“Don’t let anyone treat him with contempt. Send him on his way with your blessing when he returns to me. I expect him to come with the other believers. Now about our brother Apollos—I urged him to visit you with the other believers, but he was not willing to go right now. He will see you later when he has the opportunity. Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.”
1 Corinthians 16:11-14 NLT
I wonder why Apollos really didn’t want to go to Corinth? Apollos was involved from time to time in the ministry in Corinth, as Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3:5-6, “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. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow”. Previously we know that Apollos arrived in Achaia (a region in Greece that included Corinth) from Acts 18:24, 27, “Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. … Apollos had been thinking about going to Achaia, and the brothers and sisters in Ephesus encouraged him to go. They wrote to the believers in Achaia, asking them to welcome him. When he arrived there, he proved to be of great benefit to those who, by God’s grace, had believed”. So I think we can assume that Apollos was very effective in Corinth, building on the Gospel foundation Paul had laid. Perhaps Apollos was genuinely too busy, or genuinely didn’t have the opportunity to join Timothy’s party of believers who travelled to Corinth from Ephesus. Or perhaps he was worried about the reception that might await him in Corinth. Wisdom was to wait and see whether Paul’s letter would resolve the difficulties there.
But Paul moved on to encourage the Corinthians to “be on guard”. He knew better than most of the devil’s attempts to destroy and disrupt the growing churches around the Eastern Mediterranean. Personally, he suffered much from abuse directed at him for nothing more than sharing the Good News about Jesus, and he wanted the early believers to be aware of the dangers. Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul detailed some of the hardships that he had been experiencing. “Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are so powerful! You are honoured, but we are ridiculed. Even now we go hungry and thirsty, and we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no home” (1 Corinthians 4:10-11). So Paul personally had to “be on guard” through everything he encountered.
But what does “be[ing] on guard” mean for us pilgrims? It means being proactive in protecting one’s heart, mind, and soul from things that could damage our relationship with God. There’s a great Proverb: “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life” (Proverbs 4:23), which is a warning we would do well to take note of. But we mustn’t just wait until we are overwhelmed by a heart-harming event. We must be diligent and stop it from happening in the first place. Take, for example, a film on TV that our sinful mind wants us to watch, but our spiritual mind tells us we must avoid it. Two scenarios can develop from this tussle within. One is to be obedient to our flesh, and the other is to obey our spirit. Before the wrong option has had a chance to assert itself and destroy our relationship with God, a heart-guarding choice will maintain its integrity. If we allow our hearts to be polluted by sin and allow it to take root, then our words and actions will be infected. Being on guard means we behave as a “gatekeeper,” filtering out harmful items before they can destroy us.
Peter warned believers about the devil’s role in all of this. 1 Peter 5:8, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour”. The next verse commences, “Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. …”. Similarly, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14). Note that the time-honoured excuse “the devil made me do it” has no validity for a believer in Christ, infilled, as he or she is, with the Power of the Holy Spirit. Remember the verse, “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world” (1 John 4:4)?
There is one other thought that must inhabit a believer’s mind, and that is moral readiness. It’s the idea of living in such a way that if Jesus were to return at this very moment, we wouldn’t be ashamed of what we were doing. We don’t know when Jesus will return to this planet, but we must “be on guard” just in case His time has come. Is the angel already in the process of placing the last trumpet to his lips? A scary thought, particularly if Jesus finds us in the middle of a sinful action. So we pilgrims diligently refuse to lower our guards and let the enemy land a blow.
Dear Father God. Thank You for Your power and grace, providing all the resources we need for a victorious life. And once again. We pray, “Come Lord Jesus”. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 