Introduction
It would be good to review for a moment the discussion of the book so far. Paul is concerned about divisions in the church. The Corinth saints have begun to form parties, or at least identify themselves, under the names of church leaders. Chapter 1, verse 17, reveals what is at the heart of these divisions: 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.
Note that phrase “eloquent wisdom.” This is what the Corinth saints prided themselves in possessing. As Paul described them in 1:5, they were “enriched in [Christ] in all speech and all knowledge. From verse 17 on, Paul discusses this matter of what is true wisdom as opposed to worldly wisdom. The cross of Christ is foolishness to the world, but real power to those being saved. The Corinth believers themselves exemplify God’s wisdom in calling those who seem weak and foolish into his kingdom. In chapter two, Paul notes that his style of ministry seems foolish, and, yet, those with spiritual maturity understand that the gospel of the cross is profound wisdom.
Again, then, there are divisions in the church. Furthermore, there is tension between the church and Paul. The problem is not simply a matter of sibling rivalry. Otherwise, the Corinth believers would appeal to Paul to settle their differences, and he would write back explaining who is right and who wrong on their various issues. Perhaps some are appealing to Paul as the spiritual father of the church to settle their differences, but many are questioning Paul’s right to exercise authority.
Paul was an okay father for awhile – and everyone acknowledges his role in starting the church – but it is becoming more and more evident that the Corinth Church has out-matured Paul. He is a good evangelist, no doubt, but he obviously has his intellectual and spiritual limits. After all these years, he still preaches the simple gospel of the cross. The Corinth believers, meanwhile, have become rich in spiritual knowledge and gifts. They completed “Gospel 101” way back and have moved on to greater things.
This is what Paul is up against. He is not merely trying to resolve disputes; he is having to defend his own credentials.
Text
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
Paul had made the distinction between the natural person and the spiritual person. The natural person is one who has not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and thus does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. The spiritual person has been regenerated by the Spirit and thus does understand such things. This was the conclusion to his explanation as to why the gospel, and his preaching of it, seemed foolish to many and yet was power to others.
Now he returns to his concern about the believers. “My problem with you is that I am having to treat you as though you had remained in the flesh, i.e. as though you did not possess the Holy Spirit. Do you think you are mature? You are acting like babies!”
2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh.
We need to be careful with this statement. It has led to unfortunate interpretations. Some think that Paul means the following: “It is true that I have taught you merely simple principles of the gospel and have not fed you deeper truths that are reserved for the mature. That is because you have entered into a greater spiritual class of being. When you reach that, then the great mysteries of spiritual knowledge can be fed to you.”
Thus, some have taught that there are classes of Christians differentiated by a second blessing of the Holy Spirit. Some call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Depending upon the particular school of thought, some think this baptism leads to a new plane of holiness. The believer is now able to reach a level of holiness in which he or she virtually does not sin. Others think that the spiritual person is marked by his ability to speak in tongues and exercise the spectacular gifts of the Spirit such as prophesying and healing. Still others teach that there are two classes of Christians: the Carnal Man who has received Christ into his life but has not made Christ Lord of his life, and the Spiritual Man who has Christ on the throne of his life. The first tries to live by his own power, while the latter is controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. All these schools of thought point to this passage as one of their main texts.
We can see where they get this interpretation. Paul contrasts milk with solid food. He gives one but not the other because of the ability of the believers. Until they become capable of understanding, they cannot receive the deeper teachings. Furthermore, it would seem that the difference lies in having an experience with the Holy Spirit. Paul had said that the only trait that separated one person from understanding the gospel and another not was possessing the Spirit. Now he is addressing the difference between spiritual Christians and carnal Christians. Obviously, what distinguishes the two is that one has had a deeper experience with the Spirit while the other has not. Therefore, to handle solid food, one must be baptized, empowered (however one wants to define the term) with the Holy Spirit.
What Paul is saying? Any middle school or high school teacher should know, because this scene has been played out in many a classroom:
“Teacher, you treat us like we are in the first-grade.”
“When you are ready to stop acting like first-graders, then I will stop treating you like first-graders!”
The problem for the Corinth believers is not that they are incapable of grasping high teaching; it is not that they have yet to be initiated into a higher spiritual existence. The problem is that they are acting childish. They are acting as though they have not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, as though they are back in their old life.
For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
They are being bad children. They boast of their wisdom and their giftedness; they think they exemplify the real “spiritual persons.” Spiritually mature? Why, they don’t even act as if they have the Spirit at all. Gifted in knowledge? Why, Paul cannot even give them solid food; he still has to feed them like babies.
Why? Because they keep picking on each other! Parents, you know what’s going on. You are trying to have a conversation with your kids and one calls the other one “stupid,” or makes faces, and they start to fight. Then you say, “Stop it both of you. Go to your room and come out when you are ready to act mature.” Teachers, you’ve been there. It is just before class period. You’ve prepared a great lesson. Then you look around the room. One group of students is gossiping about the latest breakup. One student is annoying another. Another student walks in singing a song and making everyone snicker. You think to yourself, if only you could have students who actually wanted to learn. You persevere and begin the class. Before too long, one student asks, “Teacher, why do we have to learn this? It’s sooo boring. Why can’t we learn cool stuff?”
You rack your brain for that reply that will put him in his place and inspire the whole class at the same time. You have options. You could impress upon him that you are teaching cool stuff if he would just change his attitude and see it. Or you could let him and the class know that this is the best they are going to get until they demonstrate enough maturity to handle something deeper.
