Regarding Servants and Stewards

If you would please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. We're looking at the entire chapter tonight as we wrap up this opening section of Paul's letter to the Corinthian Christians. He's been dealing with Corinth's preoccupation with human wisdom, with cleverness, with rhetoric, and he brings it all to a head here in chapter 4 where he addresses the root of the problem, which is pride. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 through 21. Hear the word of the Lord. This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?

If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. Without us, you have become kings. And would that you did reign so that we might share the rule with you. In the last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour, we hunger and thirst.

We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat.

We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your Father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you, Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills, and I will find out, not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love in the spirit of gentleness?

Let's pray. Father, you have graciously bought us from the slave market of sin and made us sons and daughters of the Most High King. You have commissioned us with important work in your kingdom.

Work that affects the souls of men and work that has the potential to bring you great glory. But Lord, though we have been redeemed by you and put to work in your vineyard, we all too often act like we're still slaves to sin. We forget that we have nothing that hasn't been given to us from heaven, and we go about our lives full of pride and conceit and self-righteousness with an independent spirit that ignores the debt of grace we owe but could never repay. Lord, we're not the first generation of Christians that have struggled with pride, and we thank you that you have given us instruction regarding the way out of our arrogance.

You point us toward the path of humility, and you tell us how to get there. So help us, Holy Spirit, to listen and understand what you would have us know. Help us to believe and obey what you would have us do. We pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen. I remember hearing Derek Thomas speaking in chapel one day at my seminary years ago. He had been preaching at his church through the book of Isaiah, and he was giving us seminarians some words of advice. And he said the challenge in preaching through a book like Isaiah is to not let the 15th sermon on judgment sound like the previous 14 sermons on judgment. Now, the book of 1 Corinthians does not, thankfully, contain 39 consecutive chapters on God's judgment of sin like Isaiah does, but it does contain four consecutive chapters in which Paul is dealing with the same Corinthian sin over and over and over again.

And so the challenge is to acknowledge the redundancy without overlooking the nuanced distinctions in these opening chapters. In studying and thinking about chapter four this past week, I spent a lot of time asking myself, what is Paul saying here that he's not already said in chapters one through three? And what became apparent to me as I studied is that Paul's focus in these final words on the matter shifts really to the root of the problem at Corinth. This love of clever rhetoric, this addiction they had to the cult of personality that was splitting the church apart, all of these things at their root were the pervasive sin of pride.

That was what was the root of the sin. And so here in chapter four, Paul uses his apostolic magnifying glass to expose the church's pride and to call them to a life of humility, specifically humility in how they engaged in Christian service. At the end of the day, the Corinthians boasting in this teacher or that apostle had nothing to do with their opinion of Paul or Apollos or Cephas. It was simply an underhanded way of the Corinthians boasting about themselves.

To say I like Paul because he's the most like me is really to say I like me. That's where all of this was coming from. It was arrogance. It was self-exalting pride. It was masquerading as Christian service in the kingdom of God. Now you would think that Christians who have been saved by grace would not struggle with this kind of self-focus, particularly as it relates to their service to the church. I mean to be a Christian means that at least to some extent you have recognized your spiritual bankruptcy, right? Your sinful condition, your wretchedness before the Lord. How can a person who has seen these things, who has seen the awfulness of their own sin, turn around and act as if they are God's greatest gift to the church?

Well I think the answer is simple, really. It's that self dies hard. Even for those who have been bought with the blood of Christ, we love ourselves so much that it will take a lifetime of God's sanctifying work to bring us to the point of fully embracing our chief end, which is to glorify God, not me, and to enjoy God, not me. We love ourselves. We love getting the credit. We love being noticed and esteemed and lauded for a job well done.

We love to be thought well of. And so when these inordinate affections of self-love intersect with the high calling of service to the bride of Christ, to which we're all called, that self-love doesn't just magically disappear. In fact, when it comes to the noble task of serving in God's kingdom, I think the drive to be praised only escalates.

It's easy for us to convince ourselves that our arrogance is really just zeal for the kingdom. We get to spiritualize our pride and call it using my gift or serving the Lord. But Paul calls Corinth and Paul calls us to lay down our reputation, our high and lofty opinions of ourselves and of our contribution to the kingdom, and to embrace the label scum of the world, refuse of all things if we have to. If the measure of a good apostle is his faithfulness to God, then the measure of any minister, any ministry, from apostleship right down to the spiritual giftings of the church's youngest member ought to be faithfulness to God.

