Has Christ been divided?

OK, so we're going to look at verses 13 through 17 today. We started back about three or four weeks ago in Corinthians. So this lesson has been titled, I titled it, Has Christ Been Divided? So let's look at the problem that Paul was facing with the Corinthian church. The book of Corinthians is going to talk about a lot of issues that the Corinthian church had. And the problem of divisions was one of the main things that Paul addressed.

So in these verses we covered two weeks ago, I'd like to just read through them again. Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, Eye of Apollos, Eye of Cephas, Eye of Christ.

So you notice in here that Paul, in verse 10, he wants the Corinthians to be agreeing. He wants them to be of the same mind. But their focus on They're focused on men. They're focused on Paul, Apollos, Cephas. So verse 12 says, now I mean this, each one of you is saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ. So Paul's saying, this is what I mean.

He's pointing out, this is a division that this church is having. It seems pretty incredible that they would be having this division. So he's telling what these quarrels are about. He says, each one of you. So it wasn't just a small group. It was basically the entire body there in Corinth. Each and every one of you involved the whole church. What follows is the issues that were involved in the Corinthian church there. So the last part of this is pretty amazing.

Apparently, every Corinthian had picked his own person. and personalities were in view here it seems like so in the original language it comes across as I'm of Paul I'm identifying with Paul and I'm identifying with Apollos I'm identifying with Cephas I'm identifying and then the really spiritual person would say well hey you guys you're dealing with I'm identifying with Christ I must have this right the rest of you have it wrong and you notice that they all have what we call an eye problem Have you ever had people talk with you about, you know, I this and I that? They use I so many times that it kind of gives them away. So, I here is the word ego or ego. The emphatic personal pronoun in the original language.

Centered on personalities. They're focused on personalities. But what's interesting is, if we look through scripture, we don't find that Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Peter, were not teaching the truths about Christ. They were teaching the truths of Christ. They were absolutely right on. But men were looking at styles of, apparently, how they present themselves. You know, if you look at Apollos, he was called an eloquent man. I actually have a story about that a little bit later on, about how someone can be so eloquent that it actually can hurt their ministry. And Apollos had a warrant against that.

So we'll see. Okay, so let's go on. So now let's look at today's outline. So we started off this book by looking at the first nine verses. There was a salutation that started off, and then there was kind of a description of the church in Corinth. And Paul starts off talking about who they are in Christ, what they have in the Savior, what do all believers share in common, along with this Corinthian church. That was for the first nine. And then we just talked about the divisions that were stated in 10 and 12. Today we're going to talk about 13 through 17. He's going to talk about the issues about this. And he's going to talk about basically how is unity achieved.

It's really achieved by focusing on the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's one Christ, one cross, one baptism. And Paul was sent to preach the gospel. That's what the Lord would have him do. And he's going to spend quite a bit of time talking about that. And then in the coming weeks here, we're going to talk about the true nature of the gospel, the membership of the church, the nature of true wisdom, and the nature of Christian service. And these are all with a focus on how do we achieve unity in the body. You know, man's way of achieving unity in the body is, well, let's get together and see what you believe, what I believe, and then you give a little bit, I'll give a little bit.

Well, God doesn't work that way. He wants us to focus on the truth of who Christ is and what he's done, and for us to agree on what that is, and our only source is to be scripture. So Paul is presenting God's solution to unity in the Corinthian church, not man's solution. So here are the verses for today, and it starts off with a rather dramatic statement. Has Christ been divided? Was Paul not crucified for you? Was he?

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Now, I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. And then verse 17 is kind of the capstone of what Paul wants to put forward. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. So we're going to go through each of these verses, kind of line by line, and look at each one. I think there's something to be gained by doing this. So let's start off.

Has Christ been divided? And this is an interesting statement. If you look on the Interlinear, Interlinear is a word-for-word translation from the original language. It comes across rather strongly. It states that Christ has been divided. or Christ is divided. And the way that comes about is that we're divided in the original language is the means to divide into parts.

It's in what's called the perfect tense, which is a past completed action with abiding results. So this is saying that you Corinthians have divided Christ up. That's a pretty awful testimony of the Corinthian church. They have divided Christ up. And it's used pretty commonly in scripture. When Christ fed the 5,000, it was used to divide up the fishes. He broke the loaves and he divided up the fishes. So how would we translate this? One of my favorite go-to people is Wiest. And Wiest renders this, has been divided as follows. Rather strong language. Christ has been divided into various parts. with the present result that he lies there broken up into fragments which are distributed among you. So how did this happen? What's going on here?