Grow up! That’s all that Paul is saying. You want to be treated like scholars of spiritual wisdom, but you are acting like children fighting in kindergarten. He doesn’t point them to a spiritual experience; he reprimands them.
When Paul contrasts feeding them with milk rather than food, he does not mean that he teaches only elementary principles which are to be left behind for deeper mysteries when his students pass through a spiritual initiation. We need to be clear about this. There are no hidden mysteries of the gospel that are reserved for a spiritually elite class of Christians. We have no secret writings, no secret codes. The solid food of the gospel is merely the same simple gospel given in fuller measure, dependent upon the hearer’s ability and willingness to receive.
Paul’s problem with the Corinth Church is not that he has new mysteries to teach and he has to wait until the reach a spiritual level to handle them; his problem is that he has been teaching the mysteries of the gospel and they have become bored with them. They have failed to understand that his teaching about the cross is great wisdom indeed, and what they should be doing is begging for more of it. Instead, they want teaching that sounds as cool as that of the world’s teachers.
“Other religions have mystery rites and secret teachings. Paul just has the cross. Now, Apollos, that’s a teacher who knows how to talk. That’s who I follow.”
“But Paul is our spiritual father. That’s who I follow.”
“Apollos is better.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
Lessons
Let’s leave the squabbling Corinthians and turn to ourselves.
The first lesson is not about the message of the text, but about the way we read the Bible. As we noted earlier, whole schools of thought about a special spiritual class of Christians has risen because of misinterpretation. Someone will inevitably say, How can you know your interpretation is right and the others wrong? Why is your opinion better than another’s?
There are means by which to make more careful interpretations, and they are not complicated. The most important is to interpret Bible verses and passages in context. How did I conclude that Paul was merely reprimanding the Corinth believers for acting poorly, and not presenting a concept of different classes of Christians? By keeping in mind what he had been discussing in the letter up to this time. My interpretation makes sense in the context of the letter. The other interpretation introduces new doctrine that Paul has not been discussing, nor will be discussed later. He does not instruct the believers to seek an experience with the Holy Spirit; he does not explain what it is nor does he explain how to get the experience. What he does do is to continue to address their poor attitude and behavior. Other than Proverbs, the Bible is not written as a collection of sayings and the way to understand individual verses is to read and study them in their context.
Lesson number two is that behavior matters. Paul told the Corinth believers that they were not ready for solid food, not because their digestion system had not developed but because of attitude. He did lament that they had failed their doctrine quiz. He did not tell them that until they until they could define the term “atonement” properly, he could not teach them the meaning of “adoption.” What he said was that until they started being nice to one another, he couldn’t move on to teach them more.
In this case their problem was jealousy and strife, as demonstrated in their creating followings. What happened in the church is that instead of the believers cooperating and dialoguing to arrive at a consensus about an issue, they took sides and thought in terms of defending their positions. We Christians do this all the time. We take sides on an issue – it may be doctrine, it may be church policies, it may church activities – and we then fight it out. Some church fights get ugly and create splits; some are more polite, keeping the divisions below the surface. Nevertheless they are very much present.
What should be happening in a church is that people are making the effort to talk and work together to build consensus and unity. When we have moved from dialogue to debate, we have become like the world again. When we move from exploring together God’s will to defending our positions, we have moved from being spiritual to being carnal. It is commendable for a church to put aside differences and have fellowship; but what is better is to honestly bring those differences to light before Scripture and in prayer, so as to arrive at the truth together. That takes humility beyond what is natural; but that is the true mark of being in the Spirit.
The third lesson to take note of is that we are not only human. According to Scripture we possess the Holy Spirit. Now, we are not divine. This is not New Age theology that teaches us to find the divine that is us, but we are taught that the Holy Spirit has regenerated us and dwells in us.
As Christians, we cannot excuse sin and failure to live for the Lord because of being “only human.” We cannot develop a class system of Christians by which we put committed Christians into some category beyond ourselves. We don’t have saints who are more than human and then the rest of us who just get along the best we can. Scripture addresses all Christians as saints, and the demand to follow Jesus wherever he may lead is for us all.
Finally, don’t be looking for that mystical experience or obscure teaching that will put you on a new spiritual plane. I’ve been there. If I could only have that baptism of the Spirit, then I would live the victorious life. If I could discover the key teaching that lies somewhere in Scripture that would then open the door to new understanding, then I would live the victorious life. Maybe it is Jabez’ prayer that lies in an obscure genealogy in the Old Testament. Maybe it is some phrase about walking in the Spirit. If I could just find the secret formula.
And there are plenty of so-called teachers ready to reveal it. There are testimonies enough of how a verse or a phrase brought healing and new life: name it and claim it; just praise the Lord; keep saying “The Sinner’s Prayer”; and on and on it goes.
Do you want to know the secret to the victorious Christian life? Do you want to get onto the higher plane of Christian living? Then contemplate the cross. Contemplate what the cross teaches about God, what it teaches about you. Contemplate what Jesus did on the cross; contemplate what that work means for you now.
There is no mantra to repeat over and over, no prayer that if you say it every day and really mean it then everything will change for you. What there is is the gospel. And the mature Christian knows that he does not learn the gospel and then move beyond that to deeper things. He learns the gospel and then spends the rest of his life exploring its depths.
I’ll give you one more secret. You don’t have to speak in tongues to qualify for it. You don’t have to be slain in the Spirit or baptized in the Spirit to take hold of it. It is this. The gospel leads us to t grace of God; the cross leads us to grace. The secret is that there is no secret. Just pay attention to what every page in the Bible presents: the gospel and grace. The deeper you delve into these things, the higher you will rise in knowing peace, love and joy.