And if faithfulness to God is the measure of good Christian service, then commendation from the world is a tempting but an unreliable means of measuring good Christian service. This chapter then is about humility, humility in how we view ministers and ministries, humility in how we view ourselves, and humility specifically in how we view our labor in the Lord, our Christian service to the church. What I want to do tonight is to walk through the entire sermon, the entire chapter four twice.

The first time we'll just go through it kind of quickly to discover Paul's overarching train of thought. And then once that has been established, I want to go back through the chapter again with an eye toward application and draw from it several principles, several exhortations that Paul gives us to help us exhibit humility in our labor for the kingdom of God. So Paul begins in verses one through five by making an example out of himself and Apollos. And in making himself an example, he intends for the Corinthians to see themselves in that example and to correct their own error.

So it is a corrective example in verses one through five. In verse one, Paul explains how the church should regard or esteem its leaders and teachers, teachers like Paul and like Apollos. He says, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

When you think about the people who have evangelized you and discipled you and mentored you in your Christian walk, don't think of them as celebrities. Don't think of them as Hebrews, as heroes. Think of them as servants and stewards. These terms simultaneously emphasize both the lowliness and the authority of God's ministers. The word servant emphasizes the aspect of subordination, one who is underneath. The word steward emphasizes the aspect of responsibility. The minister of God then ought to be seen, ought to be regarded as someone who is not the head, not at the top of the proverbial totem pole, but who nonetheless has been entrusted with an important task from the one who is the head. The minister is in a position of being both in authority and under authority at the same time. We who are served by them are not to view them as being less important than they are or more important than they are.

They do have authority over us, but they never occupy the place of ultimate authority over us. That's how we're to regard servants in the Lord. Verse 2, Paul says, moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

That they be found faithful. If Paul and Apollos are stewards, then their service runs in two directions. It runs up and it runs down the chain of command. As stewards, they have a responsibility to serve the one who commissioned them to be a steward, right? That would be God. But they also have a responsibility to those that they have been commissioned to serve. That would be the church. Paul's point in verses 2 through 5 is that a steward's commendation, a steward's approval in performing his task is not granted from below.

It's granted from above. Though Paul is called to serve the Corinthians, their opinion of him doesn't determine his value as a minister. It's not even Paul's own opinion of himself that matters. See that in verse 3.

I don't even judge myself, he says. Rather, it is God's opinion of him that determines whether he has succeeded or failed as a steward. So if Paul's calling as a minister of the gospel is to scratch the Corinthians' itch for clever rhetoric, then he ought to be evaluated as a minister according to his rhetorical skills. But if Paul's calling is to be a steward of the mysteries of God, then he ought to be evaluated according to his faithfulness in proclaiming those mysteries. Paul is essentially saying in these first five verses, Hey Corinth, if you want to evaluate my ministry, go ahead, but evaluate it according to its faithfulness to the gospel, not according to its compliance to Greek tastes and preferences.

I'm serving you, but I work for God. I want to effect positive change here at Corinth, but whether or not that ever happens, my commendation comes from God, not from you. So this then is the corrective example Paul makes of himself and Apollos. But next, Paul makes a condemning application of this example to the Corinthian Christians themselves in verses 6 and 7.

You see, the first paragraph really wasn't about Paul and Apollos at all. It was about the Corinthians. Paul says in verse 6, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos, but for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. So whatever Paul had just said about himself and Apollos, he wanted the Corinthians to apply to themselves. In other words, if Paul and Apollos are merely servants and stewards whose commendation in ministry comes from their faithfulness to the gospel and to the God who commissioned them, then the Corinthians are also merely servants and stewards whose commendation comes from their faithfulness to the gospel and to the God who commissioned them. You see, pride had been the driving force in the Corinthians' approval or rejection of ministers. Of course, they had convinced themselves this was all about honoring Paul or admiring Apollos or showing esteem to Peter.

But in reality, all of that was a ruse by which the Corinthians could honor and admire and esteem themselves. And so Paul lets them know that just like he and Apollos are mere stewards, so they are mere stewards who only have what they have because of grace. Verse 7, who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?

