“WE EXIST TO PROCLAIM THE REIGN OF JESUS CHRIST OVER ALL THINGS; GLORIFYING AND ENJOYING GOD, NOW AND FOREVER!”

4 – “Unity in the Church”

Are you a spiritual person? Or are you a person ‘of the flesh?’ The Church at Corinth was the latter and had some serious problems as a result; they also had a lot of questions. Throughout Paul’s first letter to them he addresses many practical matters such as church discipline, lawsuits against fellow believers, sexual immorality, marriage, divorce, singleness, spiritual gifts, the Lord’s Supper, love, and the doctrine of the resurrection to name a few. But of all the subjects Paul addresses he devotes the most space to the one we’re considering this morning: unity in the church. He begins to address this matter in 1:10 and it spans all the way to 4:21. Clearly, he wanted the Corinthians to get this right! Unity in the church is not a peripheral concern, it was very important to the Apostle and should be very important to us today; as Paul explains, Christ is not divided, so His body shouldn’t be either (1:13). Multiple reasons explain the divisions that were taking place in the church but one of the primary reasons was this: the believers were identifying themselves with certain Christian preachers: “‘I follow Paul,’…‘I follow Apollos,’…‘I follow Cephas,’ (1:12), and this still happens today. We foolishly exalt certain preachers/leaders for their oratorical skill or charisma or any number of things. But why do we do this? Paul carefully points out several reasons, one of which was the Corinthians’ failure to grow spiritually (3:1-4). He had fed them the ‘milk’ of the Word in the past because they were not ready for more advanced teaching (‘solid food’), and now, when they should be ready, they are still ‘as infants in Christ’ and ‘of the flesh.’ Paul lays down important teaching to help them grow into spiritually mature believers: something that must happen for unity in the church to be maintained.