So I kind of, so I believe that the Corinthians were by claiming that I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas and so on, I'm of Christ, they were dividing up the true message of Christianity. They were dividing it into pieces to their own liking. They liked certain aspects of each one, but they were dividing it up that way. So then after that statement, he goes on to the next point. He says, has Christ been divided? And they apparently have divided up Christ.

And then Paul says, well, was Paul not crucified for you? Was he? Is that possible? What value could Paul being crucified have? Because there's only one cross, One death of Christ on the cross that satisfied God's demands of a holy God. Paul being crucified would not enhance Christ's cross. There could be no enhancement with Paul being crucified.

So his next point is, are you baptized in the name of Paul? And it can literally be translated, baptized into Paul. And that kind of makes you think about the wonderful truths of being baptized into Christ, as we see talked about in Romans, talked about our spiritual baptism.

But what's in view here, I believe, is water baptism. So we know from Scripture that that when a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, that this is what's called the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that's the name that will be baptized, the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But I think there's something else that comes across here, in the name of, what does that connote? In the name of something connotes the idea of true harmony of the person, who he is, what his attributes are. It's a real person. So basically, when we say we're baptized in the name of Christ, or in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that's in the name of God, not in a man.

So, several verses that talk about doing things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Ephesians 5.20 and in Colossians 3.17.

So, Paul puts to rest the fact that that being crucified does not add anything to Christ's message or to being baptized in his name is any point. But he wants to kind of put this to rest. So he's going to spend, so Paul's going to, at this point, he's going to go into, in verses 14 through 16, he's going to talk about baptism, water baptism. And he wants to make several points. So let's look at that. Paul wants to make clear the absurdity of being baptized in Paul's name. That's just not something that should be done.

But he does want to point out that baptism is an outward sign that you have put your faith in the Lord Jesus. Also, since only God sees the heart, by being baptized, by going under water baptism, you are testifying to the reality of faith in Jesus Christ. So that's the point he's trying to bring across here. And so Paul's going to discuss his interaction with baptism, how he was involved in baptism. He's going to talk about different people that he baptized. And actually, it turns out there's only three groups of people that he baptized. So we're going to see that in the following verses. So let's look at that. I'm going to kind of start in the middle of verse 14, or the last part of verse 14.

So who were Crispus and Gaius? And actually, we learn a little bit about Paul's ministry by looking at these two gentlemen. and their households. So Crispus is talked about in Acts 18.8. Crispus was a leader of the synagogue. So he was a Jew. He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ with all his household.

And many of the Corinthians, when they heard that, were being baptized. So the picture that we see is that Crispus believed. And once he believed, then he was baptized. And that's the picture we see. If you look through scripture, you look in Acts, you look in various places, you'll see that the pattern is you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then as testimony to that, you're baptized.

And that was true of Crispus' household. But what's interesting in this verse, it talks about the fact that the Corinthians, when they saw that, They believed, and they were baptized. If you read carefully there, it's kind of hard to read. We put some commas in there to make sure. When they heard that, they were believing and being baptized.

So the testimony of his household had influence on the Corinthian church, which is pretty neat. And then Gaius, he was another gentleman that's talked about at the end of Romans. He was a host to me, Paul says. And then he was a fellow companion from Macedonia with Aristarchus. So we're not told, but he was baptized by Paul. We're going to talk about that in a minute here. So let's look at the first part of the verse. I thank God that I baptized none of you except, and that's Crispus and Gaius.

So why would Paul say this? So I think verse 15 tells us, and just a little bit of note for Bible study, I know it's helpful to get a little hint sometimes, and what's helped me tremendously, whenever you see that or so that, It's like a little red flag going off in your brain. What's going to follow is going to be the purpose for that. So this is going to be the purpose for him.

I thank my God that I baptized none of you except. So he's going to give us a purpose here. No one would say that you were baptized in my name. So Paul was concerned about people kind of lining up. I'm going to line up, if I'm going to get baptized, I'm going to be baptized by Paul, because he's the man. He's the guy that everybody looks up to, so I want to be baptized in him. He baptizes me. So that's what Paul was trying to prevent. And Constable had a good statement here.

Paul deliberately did not baptize his converts, so there would be no question as to who were his disciples. He didn't want people to say, well, I'm your disciple because you baptized me. He didn't want that to be part of it. So if you look at his total ministry and the people he was involved with, three different groups of people isn't a whole lot of people.

