from everybody else. You had to be initiated before you learned them. He's not talking about mysteries in that sense. He's talking about that which the mind of man would never have imagined, left to itself.

But which God has revealed in the gospel. That is the mystery. That is the secret things of God. Now he says if you're going to be faithful, one way in which you have to be faithful is with those mysteries, with those truths. Don't play around with the gospel. Don't be cute. Don't try to reinterpret it in some way that somehow you think might make it a little more palatable to your generation. You be faithful and deliver that in the same way it was delivered to you.

Paul even uses those words in First Corinthians 15 when he's talking about the resurrection. He said, "Brother, I delivered unto you the same thing that I received, the same thing that was delivered unto me." And then he spells out the gospel, how Jesus was buried and died and rose again on the third day, and how there were many witnesses. You see, that's the gospel. And he didn't change it. He was faithful in maintaining that gospel.

Another thing he talks about is waiting for God to bring the blessing. When Jesus comes, he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and so on. He talks temporally in these verses. You have to be willing to let God work at his own speed, in his own time, as he is most certainly going to do. But we get restless, you see. We say, "Well, he's not moving fast enough."

"You know, here I am, I'm getting old. I'm in middle age. I turned 40. My goodness, I, I, I if I'm going to make it in this world, it's got to be faster than that. God, speed it up!" But you see, God works on his timetable, not our timetable, and faithfulness, in part, is allowing God to work on his timetable.

And then he speaks in what I think is a powerful word to our time, these next verses, verses six and seven, the faithfulness in not going beyond what is written. What is Paul talking about when he says, "Don't go beyond what is written"? Where is it written? Why, for him it was in the pages of the Old Testament, and for us it's the New Testament together with the Old Testament.

What Paul is saying is, "Don't go beyond what God says." Oh, we are so inclined to break that admonition. We read it and we say, "Yeah, but it's so dull." Or we say, "Yes, but it's so irrelevant. That's not where people are today. People don't want to know about the ministry. People don't want to know about the Bible. People don't want to know about faithfulness. They want you to speak to them where they're at."

Now, let me say, of course, that the gospel is relevant. It does speak to people where they're at. But if you start first of all with where you think they're at, and you change the word in order to get to where you think they're at, somewhere along the line, you've lost it all. Paul is speaking a profound word to our time when he says, "Don't go beyond what is written."

There's another way we go beyond what is written. We read the Bible and we get a great principle. Church discipline, for example, because that's what he's going to talk about in the very next chapter. We say, "There must be discipline in the church." And so we get an idea how that should be done. We say, as we search the scriptures, it should be exercised through the authorities in the church, and it ought to have to do with certain important things. And we do that, and we do that very well.

But then we get sort of carried away with ourselves and we say, "Ah, discipline is such a good thing. Let's really be careful to discipline people." And so here's somebody who's doing something that we don't think is quite right. We call them in, we say, "I don't think you ought to be doing that." They say, "Well, as I search the scriptures, I, I don't see where that's true." We say, "Well, we don't say the scriptures say that, we just don't think you should be doing that." Well, they say, "Then we're going to do that." We say, "I'm going to discipline you."

Now, that sounds funny, but that happens. And discipline needs to be restored, but listen, not discipline beyond where the Bible speaks. I might have an idea what I think is right for you, but I have no right to impose it unless the Bible says so clearly. Where the moral law of God is involved, by all means, we must uphold that standard.

But where there are doubtful areas, or where it's the question of the will of God for your life, and the Bible is not specific, let's recognize that we are all servants of God at that point. It's before our master, not before one another, that we stand or fall.

Now, Paul talks about the ministry, as I said, in those first verses. In the second portion of this chapter, beginning in verse eight, he makes an ironic contrast. Because the reason he's talking about the ministry, and what the ministry is and should be, and has been in his case, and that of Apollos and Peter as well, is to show that the Corinthians, to whom he is writing, in their own self-conceit, have quite a different, and therefore quite a non-biblical, idea of what it really means to succeed spiritually.

And so he makes the contrast. Now look how he spells it out. On the one hand, there are the Corinthians. He talks to them as "you." That's how you can tell what he's saying. What does he say about them? Well, he says they're satisfied. We'd say self-satisfied, verse eight. "You have all you want." Nothing else you want, you've got everything.

