True Spirituality

The Challenge Of 1 Corinthians For The 21St Century Church

Vaughan Roberts

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844745180
• eBook ISBN: 9781844746347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

What does it mean to be a truly spiritual Christian?




At a time when there is no shortage of answers competing for our attention, how do we know what really is from God?




This book looks for answers in the Bible, focusing on Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth. The Corinthians really thought they had arrived. By contrast, Paul was unspiritual, ignorant, weak and foolish.




Paul writes a strongly corrective letter, not simply to defend his reputation but to restore them to true Christian faith. He picks up the words that they themselves use and says, 'This knowledge, power and wisdom you claim to have are not the real thing. What you call spirituality is worldly. You are being directed by the mindset of the non-Christian world rather than by the Holy Spirit.'




That challenge still applies. Paul's appeal is God's appeal to us. We too need to repent of inadequate understandings of what it means to live by the Spirit and instead embrace true spirituality.

1. True Spirituality

Focuses on Christ’s cross, not on human wisdom

(1 Corinthians 1 – 2)

Longing for spiritual power

I recently went to lunch in an Oxford University college with a member of our congregation, who introduced me as his pastor to a professor sitting opposite. To my surprise, the professor asked immediately if I believed in God – I would have hoped that this was obvious from my job! When I told him that I did, he was politely scornful, clearly regarding me as intellectually simplistic and naive. I confess that at the time I was reluctant to respond by talking about Christ; I longed to be able to produce something more obviously powerful, such as a dramatic miracle or a knock-down philosophical argument for the existence of God.

All of us feel weak and foolish as Christians at times. It is hard not to feel weak when we look at the strident atheism, advancing secularism, apathetic spiritual ignorance and increasing strength of Islam in our society. Even closer to home, we are bound to feel weak when we find that we are the only believer in our family, office or sports team. And we will certainly feel foolish when friends laugh at us for our outdated morality or colleagues dismiss our beliefs as narrow- minded, fundamentalist nonsense. We long for the eyes of those around us to be opened so that they too can come to know God through Christ. However, it can be very hard to believe that could happen, especially when we remember God’s chosen means to bring it about: the proclamation of the gospel of Christ crucified.

The world’s rejection of the cross

Non-Christians have never been impressed by the cross. Archaeologists discovered some second-century graffiti in Rome making fun of a young man bowing down before a figure on a cross, which was drawn with the head of a donkey. Beside this is the caption: ‘Alexamenos worships God!’ His friends clearly thought it was ridiculous that he should be foolish enough to worship as a god a man who had been executed as a common criminal.1 Still today, there are those who are scornful or dismissive of ‘crosstianity’. They can understand a version of Christianity which focuses on the moral teaching of Jesus, but have no time for those who retain the emphasis on Christ as Saviour through his sacrificial death. Others are simply mystified. Talk of Christ’s agonizing death being anything other than a tragic failure makes no sense to them.

In a world that regards the message of Christ crucified as weak and foolish, it will always be tempting for Christians to look elsewhere for the power and wisdom we feel we need to impress others. Our attention can so easily shift from the message of the Bible, with its focus on the saving work of Christ through the cross, to other preoccupations. This development will often be justified as the result of the Spirit’s leading or an increase in spiritual maturity, but in reality it is prompted by the mindset of the non-Christian world. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 1 – 2 makes it very clear that true spiritual power and wisdom are found in Christ and the message of the cross.

A good test, therefore, of any movement or message that claims to be spiritual is to ask, ‘Does this point me to the crucified Christ and encourage me to grow in knowledge and love of him, to serve him and imitate him?’ If not, it does not come from the Holy Spirit, however impressive it may appear. We must be on our guard against any departure from a focus on Christ and the cross, whether it is caused by a deliberate decision or a gradual drift which flows from a form of spiritual amnesia.

Spiritual amnesia

After some introductory words, Paul begins his letter by expressing his concern about reports he had heard of the divisions in the Corinthian church: ‘My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”’ (1 Corinthians 1:11–12).

Travelling philosophers were common in Greek society, each proclaiming their particular brand of wisdom for life. Those with academic pretensions would attach themselves to one of these and to the school of philosophy they represented. It was a form of one-upmanship, with different groups arguing for the superiority of their way of thinking and intellectual heroes. What shocked Paul so much was that this worldly factionalism had entered the Corinthian church.

There is no hint in the letter as to what the different groups stood for. As far as we can tell, Paul, Apollos and Cephas (Peter) did not differ on any significant theological question. In fact, Paul stresses in 1 Corinthians 3 that God worked both through him, in planting the church, and through Apollos, who succeeded the apostle as its leader, in establishing it (3:6). It is most likely, therefore, that the factions in Corinth were divided, not by doctrine, but by mindset; instead of focusing on Christ they exalted human leaders, adopted them as heroes and placed them on pedestals. Paul is horrified: ‘I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought’ (1:10).

