“Combating Partisan Pride”

Monday, April 27, 2020

In Jesus God broke into the world to turn the world upside down but he did it in a subversive, topsy turvy way. He did it, not by coming in a way that the world viewed as powerful and glorious, but by means of a carpenter’s son, from a nowhere town, who preached meekness over might, and suffering, service, and submission over status. In the ultimate demonstration of the backward way that God brought about His purposes, He had this Jesus die in one of the most humiliating and shameful ways possible. Though He would afterward raise Him from the dead, the lesson that shame comes before splendor would have been a tough pill to swallow in a culture that was obsessed with status and Sophistry (a form of philosophy that especially emphasized style). Jesus was shaking the foundations of culture and society.

All of this comes to head in Corinth, a city that in the days of Jesus and Paul was “more Greek than Rome and more Rome than Athens.” It was a cultural melting pot, with many different expressions of the sorts of value systems, Christianity and its Christ were beginning to subvert. Paul writes to Christians who were in many ways still encumbered with ideas inculcated by their culture. In order to live in line with their profession of following Christ, these Christians needed to climb down from their pillars of pride and divest themselves of status. Especially egregious for Paul was that they were taking a system that status shirking as its foundation and turning it into a system of status symbols. They divided over who had the most sophisticated teacher, who had attained a higher level of knowledge, and whose spiritual gift made them more spiritual.

In order to combat this partisan pride, Paul reminds them of several truths that I think will help us as we evaluate our work, identity, and calling both as individuals and as a community. First, he reminds them that the cross is antithetical to clawing and climbing the social ladder and that Christianity does not exist without the cross. If we could keep the cross in our forefront we would realize there is no place for self-promotion or looking down at others.

Second, he reminds them that the teachers they have rallied around are all merely servants, working toward the same goal. Part of Paul’s strategy in this is to point out the various seasons in the life of a church. Paul came to plant, Apollos came afterward to water. Churches go through cycles, needing something different in different seasons. Different is not necessarily better, though it may be better suited to a particular season. For myself, I am indebted and grateful for the work that brother Jim and brother Earl have done for the group here and I hope that I am building on that well. If we could better see the work done by our fellow brothers and sisters as contributing to our unified purpose of bringing glory to God and growing the community of His people rivalry would dissipate and effectiveness would increase.

This gets the third point and second metaphor Paul gives, that of God’s building or temple. The church at large, Christians of all time, everywhere, together make up the dwelling place for God. This is a great honor as well as a humbling reality. Each of us is merely one part of a much greater whole, thus we must not think too highly of ourselves. Having said that, however, what a great honor it is to be part of the building project that ultimately houses God! Thus, each of us will take great care for how we build upon it, which behooves us to climb down from our pride pillars and get to work.

Finally, Paul uses the metaphor of the body, each Christian being a different member or part. We all have a different role, but each is necessary. Without one part, the body is less than whole and complete and loses an important function. This reality should ground 1) my appreciation for my fellow members’ skills, efforts, and contributions 2) an understanding of my own function in the body and 3) my need to work in such a way to build up the body as a whole. No part works for its own ends or purposes to the detriment of the other (save the guy who only works his biceps at the gym, who is topsy turvy in another way. Don’t be that guy.)

Let us keep the cross ever before us, realize that we and the teachers we follow are all servants together, stones in God’s great building project for His glory, and members of the same body, diverse and necessary to the function of the whole.

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