1 CORINTHIANS 1:10-17 - Fault Lines

Introduction

Just before midnight on March 12th, 1928, the Saint Francis Dam in southern California gave way, sending a 140-foot high wall of water barreling down the San Francisquito Valley, wiping out whole towns and killing over 400 people as billions of gallons of water cut a 54 mile path to the Pacific Ocean.

The dam had been deliberately constructed directly on the San Francisquito Fault zone, an active fracture zone with unstable rock faces that engineers had identified before construction began, but were ultimately determined to be insignificant enough that construction was allowed to proceed. Ignoring that fault line caused a horrible tragedy that could have been avoided.

Fault lines don’t just exist in layers of rock; there are fault lines in churches as well. The Apostle Paul is writing here about fault lines that are threatening to destroy the church in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 1:10 LSB

Now I exhort you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

The word translated “divisions” here is the Greek word schismata, where we get the word schism—it’s particularly used to describe a church split, where disagreements between members become so intense that significant portions of the congregation leave the church, either to start their own church down the road, or else to give up on attending any church anywhere.

There are Christian urban legends out there about churches that split over insignificant things like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary or what appliances to buy for the kitchen—but in cases like that, it’s not really about the kitchen, is it? The fight over the color of the carpet just revealed the fault lines, it didn’t create them.

I don’t have to spend a lot of time warning you about the catastrophe of church fights and church splits, do I? It is a sad truth that far too many of you have been at ground-zero when one of those fault lines gave way and a precious congregation of saints was torn apart and the Name of Christ was dragged through the mud once again in front of a watching world.

One of our regular expressions of thanksgiving to God here at Bethel Baptist is the fellowship and unity He has given us here. But we must understand that it is not an automatic unity. It cannot be taken for granted that we will always continue in love and fellowship and never be threatened by divisions that would tear this precious family apart.

It has been said that any particular congregation is no more than six months away from a church split; while that may sound far-fetched to us, it is always wise to take the warnings in God’s Word seriously to search out whatever fault lines may be threatening the precious assembly of saints gathered here.

So this is what we must do in light of God’s inspired word to the church in Corinth through the Apostle Paul—this passage is a call to

Guard against the FAULT LINES that will TEAR a church APART

Paul identifies the first fault line in the very first verse of our text—watch for the fault line in a church that forms from

I. Drifting from the MIND of CHRIST (1 Corinthians 1:10-11)

Look with me again at Verses 10:

1 Corinthians 1:10 LSB

Now I exhort you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

The situation that Paul saw in the church in Corinth was deeply alarming to him—you can sense that in the way he immediately invokes the Name of Christ in his exhortation: “By Christ Himself, stop these divisions!”

Paul exhorted the church in Philippi in a similar way when he wrote to them—in Philippians 2:1-2 he writes

Philippians 2:1–2 LSB

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, fulfill my joy, that you think the same way, by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose,

He writes in Philippians 2:5 that this way of thinking “was also in Christ Jesus.” But the church in Corinth was drifting away from that unity—

There was no AGREEMENT in the church (cp. Phil. 2:3-4)

They were doing exactly what Paul warned against in Philippians 2—they were acting out of selfish ambition and vain glory, regarding themselves as more important than everyone else. They were looking out for their own interests rather than their fellow members.

The literal rendering of the Greek word for “agree” in this verse comes across as “Speaking the same thing.” Paul was warning them that they were all coming into the church with their own agendas. When a church becomes all about “What’s in this for me?”, the fault lines are becoming visible. When your own preferences and your own opinions and your personal interests are your highest priority in your church life, you are part of a fault line that will threaten the stability (or even the existence) of the church.

There was no agreement between members of the church in Corinth—and that lack of agreement in Christ

Caused FACTIONS in the church (v. 11)

Paul writes in Verse 11:

1 Corinthians 1:11 LSB

For I have been informed concerning you, my brothers, by Chloe’s people, that there are quarrels among you.

