Bible Commentaries
1 Corinthians 1

Verse 1

XVII

SAUL’S CONVERSION, HIS CALL TO THE APOSTLESHIP AND HIS COMMISSION

Acts 9:1-19; Acts 22:5-16; Acts 26:12-20; 1 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 1 Corinthians 15:7-10; Romans 7:7-25.

In commencing this chapter, I call attention to my address called, "The Greatest Man in History," which you will find in The Southwestern Theological Review, Vol. I, No. II. There are ten special scriptures which bear upon the conversion of Saul, and most of them upon his call to the apostleship. The accounts given are as follows: (1) By Luke, Acts 9:1-9, A.D. 36; (2) by Barnabas, Acts 9:26-28, A.D. 39; (3) by Paul at Corinth, Galatians 1:15-16, A.D. 57; (4) by Paul at Ephesus, 1 Corinthians 15:8-10, A.D. 57; (5) by Paul at Corinth, Romans 7:7-25, A.D. 58; (6) by Paul at Jerusalem, Acts 22:1-16, A.D. 59; (7) by Paul at Caesarea, Acts 26:1-19, A.D. 60; (8) by Paul at Rome, Philippians 3:4-14, A.D. 62; (9) by Paul in Macedonia, 1 Timothy 1:12-16, A.D. 67; (10) by Paul at Rome, 2 Timothy 1:9-12, A.D. 68. In order to understand the conversion of Saul of Tarsus we must be able to interpret these ten scriptures.

To prove that Paul was under conviction before his conversion I submit two scriptures: (1) The words that Jesus said to him when he met him, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goads." (2) What he says about his experience in Romans 7:7-25, that he was alive without the law until the commandment came, when sin revived and he died.

As to the time and place of Paul’s conversion, the argument is overwhelming that he was converted outside Damascus. In the first place, the humility with which he asked the question, "Who art thou, Lord?" Second, the spirit of obedience which instantly followed: "Whereupon, O King Agrippa, Is was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Again he says, "When God called me by his grace, he revealed Christ in me." So we may count it a settled question that Paul was converted out there on the road, when the light above the brightness of the midday sun shone about him, and he fell to the ground.

The proof that his vision of Jesus was real, and not a mere mental state, is found in 1 Corinthians 9:1, and also 1 Corinthians 15:8, in which he expressly affirms that he had seen Jesus, and puts it in the same class with the appearances of Jesus to the other disciples, after his resurrection from the dead. It was not simply an ecstasy, nor a trance, nor a mere mental state, but he actually met Jesus, and saw him. Jesus appeared to him, not in the flesh, as on earth before his death, but in the glory of his risen body. He and Paul actually met. There was a necessity for his actually seeing the Lord. He could not otherwise have been an apostle, for one of the main functions of the apostolic office was to be an "eyewitness" that Jesus had risen from the dead. So Peter announces when Matthias was chosen to fill the place of Judas that he must be one who had continued with them from the time of the baptism of John until the Lord was taken up into the heavens, and that he must be one eyewitness of the resurrection of Christ. Other passages also bearing on his apostolic call, are, one particularly, 1 Corinthians 9:1-9, and then what he says in the beginning of his letters: "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, not of man." I need not cite all of these beginnings. You can trace these out yourself. The second particular passage that I cite, to be put by the side of 1 Corinthians 9:1-9, is Galatians 1:15-16.

Let us distinguish clearly between his conversion and his apostolic call, and show what part of this point experience may not be expected in conversions today, and was not a part of his Christian experience, and what the elements of his Christian experience. When I was interested in the subject of my salvation, to me, a sinner and an outsider, the distinction between Saul’s conversion and his call to the apostleship was very clear. You must understand that the light above the brightness of the midday sun was the glory of the appearance of the risen Lord to Saul, in order that he might see him to become an apostle, and the shock which Paul experienced by thus seeing the risen Lord was the shock that knocked him down, but it was not a part of his Christian experience – it was a part of his call to the apostleship. You must not expect anything of that kind in order to your conversion, nor must you teach other people to expect it. But the elements of his Christian experience were these: (1) He was convicted that he was a sinner; (2) Christ was revealed to him; (3) he did believe on the Christ thus revealed as his Saviour; (4) he did then and there receive the remission of his sins, which remission was pictorially set forth in his baptism three days later.

