Describing his witness, Paul says that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel. Paul is an apostle, a witness bearing the good news of the Messiah who has come into the world and of the Kingdom which, according to the Messiah's word, "has drawn near"...
Describing his witness, Paul says that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel. Paul is an apostle, a witness bearing the good news of the Messiah who has come into the world and of the Kingdom which, according to the Messiah's word, "has drawn near." Apostleship is always witness. An apostle is not a teacher, not a mentor, not the presider of a church assembly, not a catechist. His task is more definite: he is a witness who must tell about what he has seen and experienced. He must tell it in such a way that those who listen see and experience everything, as far as possible, as clearly and distinctly as the witness himself.
If the matter is the Kingdom, then the listeners must experience being joined to the life of the Kingdom just as the witness who carries out apostolic ministry has experienced it. Of course, every Christian activity is to some degree, or at least should be, apostolic: after all, a Christian is a citizen of the Kingdom, and if that is so, then communion with him must necessarily open the Kingdom to those who share in it. But apostolic ministry is witness exclusively, or at least primarily; the apostle devotes his whole life to it.
For the Church such witness is of the greatest importance: it is a matter of the Kingdom being manifested to the world by concrete people who live by that Kingdom. Authentic Christianity, Christianity not as a new religion or a new teaching but as new life, can spread through the world only in this way. But in individual churches, in every age, there has been a tendency to turn Christianity from the experience of new life into a new religion or some new spiritual teaching. This is what happened in the Corinthian church as well.
There, judging by the apostle's words, certain groups had appeared, apparently formed around teachers or preachers known in the community, and their members identified themselves precisely with their own group. The reaction to the appearance of such groups may have been the appearance of certain "pure Christians" or "just Christians," who said of themselves that they were "Christ's," in contrast to supporters of various teachers and preachers. But whatever all these people said about themselves and about one another, all of them had already ceased to be simply Christians.
They had already linked their Christianity not only and not so much with Christ and His Kingdom as with certain people. And Christianity itself had become for them a new teaching rather than a new life. This is the essential transformation against which Paul warns the Corinthian Christians: it shifts their attention from Christ and the Kingdom to something that may even be interesting and in some respect true, but has no direct relation to the Kingdom. And therefore it has no direct relation to Christianity as such.
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1:10 Now I exhort you - Ye have faith and hope; secure love also. By the endearing name of our Lord Jesus Christ - lnfinitely preferable to all the human names in which yeglory. That ye all speak the same thing - They now spoke different things, Co1 1:12. And that there be no schisms among you - No alienation ofaffection from each other. Is this word ever taken in any other sense in scripture? But that ye be joined in the same mind - Affections, desires. And judgment - Touching all the grandtruths of the gospel.
1:11 It hath been declared to me by them of the family of Chloe - Whom some suppose to have been the wife of Stephanas, and themother of Fortunatus and Achaicus. By these three the Corinthians had sent their letter to St. Paul, Co1 16:17.That there are contentions - A word equivalent with schisms in the preceding verse.
1:12 Now this I say - That is, what I mean is this: there are various parties among you, who set themselves, one against an other, in behalf of the several teachers they admire. And I of Christ - They spoke well, if they had not on this pretence despised their teachers, Co1 4:8Perhaps they valued themselves on having heard Christ preach in his own person.
1:13 Is Christ divided - Are not all the members still under one head? Was not he alone crucified for you all; and were ye not all baptized in his name? The glory of Christ then is not to be divided between him and his servants; neither is the unity of the body to be torn asunder, seeing Christ is one still.
1:14 I thank God - (A pious phrase for the common one, "I rejoice,") that, in the course of his providence, Ibaptized none of you, but Crispus, once the ruler of the synagogue, and Caius.
1:15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in my own name - In order to attach them to myself.
1:16 I know not - That is, it does not at present occur to my memory, that I baptized any other.
1:17 For God did not send me to baptize - That was not my chief errand: those of inferior rank and abilities could do it: though all the apostles were sent to baptize also, Mat 28:19. But to preach the gospel - So the apostle slides into hisgeneral proposition: but not with wisdom of speech - With the artificial ornaments of discourse, invented by human wisdom.Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect - The whole effect of St. Paul's preaching was owing to the power of God accompanying the plain declaration of that great truth, "Christ bore our sins upon the cross." But this effect mighthave been imputed to another cause, had he come with that wisdom of speech which they admired.