Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building….
Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. (1 Corinthians 3:1-9, 18-23)
Christians tend to follow non-Christian culture in every area of life. This is a disgrace, but it is a fact.
To offer one example, Christians follow non-Christian language and expression. Recently I attempted to read a really irritating book about rescuing ambitions – it was so bad that I could not finish it. The author must be older than I am, and holds a doctorate from a prestigious seminary. But in the book he tried so hard to sound hip and failed so miserably at it that the text was a continuous mess of awkward and irksome prose. This is a trend that I notice in recent publications. The old prose is convoluted; the new prose aspires to be hip. In fact, I hope that it was a put on, that it was a misguided attempt at reaching a younger audience, since if he truly thinks and talks this way, then he must be an extremely annoying person to be with, and I pity his friends and family. The fact that young believers follow their non-Christian friends in talking like uneducated morons is a problem that we should correct and not accommodate.
If one wants to write like a non-Christian, at least he can talk his own age. I just finished another book, also a disappointment, in which the author tried to sound hip as well, but it was not as irritating because he used jargons from an older crowd. It felt like he said “at the end of the day” and “unpack” five hundred times – these were expressions that he did not use in his previous and more academic works. If he did not know how to sound casual, he should not have tried. It was difficult, but I managed to finish the book. The wisdom of God is always relevant. Its power is easily unleashed in a sober and plain delivery, and any unnatural attempt to make it relevant or interesting will only dull its effect. Let us freely adopt expressions that are appropriate for Christian presentations, but once in a while, let us also choose or invent our own and force non-Christians to accommodate us.
There are more severe problems. Paul refers to a celebrity culture in which Christians form cliques around preachers and theologians. Of course this has continued to this day. It is not uncommon to hear Christians say, “I follow this pastor” or “I follow this theologian.” Now, I suppose such expressions can serve a practical purpose. People differ in their opinions and known figures can function as convenient labels to represent these opinions. Although this is arguably acceptable as far as it goes, it can readily lead to the “boasting about men” that Paul condemns.
When attention around these figures becomes more personal and obsessive, it evolves into something more than a matter of convenience, but a destructive force that divides the church and hinders spiritual growth. One person says, “I follow this theologian.” He also has a label for everyone else, so he says, with much contempt, “Oh, you follow that theologian” – and proceeds to demolish you. He thinks that he is well-read and familiar with the theological scene, and always caught up with the latest academic gossip and trivia.
I have had people assign me to an American theologian, although many of my opinions were formed independent of him and even before I knew about him, and some came from the influence of figures belonging to other theological traditions and from other countries, and which I had to greatly revise and reinterpret. But suddenly I was responsible for defending him, as if I was his direct disciple and he was my exclusive teacher! What happened? It was the way these people viewed the world, and they were not even able to do this properly, since their horizon was extremely small, so that they could categorize others only under the few individuals that they knew. They were molded simply and narrowly, and they assumed that everyone else was molded the same way. The culture of idolatry, when applied to theological categorization, results in misleading and unproductive analyses.
Paul says that this way of thinking is outright worldly – carnal, of the flesh, exactly like the non-Christians. He does not regard them as theological experts, but “mere infants in Christ” who are not ready for solid food. They should stop supposing that they can handle the more advanced doctrines, let alone teach and argue about them, but they should return to a learning stage, to the milk of the word of God. They think that they are the scholars and debaters among the people of God, but Paul says that they are mere infants, and they are still worldly.
God’s people, the apostle continues, is like a field, and Paul and Apollos are only servants. One planted and one watered, as the Lord has assigned to each his task. The laborers are not in competition, and they do not work against one another. They serve the same God and the same purpose. But in themselves they are powerless to produce results. Thus the credit is reserved for the real doer of the work, the God who causes life and growth. The metaphor inspires not only humility but also confidence. If I am the doer of the work, then I better get the credit for it. But if God is the doer, then he receives the credit. And it also follows that if God is the doer, then my confidence should not be restrained by my limitations, but it should increase more and more according to God’s limitless power and sovereign will. I can plant and I can water, but I do not have to perform the impossible – I do not have to cause the increase, for God will do it by his omnipotence.
The Bible consistently distinguishes between the Christian and the non-Christian, the things of God and the things of the world. Christians often admire those who have received an advanced non-Christian education, or even an advanced Christian education as measured by non-Christian standards. But Paul says, “Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise.” If you think that you are wise according to non-Christian standards, then you are in fact a fool; rather, you should become what non-Christian standards would regard as a fool, so that you may be truly wise. You are deceived if you think that it is wise to apply a celebrity culture or a system of idolatry to Christian ministry. You are deceived if you think that a person with an advanced degree, even if from a seminary, which is modeled after the non-Christian system, is necessarily wise. “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” (Luke 16:15). Faith in Jesus Christ is the only foundation for true wisdom, whether or not you pile human recognition on top of it.
“So then, no more boasting about men!” Why fight? Why choose? “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours.” Indeed, not all preachers and theologians are gifts from God – many are false prophets that God sends to test our faithfulness, to see whether we will follow them or reject them (Deuteronomy 13:2-3). But as for those who exalt sound doctrine, there is no need to align ourselves to this one or that one, to say, “I belong to this pastor” or “I belong to that tradition,” and then to take pride in this silliness. It is not that we belong to them, but all of them belong to us, and all of us belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. Therefore, stop being worldly, stop being children, but grow up in the Lord Jesus Christ.