God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 4:8-9 like those who are sentenced to death
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Paul asked some hard questions in verse 7 to get the Corinthians to think more carefully and realistically about their place in the world. But he needs to really pop their bubble, so he goes on:
8 You already have all you want! You have already become rich! You have become like kings apart from us! I wish that you had indeed become kings, so that we might be kings with you! 9 I think that God put us apostles at the end of the procession, like those who are sentenced to death. We have become a spectacle to the whole world, to angels and to men.
There is a place for sarcasm in preaching and teaching, and Paul shows it here. This doesn’t mean that sarcasm should be a pastor’s favorite tool, but Paul uses it like a special device. After all, I have an ordinary claw hammer to tap in nails and such, but I save the big ten-pound sledge hammer for special jobs. Paul doesn’t need sarcasm to shame the Corinthians, but to admonish them. They thought they had such a high position in the world and especially in the church, and that the apostles had such a low position!
Paul’s phrase, “I wish that you had indeed become kings,” involves a curious word (ophelon, ὄϕελoν) that introduces as impossible or unattainable wish. We might also translate this way: “Too bad you really aren’t kings, or we could’ve all been kings together!”
It’s not perfectly clear whether the Corinthians were more proud of their wealth in money or their wealth in spiritual gifts. The lust for cash is common to every age of the world. “Whoever trusts in his riches will fall” (Proverbs 11:28). But the Corinthians were also proud of their special gifts, and Paul will address that in chapters 12 through 14. Jesus warned the Philadelphians: “You say, ‘I am rich. I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17). Those words apply also to both money and gifts of the spirit.
What about the business of “you’ve become like kings”? The Corinthians were behaving like rulers in the church. Their snobbery caused them to look down on the apostles, and more than that, to work contrary to Paul and Apollos. They excluded Paul and the gospel from the way they behaved toward one another just as they excluded the poor in their own fellowship from taking the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:21). They were prejudiced about Paul’s humility and seeming poverty. Their reasoning went something like this: “If Paul and his gospel were truly successful, then Paul would be successful in cashing in on his gospel. He would not come to us like a beggar. He wouldn’t be dressed in old hand-me-downs. He wouldn’t have to sleep in borrowed beds and eat like a slave in the kitchen.” The Corinthians betrayed themselves with their attitude. As Olshausen says: “They were not rulers, kings in the kingdom (Revelation 20:4), but slaves of their own self-will and of sin (Revelation 20:4)” (First Corinthians, 1851, p. 80-81).
It seems, Paul goes on, that we apostles are like those poor wretches in a Roman victory parade, when the victorious general rides in the front and the army next and then, in the back, the losers, the poor wretches that will be put to death when the parade comes to an end.
“We’re spectacles to angels as well as to men.” The Corinthian attitude was that even the angels would be embarrassed by Paul, not considering him a “fellow servant” (Revelation 19:10) but something less than a man, something to turn up one’s nose at.
Paul is not finished with this thought, and so we will pause here, but not so quickly as not to ask, what would it matter to us if we really were set in the back of a celebration as the objects of scorn and ridicule? This is where leaders in the true church are placed today by the devil and the world. But if by my pain or persecution the Lord can further his plan, who am I to complain about what he does with me? Not enough of us learn from the Josephs in the Bible to accept our place with a believing heart. And the same is true when things are going well. We depend on God, not luck or good fortune.
“Such (changes) God still gives to his own. He lets them experience much and great anxiety, but then he helps them again. And all such things he does for this reason, that we should seek rest for our souls in him, not in outwardly good circumstance. For in this life no good circumstance is permanent. Therefore we should also not depend on it with our heart, nor seek rest for our heart in it. Rather the internal foundation of our soul should purely and only depend on God; then the rest of our heart will not be disturbed by our outward circumstances.” So preached John Gerhard (quoted in Deutschlander’s essay, “Don’t Be Afraid! Cheer Up! It’s the Cross!” (2010). Our suffering does not save our souls; Christ did that when he underwent the most excruciating horror on Golgotha. But the little crosses we bear, including the paradoxical crosses of temporary joys and successes, teach us to look to God at all times and in all things. We thank him and we praise his holy name.
“He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens which cry. His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man; but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!” (Psalm 147:9-12, included by Luther as an appropriate prayer after a meal, Small Catechism VIII: Grace at Table §10).
His love endures forever.
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.