Here it is well for us to define a Christian experience. I was once present when a man came to unite with the church, and the first question propounded to him was, "Please tell us in your own way why you think you are a Christian." "Well," he commenced in a sort of "sing-song" manner, "one day – ah, about five o’clock – ah, I just took a notion to walk around the work-fence – ah, and I thought maybe I’d better take my rifle along – ah, for I might see a squirrel – ah," and he went on just that way. I myself have heard, in a Negro protracted meeting on the Brazos, about eight miles below Waco, candidate after candidate tell their experiences. They commenced this way: "Well, about last Sunday night – ah," following the same "sing-song" manner, "something seemed to drop down on me like a falling star – ah, and I heard the angel Gabriel toot his horn – ah; I went down in the valley to pray – ah," and so on.

Therefore, I say that we ought to define accurately the Christian experience. This is a Christian experience: All those convictions, emotions, and determinations of the soul wrought by the Spirit of God in one’s passage from death unto life. That may sound like a strange definition of a Christian experience. It has in it a conviction and certain emotions, also certain determinations, or choices, and those convictions and emotions are not excited by seeing a squirrel, not in imagining that you heard Gabriel blow his horn, for it is not Gabriel that is going to blow the horn. Michael is the horn-blower. But this conviction, this emotion and the determinations of the will, are all Spirit-wrought. And a Christian experience covers every one of those in the passage from death unto life.

There are varied uses which the New Testament makes of Paul’s experience:

1. As soon as he was converted, and yet outside Damascus or at least as soon as he had entered Damascus, the Lord tells Paul’s Christian experience to Ananias in order to induce that disciple to go to him. That disciple says, "Lord, I know this man. Why, he is a holy terror! He just kills us wherever he finds us." But the Lord says, "I tell you he is a chosen vessel unto me, and you go to him." So the Lord made use of Paul’s experience to prepare Ananias to accept Paul, and to minister to him what ought to be ministered to him, just as God made use of the experience of Cornelius related by himself to Peter in order to prepare Peter to perceive that God was no respecter of persons.

2. The second use made is by Barnabas in Acts 9:26-28. Paul came to Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and essayed to join himself to the disciples, but they would not receive him: "You? Take you? Accept you? Why, this whole city is full of the memories of your persecutions." But Barnabas took up for him, and related how this Saul had met Jesus, and how he was a believer in this gospel, and a preacher. And the relating of Saul’s experience to the Jerusalem church removed all of their objections to him, and prepared them to receive him among them, so the record says, "he went in and out among them."

It is for such objects that the Christian experience should be related to the church. God requires it as the second ceremonial act – that the man shall publicly confess the change that has taken place in him before he can be received into the church, and I will be sorry whenever, if ever, the Baptists leave that out. A man must not only be converted inside, but in order to join the church there must be a confession of that conversion.

In this particular case it was exceedingly appropriate for Barnabas to relate it, as they would not be disposed to believe Paul. The general rule should be that each candidate tell his own experience. It is better to let the candidate just get up and tell the church why he thinks he is a Christian, in his own way. Some people object to it. They say it is too embarrassing to the women. I have never found it so, but Is have seen men so "shaky" when they went to get married that they answered so low I could hardly hear them. But women are always assertive. A woman knows she loves him. She knows what she is doing, and she doesn’t mind saying so.

I remember a Christian experience related to our old First Church at Waco. A Mrs. Warren gave it. I talked with her privately, saying, "When you come before the church, don’t let anybody suggest to you what you are to say, and don’t you say anything because somebody else has said it; you just simply say what has happened to you." When I put the question to her, she opened her Bible and put her finger on the passage from which she heard a sermon, and showed how that sermon took hold of her; told how it led her to pray; she then turned to another passage, showing that through faith she believed in Jesus Christ; and she thus turned from passage to passage. I considered her’s the most intelligent and the most impressive Christian experience I had ever heard. That kind of testimony does a world of good.

3. The third use of it Paul himself makes in his letter to the Galatians. He says, "God, who separated me even from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me." Thus he goes on to make use of his Christian experience. He says, "Therefore, now first I was converted, and then called as an independent apostle. That is why I do not go to Jerusalem to submit my experience to Peter or John, having derived this direct authority from God, from Christ, who alone can call an apostle. That is why I did not submit to the instruction of man."

4. The next use he makes of it is what is told in Romans 7, and he there tells his experience in order to show the use of the law in the conversion of a man – that the law does not convert the man; that it discovers sin to him: "I had not known sin except the law said, Thou shall and shalt not do this or that. I was not even conscious that I was a sinner until the law showed me I was a sinner. Apart from the law I felt all right, about as good as anybody, but when the law came, sin revived and I died." And then he goes on to show that this mere sight of sin through the law cannot put one at peace with God, neither can it deliver one; it does not enable one to follow the right that he sees in order to evade the wrong that he would not; that it leads one to cry out, "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" But when he says, "I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord," he then shows how his conversion, through faith in Jesus Christ was led up to by the law: the law was a schoolmaster to lead him to Christ.