When your church involvement is driven by your own agenda about what you want done and what you think church is about, the natural tendency is to fall in with people who agree with you—C. S. Lewis wrote a magnificent essay called “The Inner Ring”, which I highly recommend looking up and reading if you get a chance. In that essay he describes something that happens all the time between people who belong to the same organization (school, business, church): little informal cliques or associations between people that all have the same ideas about the larger organization. It’s never formally recognized (even by the people who are part of it); if anything, its members call it something like “all the sensible people here”, or “when we were talking after the service that week” or something like that. (The people outside the ring all know exactly who is “in” it, though!)

When this sort of division begins to take hold in a church, it is a fault line that will

Destroy the UNITY within the church (v.11)

Look again—the church in Corinth was already displaying that fault line of the “inner ring”. Who told Paul what was going on? “Chloe’s people.” Beloved, I don’t know about you, but hearing Paul refer to particular members of a church as “Chloe’s people” terrifies me. Because that right there is the muddy water leaking from under the wall of the dam; that is the sign that the fellowship of a church is about to blow apart.

When a church begins to drift from the mind of Christ—when everyone has their own agenda and everyone starts forming their own little circle of “us” against “them” (and no one will admit that’s what they’re doing), when the Christlike humility of mind and love for one another that He commands gives way to selfish ambition and vainglory, it is a sign of a fault line that will end in the ruin of a fellowship and disgrace to the Name of Christ before the eyes of a watching world.

Guard against the fault lines that will tear a church apart—Paul warned the Corinthians against drifting from the mind of Christ, and in Verses 12-16 he warns against

II. Exalting the GLORY of MEN (1 Corinthians 1:12-16)

Paul immediately puts this fault line squarely in his crosshairs in Verse 12:

1 Corinthians 1:12 LSB

Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”

Paul was the apostle who had founded the church in Corinth—so there were members of the church who insisted that he was the only valid teacher to follow; Apollos was a classically-trained Roman orator, and so there were people who followed him for his excellent and refined skills in debating and reasoning. Then there was Peter (Cephas), the uneducated Galilean fisherman who walked with Christ and preached with passion and raw intensity.

But the church in Corinth had looked at those men with their own unique gifts and said that those particular excellencies made them superior over the rest. When a church starts exalting the glory of men, it

Mistakes PERSONALITY for POWER (vv. 12-13)

Now, the church in Corinth had started to pick their favorites out of the men who they had heard preaching and teaching (Apollos was a frequent visitor to Corinth, as Paul indicates in Chapter 16), and Peter had visited Corinth with his wife (ch. 9). But they would have had to either go where that man was preaching or the preacher would have had to come to Corinth. And the church had begun to show the fault line of dividing over who was the “best” or “most powerful” preacher. (There was even the faction who played the Super Spiritual card and said, “Well, we don’t glorify any human teacher—we follow Jesus… You losers...”)

The church in Corinth had a fault line running between who was the most powerful preacher or teacher, split between four men. But our church today runs the risk of fault lines over all of the preachers. The everything machine in your pocket will serve you up an inexhaustible stream of every pastor, Bible teacher, commentator and author from the past six hundred years. We have a far greater temptation to mistake personality for power than our brothers and sisters in Corinth ever did.

I remember a long time ago when I was a kid, the pastor here at Bethel had been teaching on the Scripture’s prohibitions against images of Christ for worship. One of the members took particular exception to this teaching, and so he wrote to all of the radio preachers he listened to to get their opinion, and, lo and behold!, every last one of the radio preachers said that the pastor at Bethel Baptist Church was all wet! He trusted the polished, professional, packaged sermons and teachings he was hearing on the radio over the faithful pastor who was actually charged with shepherding his soul.

A church that starts exalting the glory of men mistakes personality for power—the most “impressive” preacher (however you define it) is the one who has the most power from God, the one that everyone should be following. Paul rebukes this foolishness in Verse 13:

1 Corinthians 1:13 LSB

Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

By putting it this way, Paul shocks his readers into the realization of what they are doing: “Was Voddie Baucham crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Ken Ham?” Quit measuring another believer’s spirituality by whether they listen to the same Bible podcast as you; stop looking down on your fellow church member’s Christianity because they don’t read the same books that you do, or don’t find your favorite internet preacher as compelling as you do! You introduce a fault line into the life of a church when you mistake personality for power—keep that kind of thing up and you will

