“Don’t make me come down there!”

1 Corinthians 4.14-21.

The church of Corinth’s confusion about which faction to follow, about clever Christian teachings, about how blessed they are in Christ, provoked the apostles to send them someone trustworthy to correct the church: The apostle Timothy. 1Co 4.17 In the 60s Timothy wound up leading the church of Ephesus, but at this point in the 50s, he was apparently sent by Paul to various hotspots where the Christians were losing sight of the main thing, i.e. following Christ Jesus.

’Cause churches get like that! Still get like that. They follow popular teachers, they get all agitated about what sinners are up to, they dabble in politics (or get fully invested in ’em), they invent loopholes to justify all their sins, they relabel their fleshly behavior to make their evil attitudes sorta sound Christian. The Corinthians did all that stuff and more, and though Paul and Sosthenes rebuke ’em a lot for stuff like this, here Paul recognizes a letter alone is not gonna cut it: He has to send them a good example. Can’t be him right now; he’s in Macedonia. 1Co 16.5 But Timothy’s a good man, so he’ll send ’em Timothy.

1 Corinthians 4.14-21 KWL

14I don’t write these things to embarrass,

but to caution you all, like my beloved children.

15You may have myriads of teachers in Christ,

but not many parents,

for I’m your father in Christ Jesus, through the gospel,

16so I urge you to mimic me.

17This is why I send you Timothy:

He’s my beloved child and has faith in the Master.

He’ll remind you of my way in Christ Jesus,

just as I teach it everywhere in every church.

18Though I myself am not coming to you,

—and some will puff up about that—

19when the Master wills, I will come quickly.

I will know what’s what,

not by the teaching of those who’ve been puffed up,

but the power.

20For God’s kingdom isn’t about teaching,

but about power.

21What do you want?

Should I come to you with a stick?

Or in love, and a spirit of gentleness?

To be fair, though the apostles say, “I don’t write these things to embarrass, but caution you,” no doubt some of this stuff did embarrass them. They thought they were doing great! 1Co 4.8 But they were confusing material prosperity, and clever teachings, with success—as pagans typically do. By pagan standards they’re doing great! But by God’s kingdom’s standards—which to pagan minds, is upside-down in an awful lot of ways—they were completely buggered, and needed some hands-on course correction. They needed Timothy.

Myriads of teachers; one spiritual father.

Often when I refer to spiritual fathers and “early church fathers,” I get some pushback from various Christians who insist we Christians don’t have any spiritual fathers, ’cause of this Jesus quote they love to use out of context.

Matthew 23.9 KJV

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Anti-Catholics particularly love to use this verse to bash Catholic priests. But since Paul calls himself the Corinthians’ father, 1Co 4.15 and pretty much calls himself Timothy’s spiritual father, 1Co 4.17 that can’t be what Jesus meant. After all, people do have spiritual parents. We all have fellow Christians who’ve led us to Jesus and taught us to follow him. Sometimes they’re literal parents, like my mom; sometimes they’re a pastor or a friend. Sometimes they don’t know squat! And sometimes we’ve ditched those spiritual parents, and follow another: Remember when Jesus complained his critics’ spiritual father wasn’t Abraham, but the devil? Jn 8.38-44 Used to be Abraham, but thanks to their loopholes they stopped following him long ago—which is why they couldn’t recognize Jesus.

Paul brought the gospel to Corinth, as he’d stated before. Didn’t baptize many of them, 1Co 1.14-16 but didn’t need to; other guys on his team likely did that. Apollos and Peter, when they came through, might’ve baptized a few of them too. But Paul considered himself their father ’cause he got to them first.

As their father, Paul felt a bit responsible for Corinth. Sad to say, that’s not an attitude we see in certain traveling evangelists. They come to a city, proclaim Jesus, then leave—and expect the city’s churches to follow up on all the newbies, and make sure they join churches and stay Christian. Some churches do that, and do a great job! Some don’t. But what happens when the whole church is on the wrong track?—and that’s what we see in Corinth.

Corinth no doubt thought they were on the right track, for they had “myriads of teachers.” The ESV and NASB render μυρίους/myríus as “countless,” because myríus literally means ten thousand, and the translators are pretty sure Corinth didn’t literally have 10,000 teachers; it’s gotta be hyperbole. I agree—but I’m also sure most readers of a bible aren’t so dense as to take “a myriad of teachers” literally. Then again, some of ’em are! But the apostles were only making the point Corinth had a lot of teachers. Really, “countless” is hyperbole too. Nothing’s countless to God.