5. In the letter to the Corinthians he makes another use of it. He explains that he is so different from what he was, saying, "By the grace of God I am what I am." In other words, "You need not come to me and say, ‘Why, Paul, when did you commence to do better, to work out your own righteousness? You are so different from what you were when I first heard of you; you then were breathing out threatenings,’ for I say to you, By the grace of God I am what I am."

6. We see another when he stands on the stairway in Jerusalem, giving an explanation as to why he quit one crowd and then went to another crowd. They were howling against him for going over to the Christians after being so zealous as a Jew, and he asked the brethren to hear him. He admits all that they said as to what he had been, and to justify his occupying the position he now occupies, he says, "I will tell you my Christian experience," and he proceeds to do it. If a leader of wild young men, up to all sorts of mischief and devilment, should go off for a few days, and come back changed, and the boys say, "Come down to the saloon tonight, and let us have a good time," and he would then say, "No," they would wonder what had come to him and would ask, "What has come over you lately? Come and let us have a game of cards." But, "No," he says, "boys, I will tell you why I cannot do that." Then he explains why, and he leaves that crowd because he can’t stay with it any more. So Paul explained why he left the persecuting crowd, and could not go with them any more. He had had a Christian experience.

7. In Acts 26 there is another instance recorded in which he made use of it. He was at Caesarea, arraigned on trial for his life, before Festus and King Agrippa. He is asked to speak in his own defense. In defending himself against the accusations of his enemies he relates his Christian experience.

8. In the letter to the Philippians he relates his Christian experience in order to show the impossibility of any man’s becoming righteous through his own righteousness, and to show that Christ laid hold of him. He uses his own experience now to show that his righteousness can never save him, and that though regenerate, he cannot claim to be perfectly holy and sinless.

9. In 1 Timothy 1:12-16 he relates his Christian experience in order to explain two poles of those who are salvable: (a) "God forgave me because I did it through ignorance," and (b) to show that any man who has not committed the unpardonable sin, may be saved, since he, the chief of sinners, was saved.

10. Then, in the last letter to Timothy, and just before he died, he recites his Christian experience. He says, "I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day," i.e., "I committed my soul to him on that day when he came to me and met me; I knew him before I committed it to him, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep it." He made that use of his Christian experience because he was under the sentence of death, expecting in a few hours to be executed. This is his farewell to earth and to time, so he closes his letter with the statement that the time of his exodus is at hand; that he is ready to be poured out as a libation; that he has fought a good fight, has kept the faith, and that he feels sure that there is laid up for him a crown which God the righteous Judge will give to him at his appearing, i.e., the appearing of Jesus. The relating of that experience came from the lips of a dying man, showing that the ground of his assurance gives calmness – the calmness of God’s peace.

A startling fact confronts us in these many uses of his experience. We do not find many uses of Peter’s experience, or John’s, or Matthew’s, or Mark’s, or Luke’s. Paul is the only man in the New Testament whose experience is held up before us in ten distinct passages of scripture. To account for the fact, let us expound the two reasons for this particular man’s conversion (1 Timothy 1:13-16), in which he says, "Howbeit I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief . . . howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as the chief [of sinners] might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample, . . ." the conclusion of which is this: All these uses are made of Paul’s experience because as Abraham had the model faith, which is the pattern for all generations, so Paul is a model in Christian experience – he is the pattern. If you preach on the faith of Abraham you have the model faith of the world; if you preach on the experience of Saul of Tarsus you have the model experience of the world.

The principal lesson to us is that as it was in the particular case of Paul, so it is in our case, that the most stupendous fact in our history is not when we were born according to the flesh, but when we were born according to the Spirit. That is our real birthday. It is the most significant and the most far-reaching fact of anybody’s lifetime and an abundant use may be made of it.

For instance, John Jasper, the Negro preacher, with his Christian experience could always reply to any atheist – even to President Eliot, of Harvard, about a new religion. He would say to President Eliot, "When you say there is no such thing as the religion that has been preached, you ought to say, ’Not as you knows of.’ I have it, and since I have got it and you haven’t, I am higher authority on that than you."

