Commentaries:
No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for 1 Corinthians 4:12.
I Corinthians 4:10-13
Excerpted from: What Do We Have to be Proud Of? (Part One)Now, this has all been background material, foundational understanding for the correction he is about to administer to the Corinthians. Let us drop down to verse 8, this is the other side of the coin here. Paul is being sarcastic, but by it he exposes what the Corinthians thought of themselves, first of all, as compared to what they thought of Paul and Apollos. Notice the attitude.
I Corinthians 4:8-9 You are already full! You are already rich [meaning spiritually rich]! You have reigned as kings in the kingdom of God without us [you have excluded us]—and indeed I would wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.
I Corinthians 4:10-13 We are fools for Christ's sake [he is back to his sarcasm], but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished [oh, quite noble, those Corinthians], but we are dishonored! Even to the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure it; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, until now.
I think you get it. The Corinthians thought of themselves as superior, highly spiritual, and brilliant beyond measure, and so noble.
In other words, they believed that they were already, after just a couple of years since Paul had preached the gospel to them, so spiritually gifted and developed that they no longer needed instruction in righteousness and correction from those whom God had appointed, whom they judged—God's appointees—they had already passed. Meaning, even though Paul and Apollos and Peter had all this education and experience, the Corinthians thought that they had already surpassed them in godly wisdom and knowledge, after two years or so! None of them could come into a room, because their heads were too big, they could not get through the door. He is saying there that they think they had outgrown their teachers in so short a time.
Paul disagrees, of course. Three times in this chapter, verse 6 and verses 18 and 19, he calls them puffed up. They were proud, they were arrogant, as opposed to himself and Apollos, who were faithful and humble, and had gone through a long time of difficult service to God.
And while the Corinthians looked down on the ministers' humiliations, they were actually proof of their faithfulness, humility, and Christlikeness, because they had gone through these things, as Christ had said: if they hated Me, they will hate you; if they persecuted Me, they will persecute you. Paul and Apollos had felt that in their own bodies, but these coddled Corinthians thought they were better.
We know what the Corinthians thought of themselves. We know what the Corinthians thought of Paul, and this was the big problem that he had to solve. How in the world do you get a people who, with so much pride and arrogance, to come around to the truth, to repent? That is for next time.
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