But he's not diminishing the fact of water baptism. That's pretty critical here. So here's a third gentleman that's talked about, Stephanas. And he says, now I urge you, brethren, You know the household of Stephanas, that they were the first fruits of Achaia, and Achaia is a place in Greece that Paul ministered to, and that they devoted themselves to the ministry of the saints. So his household, he baptized his household. So now Paul's going to kind of sum this up here.

Paul's apparently, it's like he's searching his memory. Baptism wasn't his focus, was not his focus, and we're going to see why in verse 17. It's just really important. That was not the focus of Paul's ministry. He can only remember three times that he baptized. There may be others he's saying, this is what he could remember. And maybe there were, but he can't remember them.

So Paul's leading up to the important point, which is going to come about in verse 17. So here we go. So he's going to start, this verse is kind of structured. If you look carefully, you know, sometimes to make a point, you might state the negative of the point. So he states the negative first. He puts the negative first and tells us the positive.

He says, for Christ did not send me to baptize. So that wasn't why Christ sent Paul. The subject is Christ. This is his word, apostello, to send out on service or send on a mission. And we see that in various parts of scripture. In this case, this is the negative of that.

He's saying, I was not set out on a mission by Christ to baptize. So Paul's mission is not focused on baptism of new believers. But he did baptize believers when needed. He did that. That was fine. But that wasn't his mission. So what was his mission? And that's stated in the next part of this verse. But to preach the gospel. Christ's mission for Paul was to preach the gospel.

And this is a really neat word in the original language. I think that's pronounced. I pronounce it as well as my computer pronounces it. If my computer pronounces it right, I pronounce it right. It's pretty cool these days. I listen to it really carefully three or four times. Hey, I got this word down here. So I pronounce it as well as the computer pronounces it. So you can talk to me later if you don't like my pronunciation.

You on Galitzo is is to preach the gospel a beautiful word it's almost always use of the good news concerning the Son of God as proclaimed in the gospel and And here's the just the incredible thing, you know Paul didn't Paul didn't get the other some days with his other believers and say hey You know, I gotta come up with a message that will really sell Christ. We got to find a message here. They'll sell Christ That never happened God had divinely appointed him and gave him the message. Paul didn't have the message.

Imagine if you go for a job and you say, well, I'm going to talk up your firm. And they say, well, what's your message about our firm? And you say, well, you're going to give me the message. And they say, what? Didn't we hire you for your intellect? We hire you for your what? No. Christ gave Paul the message.

So in Galatians 1.11 and 1.12, it tells us about that.

For I would have you know, brethren, The gospel which was preached by me is not according to men. Boy, that's huge. For I neither received it from a man, nor was taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So, Paul spent some one-on-one time, as we like to say, one-on-one time, which is tough to get these days, in the days of the corona, it's tough to get that one-on-one time, but he spent one-on-one time with the Savior.

And this was the message he got, this wonderful gospel message. And a little bit more is talked about in 1 Corinthians 15, which is the start of that section that talks about the gospel. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preach to you, which also you receive, and which also you stand, by which you also are saved. So the gospel, the good news, is intended to save people.

That's the intent of that message. And that message was received by Paul. He didn't fake it up. He didn't add little tweaks to it. It was the message received directly from our Savior. And that's so critical. So that message, as you might guess, needs to be preserved. We don't want to, in any way, detract from that message. So the last part of this verse, the last part of 17, is going to be warnings against a corrupted gospel. How might I corrupt the gospel? So he's going to talk about that. So warnings about preaching the gospels. It's not to be in cleverness of speech. Doesn't say you can't be clever, but it's not in speaking not cleverness of speech. Okay, so cleverness is actually is Sophia.

It's human wisdom God wouldn't will not have human wisdom as part of his Message human wisdom is not part of what God is about and we see that and Mike's gonna be covering that next week And I have the interlinear translation of this in verse 19 For it for it has been written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones, and the understanding of the intelligent I will set aside." So God in His wisdom does not want man's wisdom to enter into His message, His saving message. And God is our creator, He's the one that makes those decisions, and that's a totally wise decision because man Is a fallen being he wants his message to be the pure milk of the word and what I did here and I was thinking How to get across not in cleverness of speech. So I picked three different translations That I like and here's that here the three this is the translation of not in cleverness of speech trying to bring across this wisdom that's kind of wrapped up in that so weast has it not within the realm of philosophical discourse. The Amplified Bible has it, not with verbal eloquence. And then Darby has it, not in the wisdom of word.

