1 Corinthians 3:1-8, "Who and What"

But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? When one of you says, “I’m on Paul’s side,” and another says, “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally infantile?

“I’m taking my ball and I’m going home…”Now we get to the point. Paul is thankful for what God has done in the lives of the Corinthian Christians…confident that God will continue working in their lives. But, the divisions among them are immature and selfish. What. On earth, could have been the distinction between Paul and Apollos and Peter that could lead to this division?

Since Apollos hailed from Alexandria, he is thought to have been well-versed in the arts of eloquence and argument. As a learned man, he would be the sort of leader a cultured, wealthy individual might want to follow. Peter was traditionally aligned with the Jewish Christians and could have been the preference for those who were unwilling to totally depart from their Jewish heritage. Paul, while making himself "all things to everyone," was likely favored by the gentiles.  (biblewise.com)

Things didn’t appreciably change…

Religionfacts.com reminds us the first major division within Christendom came in 1054 with the "Great Schism" between the Western Church and the Eastern Church. From that point forward, there were two large branches of Christianity, which came to be known as the Catholic Church (in the West) and the Orthodox Church (in the East). The doctrinal debate centered on the nature of the Holy Spirit.

In the 16th century the Protestant Reformation was sparked when Martin Luther quarreled with Rome over Justification by grace, through faith alone. Protestants emphasized individual interpretation of scripture and demanded that believers be allowed to read the Scriptures for themselves and act in accordance with their conscience.

So we had two divisions in the first 1500 years based on critical doctrinal question. Today we identify 43,000 distinct denominations world-wide. The vast majority have no unique doctrinal distinctions. They just want to have things their own way.

We may try to tell ourselves this is important…to keep the MESSAGE pure. The Apostle Paul  might suggest it’s more important to keep it simple. “Who and what” is pretty difficult to divide that many ways.

Oh, and…Paul says its “infantile”.

Live boldly out there today…