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That cobbler was absolutely correct: there is no division between secular and sacred work for the believer. All of our work is to be done for the Lord. In a sense every believer is in the ministry because every believer has been gifted by God, and every believer is responsible to exercise his spiritual gifts for the edification of the body of Christ and the evangelism of the world. 1 Peter 4:10 makes this clear:
"As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."
The gift mentioned here is a unique blending of spiritual gifts that is God's gift to each believer at salvation. We are all to be good stewards of the grace that has been given to us; in this sense we are all in the ministry.
While it is true that all believers are in the ministry, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul is talking about a particular aspect of the ministry: he has in mind those who are engaged in the ministry of the Word--today we call these men pastors. They are those gifted men that are involved in the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. He is speaking to men like Timothy whose job it was to be preaching doctrine and building up the church of God. Paul's charge to Timothy is applicable to all teachers:
2 Timothy 4:1-2 (KJV) "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine."
There were some grave misunderstandings in Corinth as to the nature of Christian ministry and those misunderstandings had divided the church. Paul attempts in 1 Corinthians 3 to correct those misconceptions. In verses 5-8 he told them that ministers, teachers of the Word of God, are simply servants of God; they are not to be held in higher esteem than any other believers. In verses 9-17 he tells us that ministers are builders of the temple of God, and are responsible to God for the doctrine that they build into the temple of God. He closes this section with a warning:
1 Corinthians 3:17 (KJV) "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."
The word defiles and destroy are the same Greek word, phtheiro which means to spoil by any process or to ruin, corrupt, defile, or destroy. The church is damaged by teachers who build with bad materials and by members who engage in strife and divisions. This warning applies to all believers: anyone who damages God's church will pay for it.
In 1 Corinthians 3:18-20 Paul repeats a concept that he discussed in 1 Corinthians 2 and points out that any human wisdom is simply nonsense with God. Only God's wisdom is to the blessing of God's people and to the glory of our Lord.
1 Corinthians 3:18-20 (KJV) "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."
Paul begins this section with, "Let no man deceive himself." Like verse 17, this refers to the teachers and the congregation. Teachers are to build using God's wisdom rather than their own; the congregation is not to use human wisdom to evaluate the teachers. The phrases "wise in this world" and "the wisdom of this world" refer to the wisdom of the age which is the wisdom of the material that forgets the spiritual. The wisdom of this world works for the world, but it will not work for the church.
This warning is to teachers. The world depends on promotion, prestige, and the influence of money and important people. The church depends on prayer, the power of the Spirit, humility, sacrifice, and service. The church that imitates the world may seem to succeed in time, but it will turn to ashes in eternity. The church in the book of Acts had none of the secrets of success that seem to be important today. They owned no property; they had no influence in government; they had no treasure; their leaders were ordinary men without special education in the accepted schools; they held no attendance contests; they brought in no celebrities; yet they turned the world upside down! The early church trusted in the wisdom of God and not in the wisdom of this world. The church today is so out of fellowship with God that we do not expect Him to do anything miraculous. We have lost sight of the wisdom of God as we depend upon our own wisdom to build His church.
This warning against human wisdom is also to the congregation. The Corinthians were deceiving themselves by assessing the worth of different teachers and leaders according to worldly wisdom. They needed to become foolish by the world's standards and embrace the godly wisdom which Paul had been expounding. As we saw in 1 Corinthians 2, true wisdom is not humanly discovered but divinely revealed. Only as we are under the teaching of Scripture and illuminated by the Holy Spirit can we become truly wise. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
Up to this point, Paul has been correcting the misconceptions that the Corinthians had about the nature of Christian ministry. Since ministers are nothing but servants of God who are building God's temple through true doctrine and since ministers have no wisdom of their own but simply rely on God's wisdom, how should we respond to the ministers? How are we to view a minister of the gospel? What should be our attitude toward a person who is gifted by God and teaches in a Sunday school class or home Bible class or in the Sunday service? That is the question that Paul is going to answer in 1 Corinthians 3:21-4:5 through two exhortations. Verse 21 begins with `therefore' which marks the transition from the explanation of the nature of the Christian ministry to the exhortation concerning our attitude toward ministers. There are two exhortations, a negative one in 3:21-23, and a positive one in 4:1-5. We want to understand these exhortations and by God's grace apply them to our lives.
