People's trust in leaders has diminished, but God stills calls His people to submit to godly leadership
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Read the chapter in an outlined format
Read previous DIG DEEPER posts on 1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians 4 Summary
It may not initially seem like this is very applicable to the issues and problems you will have today, but looking at its context will help you see that it does. Paul has been addressing a problem in the Corinthian church in which they were splitting up into factions that followed various preachers.
Some followed Paul, others Apollos, and others just went off on their own. But here we are reminded that as members of the church we are people under authority. Certainly we are under the authority of Jesus, there's a delegated authority between us and Him. In the case of theses early churches like Corinth, that delegated authority were the apostles, and Paul is writing that since both he and Apollos were delegated by Christ, it makes no sense for Christians to categorize themselves.
Of course today the apostles are long gone. The authority of Christ still persists, but in the place of the apostles, we have the words they wrote to us under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We don't just pick a few of the books we like and disregard the others, rather, we hold all sixty-six books of both the Old and the New Testament as being Christ's delegated authority in our lives.
Dig Deeper
There's a growing sentimentality in our culture that we can live independently from the church as Christians, especially when it seems so easy to see the hypocrisies of church leaders. But you're not designed nor meant to just listen in to a recorded sermon or hum along to Christian radio.
As God's child, you are called to fight against the 'arrogance (v18)' that arises from our comfortable lifestyles and find true freedom by fully submitting to God and to His church.
AAA Prayer:
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father God provides us Godly leaders in the church to keep us close to Him;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Ask for the ability to imitate the example given by Paul and the other human authors of God's Word (v16).
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
