“No Spirit in Dissention”

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the issues that Paul was addressing in the Corinthian church. Today, we look at the condition of “jealousy”, and as you may remember, jealousy, or envy, is one of the 7 deadly sins. Bishop Will Willamon wrote a book in 2005 by the name “Sinning Like a Christian”. He takes each of the 7 and considers their impact, not on general society, but on the people who live and worship within the Church. The “Seven” – Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth (laziness), Greed, Gluttony, and Lust - aren’t so much the things we do as they are the things we feel and think. We are the ones who not only passionately condemn these practices, but we are the very ones who are the greatest perpetrators of them.
Jesus dealt with “jealousy” more than any other of the human conditions. Even His disciples were constantly bickering over who was the greatest, who would sit at Jesus’ right hand, who Jesus liked the best, and on and on.
And Jesus never accepted one word of their animosity.
Willimon writes:
“It is odd that we have made even Jesus into such a quivering mass of affirmation and oozing graciousness, considering how frequently, unguardedly, and gleefully Jesus told us that we were sinners. Anyone who thinks that Jesus was into inclusiveness, self-affirmation, and open-minded, heart-happy acceptance has then got to figure out why we responded to him by nailing him on a cross. He got there not for urging us to ‘consider the lilies’, but for calling us ’whitewashed tombs’ and even worse.”
- Willimon, William; Sinning Like a Christian; Abington Press, 2005
And jealousy was one of the whitewashings that received so much of His attention.

Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-4

Paul is just about as blunt as Jesus is. “Since there is so much jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?” And the implication here is that these are some of the things that define a worldly life and that they can never be the acts of a spiritual life.

Historian Henry Chadwick discusses the radical transformation that occurred in the fourth century when the masses, who previously had worshipped pagan gods, filled the churches. The bishops of the church tried to get the masses to give up their pagan cults with their promises of success in love and fertility, in commerce and in health.

But bishops quickly found their people determined to have such things and ready to say (as Augustine reports) that “the Church's God was good for salvation in the next world, but one had better keep in with the old gods for success in this one.”

Augustine often laments the half-heartedness of many who have been baptized but who have not been touched to the heart, and sees an image of the Church in St. Peter's ship so weighed down with the fish that it began to sink.
--Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 1985, 379-80

The church in Corinth was beginning to sink under the pressure and weight of influences from the outside world. Willimon writes “I love the fact that Envy, as a sort of refined, subtle form of hate, is numbered among the Seven. Envy is less obviously sinful than crude, publicly expressed hate, but it can be no less deadly.”
The jealousy that Paul was seeing in the church sparked his concern and fears of spiritual immaturity. It had no place there, but here it is and it was actively tearing the Body of Christ apart, limb from limb, and heart from soul. It was destroying itself from the inside. And the issue? It was simply this - “Who was a better teacher – Paul or Apollos?” And the question that must be asked back to the church is this – “Where is Christ in all of this?” And the warning, and issues, and questions are still pertinent today.

Read 1 Corinthians 3:5-7

And Paul puts it all into perspective. He very clearly tells the church that it isn’t the teacher who is important – that those who lead are merely servants of the One who makes everything work together. And isn’t this problem true in the church of today? The servants of the Most High God want to be seen as the indispensable ones in the mix. "Nothing would get done around here if it wasn’t for me!” “No one else can do it right!” “Who do they think they are – don’t they know that I’ve always done that?” Or even worse “I could never do that – he (or she) is the only one for that job!”
It’s as if we don’t trust God to do the empowering! That God can’t work without me! Willimon writes that Pride is very possibly the worse of the Seven, because it tends to be the basis for the other six! Pride leads to jealously, and it causes nearly every other affliction to spread to the entire Body.

Now, we have to recognize the fact that Paul is not condemning diversity, those differences in our abilities and understandings. To the contrary, he is proclaiming it. Some can plant, some can nurture, some will encourage, and all must work together in the name of Christ. That is what being “spirit-lead” is all about – one concerted and united effort, using our diverse gifts, to accomplish our God given goals. The problem comes when we begin to think that our contribution in the effort is more important, more inspired, better given than that which comes from others, that the goal will be unattainable without us.
Paul is telling the church, both the one in the 1st century and the one in the 21st, that if we don’t grow up, we will surely give out.

Read 1 Corinthians 3:8-9

Paul uses 3 conceptual images in this passage. First, he offers the image of family – the infant who can only tolerate milk, versus those older members who can handle solid food. Second, the idea that the church is like a field prepared for a crop. And third, he ties it all together and adds the notion that the church is like a building that is under construction. We are growing, gaining, learning, changing, rising ever higher, but as we become more and more, we must never lose sight of the fact that the plan that is guiding us is never changing. We are the workers who are preparing the field, who are constructing the building, who are raising the family, but we do not cause the growth, we did not design the structure, we did not create the life, and the vision of the final result is not of us!
We simply work to enable the Lord’s plan for the church. And in that, we are the workers, the servants, and never the planner. As Corinth began to deviate from God’s plan for them, it became more and more obvious that they were not living within His will. The Lord’s plan of unity was failing in the dissention that was growing in the church.

In one of Charles Wesley’s hymns we sing:
“Come, let us use the grace divine, and all with one accord,
in a perpetual covenant join ourselves to Christ the Lord;
Give up ourselves, thru Jesus’ power, his name to glorify;
And promise, in this sacred hour, for God, to live and die.”
- Wesley, Charles; Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine; 1762, page 606, UMH, based

With one accord… give up ourselves... his name to glorify… to live and die for Him. The church can never be about individuals – it can only be about the workings of the Holy Spirit within and through the entire church. Remember the message in Luke 18 regarding the prayers that were being offered by two men – one being a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The attitudes of these two men were drastically different and there was no unity whatsoever in them. The Pharisee was elevating himself over the tax collector, and wanted to be seen as being the best example for all to follow. But Jesus turns the table on him, and proclaims that it’s the humble man who God will raise up, not the one who already thinks so highly of himself.

The Spirit of the Church is freed to work God’s wonders through the humility and surrender of the servants of God. Continuing with Charles Wesley’s hymn:
“The covenant we this moment make be ever kept in mind;
We will no more our God forsake, or cast these words behind.
We never will throw off the fear of God who hears our vow;
And if thou art well pleased to hear, come down and meet us now.”


The covenant that the Lord offers to His church is this – if we will “no more our God forsake” and no longer “cast [His] words behind”, His marvelous spirit will grow within us, and the Church victorious can become a reality in our time!
No more dissention.
No more jealous pride.
No more “me first”.
Just Christ, and Him crucified. No more and no less.