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The church at Corinth was a hot mess, morally and theologically speaking. (You didn’t know that hot mess was a technical theological term? You do now.) Most of 1 Corinthians is given over to pointing out and then cleaning up the mess, one problem at a time. And the first problem Paul addresses is division in the church.

He devotes four chapters to the problem (1:10-4:21), which included both division among the Corinthians themselves and between the Corinthians and Paul. Here’s how he begins:

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.  My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ” (1 Cor. 1:10-12).

The NIV gives us an idiomatic translation of what Paul wrote. According to Gordon Fee, Paul literally says, “I appeal to you…that you say the same thing…that you be knitted together in the same mind and the same opinion.” The Corinthians said different things when they needed to say the same thing.

And where they needed to say the same thing was in their evaluation of Christian leaders. For reasons we’ll get into later in this series, some Corinthians held certain Christian leaders in higher esteem than others. Fair enough! But then they proceeded to put down other Christian leaders who, in their eyes, didn’t measure up to the standard set by their favorite.

This is where the quarreling began. Some favored Paul and put down Apollos and Cephas (that is, Peter). Others favored Apollos and put down Peter and Paul. Still others favored Peter and put down…well, you get the picture. One group, perhaps sick of this quarrelsomeness, favored Jesus. And that may seem pretty spiritual. But really, they were just using Jesus to put down Paul, Apollos, and Peter. (There’s nothing like a group that’s holier-than-thou in its divisiveness!) I doubt Paul, Apollos, and Peter approved of the Corinthians’ bad use of their good names. (See the positive way Paul speaks about Apollos in 1 Cor. 3:6 and 16:12, for example.)

Instead of imposing agreement on the Corinthians, Paul makes a brotherly appeal to the Corinthians to see the damaging error of their ways. His approach is a reminder that true unity among Christians cannot be pushed upon people. It can only be pulled out of them.

One final thought: American Christianity is divided into various denominations. The word denomination comes from a Latin phrase, de nomine, meaning, “according to the name.” Do we, like the Corinthians, divide according to names rather than uniting “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”? Are our denominations Corinthian divisions writ large? Perhaps the road to Christian unity begins by asking such questions.