If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? And so the corrective example that Paul makes of himself and Apollos is applied to the Corinthian Christians with the intention of condemning their pride and calling them to humble repentance. It's a condemning application of the stewardship principle to the proud people at Corinth. This brings us to verses 8 through 13 where Paul makes a convicting comparison between the apostles and the Corinthians. In this paragraph, Paul sings the praises of the Corinthians, but with tongue in cheek.

He says, you have all you want, Corinth. You've become rich. You've become kings, at least in terms of your reputation before the world. And while you have been busy becoming rich kings before the world, we apostles have become a despised spectacle to the world.

Verse 10, Paul says, we are fools, but you are wise. We are weak, but you are strong. You're held in honor, but we in disrepute. We hunger and thirst and are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless.

We labor with our hands. We are reviled and persecuted and slandered, yet we bless and endure and entreat. We have become like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things, while you, Corinth, sit in judgment of our public speaking ability and of our intellectual cleverness from your vaulted place of prestige. Paul isn't complaining. He's glad to bear the cross. He's glad to suffer persecution for the sake of Christ. But he's trying to expose Corinth's arrogance. And this paragraph is really the climax of Paul's rebuke.

He's been building for four chapters now, and it finally just comes boiling over the rim of the pot. Paul is telling his spiritual children that if the ones being served are honored and esteemed while the ones serving them are considered to be scum and refuse, something is amiss. It's shameful and suspect that a spiritual father is rejected for preaching the gospel while the children are honored and esteemed for supposedly the same gospel. Something's not right. Something's not what it seems.

Something is upside down. And, of course, Paul knows exactly what that something is. It is that Corinth is so blinded by their own pride that they are mistaking worldly approval for spiritual success. And so Paul calls them out in hopes that they'll see their blind spot and be convicted of their pride.

It's a convicting comparison. Well, finally, Paul makes a commanding threat to his beloved Corinthian congregation in verses 14 through 21. In verse 14, he makes it clear that he's not simply shaming them. He's admonishing them.

To shame someone is to leave them wallowing in their guilt, but to admonish implies a desire on the part of the exaltor to effect change. Paul doesn't just want to vent his frustration. He wants Corinth to change their ways. The sort of change Paul would love to see in the lives of the Corinthian church begins by them learning to regard ministers and ministries correctly.

According to the right standard. And then, by their imitation of those godly ministers, verse 16, I urge you then, be imitators of me. That's why I sent Timothy to remind you of my ways in Christ, Paul says.

Paul wants Corinth to view and practice the kind of kingdom service that is measured not by the size of its splash in the culture, but by its faithfulness to the gospel. And then he concludes by assuring them he is coming for a visit. He gives them fair warning. He says, if you take heed to this letter, then I'll come in love, in a spirit of gentleness.

But if you reject this letter, I'm coming with a rod. Paul is a loving spiritual father, but he's no pushover. And so he ends this section essentially saying to the Corinthians, when I come for a visit, do I need to bring a stick?

That's what he's asking him. He's serious about what he's telling them. It's a commanding threat. Well, we know that Corinth is not the only church to have misperceived the measure of good kingdom service. They're not the only Christians to have confused gospel success and worldly success.

They weren't the last congregation to conceal their pride and their love for notoriety behind a facade of spiritual hypocrisy. And so if the shoe fits, we need to wear it. If we are in any way exhibiting the flaws that Paul dealt with in Corinth, we need to heed his words.

And if anything, the stakes are raised for us, aren't they? I mean, we have Paul's letter too, just like the Corinthians did, and we have the entire New Testament. We have Peter's letters and we have John's letters and Luke's writings and all of the Old Testament and 2,000 years' worth of church history in which countless spiritual fathers have explained and applied the Word of God to the church. So what excuse do we have to not get the fact that when it comes to our labor for the kingdom of God, pride is bad and humility is good?

We have no excuse. So what can be learned from Paul's instruction here about what acceptable kingdom service looks like? How can each of us exhibit humility rather than arrogance in our labor for the kingdom of God? Well, Paul mentions at least 10 ways by which you can exhibit humility in your kingdom work. So let's just quickly walk back through the passage and pull out these 10 principles, these 10 admonitions from Paul. First of all, view yourself as a servant of Christ.