In Edward Eggleston’s Circuit Rider is the story of a fighting preacher, who was going to his appointment, and certain rough men stopped him on the way and told him that he must turn round and go home, and not fill that appointment. "No," he said, "I am going to fill it; I’m not going home." "Well, then, we will take you down from your horse and give you such a beating that you will not feel like preaching." "Well, you ought not to do that," he said. "You get down," they said. He got down and whipped both of them outrageously, but in the fight he got his jaw badly bruised and marred, and when he got to where he was to preach he could not preach. There was a big crowd, and no preacher who could preach. So he looked around and took a poor, thin, long-haired, black-eyed young fellow who had been very wild, but who had just been converted – just a boy. The preacher said, "Ralph, get up here and preach." "Why," he says, "I am no preacher; I have not been a Christian long; I have not been licensed, nor ordained." "But," said the preacher, "get up here and preach." "Why," said the boy, "I do not know any sermons." "Well, if you try to make a sermon and fail, then throw your sermon down, and tell your Christian experience before this crowd." So that boy got up and made a failure of trying to preach a sermon like preachers preach. Then, weeping, he said, "Brethren, I can tell you how God for Christ’s sake forgave my sins," and he became more eloquent in telling his experience than Demosthenes or Cicero, and that whole crowd was weeping under the power of the boy’s simple recounting of the salvation of his soul. He could not possibly have done any better than just what he did that day.

There is a myth that when Jupiter made a man he put a pair of saddlebags on his shoulders. In one of the saddlebags was the man’s own sins and in the other were the sins of his neighbors, and when the man threw the saddlebags on his shoulder the sins of his neighbors were in front of him and the other saddlebag with his own sins was behind him so that he could not see them, but his eyes were always on the sins of his neighbors. But when conversion comes God reverses the saddlebags, and putting the man’s own sins in front, he places the sins of his neighbors behind him, so that he never thinks about what a sinner A, B or C is, but, "Oh," he says, "what a sinner I am!" That is the way of it in the Christian experience. Some think that it was the thought underlying this myth which caused Paul to call himself the chief of sinners, i.e., that it was because he saw his own sins, but not the sins of other people. My belief is that all of us feel that way the first time we quit looking at our neighbors’ sins and begin looking at our own sins, but it is not the explanation of Paul’s statement, because that does not make a pattern of the case. He says, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief: howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his long-suffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life." Note that his case was a pattern to them that should thereafter believe. That was the reason, and not simply that of looking at his own sins instead of his neighbors.

What particular act, or series of acts, or state of mind constituted him the chief of sinners, is e., was it because he was a persecutor, blasphemer, or injurious? No. I have showed in a previous chapter that Louis XIV and Alva in the lowlands persecuted worse than all. Others have gone before him in blaspheming, and there have been more injurious men than he. The answer is this: He was a "Pharisee of the Pharisees," that is, he was an extremist, going to the fine points of Pharisaism, the acme, the pinnacle, the apex of Pharisaism, which is self-righteousness, and Paul was the most self-righteous man in the world. What is the sin of self-righteousness? It says, "I am not depraved by nature; I do not need the new birth, the re-birth of the Holy Spirit; I need no atonement; I am the ’pink of perfection.’ " That is the greatest sin that man ever committed, because it rejects the Father’s love. It rejects the Saviour’s expiatory death, and his priesthood. It rejects the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. Hence it is the culmination of sin. While other people are self-righteous, Paul was the outside man, which means that if all the sinners from Adam to the end of the world were put in a row and graded according to their heinousness, this one a sinner) this one more a sinner, that one even more, and to the outside man, the worst, the one next to hell, that man was Saul of Tarsus. That is what is meant by being the outside man as a pattern. He topped them all, to be held up before other sinners, so as to say, "If the outside man was saved, you need not despair." The value of this man’s conversion to the church and to the world is very great. It marked the turning point in the direction of the labors of the church in a worldwide way, and it established forever the foundations of the new covenant as against the old covenant.

His apostolic call and independent gospel knocks the foundation out from under the Romanist claim that Peter was the first Pope, because it shows that he did not derive from Peter his apostolic authority; that he did not even go to see Peter before he commenced exercising his call; that he did not get from Peter one syllable of his gospel; and whenever an issue came up between him and Peter the latter went down and not Paul. That one fact destroys the entire claim of the papacy that Peter was the first Pope.