We can imagine the different groups in the church: PPT (Pauline Preaching Trust) and ARM (Apollos Renewal Ministries), each with its own office with posters of the great leader on the walls and piles of photographs ready to be sent to donors. They assumed they would be flattered: ‘We’ve read all your books, Paul, and downloaded every sermon; we’re even thinking of calling our church St Paul’s. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ But Paul is far from impressed; the Corinthians focused on their heroes, Paul, Apollos and Cephas, but he wants to bring them back to Christ alone. Jesus Christ is mentioned eleven times in the first nine verses of the letter. It is likely that ‘I follow Christ’ in 1:12 is not a reference to a fourth group, but rather Paul’s indignant response to the other personality cults: ‘You follow Apollos, Cephas and even me, but as for me, I follow Christ – and so should you.’

Paul took the factions in Corinth very seriously, because they were showing symptoms of spiritual amnesia. They had forgotten the power of Paul’s message of Christ crucified, through which they had been converted, and had chosen instead to focus on a corrupted version of Christianity that fitted better with the worldly ways of thinking that were popular. They thought that by so doing they had grown in power and wisdom, but in fact they had forfeited both. In 1 Corinthians 1 – 2, the apostle corrects their thinking by stressing two important truths:

1. True power is found in weakness.
2. True wisdom is received by revelation.

1. True power is found in weakness (1:18 – 2:5)

After Paul had left them, the Corinthians began to feel that his understated style of ministry and his message, which focused on Christ’s cross, was too weak to make much of an impact on sophisticated Corinth. They were increasingly drawn to the emerging leaders in the church who had more in common with the wisdom teachers who were so popular in the Greek world and gave people what they demanded: clever arguments and impressive oratory (that is, the way an idea was presented was as important as the idea itself). No doubt a personality cult attached itself to the most able Christian preachers, as it did to the best travelling philosophers, who could gather large audiences and receive high fees.

Superficially it must have looked as if these new leaders in the Corinthian church were brilliantly successful. Perhaps their congregations were overflowing, and the world had begun to take notice of them: they had become personalities with the first-century equivalents of their own newspaper columns and a regular slot on a television discussion programme. They appeared to be far more powerful than Paul, whose message of Christ crucified had been dismissed by most in Corinth; but the apostle urged the Corinthians not to be taken in, for God’s understanding of power is very different from the world’s. By adopting these new leaders had in fact forfeited God’s power. As Paul himself reminded them, he had been commissioned ‘to preach the gospel – not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power’ (1:17).

The weakness of the cross

The cross, as we have already seen, has always attracted strong responses. I remember one brilliant student exclaiming contemptuously, ‘That’s ridiculous’, after I had explained that we can only be acceptable to God because Jesus Christ died for sinners on the cross to take the punishment we deserved. Another clergyman told me why he and others had so strongly opposed a church plant we had started: ‘The truth is, Vaughan,’ he said, ‘we hate your theology.’ He was speaking, above all, about the message of the cross. The Bible’s teaching that we all deserve God’s judgment for our sin, and that Christ’s death as a substitute is our only hope, was deeply offensive to him.

While some dismiss the cross, others know that they owe everything to it. Our church recently baptized fifteen people in the River Thames. They were a diverse group: a few raised in atheistic China, one from the local council estate and some brilliant young British students, yet all spoke of how they had been transformed by the same message of Christ crucified. As Paul puts it, ‘The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’ (1:18).

The power of the cross

What is our strategy in the huge task of seeking to win our friends and neighbours for Christ and reaching out to our nation and the wider world? Churches are quick to rely on money, impressive buildings and capable staff members, but these have no power in themselves. Nor do the techniques that come in and out of fashion, and on which we place so much emphasis: church growth principles, cell churches, seeker services or planting. They have their place but at their best they are simply vehicles for the communication of the message that is God’s power: the cross of Christ.

The message of the cross is not what the world is asking for: ‘Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom’ (1:22). Still today there are many who expect God to prove his existence by a supernatural display, like the man who shouted at me when I was preaching in the open air, ‘Prove God; you can’t, can you?’ Others look for a version of Christianity that satisfies them intellectually and fits with the world’s current mindset, and there are plenty of professing Christians who are prepared to give them what they want. The result is an emasculated gospel, robbed of anything that might cause offence. It is soft on sin and judgment, strong on affirmation, without any call for repentance (‘God loves you just as you are – you’re wonderful!’), and explicitly denies the uniqueness of Christ, who is offered as just one of many paths up the mountain to God. This new gospel, which really is no gospel at all, may be popular, especially when attractively packaged, but it has no spiritual power. If we want to see people saved from God’s wrath and reconciled to him, we must resist the temptation to give people what they want and instead follow Paul’s example: ‘We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human strength’ (1:23–25).