He says, "They're rich. Already you've become rich." He says thirdly, "they're reigning. You have become kings." They're ripe, rich, and reigning. That's their status. And no doubt, they were quite satisfied to be that way. That's what they wanted. They thought that was good. They said, "Look at us! We're satisfied, we're rich, we're reigning."

And then on the other side, here are the apostles, and he refers to the apostles as "us." And what does he say about them? Well, he says, "We've been made a spectacle." And he means that in a bad sense. He's referring to the Greek word is a word from which we get our word "theater." *Theatron*. But what it referred to was the captives that came behind a returning army. When an army went out and captured some place and was victorious, they brought back all the captives. And they came at the end of the train. Bedraggled, dreadful, discouraged, fearful people. And who knows what was going to happen to them? Some of them were going to be sold as slaves. Some of them perhaps would be sent to the amphitheater. In Paul's time, they would be sport for the multitudes as they were killed by the gladiators and the animals and such.

And Paul says, "That's what we've been made. We've been made a spectacle. And not only a spectacle to the Romans, brought in behind the train of some Caesar, we've been made a spectacle to the whole universe, angels as well as men. People look at us and they say, 'Look at those pitiful wretches that are being brought along behind the train as captives.'"

And verse ten, he says, "We are fools." Now, we know what sense in which he's using that word because that's what he was discussing in chapters one and two. He says, "The world is looking at us and the world is saying, 'Did you ever see such stupid people as those apostles?'" "Now, they're not uneducated men. Some of them had very good educations. And look at Apollos there. Apollos is a great orator." "Why, just think what he could be if he would really get in with the establishment and begin to pull his oar with the Greek ship or the Roman ship. Why, he could rise right up."

"Instead of that, what does he do?" And what does Paul do, and Peter? "What do these men do?" "They go around from village to village, and they talk this stupid nonsense about a rabbi from Judea, of all places, who was crucified out there as a political offender. And who, believe it or not, who they claim actually was raised from the dead." "And they're not very well received. Oh, here and there they have little groups of people, slaves and such that follow them, but they're not very well received, and they go from one town to another town, and to another town."

"And goodness, there's nothing stupider than that. They're fools, those men." And Paul says, "Yes, that's what we are." And then he says also, "We are dishonored." He spells that out at great length. "We go hungry and thirsty. We're in rags. We're brutally treated. We're homeless. We work hard with our own hands. We're cursed, we're persecuted, we're slandered. We have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world."

You think Paul was exaggerating? I don't think Paul was exaggerating at all. Second Corinthians, the fourth chapter, he spells out in greater detail all the things that he went through for the sake of the gospel, how he was beaten, persecuted, all the hardships he endured. He talks about it more in the fifth chapter.

When you look at these words that Paul is using and you compare them with the book of Acts, you can find stories in Acts. And undoubtedly, that is not all that happened to Paul, but you can find stories to go with every one of those things. Now think what a contrast that is. On the one hand, the Corinthians, who, well, we would say they had a nice church with nice people, who had nice homes and came nicely dressed. And they said, "We have everything. Isn't God wonderful? He provides all our needs."

And they said, "We're rich. Isn't that wonderful? God promises to bless you. You put him first and he'll make you prosper." And they said, "Yes, and we really are reigning as Christians in our city." And over here are these apostles that are hungry and sick and get dysentery and don't have enough to eat and are beaten and slandered and hounded from place to place. And Paul himself was stoned three times. He's almost dead, they thought, on one occasion.

And you say, this is the big question. You say, "Look, those two groups of people, the Corinthians on the one hand, the apostles on the other, who would you rather be?" Now, you know what the answer is supposed to be. I'm not asking you what the answer is supposed to be. I'm asking you, who would you rather be?

You look at your heart, and you say, "Would I rather be like Paul? Would I rather be hungry? Would I rather be slandered, abused, persecuted, hated, hounded from place to place, or would I...?" I ask, who would you rather be?

I think if we look at our hearts, we say, "I, I think I'd rather be with the Corinthians." And yet, you see, you haven't gotten the tone of that if you're thinking of it in those terms, because Paul is being sarcastic. You say, "Can an apostle be sarcastic?" Oh, yes he can. And Paul is doing it.