There are some things in this connection that need explanation. First, the falling of the scales from his eyes. Literally, there was no falling of the scales from his eyes, but the glory of Christ blinded him. His physical eyes could not see. It was not his soul that was blinded, but his physical eyes; and "the scales" that fell from his eyes was this temporary suspension of sight caused by this glory of the Lord. If you hold your eye open a little and let me put a red hot iron, not against your eye, but close to it, it will make you as blind as a bat, but if you shut your eye it won’t do it, because the tears in your eyes will break the conduction of the heat. Paul’s case is just as when you are standing out of doors on a dark night and there comes an intense flash of lightning. When it is gone you cannot see for a moment. That is the scales.

Second, Paul was unable to eat and drink for three days. The experience that had come to him was turning the world upside down. He had meat to eat that the ordinary man knows not of. The disciples were astonished that Jesus, sitting at the well of Sychar, was not hungry. He says, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." Hundreds of times I have been in that condition, after a great illumination in God’s work, and some powerful demonstration in a meeting, that I could not eat anything. The things of heaven tasted so much better than the things of earth. No man eats for a while in the shock of such tremendous experience as that Paul passed through.

Third, the Lord said to Ananias, "Behold, he prayeth." The question arises, What was he praying for? What do you pray for? You are converted. The Lord said to Ananias, "Paul prayeth." It was used as a proof that he was converted, and, "therefore Ananias, you may go to him." Ananias was afraid to go. So the Lord said, "Why, you need not be afraid to go; he is not persecuting now, he is praying; there has a change come over him." I do more praying and quicker praying after an extraordinary visitation of God’s grace than at any other time.

QUESTIONS

1. What address commended for study in connection with this chapter, and have you read it?

2. What the scriptures bearing on the theme, and what the corresponding date of each?

3 Prove that Paul was under conviction before his conversion?

4. Through whose ministry was Paul convicted?

5. At what point in the story was he converted – when he met Jesus outside Damascus, at the end of three days in Damascus, or at his baptism?

6. What the proof that his vision of Jesus was real, and not a mere mental state?

7. What was the necessity for his actually seeing the Lord?

8. Cite other passages also bearing on his apostolic call.

9. Distinguish clearly between his conversion and his apostolic call, and show what part of this joint experience may not be expected in conversions today, and was not a part of his Christian experience.

10. Define a Christian experience.

11. What varied uses does the New Testament make of Paul’s experience?

12. What startling fact confronts us in these many uses of his experience?

13. To account for the fact expound the two reasons for this particular man’s conversion (1 Timothy 1:13-16) in which be says, "Howbeit Is obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief; . . . howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as the chief of sinners] might Jesus Christ show forth all his long-suffering, for an ensample, etc."

14. What the lessons to us of the use to be made of our experience, and what illustration of it?

15. Cite the myth of Jupiter concerning the man and the saddlebags.

16. Was it the thought underlying this myth which caused Paul to call himself the chief of sinners, i.e., was it because he saw his own sins, but not the sins of other people? Explain fully.

17. What particular act, or series of acts, or state of mind constituted him the chief of sinners, i.e., was it because he was a persecutor, blasphemer, or injurious?

18. What is the value of this man’s conversion to the church and the world?

19. What is the bearing of his apostolic call and his independent gospel on the Romanist claim that Peter was the first Pope?

20. Explain the falling of the scales from his eyes.

21. Explain his not eating and drinking for three days.

22. The Lord said to Ananias, "Behold, he prayeth." What was he waiting for?

Verses 1-31

XIV

THE SALUTATION – ELOQUENCE AND FACTIONAL DIVISIONS

1 Corinthians 1:1-31.

In this discussion we commence with the salutation and thanksgiving as the second item of the analysis. The salutation is 1 Corinthians 1:1-31. The thanksgiving, 1 Corinthians 1:1-31. Let us look at that salutation: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." If we turn back to the salutation of 1 Thessalonians, we find that it says: "Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians." But this one says, "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." The change arises from the objection that had been raised against him in the city of Corinth. Therefore from now on, he never commences a letter without affirming his call to the apostleship and his qualification for it.

One of the occasions for the letter was that a man from Judea, bearing letters of recommendation, had sought to undermine Paul’s influence by denouncing his apostleship, and now Paul puts into his letters a statement of his full apostolic claim: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours."

The salutation, then, is from Paul and Sosthenes, who is the amanuensis. When we come to the end of the letter we will see that Paul grabs the pen and writes that anathema with his own hand. The only letter that he did write with his own hand throughout, was the letter to the Galatians. His eyes were very bad, and he wrote in great sprawling letters, about which he says, "See with how large letters I write unto you with mine own hand." Because of this defect in his eyesight he employed a clerk.

