Commentary on 1 Corinthians 4.1–5.13

“Let a man so regard us, as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” He indicated this because some of the Corinthians thought less of him; but so that a man might think of him what God also thought, who had chosen him, he says “ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God”. For since he did not strive to be understood by a din of words or by human wisdom, he had to dispense the sacrament of Christ, in which not words but power shone forth, so that not man but God might be seen to be glorious; for, a colleague of fishermen, he preached Christ no differently than they. When, therefore, he proves himself a minister of Christ and of the sacraments of God, he marks out the false apostles, and denies that what they hand on is Christ's, because they disagreed with the apostolic tradition.

“Here now it is required among stewards that one be found faithful.” What he says applies not only to the person of the false apostles, but also to the others who, having received a stewardship, out of shame or fear, or certainly for the sake of their own reputation, were afraid to rebuke firmly either bad opinions or bad morals. For he himself was so firm that he did not spare even his own life, provided that he performed everything faithfully.

“But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by a human day.” He says it is miserable to be judged by those whom he rebukes for such great vices, since he knew he was not to be judged even by the just. “Or by a human day”: that is, because he was not to be judged even by the laws entrusted to the world. For, having gone beyond human righteousness, he strove for heavenly righteousness, as the Lord says: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God” (Matt 5:20). When he says “a human day”, then, he also signifies the divine one, on which Christ will judge; for as the jurists or pontiffs, whom they call priests, appointed fixed days on which judgment is given, so the day of the Lord has been fixed, on which he will judge the world.

“But neither do I judge myself; for I am conscious of nothing against myself.” It is plain that, having a pure conscience, he was not anxious about himself. “But I am not justified by this.” Now he humbles himself and speaks as a man who could fall into a fault unawares. “But the one who judges me is the Lord.” He rightly says so; for although he humbled himself, he yet gave very much to the Lord Christ, because he can, in judging hidden things, make plain what escapes a man, not to make him guilty but to make him wise. For though he is holy, he is still a man, from whom it cannot be that nothing is hidden. For sometimes we think something useful which is useless; for we do not have every limb or side of human conduct described for us, though we are plainly forbidden the grave things. For certain things tend to deceive us, arising from various causes, so that we think useful what is not useful; but this is a light matter, because the will is free.

“So do not judge before the time, until the Lord comes.” He warns them not to judge, since they are to be judged, and so have a double sin, as the Lord says: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Matt 7:1); but to await the day of God's judgment, as if they were faithful and good. For it is an injury to the judge if judgment or sentence proceeds from a servant before his hearing. “Who will also bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of hearts; and then each will have praise from God.” He says this because on the day of judgment nothing will be hidden of what has been done or thought; both simplicity and hypocrisy will appear there; so that one who was held despised may perhaps appear worthy, and one who was thought to be something may be found reprobate. For all things are naked on the day of judgment, and then there will be praise for the one who acts or thinks well. For here, whether the one who is praised is worthy cannot be proved, as he says in another place: “For not the one who commends himself is approved, but the one whom God commends” (2 Cor 10:18), from whom indeed nothing is hidden.

“These things, brothers, I have transferred to myself and Apollos for your sake, so that you may learn in us not to be puffed up, beyond what is written, one for one against another.” He transferred these things to himself and Apollos when, under his own person and that of Apollos, he emptied the boasts and perverse traditions of the false apostles, indicating them in summary, not one by one, lest a greater discord should arise among the people. For no one who hears his own name censured, or that of the man he favours, is content to keep silent; but if the name is unspoken, a hearer, even if he understands it is said of him, conceals it. Under this proposition, then, he emptied their persons when he says: “I planted, Apollos watered”, and so on (1 Cor 3:6), so that they might learn by these that nothing is to be given to men.

“For who distinguishes you?” That is, there are some who, having received more in baptism or in teaching, say that the others have obtained less. He says this to those who thought that those baptized by others were something more, and by whose eloquence they were led astray, so that by a certain trick they thought perverse things right. For there was such discord among the people that there were many factions of different parties; and so the Apostle fitted all his words to all the parties without disclosing names, so that when the letter was read each party might take what was said to it, recognizing on hearing it that its own case was being addressed. “For what do you have that you did not receive?” He says that the man had obtained nothing good from others beyond what he had received from Paul, and so complained in vain; for what they had, they had received from the Apostle. He seems to speak to one person because he speaks to a part of the people. “But if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?” Those who insulted the Apostle did this through ignorance: hearing the same things they had already learned from the Apostle, they emptied him of credit and gloried in the teaching of these men; for, commended by eloquence, they turned the glory of the preaching to themselves. But the Apostle was willing to seem contemptible, provided he made the glory of God acceptable.