The first exhortation found in 3:21: "Therefore let no one boast in men." In other words, no person ought to glory in a man. The men in view are the teachers of the word of God. What does this exhortation not to glory in man mean? As we read through the New Testament, we come across similar phrases many times: we are to glory in God; we are to glory in the cross of Jesus Christ; men in the Scriptures glory in the law. What does it mean to glory in someone or something? To glory in a man means first of all to depend upon that man or his ministry for spiritual growth, spiritual guidance, and spiritual courage. Just as prayer glorifies God because it is an act of dependance upon God, so to glory in a man means to depend upon that man. Secondly, to glory in a man means to consider him as the source of blessing. God does use men to help us grow, but the man is never the source of growth or blessing: God is.
We share the Corinthians' temptation to glory in men. The Corinthians were glorying in men by exalting them, boasting in them, and considering men as their source of blessing. They said, "I am of Paul. I am of Apollos" and they thought themselves honored because of their association with a great Bible teacher. We are often guilty of the same thing. Paul forbids these practices in this passage and he develops the reason as indicated by the word "for" at the end of verse 21. In the next three verses he gives us four reasons why we ought not to glory in men.
The first reason is that glorying in man is degrading to a Christian. Notice what Paul says: "For all things are yours." We ought to take this literally: every single thing in God's universe belongs to us as Christians. This is not an isolated text:
Romans 4:13 (NKJV) "For the promise that he would be the
heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through
the law, but through the righteousness of faith."
Romans 8:32 (KJV) "He that spared not his own Son, but
delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things?"
Every child of God is an heir of the universe by faith. Since God gave us the greatest gift--He put his son to death for us--certainly He will not withhold any lesser gift. J. Vernon McGee gives a great illustration of this principle: if a jeweler presented you with a huge, unflawed diamond, would you hesitate to ask him for a bag to take it home? In the same way, God gave us His most precious gift and He will "freely give us all things". Paul says everything belongs to the believer.
Beginning in verse 22, Paul gives us the particulars. First, he says that the ministry belongs to the believer: "whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas", they all belong to the believer. Paul the planter, who first brought the message of the Gospel, belonged to the Corinthian believers and all his teaching. Apollos who taught them the Word, belonged to them and all his teaching. The Christian ministry that God has ordained belongs to all believers. Paul goes on to say the world belongs to the believer: the system of the world ordered by God for the advancement of the Church of Jesus Christ. The world is the Christian's workshop. More than the ministry, more than the workshop of the world, life or death belong to the believer. Men are born and men die as they relate to God's purposes for the advancement and development of the Church of Jesus Christ. Military leaders, presidents, and religious leaders are born and die under the sovereign providence of God for the blessing and advancement of the church of Jesus C hrist and according to God's design for the church. The whole universe belongs to believers. He concludes by saying this is not some temporary position: things present or things to come belong to Christians too. Nothing happens by chance, but all things, health and sickness, joy and woe, come from God's hand. In respect to the future, God has planned it and is working all things for our good. Paul sums it up by repeating the phrase, "all are yours". The dignity of a believer is rooted in the fact that he is the heir of all things. Paul says it is beneath the dignity of a believer and it is degrading for a Christian to boast in a simple man.
Not only is boasting in a man degrading to the Christian, but it impoverishes the life of a Christian to glory in a man. According to 3:22, the whole ministry belongs to the believer; the person who isolates himself from Apollos and Peter to become a disciple of Paul impoverishes himself by cutting off all of the riches and treasures that God wants to bring to his life through men like Apollos and Peter. Such glorying in a man by depending on a man is impoverishing in the life of a Christian. God wants to use many different teachers to enrich the life of the believer. We need to depend on Him, rather than human ministers, to teach us.
Thirdly, glorying in a man is a contradiction in the life of a believer because as verse 23 says, "And you are Christ's". To say "I am of Paul," contradicts the fact that the believer belongs to Christ. The only name that we are to take is Christ's, and the only person that we are to glory in is Christ.
Paul's exhortation against glorying in man climaxes in the last phrase: "and Christ is God's." The believer belongs to Christ and Christ is God's, and therefore the believer belongs to God. To glory in a man is to engage in idolatry. Idolatry is foreign to our thinking: we cannot see ourselves bowing to the temptations of idolatry as the Jewish people did. For instance, if we had lived in the days of Nebuchadnezzar we would most likely have resisted bowing down before that image and worshiping it. We like to think that we would have gone in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego if we had to. We certainly don't see ourselves as idolaters. But we engage in idolatry every day when we glory in men. Isaiah says that God will not share His glory with any man:
Isaiah 42:8 (KJV) "I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory
will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images."
Isaiah 48:11 (KJV) "For mine own sake, even for mine own sake,
will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my
glory unto another."
When a believer gives the glory that belongs to God to a man, he is an idolater! That is why Paul is so adamant: do not glory in man!