Turn GRACE into a GAME (vv. 14-16)

Taken by itself without the context, 1 Corinthians 1:14 sounds like a terrible thing for a pastor to say: “Thank God I didn’t baptize more of you people...” Because what was happening was that people in Corinth were going around bragging about their celebrity baptisms— “Oh, you got baptized last week? Good for you! You know, I was baptized by Paul himself...” The people mentioned here that Paul baptized were Crispus (the leader of the synagogue in Corinth that came to Christ from Paul’s preaching in Acts 18), Gaius was the man who hosted the Corinthian church at his home (cp. Romans 16:23), and the household of Stephanas was the first household that came to Christ after Crispus’ and Gaius’s conversion (Paul calls them “the firstfruits of Achaia” in Chapter 16).

So they were “the elite”, the ones who had been there from the beginning, the ones who were baptized by the Holy Apostle himself… The significance of their baptism was less important to them than who baptized them! The grace of God in their redemption and His power in their New Birth symbolized by their baptism wasn’t the point to them—it was the Big Name Celebrity who dunked them.

Beware this fault line, because it is one of the most destructive threats to the unity of a church. It was this very fault line that brought down G3 Ministries, the church network that Bethel Baptist Church has belonged to over the past few years. The ministry founder, Josh Buice, spent years secretly attacking and slandering other pastors and ministry leaders who had spoken at G3 conferences—playing the “this teacher over that teacher” game until he was caught at it and fired. Then, just over a year later his successor Scott Aniol did the exact same thing, secretly attacking one of his own board members and accusing him of plagiarizing sermons. The entire ministry of G3 has been utterly wiped out because the fault line of the celebrity pastor game was ignored until it destroyed them and brought reproach on the Name of Christ.

Because this is the ultimate end of these fault lines once they cause their destruction—they

III. Empty the CROSS of its POWER (1 Corinthians 1:17)

1 Corinthians 1:17 LSB

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel, not in wisdom of word, so that the cross of Christ will not be made empty.

There are two ways that a church can develop fault lines that will eviscerate the Gospel—look at the things that Paul said he was not called to do—he was not called to baptize, he was called to proclaim the Gospel. And as he proclaimed the Gospel he was not to do it in a particular way.

So let’s look at each of those “not’s” for a moment. First, Paul said that he was not called to baptize. He was not called to just perform religious rituals. A church is developing a dangerous fault line when it is

All about EXTERNAL over INTERNAL (v. 17a)

When it all becomes about doing the Christian things—getting baptized, taking the Lord’s Supper, singing and praying and reading the Bible—without the real transformation of the heart that those things are meant to demonstrate, then a church is on the way to a fault line that will lead to its ruin. Because if all you care about is getting someone baptized without bothering to discern whether they are even born again, then eventually you’re going to wind up with a lot of unsaved people believing they are going to Heaven when they die. And that, beloved, is a recipe for horrible eternal disaster.

Of course a church should strive to make disciples and baptize believers and grow in numbers and influence—this is precisely the command that Jesus gave us in Matthew 28, is it not? We are to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing all of them in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

But making it all about hitting the growth projections and increasing the giving and showing the big numbers of conversions and baptisms, that emphasis of external show over internal transformation will in the end make the power of the Gospel an afterthought; a beautiful idea to pay lip service to while we build our ministries on the bones of unregenerate church members (HT: Paul Washer).

Paul says that his ministry is not about how many people he’s baptized, or who he’s baptized—the Corinth church was making it all about the external rituals over the internal realities. And the second thing that Paul says about his preaching is that it is “not in wisdom of word, so that the Cross of Christ will not be made empty.” (v. 17)

The Cross is emptied of its power when a church is all about the external over the internal; and the Cross is emptied of its power when it becomes

All about STYLE over SUBSTANCE (v. 17b)

The 19th Century Scottish preacher and theologian James Denney once said

No man can give at once the impression that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.

Paul warned the church in Corinth that their preoccupation with preachers that were impressive and respectable represented a dangerous attraction that would lead to the Gospel being tossed aside. You don’t have to look far to see that happening all the time in our day—the lust for respectability in the eyes of the world has caused more pastors and churches to fall almost completely silent about the power of the Cross to cancel the penalty and power of sin.

