1236AFC090512
Read it online here, please.
1 Corinthians 4:1 – This is how one should regard us [Paul and Apollos], as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
This is from the Epistle for tjoday September 7th. It speaks to me on so many levels. Let me share a bit with you about this little verse. Paul is writing to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth was pretty diverse and spread out. There wasn’t a central gathering place where everyone came together to worship. It would be more accurate to say “the churches in Corinth,” because the meetings of believers were held in homes. Sometimes it was a single family; many times it was two or more families; rarely was it a large group as we think of a congregation today.
Because of the diversity of the groups meeting, there also arose a lot of diversity in leadership, “credit” for founding the house-church (Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ among them). Much of the content of the Epistles, especially those from Paul, focuses on toning down this diversity and returning to the Apostolic Teachings at two-degrees of separation from Christ; Christ taught the Apostles, the Apostles taught the believers. This theme appears in almost all the Pauline Epistles. In this one, for example at 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul writes, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” Sometimes the divisiveness in those early Christian communities caused in-fighting, gossip, and all sorts of disruptions. Paul – and other writers of that era – kept telling them they were missing the point. The point was, “It is Christ that matters. He willingly died a shameful death to free us from sin and death. He instituted sacraments to bring us into his Kingdom. He gave us the Gospel, the Good News, to guide our Kingdom-living. Those are the things that matter. Stop fighting about anything that doesn’t matter.”
In this passage, Paul is saying that Apollos (shortened form of Apollonius) should be considered as an Apostle in the same way Peter and Paul were. Apollos’ doctrine was incomplete when he first “felt the call” to spread the Gospel. After being reinstructed by Pricilla and Aquila so that he was in conformance with Apostolic teaching, he became a formidable preacher of the Gospel in that region, and later on accompanied Paul to Ephesus. Paul, in fact, accepted Apollos as another of the apostles, but perhaps not one dramatically converted as was Paul, but as one who had been an eyewitness to the Risen Christ and even among his followers during Jesus’ ministry. Paul is telling the Corinthians that whichever Apostle taught them, they must not distinguish themselves on the basis of who baptized and instructed them. The Christ is the center, the head, the only ultimate authority; all else that is true must point back to Christ and none other. Everyone else was to be considered “servants of Christ” by all the believers.
We have already looked at the catholic letters in the New Testament and reviewed several of the heresies that the Apostles and others fought. Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter) constantly urged their churches to follow only Christ as taught by the Apostles, the witnesses hand-picked by Jesus to carry his message “to all the world.” But Paul indicates here they were more than messengers. He tells the Corinthians the Apostles are stewards of the mysteries of God. This is an important clue to the workings of the Early Church.
A steward is a person who is in charge of a household. The steward is the one responsible for distributing the resources of the household at the right time and the right place in the right amount for the right reasons and with the right outcome. A steward is the manager-par-excellence and reports to the Master of the house, giving an account of all that has transpired. The steward managed all the activities of the household, and as you can imagine, there were plenty of opportunities for an unfaithful steward to rip off the Master, to arrange things for his own good and aggrandizement, and to squander rather than manage resources. (See Luke 16:1-12) As stewards personally commissioned by Christ to care for his Church, the Apostles held their disciples to the same requirements Jesus had placed on them: Stick to the Truth and the Truth shall set you free. Not everyone has the moral fortitude to champion Truth without tipping the scales to make a little of the limelight and glory fall on them.
The implication, of course, that all of us should match the commitment of the Apostles to be good stewards. They were commissioned to be stewards of the Mysteries of God, and they found that in that role, they also became good stewards of all of the rest of God’s creation including human work and human wealth. We are to be stewards of our “interior households,” bringing out and distributing resources from the storehouse of gifts we have received from The Holy Trinity. We have taken a look at stewardship, and the meaning of steward. We manage a “household” in our hearts and minds, in our families, our communities, our churches, and our nation; we are charged with the responsibility of bringing out whatever is needed by those households as a way to glorify and honor God’s infinite generosity. By extension, the concept of stewardship flows to all aspects of human life and can be anchored in God’s very first command to Adam and Eve: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 ESV) Our first duty to God is to be good stewards of Creation, to “have dominion over,” to control and manage God’s gifts whether temporal or spiritual.