We live in an age when glorying in man is part of our society: we glory in athletes, actors, politicians, the rich and famous; we glory in men. But to glory in men in the spiritual life is a mark of carnality and immaturity. It reveals a gross misunderstanding of the ministry, and it inevitably splinters a church and causes disunity. This is a very applicable word for us today: we live in a day of Christian superstars and we do a lot of glorying in men.
We are not to glory in men; in 1 Corinthians 4, Paul tells us what to do. The words "so then" connect the teaching from chapter 3 to this further teaching. We are not to glory in men who teach the Word, but we are to consider them as servants of Christ.
1 Corinthians 4:1: "Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."
The word "consider" implies a reasoning activity of the mind. They are ministers of Christ; this Greek word for ministers is different than the word he used in 1 Corinthians 3:5 which says that "Paul and Apollos are ministers." That word was diakonos which means a table waiter, a servant. The word he uses in 1 Corinthians 4:1 is huperetes; this word referred to a rower in the lower tier of the galley of a ship, a galley slave. Later the word came to mean a person who was an underling, an official subordinate to a higher official. Huperetes was used of Mark in Acts 13 as Paul and Barnabas go on their first missionary journey: Mark was their minister, their underling, serving under them and doing things for them. Paul is explaining the relationship between the master and the servant. We ought to regard those who minister the Word, not as superiors, but as subordinates of Christ. We don't regard them as men with authority but men under the authority of Christ. That will revolutionize our concept of a teacher of God's Word. We are to regard them as underlings, as a subordinates under the Master who is the Lord. We tend to do the opposite and elevate teachers which eventually destroys them through pride.
Teachers are not only ministers or slaves, but they are stewards of the mysteries of God. A steward was a very familiar person to the readers of the New Testament. He was a slave who was given a special privileged responsibility by the master as the overseer of the house of the master. This slave was given the responsibility of dispensing to the members of the household the provisions and the stores of the master that were necessary. Paul uses this imagery often in the New Testament as he speaks of the church as the house of God:
1 Timothy 3:15 (NKJV) "but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
The gospels speak of Christ as the house master:
Luke 13:25 (NKJV) ""When once the Master of the house
has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand
outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for
us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you,
where you are from,'"
Every Christian is part of the household of faith:
Galatians 6:10 (NKJV) "Therefore, as we have opportunity,
let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the
household of faith."
Paul teaches that the minister of the Word is the household steward in the household of God; he is a slave to whom God has given certain responsibilities.
In 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, Paul tells us three qualities of ministers who are stewards of the mysteries of God. The first thing is found in the last part of verse 1: the steward's primary function is to dispense the mysteries of God. Mystery is the Greek word musterion and in its Biblical use, it is not something that is mysterious, but it is a secret that man cannot know without God revealing it. It is something that was hidden in the Old Testament but revealed in the New Testament. The mystery is everything that God has revealed in Jesus Christ, all the truths of the Christian life. The steward's prime responsibility is to dispense that message.
A minister who does not study the Word cannot properly teach the Word. He cannot dispense to others what he does not know therefore his prime requisite is faithfulness as 1 Corinthians 4:2 states: "Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful". In this context he is talking to those who teach the Word, but remember that we are all stewards and stewards are to be faithful. In New Testament times, by the very nature of a steward's work he was left on his own so the master needed someone that was trustworthy. As he looked for a steward, his primary concern was the trustworthiness of the candidate: could he be trusted with the house; could he be trusted him with the provisions; would he be faithful? Faithfulness is also the prime requisite of the minister of the Word because he is simply a man who has been intrusted with a stewardship.
C. H. Spurgeon was once invited to speak to a Unitarian Church under the condition that he would not speak on anything controversial. Spurgeon said, "I'd be glad to accept that invitation. After he was introduced he stepped to the pulpit and said, "I've been asked to speak on something that is not controversial, so my subject this morning comes from a text in the Bible which begins, "Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh." And he preached on the deity of Christ which is very controversial in the Unitarian Church. For him to have done anything else would have been to be unfaithful to his Master. Micaiah, an Old Testament prophet, is a great example of faithfulness. When the lying prophets of King Ahab prophesied that he would have great victory at Ramoth-gilead, Micaiah, a true prophet, was urged to do likewise:
1 Kings 22:13-14 (KJV) "And the messenger that was gone
to call Micaiah spake unto him, saying, Behold now, the
words of the prophets declare good unto the king with one
mouth: let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of
them, and speak that which is good. And Micaiah said, As
the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I
speak.
