1 Corinthians 1:10-17
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. 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.
Sermon:
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Last week, we started a walk through the beginning of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the first letter he, in the order of our, of our Bible, we looked at his opening, where he talked about some of the problems that were going on in Corinth, to let them know that Jesus was enough for them, that they didn't need all of the extra things to fight over spiritual gifts, or power or status, that having Jesus was enough. Today, we're continuing to go through this letter, and see the problems that St. Paul is addressing in the church in Corinth, and looking at how they can apply to church life here. Because the letter to the Corinthians is about our life together as Christians, whether in a congregation or relating to each other around the world. And that's what St. Paul is talking about to them. Today, he talks to them about divisions. He says that he does not want them to be divided, but that you but, “That you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”
He says that there has been a report by Chloe's people, whoever they are, that they are divided into factions. Now, this isn't just a debate within the church. This is real fighting going on, that they are divided into tribal groups. What it reminds me of is the old Greek schools of philosophy. You know, what they would do is they would have, like a founder, like Zeno was a founder, or Plato or Aristotle, and they would found these institutions where they would have this school of learning, and they would go on for centuries sometimes, and he would go, Well, I am a stoic, or I am an epicurean. Sounds a little bit like that in the church. I follow Paul, I follow a Paulus. I follow Sisyphus, or I follow Christ. It's a little bit like they all had joined up in a team. And then maybe the last one were those people who are sick of it all and say, I'm an independent. Right? Now, I just follow Jesus. Come on, guys. And the thing is, is that St. Paul is urging them that having these factions in the church, divisions in the Church of God undermines the unity that Christ wants his church to have. Unity is a big deal. In the letter to the Corinthians, it goes over and over and over again, we see this theme, whether it's unity in communion, unity in the body of Christ, unity in love. Paul wants to make sure that they know the church is supposed to be united. And he tells him You are to be united in the same mind and the same judgment. Chapter 12 gives us the best image of this, the one that we know pretty well, I'm sure where it says, For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves are free. And all were made to drink of the one Spirit. So there's unity isn't just an organizational thing, but there is a spiritual unity being brought together in the body of Christ. Or as he puts it, in Ephesians four,
there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.
We also confess the unity of the church when we confess the apostles are the Nicene Creed, where it goes I believe in one holy we use the word Christian here, but the original word is Catholic, which means universal, I believe even one holy catholic or universal church, and the communion of saints, which means we are in a whole church bound together in this spiritual unity that we have with Christ. You and I, we are united in Jesus, because He has come to us and adopted us into His family and given us this one Spirit. We are bound together deeper than any other kind of bond. And we should be committed to that kind of unity inside our congregation and with Christians outside as well. On a congregational level, it means that we should always be committed to loving one another, and solving disputes between this doesn't mean we can't debate at all. In fact, sometimes we do quite vigorously. And that's a good thing. As we discuss our future or think about life, we should disagree sometimes. But always come back together as the Body of Christ and love each other, and serve God towards his mission. When that unity breaks, when we actually have real problems we need to solve, we actually should solve them. Not just cover them up, not hide them, not pretend like they're not there. Because the mystical unity of Christ demands that we actually solve our divisions. So that we have, as St. Paul says, that one mind, and one judgment. So we can come together as a congregation and take Christ's holy body and blood and say we are truly united in him.
But of course, I think when we read this, when we say, when we see what Paul's examples where he goes, I follow Paul a policy first, or I follow Christ, the first thing that we have to think about, at least I do in my head is what are we doing in a Lutheran church? Because if there is any place where we say I follow Luther, maybe it's in a Lutheran church, right? This almost seems like a direct challenge to us does? Well, first, what we have to say is, we didn't give ourselves that name. In fact, we never wanted to be kicked out of the Catholic Church to begin with. If you look back at the history of this, Martin Luther himself said, no, no, let's not do this. He says, quote, what is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. How then Should I pour stinking maggot fodder than I am? Come to have men called the children of Christ by my wretched name. He had a way with words, right. When you look at the history of our church, you can see that the first document that the Lutherans put out, the Augsburg confession was a was presented to the Catholic Church as a way of saying, Don't kick us out. We are really good Catholics. And they did anyway.
Many people assume Luther wanted to go out and was like, I will be an entrepreneur and start my own church. And it was the opposite of what he wanted to do. What he wanted was to have a debate within the Catholic Church, call a council bring out God's word and have everybody talk about it so that we could get back to the way it's supposed to be. Even at the end of his life, when he's writing the small called articles, this is what he was hoping to do. That the church would gather together a council of everyone so that they could finally have the debate he always wanted. It never happened. How did we get the name Lutheran? Well, it was because other people called us that. That happens a lot, doesn't it? People looked at at the the evangelicals. That's what they called themselves, gospel centered people, and they call them Lutherans, and eventually, we took it up as well. instead.
