26 August 2024

In the face of Corinthian disunity, St. Paul uses two powerful  arguments. Firstly, the primacy of God’s work. Apollos and Paul have a common  purpose. They are working together not in competition. They have different jobs to do. The one plants. The other waters.

But it’s God who gives the growth. ‘So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,’ he says, ‘but only God who gives the growth.’ Without God, our work is in vain. What is harvested from our endeavour is God’s alone. (1 Corinthians 3;7)

This is the true perspective for all ministry. It is not ours but God’s. We all participate in the ministry of Christ. What is of lasting value is not what we do per se but what God accomplishes through us. This perspective rightly challenges our pride and our disunity.

Secondly, the folly of the cross. And this is Paul’s most eloquent starting point. ‘For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ Through the folly of the cross, Christ has turned the world’s values upside down. And if the Corinthians wanted more evidence of this, they only needed to look at themselves.

‘Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.’ he writes. ‘But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world …’ (1 Corinthians 1;26,27)

Why? Why has God made these surprising choices? He has made them so that ‘no one might boast in the presence of God’. For we have nothing to boast about except what God has been able to do through us. So, once again, disunity is challenged and perspective renewed.

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