Authority

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

What happens in a family when there are division and quarreling, does it not lead to mistrust?  How would you define a family; a mother and dad who have children, and they live together in a household?  Maybe you define it as a group of people related to one another by blood, marriage, or adoption.  But for the family to work it requires the parents to be the authority, and to not have turf battles, but to show a unified approach with love for God and all He is doing, a love for each other, and love is the core, it produces loyalty and trust.

Most of my life I’ve heard the term church family, and being raised in small Baptist churches, it seemed like it was the most dysfunctional family one could have known, or been a part of.  Jan and I often laugh when we see a small Baptist church with the name of Unity, and one of us will say, they just split from another little Baptist church and the unity is very temporary.  Now we laugh, but it is shameful, and an affront to our LORD, so why does it happen?   Authority!  One or more people want to run the show, and they are ignorant of how the LORD set-up His Church, or just full of self and want to be the kingpin.

You may ask, is this a new thing and it’s clear from this first letter to the church in Corinth that it is not.  Now listen to the apostle Paul; “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.”  Someone in the household of Chloe was troubled by what was taking place in the church family and shared it with Paul.  With whose authority did Paul come to the church, it was in the name of Jesus Christ?  What is his requesting from them, is it not unity, not division, but to have the same judgment or mind of Christ?

And this was the problem; “What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? 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 may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

As you and I have found in our family and church life the problem on the surface does not expose the source, so what was the source?   The bad news is it has not changed, it goes by many names, pride, arrogance, fear, and even disdain for others in the family, but the source is the evil one, the one Jesus tells us in John 10:10, has come to kill, steal, and destroy.  And the deceiver is good at his job, he plants seeds of greed, and rebellion in the hearts of foolish people who are ignorant of Jesus’ teaching, and you have division.

 I’ve been told that sheep are not the smartest of animals and yet they learn the voice of the sheepherder and though many sheep are put into the same pen, they will only follow the voice of their shepherd.  Do you know that God calls us sheep, so much for the smart thing, but we need to learn the voice of our Shepherd?  The evil one or deceiver does not come to us with a strange voice, it sounds like ours, but one of his great lines and lies is, “You deserve, you're smarter, you're better, have more talent, and the list keeps going, and his goal is to have you rebel against the authority God has placed over you.  This is true in the home, at work, on a ball team, or as a member of a local body of believers called the church.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice