What’s the problem Paul is so clearly wrestling with regarding the Corinthian church? Verse 8 puts it so powerfully in the biting irony: “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign - and that without us!”
The view they were entertaining about the Christian life, about Christian experience, is that they already had it all. Every last drop of what Jesus achieved was theirs right now. Nothing left to be added upon some future stage. Nope - it’s ALL ours and it’s all ours NOW.
They weren’t wrong, in one sense, and yet tragically so in another. In principle, yes, all things are ours now in Christ. We’re seated with him in heavenly places - Paul himself said so. We have been made Kings and Priests in Christ - Peter affirms it. All things are ours (1 Cor 3:21) - and all are safely held in trust for us, in him, until that Day. In principle, yes, but not yet in completed enjoyment. The best is, truly, yet to come.
So what’s the big deal? They’re just a little bit over-eager, guilty of enthusiasm perhaps, but not much more, surely? Yet it is a big deal. Here’s why:
The posture they were adopting, towards the world and about a suffering Christian like Paul, was one of superiority and not service. One day, when completely transformed into the image of Christ, they and we shall reign and even judge angels. Paul himself was looking forward to that day (v.8b). But not now. That kind of power simply could not be entrusted to us in our present state. And, even more clearly, that isn’t our present calling.
The life of an apostle and the lives of Christians and churches are to reflect the life of Jesus in his days on earth. Not exercising - nor seeking - worldly power, as though obtaining it would vindicate Paul’s claims or would validate the church’s witness. No. Our Lord Jesus, in whose steps we follow, was a man of sorrows, one acquainted with grief. He came to serve, not to be served, and to offer up his life. This is what Paul knew and he felt the overflow in his own experiences (as verses 9-13 testify to so movingly).
Our lives are not offered for sin - Jesus’ sacrifice was unique and unrepeatable - but they are offered for the sake of the world. And the place where that posture of servant-hood and pain-bearing is often most evident is when we pray. Or at least it ought to be. Prayer for power now, for preferential treatment, for top dog status and a pain-free existence isn’t prayer worthy of being offered in Jesus’ name.
But prayer that agonises over the state of the world, that pleads for mercy on the unrepentant, that asks the Lord to open hearts to his gospel, that stands with the broken-hearted, that yearns for justice - that kind of praying has about it what Paul writes of in 2 Cor 2:15
“We are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.”
May God bless our times of prayer with the same spirit of willing service and sacrifice for the sake of his world, and for the glory of Jesus.
