“So look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries. Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful. As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point.”
1 Corinthians 4:1-3 NLT
Paul continued to write about the role of Apollos and himself in the next chapter. Consider us as managers (other Bible versions use the word “stewards”), he said, “mere servants of Christ”; Paul and Apollos were two men whose role was to teach the people about “God’s mysteries”. Typically for Paul, he was downplaying his role in the eyes of the Corinthian believers, telling them not to put either him or Apollos on a pedestal. They were just ordinary men with the ability of being able to teach and serve the people. Paul went on to explain that he wasn’t concerned with what the Corinthians thought of him, and then he said that he didn’t “even trust [his] own judgment on this point”.
In the previous chapter, Paul explained the role of himself and Apollos, and by implication any other teacher who came to their church, as being the Lord’s workers. 1 Corinthians 3:5, “After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us“. In 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, Paul made very clear his role in coming to Corinth, “When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the crucified one“. So what was it about the Corinthians that made Paul respond in the way he did? News had obviously got back to him that worldliness had crept into the church there, and the people were in a state of division, spending their time arguing about the merits or otherwise of the men who were serving them from the pulpit. But Paul said quite simply that he and Apollos were just “servants of Christ”.
So what makes a person a “servant of Christ”? Of course, Jesus was the ultimate example. He said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This was a message that Jesus laid down for His disciples, and we read in the previous chapter, “He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else”” (Mark 9:35). Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-7, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness”. And as we read all about Jesus’s ministry years, we see the God-man going about Palestine serving all who came to Him. For example, look at Matthew 15:29, “Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them“. No mention by Jesus about taking a lunch break or clocking off at 5pm. He was there for the people, serving the “great crowds”. Jesus also said, “However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them” (John 6:37). That’s servanthood.
In his role as a “mere servant of Christ”, Paul also said he was a manager or steward of the work entrusted to him. A steward is a servant who manages his master’s property, and stewards must be found to be faithful people of high integrity, working with excellence and honesty. But all this applies to us pilgrims as well. We are not only “servants of Christ” but we are also stewards, entrusted with sharing the wonderful truth of the Message of the Cross, the Gospel. But we mustn’t forget that we take the attitude of servanthood into the workplace, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:7-8, “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free”. That can be a hard one, particularly if we are stuck in a boring and unfulfilling job.
Servanthood is at the very heart of our faith. Before we look to our own needs, we look to the needs of others. We put aside what we are doing, no matter how inconvenient it is, to meet someone else’s needs, serving them with love, kindness and compassion. And we look to Jesus as our Saviour and example. He said, “ … “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). God first and everyone else second, with an emphasis that we treat and serve them as we would like others to treat and serve us. Who is our neighbour? Well, that’s for another day.
Heavenly Father, we worship You with grateful hearts, grateful for all You have done for us. Please help us as we look for opportunities to serve others, day by day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 