“Already you are filled, already you have become rich; without us you reign.” It is irony, as they say; for they are the words of one who is angry, not of one who affirms. He says they reign, though he rebukes such great vices in them; for so they thought, glorying in what was handed on by the false apostles. “And would that you did reign, so that we too might reign with you.” Like a loving father, he wishes well even to ungrateful sons. For how could it be that they would reign without the apostles? For whatever has not been handed on by the apostles is full of wickedness. The order of thought should have been to say, “so that you might reign with us”; but because he had said first, “and would that you did reign”, he could not say otherwise than “so that we too might reign with you”. To reign, however, is to be secure in the hope and promises of Christ, and to rejoice in adversities that happen for the name of Christ; for they bring gain, not loss. Hence he says in another place: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

“For I think that God has displayed us apostles as last, as men destined to death.” He applies this to his own person because he was always in hardship, suffering persecutions and afflictions beyond the others, as Enoch and Elijah, who will be apostles in the last time, are to suffer. For they are to be sent before Christ to prepare the people of God and to fortify all the churches to resist the antichrist; and the reading of the Apocalypse testifies that they will suffer persecutions and be killed. The Apostle compared their time with his own, saying: “as men destined to death” (Rev 11:8 and following); for they will come in order to be killed. “Because we have been made a spectacle to this world, both to angels and to men.” For Enoch and Elijah will be a spectacle, to the point that their bodies will be thrown out in the street in the sight of the whole unbelieving people; so too the apostles have been made a spectacle, because they were publicly mocked, exposed to the injury and death which they suffered. He called angels and men 'the world' because there are also evil angels, as David says in the seventy-seventh Psalm: “He afflicted them through evil angels”, and evil and unbelieving men; to these the injuries of the apostles are a delight. Unbelief is called 'the world' because it follows visible things.

“We are fools for Christ's sake.” It is true that those who love Christ are fools to the world. “But you are wise in Christ.” One who is judged wise in Christ by the faithless does not rightly assert Christ. Indeed Marcion, because he denies that God has a Son and that God could become incarnate, is wise to the world; and Photinus, because he does not confess that Christ, in what he was born, is God, seems wise to worldly people. “We are weak.” Weak because, preaching Christ without flattery and with what seems foolishness to worldly people, they were subjected to injuries. “But you are strong.” Strong because they professed Christ in such a way as not to offend men, so as to be safe. “You are noble.” For one who does not confess that Christ was promised to Abraham and preached from the beginning is noble against Christ, because he ascribes the antiquity of the promise of Christ to others. “But we are without honour.” One is without honour to the world who professes Christ from the beginning, which the world denies. All the things said above, then, which he seems to deny, he confirms, and what he seems to confirm, he denies. For these are the words of one who is angry, who confesses by denying and denies by confessing.

“Up to this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are beaten, and are unsettled, and we labour working with our own hands.” For, preaching Christ freely and according to the true faith without any flattery, and rebuking the deeds of a depraved life, they had no favour with men, and were beaten, that is, treated with injuries, and were unsettled, because they were driven away, lest by staying long in one place they should teach more people. They worked with their hands because not only did they have no favour with men, but it was also unworthy to accept anything from those who were devoted to error, as he says in the hundred and fortieth Psalm: “But let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head” (Ps 140:5). For the one who accepts from someone who gives in order not to be rebuked both loses the freedom to rebuke and sins. “We are cursed, and we bless”: for they urged those who treated them badly toward the good. “We suffer persecution and endure it”: because they did not resist their persecutors. “We are blasphemed, and we entreat”: for they asked those who blasphemed to allow them to give an account. “We have become like the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all, until now.” By resisting no one and not repaying evil for evil, but always submitting, so as to call people back to the good by patience, he became contemptible and despised. “Until now”: that is, even now among the Corinthians, for whom he suffered the evils he mentions above. And since he saw that his humility achieved nothing in them, he complains, moved by grief, that such great submission and such injuries could have no fruit, and, what is worse, had even turned to the worse.

“Not to confound you do I write these things”: that is, I do not write these things to make you blush, but so that you may correct yourselves. “But I admonish you as my dearest sons.” He still makes himself a suppliant, lest, being rebuked and provoked to anger, they should spurn his admonitions. He acts like a saving physician who, cutting away the dead flesh, soothes the pain he has caused with hope and gentle words, so that the patient lets himself be treated. “For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.” By these words he shows that no one could love them with the affection with which he loved them. For who would prefer others' sons to his own in love? And therefore they ought not to spurn the admonitions of one who has also suffered such evils for them.