The weakness of preaching...and its power

If we want to be spiritually powerful, making an impact on the world as individuals and churches, we must be willing to be weak. God’s power works through weak people proclaiming a seemingly weak message, which is often dismissed and despised by the world. Hudson Taylor, the great nineteenth- century missionary to China, was right when he said, ‘All God’s giants have been weak people.’ That is the result of God’s deliberate strategy: ‘God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ (1:27). If he had decided to save people by depending on the brilliant intellect and oratory of especially able preachers, they would receive much of the credit, but as it is, ‘No one may boast before him’ (1:29), and all the glory goes to God.

When Paul first visited Corinth, he knew that he would be far more acceptable if he gave people the human wisdom they wanted: the kind of teaching they were used to, with a Christian veneer, attractively presented in impressive oratory. However, he deliberately resisted that temptation: ‘When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (2:1–2).

It is no surprise that Paul entered the city ‘with much trembling’ because the world hates the message of the cross, dismissing it as weak and foolish. And yet, God worked mightily through him and many were converted: ‘My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power’ (2:4–5).

The apostle is hoping that this reminder of the remarkable story of the establishment of their church will awaken the Corinthians from their spiritual amnesia and prompt them to return to the message through which they were converted. That is a challenge needed by every generation of believers. The devil will always do everything he can to divert the church from the cross. We can hear his voice whenever we are encouraged to believe those scholars who caricature the glorious doctrine of Christ dying in our place to take our punishment as primitive and unbiblical. And we should recognize his evil scheming behind every temptation to sideline the message of Christ crucified and rely instead on human personalities, wisdom, techniques or oratory to make an impact on the world. Let us never forget that true power is found in the weakness of the cross.

2. True wisdom is received by revelation (2:6–16)

The wisdom of the cross

The world may dismiss the gospel of the cross of Christ as foolish, but Paul insists that his message is in fact wise: ‘We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature’ (2:6). His words contain an implicit rebuke to the Corinthians: if they really were spiritually mature, as they claimed, they would recognize the wisdom of the gospel, but worldly people like them are unable to see it. The cross is God’s ‘wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden’ (2:7), which cannot be discovered or understood by human brain power alone.

Living in an intellectual centre like Oxford, I am bound to acknowledge that human wisdom has achieved much. It was here in 1662 that Robert Boyle devised his law of gas expansion that gave birth to the age of steam, and in 1785 that Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, which launched the Industrial Revolution. Who knows what achievements may follow in the future – a cure for AIDS or cancer, perhaps? But despite its fine record and the brilliance of the minds gathered in my home city, there is one discovery which Oxford will never be able to boast: the truth about God. The world in its wisdom has split the atom, put men on the moon and created artificial intelligence, but it cannot tell us what God is like or how we can know him.

The Spirit reveals God’s wisdom

I was once in a taxi in Indonesia with a friend, when we noticed a hideous object dangling from the mirror. When the driver told us it was his god, my friend asked him if his god spoke to him. The driver just laughed at what was obviously a ridiculous idea; but we were then able to tell him that our God speaks to us. In his amazing grace, God has not left us in the dark but has chosen to reveal his secret wisdom to us by his Spirit: ‘“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no mind has conceived” – the things God has prepared for those who love him – these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit’ (2:9–10).

In the remarkable verses that follow, Paul describes four stages in the process of the Spirit’s revelation of God’s wisdom to us:

1. The Spirit knows (‘internal revelation’)

   The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (2:10b–11).

   If I concentrate on a particular image in my mind and then ask you to tell me what I am thinking about, the best you can do is guess. You do not know my thoughts, but my spirit, the inner me, does. You would never have suggested that I was imagining an elephant balancing on a tennis ball with a crown on its head, but my spirit shares that knowledge with me.
   In a similar way, no-one knows the Father’s thoughts except the Spirit. We may call this ‘internal revelation’. God himself knows what he is thinking; his word is understood by his Spirit.

2. The Spirit reveals (apostolic revelation)

   What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us (2:12).

   The Spirit does not keep his knowledge of God’s wisdom to himself, but reveals it to those Paul refers to as ‘we’....

Table of contents

• True Spirituality
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. True Spirituality
• 2. True spirituality
• 3. True spirituality
• 4.True spirituality
• 5. True spirituality
• 6. True spirituality
• 7. True spirituality
• 8. True spirituality
• Epilogue
• Notes