The nature of this management is also seen in Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians: As servants and stewards. We have only one master (Matthew 23:8), and his “household” is The Kingdom of God. Christ is the head of that entire Kingdom, and no steward is equal to or greater than the Master. As the popular window sticker says,
So, Beloved, if you cannot claim to be an Apostle, then perhaps you can claim to be part of “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” as the Nicene Creed states. And in so doing, you can renew your understanding of and commitment to being a “good a faithful servant,” a worthy and honest steward of the mysteries of God which include his original command to take good care of everything he created (that includes you and me, too!). It doesn’t really matter if you do that with the Sierra Club, the Democrats or Republicans or whomever, the Scouts, or Catholics, or Four-Square Gospel, or Church of Christ, or Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, take-your-pick. As Paul said, some plant, some water; some till the soil, some carry off the rocks; and eventually the Lord of the Harvest sends laborers into the fields to prepare the harvest. Be a faithful servant and a good steward. It is the right time and the right place in the right amount for the right reasons and with the right outcome.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved!
Share-A-Prayer
Continue your prayers for those who are ill, those who are suffering tyranny and terror, those whose lives have been hijacked by the Devil’s addictive chemicals and toys, and all who suffer persecution for the Glory of The Name. And please, as this election draws to an end, carefully review your options and vote. For me, it has come down to a single issue that I find relevant: Morality. Neither team represents any sort of paragon of morality, but perhaps one may have evidence of a better conformance to that ideal.
1236AFC090512
Read it online here, please.
1 Corinthians 4:1 – This is how one should regard us [Paul and Apollos], as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
This is from the Epistle for tjoday September 7th. It speaks to me on so many levels. Let me share a bit with you about this little verse. Paul is writing to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth was pretty diverse and spread out. There wasn’t a central gathering place where everyone came together to worship. It would be more accurate to say “the churches in Corinth,” because the meetings of believers were held in homes. Sometimes it was a single family; many times it was two or more families; rarely was it a large group as we think of a congregation today.
Because of the diversity of the groups meeting, there also arose a lot of diversity in leadership, “credit” for founding the house-church (Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ among them). Much of the content of the Epistles, especially those from Paul, focuses on toning down this diversity and returning to the Apostolic Teachings at two-degrees of separation from Christ; Christ taught the Apostles, the Apostles taught the believers. This theme appears in almost all the Pauline Epistles. In this one, for example at 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul writes, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” Sometimes the divisiveness in those early Christian communities caused in-fighting, gossip, and all sorts of disruptions. Paul – and other writers of that era – kept telling them they were missing the point. The point was, “It is Christ that matters. He willingly died a shameful death to free us from sin and death. He instituted sacraments to bring us into his Kingdom. He gave us the Gospel, the Good News, to guide our Kingdom-living. Those are the things that matter. Stop fighting about anything that doesn’t matter.”
In this passage, Paul is saying that Apollos (shortened form of Apollonius) should be considered as an Apostle in the same way Peter and Paul were. Apollos’ doctrine was incomplete when he first “felt the call” to spread the Gospel. After being reinstructed by Pricilla and Aquila so that he was in conformance with Apostolic teaching, he became a formidable preacher of the Gospel in that region, and later on accompanied Paul to Ephesus. Paul, in fact, accepted Apollos as another of the apostles, but perhaps not one dramatically converted as was Paul, but as one who had been an eyewitness to the Risen Christ and even among his followers during Jesus’ ministry. Paul is telling the Corinthians that whichever Apostle taught them, they must not distinguish themselves on the basis of who baptized and instructed them. The Christ is the center, the head, the only ultimate authority; all else that is true must point back to Christ and none other. Everyone else was to be considered “servants of Christ” by all the believers.