If you want to get interviewed by The Atlantic or have a column in the New York Times or be a guest contributor on cable news, then you have to carefully avoid faithfully applying the truths of Scripture to the evils of our day. You cannot say that abortion is murder or that a homosexual man can be transformed and forgiven or that sex and gender are identical and both “assigned” by God at birth. The only way to be accepted in “polite society” of this world’s wisdom is to gut the Gospel of all of its power. As soon as a church decides that it wants to curry the favor of the world around it and wants to be considered “wise” by the world’s standards, it is introducing a fault line that will result in its ruin as it empties the Cross of its power.

Christian—see here in God’s Word the warning that Paul gave the church in Corinth: Guard against the fault lines that will tear a church apart. It’s important to recognize how far the church in our day has drifted from what Paul exhorts us to here—as one commentator notes, we have actually come to the point in our day and age where if we seriously sought to live out 1 Corinthians 1:10, agreeing with one another with no division, complete in one mind and one judgment, we’d be accused of being a cult! That we’d all drunk the Kool-Aid, that the elders and leadership were all a bunch of yes-men, that no one thinks for themselves...

Of course, Paul is not saying that we must all have some mindless conformity—he will write later on in Chapter 12 the importance of all of the gifts of the Body of Christ working together. The unity we are called to is like the unity of a symphony orchestra—each instrument playing with a different sound, playing different notes, but all to the same score and with the same purpose.

What does God’s Word reveal to you about your heart this morning? Do you see any of these fault lines running through your own heart this morning?

Are you harboring quarrels with another member here? Are you nursing a grudge, holding on to resentment, growing bitter?

Have you been putting down another member in your mind because they can’t keep up with your theological conversations, or because they haven’t done all the spiritual things you’ve done or places you’ve been?

Do you tend to retreat into the shadows at church because you don’t think you have the spiritual pedigree to qualify you to participate? You tell yourself that everyone else is so spiritually and theologically superior to you that you just don’t fit in and should just keep quiet?

Do you constantly measure the teaching or preaching or Bible study or Sunday School lessons that you hear against what your favorite preacher said or wrote on the same subject?

Do you look at the direction the church is going in worship or evangelism or discipleship and think to yourself how much better off the church would be if your ideas were followed? Have you been floating some of those thoughts around other members to see if you can find other “reasonable” people here to talk to about it?

There is only one way to fight those fault lines, to preserve your fellowship with your brothers and sisters and guard the life of your church—Paul says it in Verse 10:

1 Corinthians 1:10 LSB

Now I exhort you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Paul is not just telling you to buckle down and root out divisiveness from your heart; he’s not just saying that you need to work really hard at being a nicer person. He’s not telling you to simply power through your desire for division and love one another anyway. He is saying that the only way to combat these fellowship-destroying fault lines is in the Name of Jesus Christ. When Jesus died on that Cross, He closed the greatest, most destructive fault-line that ever existed: The unbridgeable chasm between a holy Creator God and sinful, wicked men. Without His sacrifice on that Cross, you would be eternally sundered from Him in the torment of utter darkness and complete isolation with nothing but your terror, despair and hopelessness to fill you forever as your sin separates you from Him and from everyone else.

But here is the power of the Cross of Christ—the sins that have driven you away from His holiness; the sins that have created fault lines between you and others; the guilt and shame that isolates you—Jesus took them all on Himself on that Cross and was separated from His Father as a result: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me??”

And because He was separated from His Father in that moment on that Cross, you never have to be separated from Him! The power of the Cross of Christ that you cling to—the power of the Name of Christ that you bear—means that you can be reconciled to God. And if you can be reconciled to Him, then you have the power in the New Birth He gives you to banish those fault lines that threaten to destroy your fellowship.

Take all of those fault lines that lurk in your heart: The divisiveness, the resentment, the judgment, the quarrels, the pride—all of them—and lay them all down at the foot of that powerful Cross. Lay them down there and leave them there as you are made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment together with your brothers and sisters in the Name of Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20–21 LSB

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

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