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It is to me very gratifying that you feel and exercise so much Christian freedom in mingling among persons of various denominations, whom, though owing to education and to various circumstances, they may differ considerably in opinion on subjects of minor importance, yet conscious of one common disease that of sin, and looking for or experiencing the only remedy reconciliation with God through one Saviour, you can salute as brethren and sisters in the truth, and feel your spirits refreshed whilst you enjoy the privilege of refreshing theirs; and like Aquila and Priscilla, with Apollos, are made the instruments, I trust, of "expounding unto them the way of God more perfectly."
Here the arguments of a Paul end here the silver tongue of an Apollos is speechless here the hands of a Dorcas cease to manufacture for the poor, whose unavailing tears cannot recall departed piety. But who will define the limits of possible attainment in knowledge and excellence in a state of deathless existence?
I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference between my house and Croesus's, than there is in two ten dollar bills of the same bank. He might live in my house and I in his, without any confusion. He has the same curtains, carpets, chairs, tables, Venuses, Apollos, busts, vases, etc. And he goes into his room, and thinks it's all a devilish bore, just as I do.
For all things are your's; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all things are your's; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. LET a man so account of us, as the under servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is expected of stewards, that a man be found faithful.
Paul and his companion, Apollos, had been taken as the figureheads of two of these parties, and so he sets himself in the context, first of all to show that neither of the two was of any real importance in regard to the Church's life.
It is a tenderness which gathers into its embrace all these imperfect, immoral, lax, heretical people in Corinth, as well as everywhere else 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. There were men in that church that said, 'I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ. There were men in that church that had defiled their souls and their flesh, and corrupted the community, and blasphemed the name of Christ by such foul, sensual sin as was 'not even named among the Gentiles. There were men in that church so dead to all the sanctities even of the communion-table as that, with the bread between their teeth and the wine-cup in their hands, one was hungry and another drunken.
Heaven forbid! Wee Apollos there may be, 'the little Crichtons of the hour, who twist about their brows the cypress sprays that have fallen from this perverted poet's wreath, and fancy themselves crowned with the laurel of a nation's applause. But these men are not types of our literature. The truly great mind is never molded by the idol of a day, a clique, a sect.
This Christ Himself proves from the prophet Isaiah, Mat. xi.: "The blind see, the lame walk," &c. As though He had said, just as it was written there it is taking place now; so also we read in Acts ix., of Paul, and in the xviii., of Apollos, how they confounded the Jews, and convinced them out of Scripture that this was the Christ.
In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in men's minds before the Savior of the Christians.
Paul to the Judaizing Christians, whom these so much resemble, who were his chief hindrance in the work his Master had given him to do. In Christ we must forget Paul and Apollos and Cephas, pope and bishop and pastor and presbyter, creed and interpretation and theory.
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