Great fundamental principles are discussed in this letter, and it is addressed to them directly, but it was not intended to be merely a local letter. The expression, "With all that call, . . . ," lifts it above local restrictions. We notice in the salutation his use of the words, "sanctified," and "saints," one indicating past time, and the other present time: "Them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." The two words come from a common root. Sanctification has three Bible significations: Primarily it means to set apart. God sanctified the seventh day and set it apart. Jesus said, "I sanctify myself," that is, "I set myself apart to do the work I am to do." In one instance at least, the word "sanctification" is used as an equivalent of regeneration, because sanctification commences in regeneration, and the passage is this: "The elect . . . according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit." There, sanctification includes both sanctification and regeneration. The third sense is where it is limited to what is called the doctrine of sanctification as distinguished from justification and regeneration. Regeneration is an instantaneous act of the Spirit of God, giving a holy disposition to the mind, renewing the man, applying to him the cleansing blood of Christ. But sanctification, in its doctrinal aspect, is the progressive work of making completely holy that new life which is commenced in regeneration. And then it goes on until the man’s soul is made completely holy – as holy as God is holy. In justification Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us through faith; in sanctification, before the work is completed, or when it is completed, we personally are made righteous altogether. Sanctification of the spirit culminates in death. When the soul is separated from the body it is sanctified – made perfect. Paul says) "The spirits of just men made perfect." Death is the last lesson in sanctification. He continues the salutation: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Paul’s salutations always consist, first, of "grace," and then "peace," because peace depends on grace.

In every letter that he writes, just after the salutation is a thanksgiving statement. He had hard work in finding ground for thanksgiving here, but he always finds it if it is there. He always gives his thanks to God for the good that there is, before he begins to point out evil. I take great blame to myself that I do not follow Paul with regard to thankfulness concerning the brethren. I am afraid many of us are addicted to censoriousness; because of the spirit of criticism we see but little reason for thankfulness in many of our brethren.

An old deacon of the church to which I first preached told me of one man who never condemned, who in every case found some good in whomsoever was mentioned. Finally they made a bet that even the deacon could not find a good thing to say about a certain man that was a notoriously bad character and who had just died. They told the old deacon about it and he stood a while and then said, "Brethren, we ought to be thankful that he was a good whistler." He just wouldn’t say a condemnatory thing about anybody.

This letter of Paul to the church at Corinth was a sharp letter, and particularly when he criticizes the abuse and misuse of the miraculous spiritual gifts. I once heard a preacher say, "Don’t burn the ship in order to get rid of the rats." So Paul does not discount the great spiritual gifts because by some people they were so abused and misused. These gifts were more widely diffused among the Corinthians than at any other place of which we have any account in the Bible. It was a great necessity at that place for these spiritual gifts in order to get a hearing. Referring to these gifts Paul says, "In everything ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift." That is a new ground of thanksgiving that we have not found before.

With this brief prelude Paul launches at once into the discussion of the great questions that occasioned the letter. First of all were the eight ecclesiastical disorders. This ’is what he says: "Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, that there are contentions among you." Let us see what kind of contentions, and how factions started in that church, and let us see if, so far as our knowledge of factions goes, that they arise from the same cause. I don’t suppose that there ever was a preacher who didn’t at some time or other see a divided church. There are men today with a great burden on their hearts because of divisions in the church where they preach. We want to know how these factions started. He said, "Each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I am of Apollos; and I am of Cephas; and I am of Christ." What then is the contention about? The members of the church are partial toward spiritual leaders. After Paul left there, Apollos, of Alexandria, an eloquent rhetorician, came there, and he was a mighty orator, and the people were led away by his eloquence, and later there came these brethren from Judea who thought that Peter was a great man. Apollos himself was not to blame; he had nothing to do with it. But a faction rallied around Apollos, another around Peter, another rallied around Christ. Some held to Peter and some held to themselves, and said, "I am a ’Christ-i-an,’ " others, "I am Apollosite," "I am a Peterite," or "I am a Christite." While Paul was away Apollos came there and preached, and being a very eloquent man and a rhetorician, with all of the arts of polished speech, with well-rounded periods) his speech so very fine that admiration for the rhetoric of it led some to disregard the matter of it, so that to them the speech was lost in its oratory.

At various conventions I have heard men remarking on certain speakers. One said concerning a certain address, "That was the most logical, best rounded, and of the most homiletic art," showing that they were studying the manner and casting of the speech more than the preaching itself, just like discussing a woman’s dress instead of the woman.

