Many teachers, NOT MANY FATHERS IN CHRIST.
I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as MY DEAR CHILDREN. Even though you have ten thousand guardians(or teachers) in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 1Cor 4:14
Paul appeals to the Corinthian Church to come back to the way of life he had lived out before them as their spiritual father. Are there things in our Christian walk today that weren’t there in the beginning? Things that may be holding us back? Many start well but it’s finishing well that counts.
Paul slightly ridicules them by saying how great they have become compared to his way of life as an apostle. He reminds them how much it has cost him and other apostles as servants of the Lord.
Already you have all you want! You have become kings — and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you… We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! You are honoured, we are dishonoured! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answered kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the Earth, the refugees of the world. 1 Cor 4:8, 10-14
Paul calls upon them as their spiritual father( the one who’s brought them life in Christ) to listen again to him and return to the life he gave them.
For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. 1 Cor 4:17
The Corinthian Church was struggling, so Paul was sending his beloved son Timothy to help them. He had laid a good foundation but things had gotten out of order and he was sending Timothy to restore what they’d had in the beginning. Some of the Corinthians had become arrogant and Paul told them he could ‘come to them with a whip or in love with a gentle spirit’. 1 Cor 4:21
We are living in a day when God is trying to get all people, including the Church, to turn back to Him and away from wickedness. He wants to come gently because He’s a loving Father(God is a Father to us!) but we’ve got to heed what He’s saying. Now is a time to turn back to the Lord, just like Paul was trying to get the Corinthians to ‘shift’.
God bless and keep you today.