1 Corinthians 4:14 Commentary and Bible Study

Although the church at Corinth was by and large a good church, serious problems had developed. It had gone to the heads of some, that they were preachers and teachers in the Church of Jesus Christ. They have become puffed up and, because of that, they had veered in serious ways. So this is about the failings of their ministry, and Paul warns them here about this. ‘For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers.’ In fact they had only one father. Of course, their true Father was God alone, but on earth they had one father, and that was the apostle Paul. He was the founding preacher of the church. Through his preaching many people found life in Christ. Although no one calls pastors, fathers, for obvious reasons, and we are commanded by the Lord never to call a pastor, father, nevertheless Paul was effectively a father to them. There was one through whom they had been born-again, and he really cared for them, but they had many instructors – not as many as ten thousand, obviously; the apostle Paul is saying this, for arguments sake. Who were these other instructors? The word ‘instructors’ is a very interesting word. Our word ‘pedagogue’ is right out of the Greek, although pedagogue has changed its meaning. Today, it means a very severe teacher, most commonly a teacher who is very pedantic about detail, and insistent on small things, and getting them absolutely right. But in the time of the Bible and the apostle's time, a pedagogue was a slave who took the boys to school, to their instructor. He trafficked them to school, and he taught them the very basic elementary things. Now these instructors had a poor reputation; they would be very overbearing with the children. Whether they all were or not is another matter, but this was the general image that they had. They would cane them and deal very severely with them; their great aim was to give the impression to the master of the house, who owned them as slaves, that they had everything under control. The idea of using this term is that you could have ten thousand instructors who just bullied you and didn't care that much for you and taught you because they wanted the office, but you have only got one father with a father's heart who really cares for you. It is a bit hidden, because we have to translate the term into one simple word. So it is a reproof really for the teachers in Corinth. That is all they were, and they bullied people and they stomped around and it went to their heads, and they only ever taught them the fundamentals. They never got to the deep things; they never got to the sense of the message, and the doctrines. So the instructors at Corinth are under the spotlight in this verse, and it brings us to think.What were their failures? Well, apart from their personal lives, they were puffed up men, many of them. People put themselves forward to teach, and it promptly went to their heads. They had failed to address one of the great problems at Corinth: that the church was dividing into factions. They had to waited for the apostle Paul to write to them about that. In fact it rather suited them. They failed to deal with the sinners in the congregation, the classic case coming up in chapter 5 of incest. These things were not processed in the church. Sinful conduct was allowed to just go on without reproof. They failed in bringing order to the Lord’s Supper. They had failed too to deal with the problem of idolatry. Some members of the church in Corinth were sincerely born-again, but they were still in their employment guilds which were idolatry based, so they were going to the idol temples; they were compromising. ‘We have got to go to the idol temple or we would lose our job.’ Yes, well, so be it, for the Lord’s sake. Then there was the problem of the gifts. There were genuine tongue speakers in Corinth in those days and prophets, because unlike today the word of God was not complete at that time, but it had gone out of control because some of those prophets were dominating the services, and Paul had to teach them what was right.They failed to respect the apostle. They got so heady, they said we will set the apostle Paul to one side, and we will innovate and do things our way. The equivalent today of course is to fail to respect the word of God as the authority for everything. The apostle was, in effect, in the place of the word of God. He was inspired apostle who was giving God's inspired directions. In Corinth there were many people who wanted to be teachers, because they wanted to appear ahead of other people. Were they apt to teach? Well, they might appear so: they were accomplished; they loved Greek oratory and Greek culture, and using high sounding words. But were they faithful to Christ? Not so much. To the word of the apostle, to the standards for the ministry? Now there, they fell down.