1 Kings 22:17-18 (KJV) "And he said, I saw all Israel
scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd:
and the LORD said, These have no master: let them return
every man to his house in peace. And the king of Israel
said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he would
prophesy no good concerning me, but evil?"
Micaiah's words didn't please Ahab but they pleased the Lord; Micaiah was a faithful steward. Today, we are afraid to make anyone uncomfortable or unhappy and so we are less than faithful. The one thing that is required of a steward is not success, or brilliance, or creativity, or popularity, but faithfulness. A steward is not only to be faithful to the Master, but he must also be faithful to the household by giving them what they need. If he fails to distribute to the household the truths of God then he is unfaithful to them. The responsibility of every Bible teacher is to dispense the truths of God's Word to God's people.
Who judges the faithfulness of the steward? Paul answers that question for us in the last couple of verses. Paul tells us in 4:3 that the primary responsibility of the steward is not to the church: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself." The words judged and judge are from the Greek word anakrino which means to investagate, question, evaluate. It does not mean to determine guilt or innocence, as the King James version suggests. Paul doesn't say that others' evaluations don't matter at all, but they matter very little. Paul did care what others thought of him, but compared to the judgement of God, other people's evaluation of him meant little. He is not concerned about the judgement of the believers or the unsaved.
Even Paul himself was not the judge of his stewardship.
For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. (1 Corinthians 4:4).
Some people become so introspective in ministry, but Paul said that he couldn't judge himself because he was prejudiced. The final evaluation of our stewardship is from the Lord. In our own evaluation, we are faithful stewards, and we don't know of one area in which we are unfaithful. But an unaccusing conscience does not mean acquittal before God. The reason we cannot find any unfaithfulness is because we are partial and don't even know our hearts. We do not have the capacity to make a judgement upon ourselves. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't examine ourselves; we do need to do that. But there is a great difference between examining our spiritual lives and properly evaluating our stewardship. In the final analysis each of us is responsible to the Lord, and He who judges us is the Lord.
"Therefore judge nothing before the time," (1 Corinthians 4:5). If a minister of the gospel is a steward whose primary function is to dispense the message; if his prime requisite is faithfulness; if he is primarily responsible to the Lord, then we are to judge no one before the time. He is forbidding us to judge the faithfulness of the steward of God. He is not forbidding us to judge a false teacher or one who is in sin. He is also not eliminating the need for discernment in the Christian life. Each of us is responsible to search the Scriptures to see if the teaching we receive is correct. But we have no right to judge faithfulnessof the steward. That judgement will take place when "the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God." (1 Corinthians 4:5).
No one can judge me this morning because no one knows all the facts. (We are not talking about sin here, we are talking about motives.) We can't judge another steward because we do not know his heart, his motives or desires. Paul says the Lord will "expose the motives of men's hearts" which is an explanation of his statement that "he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness." God will reveal the heart, both good and bad things. It is so easy for us to misjudge the motives and deeds of another person. The story is told of Mr. Jones who picked up the wrong umbrella in a hotel lobby and was about to walk out when the rightful owner called attention to his mistake. Embarrassed, Mr. Jones offered his apologies, found his own umbrella and went on his way. The incident, however, reminded him that he had promised to buy both his wife and daughter an umbrella. To his delight he found that a local store nearby had them on sale, so he bought two. As he was getting into his car with his purchases, he saw the man he had encountered earlier eyeing him suspiciously. Seeing the three umbrellas hooked over his arm, the stranger exclaimed sarcastically, "I see you had a good day after all!" Although Mr. Jones blushed, he was not guilty of any wrongdoing.
Things are not always what they appear to be on the surface. Beware of the sin of misjudging others! To make an impartial and accurate judgement we must know all the facts, motives and desires. The only one who knows all of that is the Lord. When He comes back He will reveal the hidden works, those works that only God knows. He will also expose the motives of the heart. Only the Lord can make a final judgement and then every steward will receive his praise. The Greek text suggests that each steward will receive his appropriate praise, the praise that he deserves of God.
In 1 Peter 4:10, Peter calls every believer a steward. Even though this passage in 1 Corinthians primarily addresses teachers, we are all stewards and this text applies to all of us in a secondary sense. We will all give account of our stewardship to God some day. Are you being a faithful steward? Someday many of us will be amazed at the rewards that God gives: superstars will have a very small reward because they worked in the flesh, while some that seemed to do nothing for God will have large rewards because they were motivated by the glory of God. Do you detract form the glory of God because you are giving glory to men? The issue is the heart: many things do not appear what they are, but the righteous Judge will not make any mistakes. How much of your life is consumed by bringing glory to God? God will call us into acount for our stewardship.
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