12.03 | Certainty
1 Corinthians 1:1-25
‘For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?’
1 Corinthians 1:11-13
A number of years ago I heard Archbishop Justin Welby speak at a leadership conference. Among other things, he commented on what was then the recent political rise of Donald Trump.
He described the feeling of instability that many people were experiencing, and then made a comment that stuck with me.
“Trump gives them certainty.”
It stuck with me, because until that point, all I’d heard were people’s opinions about Trump. But the Archbishop gave something different: he gave an insight into the felt needs of humanity that led so many to put their confidence in Trump’s narrative.
Today we’re jumping to a different city in the Roman Empire. Corinth, a bustling, metropolitan, multicultural city on the northern coast of the tongue-twisting Peloponnesian peninsula. Its population was about 80,000. Paul was writing from across the Aegean Sea, from the city of Ephesus, in around A.D. 53, in an ongoing back-and-forth correspondence. His aim was to nurture this young community in unity and purity and wisdom. His letter touched on five main areas of real-life discipleship that was live to the Corinthians.1 Into each of these he gives a response that re-centres the Corinthians on the Cross of Jesus.
And the first place he wants to speak into was an issue that is familiar to us.
The Corinthians were dividing into Christian tribes. More specifically, they were dividing over proclaimed allegiance to various big name figures in the early Christian world.
Paul, who we know. Extraordinary credentials as a trained rabbi, dramatic conversion story, a ministry of healing and miracles and rapid church planting.
Apollos, exceptional communicator and teacher, who arrived as a missionary to Corinth before Paul, renowned for his agility with the Scriptures and ability to train the church in strong doctrine.
Peter (Cephas), the ‘rock’ on who Jesus established the Church. First among equals in the original discipleship group, the Pentecost preacher, whose proximity to Jesus through His earthly work became foundational for the emerging church.
The Corinthian experience is familiar to us. They were looking between different big name leaders of their day, seeking a feeling of security that comes through proximity to perceived strength.
They, too, were looking for certainty. And certainty based on a human leader.
This is such an insidious draw for us. It is the search for people who will provide stability in our feelings of insecurity. It seeks affiliation to those whose strength and charisma give us a vicarious sense of significance. Those people whose affirmation becomes our everything, and whose critique shakes us to our core. Those people whose mistakes hit us so hard, because we’d in some way built our security upon them.
It is those people that become more to us than our primary allegiance to and focus upon Jesus of Nazareth.
It’s right into this that Paul wants to speak. Because picking different people to build their lives upon has become the very place of the Corinthian disunity.
Paul … Apollos … Cephas….
Paul urges them instead to unity.
The same words. The same mind. The same judgement.
Their presenting problem is their disunity.
The deeper problem is that they are seeking to soothe their insecurities with unhealthy dependency upon human leaders. They’ve made them quasi-messiahs. They are looking for their security in the wrong place.
Paul goes to the deeper problem.
He relegates the power personalities of their tribes (including himself), in order to re-establish their true point of certainty.
Jesus.
Our only place of stability.
Our only place of confidence.
Our only place of certainty.
Jesus, who does not invite our eyes upwards, to the privileged and powerful and photogenic. But who invites our eyes downwards, to His dying life upon the Cross.
This is not the flimsy uncertainty of the celebrity; it is the immovable certainty of a Saviour.
The world distracts. Never before have we been so consistently presented with the shiny lives of those who look so happy, able, beautiful, and strong.
But Paul invites us to change our place of confidence. From the impressive credentials of the platformed, to the indescribable love of the crucified.
Because He alone is our unity.
And He alone is our certainty.
Reflect:
Spend a bit of time thinking about those people I admire. Those people whose opinion really matters to me. Those people I aspire to be more like. Those people who give me a vicarious sense of security.
Ask the Spirit to show you if your focus upon them has become unhealthy. Has it elevated them to a pedestal beyond their basic humanity? Has doing so comparatively diminished you?
Bring this to the Cross of Jesus again, and recommit your direction as simply and wholly and humbly towards the Way of the only Messiah who can ever bring you the stability you crave.
Pray:
Father,
I’ve got a whole lot of fear in my heart:
Fear that I’m not enough;
Fear that I’ll get rejected;
Fear that I’m insignificant.
It’s so easy to try and put my security in those who seem so together,
So clear,
So confident,
So able.
Father, today, I turn.
To honour those I respect without idolising them,
And to love them without requiring them to be
What only you can be.
I return to the simple fidelity;
Jesus upon the Cross,
Where certainty comes,
From other place
But from the measure of your love.
Simplify my wandering heart,
To build from the unshakeable certainty
Of You.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Numbers 27:12-29:40 | Proverbs 10:6-11
Chs. 1-4: divisions around leadership; chs. 5-7 sex and marriage; chs. 8-10; food sacrificed to idols; chs. 11-14: worship and gifts; ch. 15: resurrection; he then concludes with words of greeting in ch.16