We have already looked at the catholic letters in the New Testament and reviewed several of the heresies that the Apostles and others fought. Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter) constantly urged their churches to follow only Christ as taught by the Apostles, the witnesses hand-picked by Jesus to carry his message “to all the world.” But Paul indicates here they were more than messengers. He tells the Corinthians the Apostles are stewards of the mysteries of God. This is an important clue to the workings of the Early Church.
A steward is a person who is in charge of a household. The steward is the one responsible for distributing the resources of the household at the right time and the right place in the right amount for the right reasons and with the right outcome. A steward is the manager-par-excellence and reports to the Master of the house, giving an account of all that has transpired. The steward managed all the activities of the household, and as you can imagine, there were plenty of opportunities for an unfaithful steward to rip off the Master, to arrange things for his own good and aggrandizement, and to squander rather than manage resources. (See Luke 16:1-12) As stewards personally commissioned by Christ to care for his Church, the Apostles held their disciples to the same requirements Jesus had placed on them: Stick to the Truth and the Truth shall set you free. Not everyone has the moral fortitude to champion Truth without tipping the scales to make a little of the limelight and glory fall on them.
The implication, of course, that all of us should match the commitment of the Apostles to be good stewards. They were commissioned to be stewards of the Mysteries of God, and they found that in that role, they also became good stewards of all of the rest of God’s creation including human work and human wealth. We are to be stewards of our “interior households,” bringing out and distributing resources from the storehouse of gifts we have received from The Holy Trinity. We have taken a look at stewardship, and the meaning of steward. We manage a “household” in our hearts and minds, in our families, our communities, our churches, and our nation; we are charged with the responsibility of bringing out whatever is needed by those households as a way to glorify and honor God’s infinite generosity. By extension, the concept of stewardship flows to all aspects of human life and can be anchored in God’s very first command to Adam and Eve: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 ESV) Our first duty to God is to be good stewards of Creation, to “have dominion over,” to control and manage God’s gifts whether temporal or spiritual.
The nature of this management is also seen in Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians: As servants and stewards. We have only one master (Matthew 23:8), and his “household” is The Kingdom of God. Christ is the head of that entire Kingdom, and no steward is equal to or greater than the Master. As the popular window sticker says,
So, Beloved, if you cannot claim to be an Apostle, then perhaps you can claim to be part of “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” as the Nicene Creed states. And in so doing, you can renew your understanding of and commitment to being a “good a faithful servant,” a worthy and honest steward of the mysteries of God which include his original command to take good care of everything he created (that includes you and me, too!). It doesn’t really matter if you do that with the Sierra Club, the Democrats or Republicans or whomever, the Scouts, or Catholics, or Four-Square Gospel, or Church of Christ, or Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, take-your-pick. As Paul said, some plant, some water; some till the soil, some carry off the rocks; and eventually the Lord of the Harvest sends laborers into the fields to prepare the harvest. Be a faithful servant and a good steward. It is the right time and the right place in the right amount for the right reasons and with the right outcome.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved!
Share-A-Prayer
Continue your prayers for those who are ill, those who are suffering tyranny and terror, those whose lives have been hijacked by the Devil’s addictive chemicals and toys, and all who suffer persecution for the Glory of The Name. And please, as this election draws to an end, carefully review your options and vote. For me, it has come down to a single issue that I find relevant: Morality. Neither team represents any sort of paragon of morality, but perhaps one may have evidence of a better conformance to that ideal.
About Chick Todd
American Roman Catholic reared as a "Baptiterian" in Denver Colorado. Now living on Kauaʻi. USAF Vet. Married for over 50 years. Scripture study has been my passion ever since my first "Bible talk" at age 6 in VBS.