“I beseech you, then, be imitators of me.” See the kindness of the holy Apostle, who beseeches his sons to imitate their father; that is, he begs the sick of his own accord to accept the medicine. Yet he wants them to be his imitators in this: that, just as he suffered many afflictions from unbelievers for their salvation and did not give way, provided that day and night he preached to them the gift of the grace of God, so they too, remaining in his faith and teaching, should not accept the perverse inventions of the false apostles, but resist them, despising reproaches or slanders, so as to keep their affection for their spiritual father unviolated.

“For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my dearest and faithful son in the Lord.” He exhorts them in this same Timothy, whom he therefore attests to be his dearest and faithful son in the Lord, so that they might learn by him in what they were sinning; for when he bears witness to him, he rebukes them. “Who will remind you of my ways, which are in Christ Jesus, as I teach everywhere in every church.” Through this man, whom he confirms as a faithful son in the Lord, he wants them to return to the rule of the truth he had handed on; so that, reminded by his words and the example of his works, they might come to their senses, recognizing that they had not been wrongly taught by the Apostle, when they learned that all the churches hold the same things.

“Some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.” Some of the Corinthians were indignant that he did not go to them, not out of longing but out of pride, as though he held them unworthy; whereas the Apostle's aim was rather to make the unworthy worthy. He had, then, the wish to go, but what he was doing was more important.

“But I will come to you soon, if the Lord permits.” After the admonition he promises to go to them, but if the Lord should permit; so that, since God knows more than man, he would permit it if he knew it was worthwhile; and if he did not go, he would show that the Lord had not allowed it, certainly because of their unworthiness. “And I will find out not the speech of those who are puffed up, but their power.” He confounds them, because, though they lived crookedly, they were indignant, as though they deserved to be visited by the Apostle.

“For the kingdom of God is not in speech but in power.” So that, just as the kingdom of God is commended not by splendour of words but by the power of signs, so these too should show themselves worthy to be visited by the Apostle not by bare words but by the power of spiritual works.

“What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” He adds words of terror, so that those who were puffed up, being shamed, might be humbled; so that if they truly desired the Apostle's presence, they might prepare themselves to receive him, that is, wash themselves from every stain of sin; so that, coming to them, he might have joy as with his dearest sons.

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the gentiles.” To show how grave this sin is, he said it is not committed even by those who do not know God; so as to show accordingly with what penalty this man should be punished, who, though placed under eternal and divine justice, had committed the crime of so great a wickedness. “That someone has his father's wife.” He disclosed the kind of crime mentioned, so as not only to make him plainly guilty of death, but also to show that those who sided with him were not free of the crime; for sinning in a matter where sin is difficult makes one more guilty.

“And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned.” He humbles their pride so far as to make them no longer complainers but rather suppliants. For they too were sharers in it, while they allowed one guilty of so enormous a crime to assemble with them uncorrected; whereas all of one mind should have cast him out if he refused to amend himself. But if anyone does not have the power to cast out someone he knows to be guilty, or cannot prove it, he is free of blame; and it is not for a judge to condemn without an accuser; for the Lord too did not cast out Judas, though he was a thief, because he was not accused. “So that the one who did this deed might be removed from your midst.” Once this deed was known, he should have been driven from the assembly of the brotherhood; for all knew his crime and did not rebuke it; for he openly kept his stepmother in place of a wife. In this matter there was no need of witnesses, nor could the crime be covered by any evasion.

“I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit”: that is, absent in face but present by the authority of the Spirit, who is absent nowhere. “I have already judged, as if present, the one who has done this, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” Since all pleasure of the flesh is from the devil, therefore when someone is given over to this pleasure, he is handed over to Satan; for the flesh has this by nature, that it perishes; so the soul, when it joins itself to its desire, weakening its spiritual vigour, suffers destruction along with it. And so, if this man, rebuked for the sexual immorality he committed, were ashamed at being cast out, he would not perish, repentance following. Not only by the agreement and presence of all, but by the power of the Lord Jesus, that is, by the sentence of him whose embassy the Apostle discharged, he decreed that the man should be cast out of the church. When he is cast out, he is handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh; for both soul and body perish when things contrary to the law are done; but in this case the destruction of the flesh is ascribed to the man in another way. For although all sins render a man carnal, this is especially the desire of the flesh, by which he hands himself over with the body to Gehenna; for when the soul is conquered and stained with filth, it becomes flesh by the lust of the flesh; just as the body too, rightly governed, is called spiritual. Yet it is the mind which, either conquered by enticements, makes the whole man fleshly, or, remaining in the vigour of its nature, enables the flesh to be called spiritual. “So that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.” He hands over the defiled man mentioned to Satan so that the spirit may be saved in the people of the church on the day of judgment; for unless he had been cast out, the spirit of the church would not be saved on the day of judgment. For the Spirit would have deserted all because of the defilement, so that, found on the day of the Lord stripped of the Holy Spirit, they would hear from the Lord, the judge: “Depart from me, I do not know you” (Matt 7:23); as he says to the Romans: “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his” (Rom 8:9); and in another letter: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph 4:30). For if he is grieved, he departs, and will not be saved; not, of course, for himself, for he is impassible, but for us, to whom he has been given, so that through him we may be proved to be sons of God. For a thing that is lost is not saved, not for itself, since wherever it is it must exist, but for the one by whom it is lost.

