1 Corinthians 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul says he and Apollos should be seen as servants of Christ who are trusted with God's revealed secrets, and that what is required of such servants is faithfulness. He tells the Corinthians to stop passing judgment before the Lord comes and exposes hidden things, and to stop taking pride in one leader over another, since everything they have was given to them. He then contrasts their sense of being rich and reigning with the hunger, homelessness, hard labor and insults the apostles live with. He closes by calling them his children, urging them to imitate him, announcing that Timothy is on the way and that he himself will come soon, and asking whether they want him to come with a rod or with love and a gentle spirit.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • A person should regard Paul and his fellow workers as servants of Christ.
   • A person should regard Paul and his fellow workers as stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God.
2. 4:2
   • What is required of stewards is that a steward be found faithful.
3. 4:3
   • Paul says it is a very small thing to him that he should be judged by the Corinthians.
   • Paul says it is a very small thing to him that he should be judged by any human court or human day of judgment.
   • Paul says he does not even judge himself.
4. 4:4
   • Paul says he is aware of nothing against himself.
   • Paul says that being aware of nothing against himself does not make him justified.
   • Paul says the one who judges him is the Lord.
5. 4:5
   • Paul tells them to judge nothing before the appointed time.
   • The judging is to wait until the Lord comes.
   • The Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness.
   • The Lord will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.
   • At that time each person will receive his praise from God.
6. 4:6
   • Paul says he has applied these things figuratively to himself and to Apollos.
   • Paul says he did this for the sake of the Corinthians.
   • Paul's purpose was that they might learn from him and Apollos not to go beyond what is written.
   • Paul's further purpose was that none of them be puffed up in favor of one man against another.
7. 4:7
   • Paul asks who makes one of them different from another.
   • Paul asks what any of them has that he did not receive.
   • Paul asks why one who did receive it boasts as though he had not received it.
8. 4:8
   • Paul says they are already full.
   • Paul says they have already become rich.
   • Paul says they have reigned as kings without him and his fellow workers.
   • Paul says he wishes they really did reign.
   • Paul says he wishes it so that he and his fellow workers might reign with them.
9. 4:9
   • Paul says it seems to him that God has exhibited the apostles last.
   • Paul says the apostles are displayed like men condemned to death.
   • Paul says the apostles have been made a spectacle to the world.
   • Paul says the apostles have been made a spectacle to angels.
   • Paul says the apostles have been made a spectacle to men.
10. 4:10
    • Paul says he and his fellow workers are fools for Christ's sake.
    • Paul says the Corinthians are wise in Christ.
    • Paul says he and his fellow workers are weak.
    • Paul says the Corinthians are strong.
    • Paul says the Corinthians are held in honor.
    • Paul says he and his fellow workers are without honor.
11. 4:11
    • Paul says that up to the present hour they hunger.
    • Paul says they thirst.
    • Paul says they are poorly clothed.
    • Paul says they are beaten with fists.
    • Paul says they have no settled dwelling place.
12. 4:12
    • Paul says they toil, working with their own hands.
    • Paul says that when they are reviled, they bless.
    • Paul says that when they are persecuted, they endure it.
13. 4:13
    • Paul says that when they are slandered, they answer kindly.
    • Paul says they have become like the refuse of the world.
    • Paul says they are the scrapings of all things up to this moment.
14. 4:14
    • Paul says he does not write these things to shame them.
    • Paul says he writes them as admonishing his beloved children.
15. 4:15
    • Paul says that even if they have ten thousand guardians in Christ, they do not have many fathers.
    • Paul says that in Christ Jesus he begot them through the gospel.
16. 4:16
    • Paul urges them to become imitators of him.
17. 4:17
    • Paul says that for this reason he has sent Timothy to them.
    • Paul says Timothy is his beloved child.
    • Paul says Timothy is faithful in the Lord.
    • Paul says Timothy will remind them of his ways in Christ.
    • Paul says his ways are what he teaches everywhere in every church.
18. 4:18
    • Paul says some have become puffed up.
    • Paul says they are puffed up as though he were not coming to them.
19. 4:19
    • Paul says he will come to them shortly.
    • Paul's coming is conditional on the Lord's willing it.
    • Paul says he will find out not the speech of those who are puffed up but their power.
20. 4:20
    • The kingdom of God is not in word.
    • The kingdom of God is in power.
21. 4:21
    • Paul asks them what they want.
    • Paul asks whether he should come to them with a rod.
    • Paul asks whether he should come in love and in a spirit of meekness.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

"Ministers" here is not a church office. The Greek word pictures a subordinate officer or attendant who carries out a superior's orders. A "steward" was the household manager, very often a slave himself, trusted with the owner's money, stores and staff; his one duty was not brilliance but reliability. "Mysteries" in Paul's vocabulary does not mean puzzles or secrets kept hidden. It means things once undisclosed that God has now made known, so a steward of them is a man handing out what belongs to someone else.

4:3

In the King James, "judged of you" means judged by you; "of" regularly carries the sense of "by" in 1611 English. "Man's judgment" translates a Greek phrase that literally reads "a human day." "Day" was courtroom shorthand for a day in court, and Paul is setting any human court day against the Lord's day in verse 5.

4:4

"I know nothing by myself" is old English for "I know nothing against myself," that is, my conscience brings no charge. It does not mean Paul knows nothing about himself. "Justified" is a courtroom word: acquitted, declared to be in the right. Paul's point about language is that a clear conscience is not the same as a verdict.

4:5

"Make manifest" means bring out into the open. "The counsels of the hearts" means the plans and motives people keep to themselves. "Praise of God" means praise from God, not praise directed at him.

4:6

"In a figure transferred" renders a Greek verb meaning to change the outward form of something, here to apply a point by way of illustration. Paul means he has used his own name and Apollos's as stand-ins. "Puffed up" is a vivid word meaning inflated, swollen with air, and Paul uses it repeatedly in this letter. The rivalry behind it is the slogan-trading of 1:12, where members were saying "I am of Paul" or "I am of Apollos." "That which is written" is Paul's standard formula for quoting Scripture; exactly which passages he has in mind is debated, though he has already quoted several in chapters 1 to 3.

4:7

"Glory" here means boast. When the King James has a person glorying, it almost always means bragging.

4:8

Verses 8 to 10 are sarcastic, and would have been heard that way. Being full, being rich and being a king were stock boasts in the popular philosophy of the day about the truly wise man, who supposedly needed nothing and ruled himself like a monarch. Paul throws that language back at the Corinthians, then drops the sarcasm for a moment in the second half of the verse to say he wishes it were true.

4:9

"Apostles" means those sent out, envoys carrying someone else's commission. The picture is a Roman victory parade: the general first, the prisoners of war last, and at the very end those condemned to die in the arena. "Spectacle" is the Greek word for a theater show, so Paul is describing himself as the closing act that the crowd has come to watch.

4:10

The three pairs are set as exact opposites on purpose. In a Greek city, wise, strong and honored were the words a man wanted attached to his name in public, and fool, weak and despised were the insults that could end a reputation. Paul takes the second set for himself and hands the first set back to the Corinthians, still with an edge to it.

4:11

"Naked" in the King James does not mean without any clothing at all. The Greek means badly clothed, in rags. "Buffeted" means struck with fists. "No certain dwellingplace" means no fixed address, nowhere to live that is his own.

4:12

Working with your own hands was not a neutral detail. In the Greek cities of Paul's day manual labor was looked down on by the well off, who expected a teacher to be supported by wealthy patrons rather than sweating at a trade. Paul lists it here alongside hunger and beatings because his readers would have read it as part of his humiliation.

4:13

"Intreat" here means to answer with soft words, to speak kindly in reply. The two words at the end are the harshest in the list: one means the scrapings cleaned off something dirty, the other the muck wiped away after a scouring. Both were also used of a worthless person offered up to get rid of a city's pollution, so the sense is something between garbage and human refuse.

4:15

"Instructors" translates a word for a household slave who walked a boy to school, carried his things and kept him out of trouble. He was a minder and a disciplinarian, not a teacher, and he was not the boy's father. "Ten thousand" is not a count. In Greek it is the standard expression for a huge, uncountable number, like saying "a thousand and one" in English. "Begotten" means fathered, which is why the father and child language runs on through verses 16 to 21.

4:16

"Followers" in 1611 English means imitators; the Greek word is the root of the English "mimic." Paul is not asking for supporters or disciples but for people who copy the way he lives, which is what Timothy is being sent to remind them of in the next verse.

4:17

"Timotheus" is simply the Greek form of the name Timothy. "Have sent" may mean Timothy was already traveling when this letter was written, possibly by a different route, since 16:10 speaks of him as arriving later than the letter.

4:19

"If the Lord will" was a set phrase, used in Jewish and Greek speech alike when announcing any future plan, roughly the force of "God willing." It is a courtesy formula rather than a statement of doubt about the trip.

4:20

A kingdom is a place where a king rules. God's kingdom means God ruling as king.

4:21

The "rod" is the stick a father used to discipline a child, so the image continues the father and children language from verse 15 rather than introducing a court or an army. "Meekness" in the King James does not mean timidity or weakness. The Greek word means gentleness, strength held under control, the opposite of a harsh or heavy hand.