No Quarreling

 

DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

NO QUARRELING

1 Cor 3:1-4

3:1 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

NIV

As with most of what Paul writes in this letter, it is difficult to cut his complete thought into segments, yet if we were to put the whole of this discussion, it would be the complete letter. So we deal with one bite at a time. It is certain there were problems in this early church in Corinth. Paul is making a distinction between behaving in the manner of the world and behaving as believers in Christ. Certainly, it is true that when a person is born again, they have merely accepted the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ. Above that, they have little to no knowledge of spiritual matters. We certainly fit into that category, as before becoming a believer, we behaved in accordance with the world. We were an infant when it came to spiritual matters, but we learned and we grew, and we made mistakes along the way, and even after many years we are still growing and still making mistakes along the way. However, this milk and solid food that Paul speaks of were not part of our growing process. We began chewing the filet mignon from the very beginning, digging into the scriptures, consuming them as if we had been starving our whole life, which in fact we had been. Without the spiritual food from God, we would starve to death, but because we are feasting on his truths, we have life, in fact, everlasting life. Yet there is still division within the church and it may not show up as one following Paul and one following Apollos, but rather in quarreling over matters of interpretation and forming whole groups, or denominations splintering the body of Christ. There are even some, perhaps minor, quarrels within one denomination, with the multitude of churches available groups do not gather according to their location, but rather according to their wanting to follow a certain pastor because of his type of message, or personality. When asked about the church, a typical response might be about the pastor, rather than about Jesus. Then we have even witnessed quarrels within the local church because of either envy, or jealously, but most often it comes from none forgiveness. Quarrels over hurt feelings stem from thinking more of ourselves than we should. When we the church behave like mere men, we cannot accept as well as are not able to chew that filet but need only the milk. We will see how Paul deals with this in the next segment of his letter, but for now, let us consider the one and only important spiritual matter as to who we follow, and He is Jesus. We follow Jesus and only Jesus. There can be no quarreling about that.