Party-Spirit: Its True and False Remedies

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

In this passage, we have one of the most misunderstood passages in all of Scripture. For many a false-peace-maker, it is second only to “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” to which I like to respond the way Paul Washer suggested: “Twist not Scripture, lest ye be like Satan.” Part of the problem is getting the whole biblical context. The same Paul who insists here “no divisions among you” (1:10) says later in the same letter, “there must be divisions among you” (11:19). So how to rightly divide? Theologians will use the term “party-spirit” to stand in for the more technical words “partisanship” or “factiousness.”

Factionalism is the sinful kind of division: putting loyalties to the tribe or the clique or the pet-project above the eternal cause of the gospel. We know that this was deeply disturbing to Paul. Twice in this short space he calls them all “brethren” (10, 11) to remind them of what they are to each other. I want to approach sinful division as a kind of disease and true unity as a medicine. Paul was an expert pathologist of the infant body of Christ. He knew the difference between false symptoms and true, and the difference between the external symptoms and the root disease.

There is a Surface with its Mere Symptoms of Sinful Division

 Very often we are told that what creates divisions is names and labels and so forth. If we would just call ourselves “Christians only,” problem solved! But notice that when Paul looks out at these parties with their banners, he sees not only the name of three mere mortals (Paul, Apollos, and Cephas), but he also sees a banner with the name of Christ (v. 12), and he puts them in the same boat. Saying “I follow Jesus, not any mere man,” doesn’t necessarily make us non-divisive. The spirit of division must run deeper than that. 

 So this is the first shallow remedy: to peel all the labels off the medicine bottles. “Ah, you see, labels! The doctrines of men! You may follow Calvin or Wesley, but I follow Christ!” But what is behind this cheap virtue-signalling is nothing but a lot of unlabeled medicine that still needs faithful doctors to prescribe at the right dosage. It turns out that labels have their place. Christ gave teachers to his church (Eph. 4:10-11), and Paul commends imitation of faithful teachers (1 Thess. 1:6, Heb. 13:7). Peeling all the labels off won’t heal us of division.

 Another thing we can do is to isolate the opening verse and say: “You see, it is very simple. Just obey Paul here: “all of you agree” (v. 10). “There you have it! If you will just stop disagreeing over this or that point of doctrine or practice, all will be well.” But simplistic remedies lead to all kinds of absurdities. Let me show you that by asking a few simple diagnostic questions: Which of the partisan views should all the parties settle on in order to stop the division? And would it make any difference if these Corinthians agreed with Paul or disagreed? Certainly they do not currently agree with his position now. And if they disagree with Paul, does not Paul disagree with them? Are you starting to get a sense of the problem with the surface healing of divisions? This is the great fraud of ecumenicalism. It is nothing but unilateral disarmament. It turns out that the only way to unify is around an idea that is bigger than the unity. 

A Truer Diagnosis and Remedy for Sinful Division

By saying that “all of you agree,” Paul is actually not telling them to water down their doctrine to some lowest common denominator to achieve unity. The strictest Greek would be “that you all speak the same thing” (v. 10), which addresses what they are communicating about their basic identity. To put it in simple terms, the sin in this division is tribal and not an honest doctrinal disagreement.

Paul is actually calling them up from the divisive pigsty of tribalistic thinking to the unifying horizon of gospel-doctrinal thinking. He does this in two ways. 

First, in the way that he chides them: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (v. 13) What he is holding in front of their minds is the work of Christ: undivided and undelegated to a mere mortal like Paul. In other words, because there is one faith and one hope, so there is one body (cf. Eph. 4:4-5). In that same letter to the Ephesians, Paul holds forth Christ’s work on the cross as the thing that reconciled the warring parties of Jew and Gentile: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (2:13-14).

There is a second way Paul highlights this. He doesn’t just chide them as ones who have forgotten the gospel that they have in common. He also contrasts how earth-shattering the gospel business is versus their faction-building business in verse 17—“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.” Note that he is not minimizing baptism, but only using it as a focal point of the comparison because that’s what they were using to build their little cliques and tribes. 

Here is the key. Focusing on personas divides. Not only is our focus taken off of the gospel message (which would be one and unifying) but our focus is now on a finite individual who is less than Jesus, and we are making comparisons between that mere mortal and other mere mortals, and, whether we know it or not, a good portion of our faith is starting to latch itself to their star. The words of Paul have to be our constant drumbeat: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5).