He's saying, "Already you have what you want. Oh, yes you do. Already you've become rich. Oh, you are rich. You've become kings. And you've done it all without us. Good for you. I wish that you really had become kings, so that we might become kings with you." You see what he's saying? "You think you're kings, but you're not reigning. You're a slave to the values of your world. And you look at us and you say, 'Look at those poor slaves,' but we're free because we're following Christ."

"Seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession like men condemned to die in the arena. We're made a spectacle to the whole universe, angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ. We are weak, but oh, you are strong. You're honored. We're dishonored. At this very hour we go hungry and thirsty. We're in rags. We're brutally treated. We're homeless."

You understand how he's writing? I said there are three things he uses to describe himself: the fact that he's a spectacle, the fact that he's a fool, and the fact that he's dishonored or impoverished. And that is true. Paul absolutely did go through those things, but look the way in which he talks about it. He says, "We are a spectacle," but notice not just that, "We are made a spectacle, and by whom? By God." It's God's doing. Because we're his servants, and that's what he's chosen to do with us. "We are fools." "Yes, but we are fools for Christ," he says.

"And it is true. We are impoverished and dishonored, but why? For the sake of the gospel, which is a treasure above any earthly wealth." Now you see how that contrast has to be taken. Who would you rather be? The Corinthians with their wealth, but their wealth which is passing away, which is going to evaporate with this world, when all this world, all we know, is going to be burned up.

Or the apostles who have nothing now, who suffer abuse now, but who hold the treasure of the gospel, and who, through their service to Jesus Christ, are laying up an immortal treasure in the world beyond. This is why, as Paul ends the chapter, he says, and I'm sure you see it clearly, "Therefore, verse 16, I urge you to imitate me."

Why? "Because Paul is imitating Christ." That's what Christ went through. Christ laid aside the glories of heaven, the prerogatives of the Godhead, in order to become like man, and not even a rich man, but a poor man. And to take upon himself the death of a man, and not just any death, but the death of a cross. "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him." And Paul says, "That's the one I follow. And because I follow him, I say to you, imitate me."

In order to say that, a man has to be walking close to Jesus Christ. Yet that's what Paul was doing. Paul was walking close to Jesus Christ. And so he said it, and it's here in the pages of the Word of God with the seal of the Holy Spirit upon it.

I make this conclusion, a double conclusion. Paul can say that. If God gave the Corinthians in their time people like that, that they could imitate because such people were imitating Christ, look for such people today. Don't look to the television for its standards. Don't read the popular magazines for their standards. Don't look to politics for their standards. Those things are so passing. They don't mean anything at all. Look for the godly people and follow them, those who know what it means to walk with God, to live for Jesus Christ, to do so, if necessary, in spite of all the poverty and slander that the world can bring. Look for people like that and imitate them.

And then there's a second conclusion. By the grace of God, try to be a person like that yourself. You may not be like that yet. You may not be able to say, "Imitate me," because you know in your heart, you're not imitating Christ. But you try to live that way and become like Christ. So that as the years go by, and as your children come along, they can say, "I want to be like my father. I want to be like my mother," because "my father follows Jesus, my mother knows God."

And the people in the church who know you can say, "I want to be like Mr. so-and-so. I want to be like Mrs. so-and-so or Miss so-and-so," because "they're somebody who knows God, and it's evident in what they do." And by the grace of God, we'll have a generation that follow Jesus, and the church will not be divided, and the power of the gospel will be evident in our world.

Oh, our great God and our heavenly Father, we read something like this, with a standard like that about which we've read. And we almost fear to ask the question, "Is it possible for somebody to imitate us, and in doing so, actually imitate the Lord?" Our Father, if we're not like that, that's what we want to be. Give us grace to be like Jesus. So that people may see him in us and bless us all together to that end for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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I'm Mark Daniels. Glad you tuned in. One of the hardest and most controversial aspects of the Christian life is church discipline. In many churches, it has fallen out of favor and practice as we conform more and more to the world's standards. The Apostle Paul, however, faced the problem head-on and left us timeless advice for this necessary practice. Join Dr. James Boice as he follows Paul's commands for dealing with sin in the church and gives us some sound advice on the subject. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.