The gravest factions that ever agitated the churches of Jesus Christ have come up around persons more than doctrines, politics, or measures. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, rows in the church come up around preachers. Laymen as a rule don’t like a fuss in a church, but the preacher oftentimes makes a great deal of harm, intending really to do good instead of evil, and yet because he doesn’t know how to do certain things, and particularly how to handle delicate cases of discipline, there will be a scene, and directly the cause of a splitting of the church wide open. Generally we can get men to compromise, and by reasoning and prayer, we may bring them into doctrinal agreement, but the hardest men to harmonize in the world are those who are contentious about men. That is why we should never seek after a "stack-pole" unification, i. e., stack around a man. He may die, and then what becomes of our unit?

It was a grief to Paul because people had made his name a cause of faction. Let us carefully and prayerfully make the application to our own hearts, and note the great arguments Paul gives against these factions. He says, "Is Christ divided?" i. e., is our Lord Jesus Christ to be cut up and parceled and measured out, one piece to one man, another to another man? So long as Christ is the center of our unification, kingship, priesthood, there should be no division about men.

When I was a schoolboy I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Union, though when my state seceded, I entered the Southern army and remained in it four years. In my last days at school I stood on a goods box in the streets of Independence under the last Star-Spangled Banner ever lifted to the sun of Texas before the war, and with a great mob gathered round to pull down the flag, I commenced my oration by repeating the poem: Think ye that I could brook to see That banner I have loved so long, Borne piecemeal o’er the distant sea, Divided, measured, parceled out, Tamely surrendered up forever, To satisfy the soulless rabble? Never, never!

I have to confess that I changed my conviction about the right policy of secession, after I saw that they had to secede. There was not anything else to be done, but I am just showing how here in measuring, parceling out, the thought is just the same.

Notice Paul’s next argument: "Was Paul crucified for you? You say you are for Paul, Cephas, or for Apollos: is any one of these your Saviour? Was Peter judged before Pilate? Was it Peter that entered the three hours of darkness and cried out, ’My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Was it by the shed blood of Paul that your sins were forgiven? If none of these men was crucified for you, then in the name of consistency, why name them as rallying points? When you came up and testified for Christ’s sake that God had forgiven yours sins, and when you were led into the water, and the preacher lifted up his hand over your head, did he say, "Upon your public profession, I baptize you in the name of Peter"? He makes his argument still stronger, saying, "I thank God that I baptized none of you save Crispus and Gaius – and the household of Stephanus."

Never shall I forget one of my earliest controversies. A man came to my town and was affirming that baptism was essential to salvation, like repentance and faith. I stood up before him and said,

"Will you tell me then, why Paul said, I thank God I baptized none of you save Crispus and Gaius? You say baptism is essential to salvation; Paul said, ’God sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel.’ " Notice how he puts baptism in opposition to the gospel.

Then further, if there were no other words in the Bible than the words we have here, they are forever fatal to the doctrine of baptismal salvation.

Those who were converted were usually baptized by other ministers. Perhaps he baptized these when he first reached Corinth and was by himself. But soon after Timothy, Titus, and Silas joined him and performed the rest of the baptizing. Christ never baptized at all, but Christ saved men, therefore his baptism was not essential to salvation.

It was Peter who opened the door to the Gentiles, and they through faith received remission of sins. He commanded them to be baptized; he did not do it himself. Baptism is a commandment of great importance, but it is not a condition of salvation. Paul says, "I thank God I baptized none of you lest somebody, in saying, I am of Paul,’ should give as a reason I am better than you are because Paul baptized me.’ " I can understand that one who is to be baptized would prefer that a dear friend should perform that ordinance, just as people marry and want some dear friend to perform that rite; but it is not necessary that a particular person should do it. If it is a fact that a certain person should not do the baptizing, then that should be made no ground for division, or from the fact that there are three denominations at least who recognize us as proper subjects of baptism, but who refuse to recognize it because we were not baptized by the bishop or some person high in church position.

Notice the continuation of Paul’s argument: "For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. And the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe."

The application is this: One of the factions of that Corinthian church arose out of the great dialectic skill of Apollos in his preaching and in his argument. That, says Paul, can be no ground for a faction in the church of Jesus Christ, because true preaching holds up the cross only as a means of salvation, and not the oratorical manner in which one talks about the cross. He goes on to show why it was in his preaching that he refused that oratorical method. He says, "I came, not relying upon the wisdom of the world and argumentation. I came in weakness, fear and trembling, praying that your faith should not stand in man, but in the demonstration of the Spirit, and I held up nothing before you but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If a church is to be divided on a question of rhetoric or philosophic training, then I propound Paul’s questions, "Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world?" God had poured his contempt upon the whole of it. The world by wisdom knew not God. All the wise men of the world were never able to find him nor to devise a single plank of the bridge of salvation that spans the chasm between hell and heaven.

