August 17, 2010
Servants Only
I recently heard a fellow believer comparing a local pastor with a prominent TV preacher. I get the feeling that she secretly thinks the local pastor should and could strive to be more like the polished preacher who she watches on TV each week. Paul took the Corinthians to task for similar thoughts. “For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.” (1 Cor 3:4-5 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I Corinthians’ chapters one through five are one of the better examples of how important is context. 3:15 is the premise tested true by the assertions made throughout it, “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” The saving of the man, regardless of his work being burned up, is God’s acceptance of the man as being more important than His acceptance of his work. In other words, it is the soul in which God is interested, his work is secondary. It is a godly attitude.
-----But this passage does not categorize a man as either wholly valuable or entirely worthless. The man only being saved while all his work is burned up is merely an extreme. Few of us, if any, are substantively defined by an extreme. Most produce at least a gem or two in whom they are. Moreover, implied in the flammability and value of the various substances analogizing work to be tested by fire, “...gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw...” is the idea that some work has more value than does other work, as gold is more valuable than silver, and that some work is more congruent with God’s principles than is other work, as it takes a more intense fire to consume wood than it does to consume straw. But the simple fact that fire will consume wood or straw does not implicate their uselessness. Wood makes tables and chairs, hay feeds the animals, and straw beds them. So every substance Paul lists in the analogy provides at least some value, if not before and after the cleansing fire, as do gold, silver, and precious stones, then at least before it, as do wood, hay, and straw.
-----Before reflecting back on I Corinthians 3:4-5, note how this passage ties with Romans 12:3, “...I bid everyone among you...to think of himself...with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him,” and Romans 14:4, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” We don’t have our faith by our own generation, as if we can generate as much of it as we need. We have it by God’s assignment in the measure He gives. So the man whose faith produces some silver and much hay pleases his wife with a few bracelets and feeds the community’s animals by God’s assignment, so also does the faith of the man who supplies the community‘s gold and his wife with only a footstool (which he probably will be.) And from Romans 14:4, we are also to view others with sober judgment, realizing their faith, too, has been assigned by God according to His measure.
-----Therefore, measuring Paul against Apollos, or Apollos against Paul, for determining with which to align is not a godly process. The godly process is to receive Paul’s service God has provided through him but not Apollos, and to receive Apollos’ service God has provided through him rather than Paul. Then God builds the community of believers by His Spirit through whom He needs where He needs him. The more we open to one another rather than close to one another, the more community God can build.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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