Humans have two conflicting intense desires – first, to be accepted by a group, and second, to be distinct from the group. The combination of these two things creates tribalism, and a seeking of distinct identities as a piece of one community as opposed to another. We were made to live in community, and this “tribe-shaped hole” in our heart is meant to be filled by the community of Christ. But all too frequently, we treat the church of God as if it were a worldly tribe, as we create sub-tribes, cliques, schisms and divisions.
This was the situation in the Corinthian church. They had divided themselves up based on the leaders that they followed. Some identified with Paul, the founder of the church. Some identified with Apollos, the current pastor and an eloquent speaker. Some identified with Peter, the overall leader of the church in Jerusalem. Others were super-spiritual and identified with Christ.
This was largely a spillover from culture. In Greco-Roman culture, it was entirely expected that you would seek to elevate your own rank by associating yourself with somebody of higher rank. Similarly, the Sophist philosophy was built around a student’s identification with and imitation of a teacher. Politics, similarly, was primarily about personality rather than ideas. In all these cases, it was the responsibility of the follower to defend the patron in their absence, and to boast in their successes and virtues.
In the church, this entire concept became tangled up with the concept of baptism. This ceremony originated with Judaism, and were in some ways a ceremony of connection between a rabbi and a follower. There were secular and pagan version of the same thing. So in the church, the person who baptized you became seen as your patron, and you would defend their positions abilities and status against the others who are defending their own patrons.
Paul goes after this whole concept by using rhetoric, asking three rhetorical questions. First, can Christ be divided? Can Christ be put alongside mere human leaders as one of many church leaders? Second, was Paul crucified for you? He reminds them that he (and the other leaders) are merely messengers. Third, were you baptized in the name of Paul? He seeks to strip the concept of baptism of its secular, patron/follower baggage.
Paul emphasizes that he did not come to them to tick off followers or speak eloquently (with “wisdom of words”). He came to pass on the message of the gospel. That message is that Christ himself is our spiritual patron, and we, as followers of Christ, are called to unity in Him. We can have differences of opinion, but we must be unified as followers of Christ. We can and should treat Him as the culture expects – boasting about him and building him up. But all this must be done in humility about ourselves, knowing that our association with this particular important patron does not build us up to be better than others, but in fact does the opposite.
The biggest danger to Christian unity is not that we elevate our own views above Christ. Rather, we elevate our views or our tribe as being on the and level as Christ. Too often, we see our conservatism or progressivism as being the natural extension of Christ’s teaching, rather than our own imperfect application. We set up our tribe or our leader as equal with or equivalent to Christ’s kingdom. We become more concerned with supporting or defending our side than with speaking truth.
We certainly see this in the culture today. If Paul were here, he would demand that we keep all that nonsense out of the church. “Did Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump die for you? Were you baptized in the name of conservatism or progressivism?”
How do we know when I am falling into this? When we disagree with another believer and this leads to a feeling of contempt for them, that is a key indicator that something is wrong in our outlook.
We cannot imitate what is acceptable in culture. Within the church, we must be able to acknowledge our differences but focus on our unity in Christ. Recent years have made this increasingly difficult in the realm of American politics, so we must redouble our efforts to seek love and unity within the diversity of the community of Christ.
–Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA
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