Tom writes:

For a weak and trembling man Paul kicks pretty hard. His rebukes of the church - “you are still worldly” (v3) and “do not deceive yourselves...” (v18) - are robust to say the least. To understand how such robustness can be in bed with such trembling we must distinguish between the message and the messenger. We’ve seen Paul all the way through Acts and we know that he is uncompromising about his message. God is the immovable object in Paul’s life. God has revealed himself to Paul and has sent Paul to testify to who He is. You never catch Paul adding ‘maybes’ or ‘from my perspective’ to his statements about the character or work of God. “You are God’s field”. “You are God’s temple”. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.” Instead, Paul trembles about himself. Paul trembles over the meagreness of himself and Apollos and the saints of Corinth. He is fearful that they - or their leaders - will become the focus instead of Jesus. We are nothing, he says. The only one who counts is God, he says. Paul sounds like an accident-prone delivery man realising he is carrying a Ming vase. The more conscious he is of the value of the vase, the more alert he is to the risk of him wrecking it.

This sounds so far removed from most of my “ministry” up until this point. Far too often I’ve bent over backwards to allow different perspectives on the character of God as long as people have stayed in my group. I’ve added way too much wiggle room into my presentations of who we are in Christ in order that people will continue to want to hang around with me. What have I been thinking?! I’ve been acting like a mere man, I have been building with straw. I have been anxious over conversations not because someone believes something wrong but because they believe I am wrong! In this I have been worldly and I can deceive myself no longer. I ask Holy Spirit to lead me in a better way. It is God who makes things grow. If they follow me but are not following God then they certainly won’t grow. In fact they probably will shrink. Prioritising my reputation is like me being the delivery man ringing their bell, puffing out my chest and flattering them about their garden, but not even care whether I’m giving them a broken box. I want to do that no longer. Instead I want to reduce my focus on my reputation and just try to serve up Jesus to his people in his pure unadulterated form.

Question for reflection

How does your desire to be well thought of now play out? What would it look like for you to serve up Jesus to people in his unadulterated form?

1 Corinthians 3 - Monday 20th May