God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 4:6-7 the gift
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 12, 2022
6 I have applied these things to Apollos and myself for your benefit, brothers, so that you may learn through us not to go beyond what is written, so that none of you will be puffed up, favoring one against another. 7 For who distinguishes you from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
Before we apply this passage, we should understand what it says. Verse 6 has three phrases. The first is the main idea: “I have applied these things… for your benefit.” This is followed by two parallel phrases that show the ways that these words of Paul (chapters 1-4) have been for the benefit of his Corinthian readers. The second point (the third phrase), “So that none of you will be puffed up,” is clear enough. But the middle phrase is not so easy.
There are five or six ways of understanding the phrase, which is literally, “So that in us you may learn the not beyond what is written.”
1, The grammar seems odd, like a mistake or an insertion from the margin of some manuscript. But there is no evidence of this anywhere.
2, “What is written” could simply be “boundaries,” such as the boundaries of moderation. But Paul could have said this more clearly.
3, This could be a reference to a legal or political document known to the Corinthians: “Don’t go beyond the rules.” But there is no evidence for this that has come down from history or archaeology in Corinth or the Achaean region of Greece.
4, This could be a well-known idiom. The NIV shows this by putting “Do not go beyond what is written” in quotation marks. This is not only possible, it is a very good way of taking the Greek, especially the detail of the unusual definite article as the marker of a well-known phrase.
5, This could be a reference to what Paul has already written (in this letter or a previous one). This seems arrogant of Paul, who everywhere urges his readers not to go beyond the Scriptures without holding his own writings up in the air.
6, This could be a reference to the Old Testament Scriptures in general, which is to say the Word of God. These words aren’t a quote from the Bible, although Balaam said in the days of Moses: “I cannot do anything of my own accord to go beyond the command of the Lord” (Numbers 24:13). But they could simply point to the Scriptures in general.
Points 4 and 6 make the most sense. Since both are possible, the translator must use his sanctified judgment to put one in the main text and then place the other in a footnote or drop the concern altogether. I’m sure I’ve taken up too much time explaining the issue.
Paul is humbly applying what he said earlier about all pastors and ministers just to himself and his co-worker Apollos. The people of the Corinthian church (or churches) made false divisions by saying “I follow this preacher” and “I follow that preacher.” Paul is finishing his correction of this by saying here: Who am I? Who is Apollos? Who is any preacher? And who are you, O Corinthians, to consider yourselves better judges of preachers than anyone else? If you think that you are a better judge of my preaching than the men sitting behind you or the one sitting ahead of you, you are sorely mistaken! They listen to the same preaching and teaching and they are built up better than you are, because you are spending your time either smugly proud that your favorite man is up to preach this week, or else you glumly sulk that your favorite doesn’t happen to be in the pulpit this time. Paul hammers this point home and at the same time raises a very important point about our own worthiness with regard to the gospel and the forgiveness of sins: Why do you boast about a gift as if it was not a gift? If I am a Christian, is it because I deserve to be? If I am saved, is it because I am that much better than some other person, that God saw something in me that is more deserving? How many Buddhist monks or Tibetan lamas are morally superior to me? And yet they reject Christ. To the world, I deserve to go to hell, and all of those monks, gurus and lamas deserve to go to heaven. But that’s because the world’s idea of what heaven is and who should go there is completely different from God’s requirement. God looks at faith (Galatians 2:16), and God is the one who gives us our faith (Romans 12:3). So my boast is in God who set my faith in my feeble and useless hands. He planted that faith in the dead soil of my heart, and this faith blossomed unlooked-for. And so “the life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). This is the way it always is: God is one who performs the act, and then he invites man to believe in him. “He saved them, and then they believed his promises and sang his praise” (Psalm 106:10,12). He rescued you, and then he called on you to trust in him.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.