1 Corinthians 4:6 Commentary and Bible Study

This is sometimes considered a puzzling verse. This verse is a kind of key to the whole chapter. ‘How you view us’, he says, ‘should teach on how you should view each other.’ Paul has been speaking about himself and Apollos, but he says, ‘I have done this more so that you can learn in our case to apply these things to yourselves.’ The whole chapter is about believers and their attitude to other people and their aim in life, even though the apostle actually speaks about himself. He is speaking about Apollos too; not only himself as an apostle, but Apollos as an ordinary minister. So he teaches how the people of God should view the ministers, the pastors; but he does so, not only to instruct us in that, but so that he shall use pastors and ministers as an illustration of how we ought to view every fellow Christian also. Under-oarsmen, stewards: that is the maximum eminence that you should give to pastors and preachers. ‘That no one of you be puffed up for one against another.’ These words bring us to another subject: pride is behind any cliques in a church. We are stewards of God’s precious things to other souls. What are our motives? How earnest have we been? How loyal to the Lord? How often have we gone the extra mile? How much do we pray in private? We cannot see these things in each other, so we must not overpraise each other. Of course, we must not be unnecessarily critical of each other either. The apostle Paul is calling us to sense and maturity in these things. What an interesting phrase – ‘above that which is written’. There is much debate about what the apostle means by this. Some people think that he means, ‘You shouldn’t think of men above that which I have just written in the previous chapter’, for example verse 21, ‘Therefore, let no man glory and men, for all things are yours.’ But other people point out that ‘that which is written’ is the apostle Paul's usual way of introducing a quotation from the Old Testament. However there is no quotation. So, we are left to conclude something like this – that possibly the apostle Paul means all the Old Testament. ‘Do not praise men above that which is written in all the word of God up till now.’ Throughout the Old Testament it is God who is glorified, and man is portrayed as a poor, weak, needy being. The Old Testament is full of the depravity of man, and the weakness of man. It is very frank in the way it reports these things, even when God’s children go wrong. There was nobody so meek as Moses. How much he had to put up with from the rebellious Israelites, and he was so loyal to the Lord. But one day he lost his temper, and it led to him being very impatient with the people, and disobey God in what you might think was a minor detail of what he was commanded to do. He was impatient toward the people, and didn’t follow the precise instructions of the Lord, and so he is not allowed into the Promised Land. Then you see Solomon, the wisest man ever in the world. The people flocked from the known world to hear his wisdom, and yet he became a total backslider and slipped right away. Yes, the Lord restored him and used him again towards the end of his life, but nevertheless, we remember he was but a man. We have got to be sober and careful, and we all depend entirely upon the Lord.