He continues to argue: "Not only is this true, but I appeal to your experience, For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that were strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are; that no flesh should glory before God." If salvation is dependent upon the eloquence of preachers, the logic of Aristotle and wisdom of Socrates; if the number of converts are to be measured by the preacher’s acquaintance with flights of fancy, and with great epic poems that he has either written or read, then, indeed, might one make that a ground of contention, but the very highest estimate that one can put upon any of that is that it is merely a scaffolding.

I have oftentimes seen a great sermon fail to convict because it was too ornate, too delicate, too polished. It did not deal directly with the naked souls of men.

That was a shrewd thing in Paul to appeal to their experience: "Look at yourselves! You were a ragamuffin crowd – thieves, murderers, adulterers. Did rhetoric come to you in the mud, and wash you clean? Was it the power of the orator that could charm you from the degradation of sin, and could lift you up and put your feet upon the rock? O brethren, it was the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! The cross of Christ is the only true thing in preaching that saves men, and here you are splitting up the church because one preacher is more eloquent than another."

I feel pressed in spirit to enforce upon the minds of preachers the subject of contention. Let them beware that there should come death unto the church of Jesus Christ on their account. Though a Christian cannot be lost, the church can be destroyed. Because that church organization is the temple of the Holy Spirit, God says, and Paul brings out the statement of God in this letter, "Him that destroyeth the temple of God will God destroy, and his temple are ye." That does not mean that the preacher loses his soul, but that on account of his church he may be stricken and temporarily destroyed so that he will never get over it; his usefulness gone and his name on record as the man who divided the church, and the light was put out, and all because "him that destroyeth the temple of God will God destroy."

What graver lesson does Texas need than she has had? Some years ago all our work was paralyzed on account of hypercriticism, until at last the brethren saw that there could never be a forward move, the people of God could never advance with banner unfurled, and from the very day that they drew the line of demarcation until now, there has been one colossal stride after another toward greater things. Let us go back in our mind over the list of ministers who have lost their hold on congregations, not as Christians, but as preachers, and have made shipwreck of their lives. There was a man that destroyed a certain church of Jesus; he came in as a ground of faction; he worked up a party of division around himself, and the power of the church was lost. When he did that he signed his death warrant as a useful preacher.

QUESTIONS

1. What constitutes the second item of the analysis, and what the scripture for each division?

2. What particularly distinguishes the salutation of this letter from the preceding salutations in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and why?

3. What expression lifts the letter above local restrictions, and why should this letter not be so restricted?

4. On the phrase, "sanctified, called to be saints," what the several New Testament meanings of the word "sanctify," who could the sanctification of the Corinthians be past, present, and future, what the particular meaning of the word expressing what Baptists call the doctrine of sanctification, and how distinguish it from regeneration and justification?

5. What the relation of "grace" and "peace," and how is this relation indicated?

6. What was Paul’s habit in writing his letters, and what the lesson on censoriousness? Illustrate.

7. What the new ground of hi? thanksgiving here?

8. Were the gifts mentioned in this thanksgiving the ordinary graces of the Spirit or those miraculous endowments of the Spirit constituting the "baptism in the Holy Spirit"?

9. What passages in the letter show the extent and variety of the miraculous endowments bestowed upon the Corinthians?

10. In view of their misuse and abuse of these gifts, what the explanation of Paul’s thankfulness for their reception of them? Illustrate.

11. What is the first ecclesiastical disorder, and what part of the letter discusses it?

12. What is the occasion of this disorder – persons, doctrines, or discipline, etc.?

13. If persons, were they laymen or preachers, and who were they?

14. What proportion of church divisions now are caused or occasioned by preachers, and when thus occasioned are the preachers always to blame?

15. What is Paul’s first argument against factions, and what the present-day application?

16. What is his second argument and its application?

17. What is his third argument, how does he reinforce this argument, and what is its bearing on baptismal salvation?

18. What is the fourth argument, and what the application to the Corinthians?

19. What is the fifth argument, and what the special application to the Corinthians?

20. What is the sixth argument, appealing to their personal experience, and what illustration from modern Baptist history?

21. What is the meaning of "if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy"?