View yourself as a servant of Christ. We see that in verse 1. The Corinthians were to regard Paul and Apollos as servants. They ought to have also regarded themselves as servants. You know, a parent begins the rearing of a child by doing literally everything for the child. The parent feeds the child and dresses the child and speaks for the child and thinks for the child, but there comes a point when the child, if he's maturing, needs to begin doing things for himself. The goal in serving the child is to eventually produce a self-sufficient adult who can replicate the same kind of service to his children that his parents gave to him. Paul spoonfed the Corinthians because they were spiritual infants, but the goal was never for the Corinthians to stay in a state of spiritual infancy.

The idea was that they would learn to eat meat so that they could go feed milk to the next generation. Paul served them so that they would, in turn, go and serve others. We are served by gifted leaders and teachers and pastors and officers, not so that we can sit back and be at ease. We are served so that we will go and serve. We need to view ourselves as servants of Christ. How, then, do we serve Christ?

And this is Paul's second exhortation there in verse 1. We serve Christ by being a steward of the gospel, a steward of the mysteries of God. You know, there are a million things you could do in the name of kingdom service. How do you know what to give yourself to?

How do you know what to spend your best energies on? Well, you give priority to that which proclaims and promotes the mysteries of God, which in Paul's writing is shorthand for the revelation of the gospel. Spend yourself doing that which will make Christ and Him crucified the central message of your life. You're a steward of the gospel. Thirdly, evaluate your service according to its faithfulness to Christ and the gospel rather than according to the opinions of others, including your own. And that's seen in verses 2 through 4.

You see, the primary quality that is desirable in a steward is not credibility or renown, but faithfulness. Other people's opinion of us, even our opinion of ourselves, is inaccurate. One commentator said, Introspection is not the way forward. Often people think that they know exactly what their spiritual state is and just what their service for God has affected. The result may depress beyond reason or exalt beyond measure.

Neither is relevant. It is not the task of the servant to pass such judgments, but rather to get on with the job of serving the Lord. Folks, we are dim-sided, but God is preeminently discerning. We think of ourselves too indulgently, but God is a judge of the utmost strictness and consistency. So let His assessment of us be the assessment that matters.

Number 4 from verse 5. Remember that God will one day expose your actions and your motives. Remember that God will one day expose your actions and motives. We don't need to praise ourselves or commend ourselves or sell ourselves to the world to validate our Christian service.

God will make all of those judgments on Judgment Day. We have but to focus on being faithful to His instruction, to let His will rather than human applause be our motivation. The fifth thing we see here in verse 6, and hear what I'm saying, not what I'm not saying, is this, beware of having heroes. It could be a mask that's hiding a too high opinion of yourself.

Beware of having heroes. There is a right way to hold people in high esteem, but there is also a wrong way. Paul is not prohibiting Christians from esteeming faithful workmen who have proven themselves to be true to the Gospel. He's condemning the way that we sometimes prefer certain ministers and ministry styles solely on the basis of ambition and the perception of success, or on the basis of how certain spiritual giants of the past perhaps stroke our ego. Isn't it interesting how we seem to always gravitate toward people who are like us? If I'm a black and white kind of person, then I like black and white kind of preachers.

I got no time for those nuanced compromising sorts. If I'm enthusiastic about acts of service, I like ministers and ministries that affirm mercy ministry, and I can get easily exasperated by those long-winded preachers who are always insisting on doctrinal precision. You see, we love to see our own strengths and proclivities in others because it's affirming, it's validating. But there's a danger here, especially if we allow ourselves to overlook or be dismissive of the diversity of gifts that God has given to his church. You know, your spiritual heroes should probably be faithful Christians who are strong in areas where you are weak, in areas where you need to grow, not just heroes who are always affirming you by mirroring your favorite personality traits.

So beware of heroes. Number seven, remember that anything you have that is praiseworthy, talents, opportunities, knowledge, relationships, has been given to you, not earned by you. It's a way of exercising humility in our spiritual service, and we see this in verse seven.

So get this in your head and heart. Everything in us that is worthy of praise is derived. Everything in you that is worthy of praise is derived. It came from outside of you.