“Is your glorying good?” That is, it is not good; for they were glad, when they ought rather to have been saddened over a brother sinning so bitterly, as Samuel was sad over Saul's sinning. Bad teachers either ignored this crime or rebuked it too negligently (as Eli the priest did his sons who sinned against God, 1 Sam 2:23), so as not to be disliked by men. “Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?” So too the sin of one person, known and not rebuked, defiles many; indeed all who know of it and do not avoid him, or who conceal it when they could rebuke it. For he does not seem to himself to sin when he is rebuked or avoided by no one.

“Clean out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump.” This is to be taken in two ways, because leaven is also human teaching, as the Saviour says: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” (Matt 16:11), that is, of their teaching. It was said, then, both to guard against bad teaching and for this case, because when the fornicator is cast out, the old leaven is cast out. It is 'old' because it is the sin of the ancient error. The new mixture is Christ's teaching. “As you are unleavened.” Unleavened bread was named from flour not leavened when the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt; so that leaven was held to be oldness and the unleavened newness. For, having cast off the old errors of the Egyptians, they were led into a new law; so too the Corinthians, after the errors of the pagans, were led into the gospel of Christ. He exhorts them, then, to live according to their profession, which they had received from the Apostle under the name of Christ, as people who now practise a new life; and this is to be unleavened. “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” He teaches according to the law that the newness consists in the meaning of the Passover, and that Christ was slain so that from it a new preaching might make a new way of life; so that, since we keep the meaning of the Passover, we may not follow the old life. The Passover, therefore, is a sacrifice, not a passing over, as it seems to some; for first the Passover, and then the passing over, because first comes the Saviour's pattern and then the sign of salvation. For the sign does not come before the cross; for when the lamb had been slain in the evening, the children of Israel in Egypt kept the Passover, and marked their doorposts with its blood, so that the angel passing by at night would not touch the places smeared with the lamb's blood (Exod 12).

“So let us celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven.” That is, rejoicing in renewal, let us flee old deeds, casting away from us all uncleanness, which is corruption; for as leaven corrupts the whole lump, so a bad life corrupts the whole man. So that we may keep ourselves not only from shameful living but also from the pursuit of iniquity, he added: “nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” That is, so that sincerity may make life clean, and truth exclude all fraud.

“I wrote to you in the letter not to associate with fornicators.” He indicates that he had written earlier, where he warns them not to join themselves to people of bad life. And since they seemed perhaps not to have understood what he had written, he now in this letter interprets what he wrote, saying: “Not at all the fornicators of this world”, but I wrote that one must withdraw from such brothers. “Or the greedy, or robbers, or idolaters; otherwise you would have had to go out of this world.” He rebukes the understanding of those who perhaps thought that he had forbidden association with unbelievers who were fornicators, greedy, robbers, or idolaters, not with brothers; and therefore they were not troubled that the man who had his father's wife was among them. “If, then, you associate with these”, he says, “it would be better for you to die”; for it is a gain for evildoers to die sooner rather than to live longer in sins.

“But now I have written to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother among you if he is a fornicator, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber; with such a one not even to eat.” He forbids taking food with a brother, but did not forbid it with an unbeliever, since he says: “If any of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you” (1 Cor 10:27). Therefore he says:

“For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?” It is true that a bishop cannot judge unbelievers; but with a brother in whom these vices are found he teaches that not only are the sacraments not to be eaten, but not even ordinary food; so that he may blush when he is avoided, and correct himself.

“Do you not judge those who are inside?” One judges when he discerns which brother to cling to, which to rebuke, which to avoid. “For God will judge those who are outside.” Above he says: “Do not judge before the time” (1 Cor 4:5); here he does not forbid it. But above he forbade judging unknown things on suspicion, especially about a ruler, because judging hidden things belongs to God alone; in this place, however, he even commands that brother examine brother, as he says in another place: “Test yourselves, whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves” (2 Cor 13:5). But those who are outside will be condemned on the day of judgment; for the Lord said: “Whoever does not believe has already been judged” (John 3:18). For one in whom there is no hope is to be counted as dead. “Remove the evil from among yourselves.” He again warns them to separate themselves from evil, both deeds and men.