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Academic Divisions

By Phillip Ross

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 15May2009 Word count: 1174 Viewed: 327 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

The Puritans called it mortification -- the subjection and denial of bodily passions and appetites by abstinence or self-discipline. Mortification is not a hard thing or a harsh thing that causes suffering. Rather, it is the abandonment of those feelings and desires that are the true cause of suffering. Paul was talking about mortification when he said "that our old self was crucified with him (Christ) in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6). And again in Ephesians 4:17-24. And in Colossians 3:5-11.

Paul is telling us in chapter three that divisions and dissensions in the church are the result of sin not yet overcome or purged from the body of Christ. But he is not suggesting that anyone be run out of the church because of some latent or manifest sin. Rather, he calls all Christians to grow up in Christ, to get over their attachments to sin and evil. Christian discipline (or discipleship) is self-discipline (or self-control through submission to the power of Jesus Christ). This is the critical element that was missing in Corinth, and is missing in too many Christians today.

Yes, we are saved by grace alone, yet we are called to righteousness. Yes, it is the righteousness of Christ alone. The righteousness that saves is not ours, but Christ's. It is a foreign righteousness that is applied to believers by the power of God -- but it is righteousness, nonetheless. Justification by the blood of Christ is immediately credited to believers, and is sufficient for salvation. Yet, sanctification through the mortification of the flesh must be willingly engaged and regularly practiced by those who persevere to the end. Sanctification is not possible apart from the power of Jesus Christ. It can't be faked. But neither is it magic. It doesn't happen automatically. It doesn't happen all at once. It doesn't happen without hard work. It doesn't happen without willing submission to Jesus Christ, who is alone the author and power of it. It is not works-righteousness, but it is righteousness and it does require work.

Paul said that "each one shall receive his own reward according to his own labor" (1 Corinthians 3:8). Part of what this means is that the Corinthians would not be rewarded according to Paul's labor, nor will you be rewarded according my labor, nor will Reformed Christians be rewarded according Calvin's labor. Rather, each will be rewarded according to his own labor (2 Corinthians 5:10). Note that the reward is real, and so is the labor. We are saved by grace, and we are saved for works. Works apart from grace cannot save, but neither does grace apart from works -- works of righteousness.

John Gill says of this verse that we are not given reward for our success -- "not according to the success of it," but according to our willing engagement of the work given to us by Jesus Christ -- works of mercy, works of service and growth in righteousness by the grace of God. The reward does not come as a result of our success, but serves to encourage us toward greater faithfulness. In other words, God withholds rewards from those who do not grow, who do not mature in faithfulness.

Of all of the churches mentioned in the New Testament the Corinthian church that Paul addressed, is most like the contemporary American church today. The church in Corinth and the church today suffer from spiritual immaturity. Paul wasn't saying that they were not saved, he was saying that they were unacceptably immature, and that the primary evidence of that immaturity were the divisions that plagued the church and interfered with evangelism.

Ray Stedman said that "the two major forces that were active in this city, creating the atmosphere in which the Corinthian church had to live, were these: intellectualism and sensualism. This was a city devoted to the worship of the goddess sex." John MacArthur said that "they had managed to drag into their church life all of the features of their former pagan existence. They had not made a clear-cut separation -- they had not come out from among the world to be separate." Like those who heard Paul in Athens (Acts 17), the Christ that they accepted was a christ of Greek origin, not the Hebrew Christ of the Bible. They accepted Christ only to put Him into their pantheon fully clothed in the robes of Greek mysticism and philosophy -- Greek (human) wisdom.

This is why Paul spoke so hard against human wisdom in the first two chapters. In chapter three he is saying that the failure to accept the Christ of Scripture by substituting a christ of Greek or human wisdom results in, among other things, divisions in the church. The divisions arise from the false understandings produced by filtering the gospel through the categories of human wisdom, by submitting the gospel to the categories of academia. Nowhere does Paul suggest merging human wisdom with God's wisdom. Rather, he insists that human wisdom is not adequate to the task of interpreting God's wisdom. Nowhere does he try to make the gospel appeal to human wisdom. In fact, he says that such an appeal is futile because "the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

By extrapolation, then, the effort to make the gospel appeal to popular tastes is no different than trying to make the gospel appeal to the natural person. The Greek word translated as natural is psuchikos, which literally means sensual. So the natural person is a sensual person, a person dominated by feelings (passions). The effort to bring natural people into the church by appealing to their natural sensitivities is an invitation to trouble. It is destructive to the peace and purity of the church.

Rather, says Paul, build on the foundation you already have. Build on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Church growth is not a matter of packing the pews with natural people. Work the good ground that you have been given by Christ. Plant and till and water the soil you have. You don't need different soil or different seed or different water. What you need is the discipline of perseverance in faithfulness. What we need is to do works of righteousness where we are planted. What we need is God's wisdom to show us who God has called us to be, and how to live lives of grace in Jesus Christ. What we need is the spirit of Jesus Christ to give us the courage to be Christian in the midst of a culture that is not Christian. Having been called by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, we need to rely upon the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to make a difference. But we are not to make just any old difference. The difference we are to make is the difference between God's wisdom and worldly wisdom, between righteousness and lawlessness, light and dark, Christ and Belial.

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