You didn't produce it from within. It comes from the outside, which ought to free us from the temptation to take the credit. But it also reminds us of the obligation to be faithful stewards of these gifts that have been given to us. Next, you need to beware of enjoying more esteem from the world than your spiritual forebears have had. This is Paul's warning in verses eight through 13. Now, I realize that it's quite possible to be sinlessly more highly esteemed than one's predecessors, but there again, there's a danger here. While Paul was glorying in the reproaches he endured for Christ, the Corinthians were considering themselves blessed to have not had to deal with all of that contempt and derision and persecution.

They had Christ, but had somehow maintained their respectability before the world. Folks, respect from the world is rarely, if ever, a sign of spiritual success. If there is as big a discrepancy between the world's opinion of you and the world's opinion of your spiritual mentors as there was between Paul's reputation and the Corinthians' reputation, you probably need to question your devotion to Christ and your motives in ministry. The eighth exhortation from verses 14 through 17 is that if you're guilty of any of these exhibitions of pride, don't wallow in the guilt of past failings. Rather, repent of your pride today and begin serving with humility.

Don't get stuck in an analysis paralysis. Again, Paul's objective was not to shame the Corinthians and just walk away. No, he wanted them to repent, to learn humility, to practice humble kingdom service. It's unproductive to sit in dust and ashes sulking over your pride without ever changing.

By the grace of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit in you, acknowledge your pride, repent of your pride, and move forward in humility. Next, in verses 18 through 20, Paul admonishes us to make sure your walk matches your talk. I don't imagine that anyone here tonight would say with their mouth that the path to good ministry involves keeping up appearances.

We wouldn't say that, we know better than to say that, but we still sometimes act like we do what we do for the commendation that we receive for it. I can say with my mouth to God be the glory and then proceed to do everything I do in a way that screams to me be the glory. Paul says that ought not to be because the kingdom of God, verse 20, will not consist in talk but in power.

Our actions, more so than our words, reveal the true motives of our hearts. And then finally, from verse 21, you need to consider what your relationship with your spiritual leaders reveals about your motives in service in the kingdom. Consider your relationship to those God has put over you in the faith. The Corinthians were facing the prospect of Paul showing up in Corinth to commend them or rebuke them. If they had obeyed the letter, they would have nothing to fear, but if they had continued in this arrogance that Paul was condemning, then they would need to live in dread of Paul's visit because it was not gonna be pretty. God has given leaders to his church for its edification, for its equipping in ministry, and to the degree that we follow God's direction through these leaders, it will go well with us. To the degree that we neglect that order, it will go poorly for us. This is the principle embedded in the fifth commandment, isn't it?

Honor your father and mother that it may go well with you. Hebrews 13, 17 applies that same principle to the relationship between church members and their officers. It says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. As those who will have to give an account, let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Are you habitually finding yourself at odds with those entrusted with keeping watch over your soul?

It might be indicative of an arrogant spirit in you that needs to be mortified and replaced with humility. Church, ultimately, these four chapters, first four chapters of 1 Corinthians are all about maximizing the glory of Christ. We confuse our purpose as the body of Christ on earth when we replace the preaching of the cross with a hundred other good endeavors. Education has value, so get as smart as you are able to with the intellectual abilities you have. Work hard to send your kids to the best school you can afford. Efforts of humanitarian charity and philanthropy make life better for suffering people, so go, help the poor, the less fortunate, the oppressed.

Politics matter, so vote and campaign and hold the state accountable. Health is better than sickness, so try to stay fit and able and healthy. But brothers and sisters, none of these things matter in a Christless world, because none of these things can take someone whose sin is red like crimson and wash it white as snow. Only Christ and Him crucified can do that.

And if only Christ and Him crucified can do that, then shouldn't the all-consuming goal that goes through our hearts and minds every morning be, how can I promote the glory of Christ today and make His gospel known? The world will laugh at that if that's your goal. The world will look at you and say, what a wasted life.

They're scum of the earth, they're the refuse of all things. But God will say, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. If I'm serving the Lord for the applause of men, I'm really not serving the Lord. But if I'm serving with right motives, with humility in my heart, then Jesus Christ will be at the center of everything I do.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you laid down your life for us and you have called us to imitate you in laying down our lives for others. Help us to do that in such a way that the aroma of our lives is one that always seeks to stay out of the way of your fame, of your prominence, of your glory. Lord, may we decrease and may you ever increase in our own hearts and in the hearts of those we serve. We pray in your name and for your glory. Amen.