Yet, we still know that there are problems in the division that there is right. But when we look around, we know that there is a lot of division within the church. In fact, there are all sorts of names. There are Baptists, and Methodists, and Lutheran there are divisions within the Lutherans. It's actually kind of kind of crazy. And one of the great big problems of the church, perhaps the most tragic thing that the church has happened is this division, that we have been divided ever since the Great Schism. And ever since then, we have been cracking and breaking until now, just about every church is its own denomination, with its own mini Pope. How do we deal with this unity? How do we come together with the same mind and the same judgment? I used to talk to people who've been in the Lutheran church their whole lives who grow grew up in the 50s and 60s, and they would tell me that many of the divisions that happened in between the different groups at the time, mostly seem tribal, you know, you would never go to a Catholic church because they were Catholics, and we were Lutheran. And that was pretty much the theological division, like they do. They do weird stuff, and we do our own thing. I remember as a young child, having someone explained to me that one of the big differences about why we have an empty cross and Catholics have a crucifix in the front of their church is because we believe Jesus is risen from the dead, and they believe he's still on the cross. Ridiculous, right? Of course, they don't believe that. But it was mostly about stereotype, and, and misunderstanding. And now that most of us have moved past some of those things, that things that divide us are actually real in our different denominations, and our different groups. Because these aren't just tribal stereotypes or different practices, but there's real theological division. We can't pretend they're not there. Just like in a congregation that is fighting, you can't pretend that those divisions don't exist. We have to approach these in a faithful way. Because Paul tells us, we should be of the same mind and the same judgment. How do we do that? Perhaps the history of the church can help us out with this. If you look at the early church, they did their best to make sure that the church was united and bound together in the same judgment. And all you have to do is go to Acts chapter 15. And find when the church was rocked by the circumstances cision scandal, when Jews were going around telling the Gentiles that they had to be circumcised to be saved, what did they do? They called a meeting. They got together, they talked about it. And one guy stood up James and said, Here's what we're going to do. Gentiles don't need to be circumcised or follow the law of Moses. They talked about God's word. They had a debate, they heard what was going on, and they made a decision and the church came together. The same thing happened a few 100 years later, in the Council of Nicaea. There was this guy named Arias who was going around and teaching that Jesus was not God. That he was a created being, maybe the most powerful and first of the created beings, but still just a created being. So what did they do? They called a meeting, the gathered in all of the bishops. They talk talked about God's word, they debated they figured out what it really had to say, and they came up with the Nicene Creed to show us what a unity is. And after that, the church said this is the same mind in the same judgment. Jesus is truly God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, god of God, Light of Light, very God, a very God and begotten not made. In 431 AD, the church College Council of Ephesus there was this bishop named Nestorius, who wanted to preserve the divinity and humanity of Jesus so much, he kind of separated the two and acted as if the that marry wasn't truly the Mother of God, but only the mother of the human nature. And that the two natures didn't really interact, which is a big problem, because if the two natures don't interact, then there's no body and blood right up there in communion. So what did they do? Cyril of Alexandria, he was the patriarch of that area, who was very aggressive about dealing with this. What he did was, he split communion until they could have a meeting, which they called in for 31 ad. They got together, they made some decisions, they debated God's word. And they came together around what the true interpretation of God's word is. They were dedicated to preserving that unity. They were dedicated to making sure they understood the truth, and came together around it to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ. But they did it by being united in the word in doctrine, and not just covering up these things. And I think that's the challenge for us, as we look at the different groups and churches around us, is that it's very tempting just to say, we want to be nice to each other. So we'll act as if we're all the same. But we can't. Because we are different. Lutherans have a different way of understanding the gospel from Baptists or Methodists were Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox. In fact, we're talking about those things in our Bible study in between services right now, helping us understand what are these differences. And they're important, we can't cover them up. The Paul was pretty, pretty aggressive. When people were doing things that weren't right. When they didn't understand the gospel correctly. Listen to what he says in Galatians chapter one, he opens up the letter he writes to them, he does his intro thing. And the first thing he says is, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel. pretty aggressive, right? Yikes. Or maybe Second Peter chapter three, where Peter talks about interpreting God's word.
“There are some things in them those scriptures that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. Therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people, and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him the glory now and to the day of eternity, amen.”
We want to be together and unite it with our brothers and sisters of Christ to understand God's word differently than we did.
And one of the great things is that we can know that on the last day when Jesus returns, and he raises us from the dead, all these labels will fall away, because we'll know face to face. And as we deal with the conflict, and the pain and the sadness of this, we can hold on to that hope. But until then, we have to use God's Word, to understand what God truly wants to help us come together. And it's the word of God. That word of the cross that St. Paul tells us is that it's supposed to bring us together, for it is the power of God for all of us. And so, that's what we do. As we deal with the differences. We use God's word to talk and debate and think and pray. But until these divisions are healed, we have to know that they're real and true. And as much as it pains me and makes me sad, as I'm sure it does. As you we can't overlook it in Jesus name amen
Transcribed by https://otter.ai