Then Paul mentions Apollos, who was apparently a very eloquent speaker, a Greek who had received a good education and was very well received in the Greek city-states. Apollos had been to Corinth because earlier in the letter, we find out that part of the factionalism that was there in the church involved him. He was one of the Christian leaders, along with Paul and Peter, with whom those in the church more or less divided up into different parties. Apollos was apparently a great leader who was not directly under Paul’s authority. We get that idea from verse 12, where we are told that Paul urged him to go to Corinth but that Apollos was unwilling to go at that time but would go later when he had the opportunity. And yet as we read this, we do not find any jealousy or resentment on the part of Paul. What you have here instead is Paul talking about Apollos as a brother and upholding his ministry before the Corinthian believers.
It is a wonderful thing when Christianity functions that way. One of the sad things in the church is the kind of rivalry that exists between ministers. Sometimes this rivalry exists within a local church itself, but probably more often it is found between local churches in a neighborhood, or between ministers in the same denomination, or even between different denominations.
Now I have to say that I believe in denominations. I believe that a local church should belong to something greater than itself because there is the matter of accountability. Yet I also think that the Church is bigger than any denomination. We have to find ways of reaching out across these barriers, not to deny what we think is important and a valid expression of the faith, but reaching out across these barriers to say that a person in another denomination is a brother or sister in the Lord. Although we function in different spheres and we are doing things in different ways, we are, nevertheless, all members of the body of Christ. If we do not maintain that unity with those who are obviously of like faith, we are participating in the same divisive error as the Corinthians when they took sides between different Christian leaders.
In verse 13 he has a series of statements in which he is encouraging the Christians at Corinth. There are five statements there: 1.) “Be on your guard”; 2.) “Stand firm in the faith”; 3.) “Be men of courage”; 4.) “Be strong”; and 5.) “Do everything in love.” That is a good challenge for any group of Christians at any time because it speaks of our work in Christianity as a warfare, which means that there are enemies. Paul speaks of those he was facing. He mentions that there were those who opposed him in Ephesus. In the power of Christ, Christians are to stand firm against them.
The first thing Christians need to do is to be on our guard. That makes us think of 1 Peter 5:8, where Peter is talking about Satan. There Peter says virtually the same thing as Paul: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
It would be bad enough if we just had enemies in the world, those who hate Christianity and everything it stands for. Those are very apparent in our culture, and some of them can be very powerful. But those human enemies are not the most dangerous. Our real adversary is the devil. He is set entirely against God, and, therefore, he does whatever he can to oppose the Gospel.
The wise Christian is the one who is living as God wants him to, and he will be on his guard against the various assaults of the devil. That means that we must be on guard against temptation. We must be on guard against factionalism. We must be on guard against error—all the kinds of things that can creep into a Christian’s life, or into the life of a church, and hurt it.
He says secondly that we are to stand firm. That brings to mind the sixth chapter of Ephesians, where Paul is speaking of the same kind of warfare as he does in 1 Corinthians 16. In Ephesians he speaks about the devil, the principalities, and the powers which oppose us on every hand and where he says several times over in that great passage about the Christian’s armor that we are to stand. His emphasis is upon standing firm in the faith, not being shaken from that position to which we have already been bought by Jesus Christ.
