Pretentious Christians and persecuted apostles.

1 Corinthians 4.6-13.

Every once in a while Paul uses irony—rhetorically says the opposite of what he actually means in order to reveal its ridiculousness. Irony is best known in its angry form, sarcasm. Yep, there’s sarcasm in the bible. ’Cause sometimes its writers get angry at injustice, sin, and stupidity—and the Corinthians were being kinda stupid by dividing themselves into factions. They should know better than to do this; they should be more spiritually mature than this! But they weren’t.

I myself don’t encourage Christians to get too sarcastic. Few to none of us have the self-control necessary to wield sarcasm safely. Contrary to those folks who say, “Sarcasm is my spiritual gift,” no it’s not. It’s a form of anger, and seldom a healthy form. I won’t even say Paul and Sosthenes were exhibiting a healthy form of it here. They were understandably irritated at the Corinthians right about now in their letter, but I’m pretty sure this passage alienated the Corinthians more than it got ’em to repent. (As is hinted by 2 Corinthians.)

My translation of the passage first, and I’ll expound on it afterward.

1 Corinthians 4.6-13 KWL

6I use the example of these things—

of myself and Apollos—

for you, fellow Christians,

so you might learn from us the saying:

“No more than what was written,”

so you don’t inflate one over another any more:

7What makes you special?

What do you have that you weren’t given?—

if it was given to you, why boast like it wasn’t given to you?

8Now you have enough?

Now you’re wealthy?

You rule like kings without us?

I wish you ruled like kings,

so we might rule like kings with you,

9for I think God puts us apostles on the lowest level,

like death-row inmates,

since we become entertainment to the world,

to angels and to humans.

10We are morons because of Christ.

And you are wise in Christ!

We, weak. You, strong!

You, glorious. We, dishonored.

11Even now, we still hunger and thirst and are naked,

and get punched, and are homeless,

12and are exhausted from manual labor.

We bless while we get told off.

We put up with persecution.

13We help others while getting slandered.

We become what the world cleans off their shoes;

even now, the scum of everything.

Like I said, the apostles used a lot of irony here: What makes the Corinthians special? Why do they boast about blessings as if they earned ’em? Why do they think they get to live their best lives, while at the very same time, the apostles feel like they’re living their very worst lives? What’s up with that?

And why does American Christianity consistently act exactly the same way as these dense Corinthian a--holes?

“No more than what was written.”

Scholars are still debating what Paul and Sosthenes meant by Μὴ ὑπὲρ ἃ γέγραπται/mi ypér a yégrapte, “not over what had been written.” 1Co 4.6 I feel “more than” reflects the meaning of the participle ypér more accurately; so do other bible translations. It’s not an Old Testament quote, and doesn’t come up in Greek or Hebrew philosophy, so they’re not precisely sure what the apostles meant by it. But obviously we have educated guesses!

In the KJV it’s rendered, “not to think [of men] above that which is written.” The words “of men” are in brackets ’cause they were inserted by the KJV’s translators—who didn’t borrow it from the 1568 Bishops Bible, nor the 1599 Geneva Bible; this was entirely their insertion. They figured the apostles meant, “Don’t exalt men over the scriptures”—don’t prioritize the here-and-now preachers over the tried-and-true writings of great saints and the bible. And yeah, preachers certainly need to be double-checked against bible. But not every great saint knew what he was talking about. I disagree with St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, John Wesley, and C.S. Lewis from time to time; so would you, if I showed you certain things they wrote. Saints are fallible! And their writings can be just as fallible. We trust that the writings which made it into the bible are not.

But all this aside: It’s probably not what the apostles meant. Yeah, they wrote this just after they wrote about the divisions among the Corinthians over which apostle they follow. Doesn’t mean “No more than what was written” refers to the apostles. The apostles weren’t the problem! None of ’em were teaching heresy. None of ’em, as far as we know, were going beyond the gospel message. The Corinthians were the problem; they were the ones going overboard. (Or, as we’ll see later in the letter, underboard.)

So the advice to them, as spiritual infants who were botching the gospel, if they were even following it at all, was stick to the scriptures. Yes, Christians have every right to judge apostles, but crummy Christians are in no position to judge anything. They need to ask questions instead of declaring doctrines. They need to learn. Then prove they’ve learned by obeying Jesus. By producing good fruit—and divisiveness ain’t good fruit!

What about those of us who aren’t spiritual infants? Keep sticking to the scriptures. Don’t invent your own stuff! Feel free to express the teachings of the scriptures in new, creative ways, but new teachings?—that’s for Jesus to do, not us. He knows God; us, not so much.

Prosperity-gospel thinking versus real-life experience.

Too many American Christians think if we follow Jesus, we’re gonna be successful. In everything. Just like various Hebrews in the Old Testament; Solomon got money, Mordecai got political favor, Joshua won wars, Samson got white girls. (Well, they don’t preach on Samson so much. But look at ’em: You know they wanna. “Follow Jesus, and you’ll get a smokin’ hot wife like mine!” Uh-huh.)

You see some of this concept in practice in the New Testament. Jesus, James, John, and Paul all had to speak out against people who presumed God blesses our devotion with material wealth; that if you’re rich, it’s because God wants you to be rich. They never acknowledge the fact many people are rich because they cheated their customers, underpaid their employees, bribed rulers, robbed the needy, never paid their fair share, or inherited their wealth from ancestors who did all these evil things and have the gall to claim they merit this ill-gotten mammon. Wealth does not mean you’re righteous! It only means you own stuff. Whether you’re righteous is a whole other thing.

But Corinth was a wealthy trade city, and there were a lot of rich Corinthians. And a lot of ’em probably fell for—and gratefully embraced—the idea that riches are God’s blessings and endorsement. They’re special. They live like kings. 1Co 4.8

In contrast, Paul, Sosthenes, Apollos, and all the other apostles who were traveling from city to city, getting life-threatening pushback from pagans and Pharisees, who had to scrape together the funds to eat, much less travel: This rich Corinthian lifestyle certainly wasn’t their experience. They were suffering for the gospel. They were the sort of guys the Romans threw to the lions in the arena, for fun. 1Co 4.9 (Wasn’t long before the Romans were literally doing that.) They were getting treated like περικαθάρματα/perikathármata (KJV “filth”), a word which literally means “the all-around stuff you clean off”—the mixture of mud and feces and trash you found on every ancient street, and get all over your shoes and sandals and bare feet, and have to clean off when you enter a building. They’re that to the world. The lowest caste of society. Scum of the earth.

I’m not saying we need to pursue the kind of persecution the apostles suffered. Suffering doesn’t make us righteous either! Cult leaders get prosecuted for breaking the law, and absolutely should get prosecuted—they’re not breaking immoral laws; they’re breaking moral ones! But the apostles don’t bring up their suffering because they’re claiming suffering is righteous; they bring it up because not suffering isn’t righteous either. Because wealth doesn’t automatically mean we have God’s favor, or that we know God better, or that we’re following Jesus any more closely. Wealth is morally neutral… but as a form of power, it can easily corrupt, so let’s not be naïve about that.

And it did corrupt the Corinthians into thinking less of Paul because he was so poor. Still corrupts American Christians: If a church is tiny and broke, we presume its pastor must not know God all that well. If a ministry is constantly on the verge of shutting down, it must not serve God all that well. If a writer’s not on the bestseller lists, what does she know? And so forth. We gauge a ministry or minister by “success,” not the Spirit’s fruit. Stands to reason our ministries display an awful lot of rotten fruit!