And while having a lot of bible teachers sounds mighty impressive—and Baptists in particular love to point out they’ve got a lot of really good teachers among them—is it? Are these teachers emphasizing what Jesus teaches, and encouraging Christians to produce good fruit? Or are they just filling people’s heads with a lot of bible trivia? ’Cause back when I was a young hypocrite, I knew tons of bible trivia, which greatly impressed all my pastors, but I was just as fleshly as any pagan. Wasn’t acting like Jesus! And duplicating Jesus should be the goal of every bible teacher. We want ’em to be more like Jesus, not win game shows.

This is why Paul tells people—more than once in the scriptures—to mimic him. 1Co 4.16 Not because he’s the best Christian ever, but because he tries to follow Jesus, and all of us should likewise try to follow Jesus. He tries to emphasize the gospel, grace, gracious good deeds, fruitful attitudes and behavior, constructive supernatural gifts, and getting ready for Christ’s second coming. Unlike Christ Jesus, he fumbles—but gets back up and tries again, and we should do likewise.

Because Paul wrote a big chunk of bible, every Christian technically considers him a spiritual father. After all, we quote him like he’s infallible scripture—because his New Testament writings are infallible scripture! And there’s nothing at all wrong with seeing Paul as our spiritual father. Actually I recommend it. He explains salvation better than anyone. But of course he’s not our only spiritual parent; we also have the other authors of the New Testament, and the prophets of the Old Testament. We have Abraham and Moses.

We having living saints too. We have current preachers and writers. We have a wealth of resources, and all of it belongs to us—and we belong to Christ, and Christ to God. 1Co 3.22-23 So it’s not disloyalty to Christ to have other spiritual parents. It’s just that Jesus gets the final word: If your spiritual parents aren’t consistent with Jesus, always go with Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Got it? Good.

It’s not the teaching; it’s the power.

You’re gonna find plenty of powerless Christians who insist Christian teaching is the power. “I got a powerful word for you!” Well, it might be true and impressive and influential, but the dynamo of God’s kingdom is the Holy Spirit, and if you don’t have him, your power is like a 1½-volt battery. Might power a small motor, like that of a clock, for a while; but not big things, and certainly not forever.

Paul had already said when he first came to Corinth, he didn’t focus on his message and lessons, but on the power of the Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit’s power is gonna actually change lives. Radically change lives. And for the better!—whereas a human message, like that battery, can power good or evil, depending on where you plug it.

By “power,” the apostles don’t automatically mean the things we’d call “supernatural”—we’re not always talking about prophecies and faith healing. A radical change in one’s attitude and behavior isn’t necessarily seen as a supernatural thing. Traumatic experiences can trigger such changes too. But again, not always for the better!—and in fact, a traumatic experience is gonna stuff down a whole lot of evil instead of dealing with it and getting rid of it. The Holy Spirit absolutely doesn’t work that way. He deals with these things in healthy ways. He guides us to good therapists and counselors. He helps us fight our hangups and prejudices, instead of pretending they’re all gone now. He helps us reconcile with people we’ve wronged, instead of demanding they forgive us now ’cause we’ve “changed” (except we really haven’t). I could go on, but enough about this tangent.

Domineering Christians, the sort of “puffed-up” folks the apostles write about, are regularly gonna try to swap the Spirit’s power with something they can control. Same as Jesus, the Spirit is Lord, and they can’t control him! So they try to claim he’s a “gentleman,” who would never, ever tell us what to do—and therefore we ignore him whenever he does tell us what to do. They try to claim he doesn’t do acts of power anymore—and therefore we don’t do the same miracles Jesus and the apostles did, and demonstrate God doesn’t only work through these control-freak leaders.

But the only sure way to make sure a church continues to grow in Christ, and doesn’t need apostles to regularly send ’em corrective letters—and occasionally corrective apostles in person!—is to show ’em how to listen to and follow the Holy Spirit. How to tap God’s power for themselves. How to use the resources of God’s kingdom, rather than sit on their arses and wait for Kingdom Come instead of following Jesus right now.

And the Corinthians had to decide right now: What kind of leadership did they want? Someone who’d smack ’em over the heads with a stick, like their current leaders were probably doing? Or someone who’d come to them in the spirit of Jesus, with patience and kindness and grace? Should Paul bring a stick, or Christ’s love? (Spoiler: Love.)