So I'd just like to take a little detour here, but I think it's an appropriate one. Vani and I had the privilege of living in the UK, in North Yorkshire, for five years, which was actually quite a long time. We would have stayed longer, I think. But anyway, it was a pretty wonderful time. And we had an opportunity to worship in a local church there. It was a Bible church, and they taught scripture, and it was good. They occasionally would have visiting speakers, and they had an evening service many times.

So in the morning, this gentleman spoke, and he spoke quite eloquently. He spoke to our ears, to Rodney and I's ears, he spoke more understandable English than we found from the Yorkshire people. Yorkshire people had a heavy accent. We had a difficult time understanding English with a Yorkshire accent.

So we had the occasion where this lady after the service came up to Bonnie and she said, she asked Bonnie if Bonnie knew whether this gentleman was going to be speaking in the evening service. Because if he was, she wasn't going to come because she didn't understand a word he said.

And it wasn't so much, and we thought, I thought, what in the world? I'm an American. How in the world? How in the world could I? You know, he couldn't make any sense of it. And what we came to the conclusion was, and we kind of know, this gentleman was very eloquent. In fact, he was so eloquent that I could not understand what his message was. So I thought this was an excellent case. You can be so eloquent and have such flowery words that you miss the message.

And Paul doesn't want that to happen. And God doesn't want that to happen. That is not his desire, is it, to be a simple message of the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So with that said, I think the simple message of the Gospel is this. I just kind of compressed it to four statements, and they're all right there in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 3. The four statements are, Christ died for our sins, Christ was buried, Christ was raised, Christ appeared. That's the core part of the gospel. That's the simplistic part of the gospel. Christ died for our sins, Christ was buried, Christ was raised, and He appeared.

And it's a simple message, and we don't want to distort that in any way. So Paul has one last thing to talk about here in terms of distorting the message. So that, with a purpose that, the cross of Christ would be made void. So what's the cross of Christ?

You read that phrase. We're going to spend some time on that. It's first mentioned here in Corinthians in this verse. We're going to see it more. It's going to be contrasted with the wisdom, all the way through with God's wisdom, with man's wisdom, with God's wisdom, the cross of Christ.

So this definition I found is McCauley, Chester McCauley, it just does an outstanding job on kind of pulling things and getting really wonderful definitions. And so let me read this, I'm going to read it a couple times. The doctrine of the cross, and this actually is the gospel just right in here. The doctrine of the cross is a teaching that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died a death wherein the guilt and penalty of man's sins was placed on him making it possible for salvation to be extended to those who believe in Christ. So let's just read it again, and hopefully you can read it with me. It's great. Actually, the charts come out wonderful on Zoom. Hopefully it all looks good today.

The doctrine of the cross, or the cross of Christ, is the teaching that Jesus, the Son of God, that's a person. You know, it's a person and the work of Christ. That is what we're to believe in. He starts off with the person. Who is Jesus Christ? He's the Son of God. Died a death, where the guilt and the penalty of man's sins was placed on Him, making it possible for salvation to be extended to those who believe in Christ. Just a wonderful, wonderful message.

So his last point is, would not be made void. That's his last concern here. He doesn't want that message to be made void. And made void is the idea to make of no effect, to empty of its power. So Zodiatis says it's used in reference to the cross of Christ, meaning the cross not accomplishing its purpose, the salvation for unbelieving men, So, and this is kind of my words here at the last, if Paul were to use man's wisdom in presenting the cross of Christ, this message would be ineffective and without the power of the Holy Spirit. If we, if we let man's wisdom creep into that, we, we change the message ever so slightly to make Christ more acceptable, to make, you know, well, this, this crowd won't like this message. And we keep changing, we make it acceptable to man's wisdom. the power of that message is degraded, is made of no effect.

And that was Paul's concern. That was his big concern. So a couple final thoughts, and these are from Constable. He points out later in Corinthians, Paul points out that the Corinthian Christians were viewing things through carnal eyes, namely seeing them as the unsaved people do. And that comes out perfectly.

They were worried about men and how men men talked, how men looked, how men presented things. And that's not what Paul wanted to be about. Paul did not emphasize or place confidence in his method of preaching. But the message of the cross, he wanted the method of preaching, whether you preach loudly or softly, whether you're flamboyant or quiet, whatever it might be, he wanted the message to come across Clearly he did not want to draw attention away from the gospel message to his style of delivering the message So let's pray Thank you father for our time today Lord. We thank you for the the blessings. We have in our Savior Thank you for your wonderful message of of God's saving power. Thank you for Paul's Diligence and wanting to preserve that message in Christ's name. Amen. I