Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? 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 would say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other.

The central “figure” in Christianity is “Christ.” Yet He has been maligned repeatedly within the Christian movement. The Corinthians in their squabbling were in essence dividing their Savior. Down through the centuries people have derided His deity, twisted His incarnation, rendered Him a mere prophet, and the list goes on. Yet Christ is central. He is undivided. We err if we pit the teachings of Christ against the teachings of Paul and vice versa, particularly when Paul himself teaches that he preaches Christ (1 Cor. 2:23)!

Taking up the last-mentioned group of squabblers, the “Christ followers” and the “Paul followers,” the apostle (who was their evangelist and first teacher) disavows the division between him and Christ. The central action that made Christianity possible was the crucifixion, and it was not Paul who was crucified for them. To all the Paul detractors who claim he was arrogant, such teaching belies such thinking. Choosing the issue of crucifixion, though, is an early indication of a central theme of this letter, in fact, the central theme of our faith. Christ is the one who died for believers; that trumps all divisionary and sectarian thinking. We were not baptized into anyone else’s name but Christ’s.

Paul, in a brief autobiographical interlude, explains that he only baptized a few people when he planted the church there, the most prominent of whom he mentions. Stephanas, whose family was among the first believers there, was apparently traveling with the apostle at the time of this writing (1 Cor. 16:17). Of the other two mentioned individuals, Gaius also became a co-traveler with Paul. To the apostle it just wasn’t important to exalt the one doing the baptizing but to put the prominence on the One into whom Christians are baptized! From the earliest times, Paul avoided anything that would encourage a cult following, even to the point of refusing any financial support from them (2 Cor. 11:7-9).

So much of the apostle’s ministry undercuts the contemporary prominence of the “pastor” of a local church. Often today we see the names of the senior ministers blazoned on the marquees on the front lawns of many churches, with people flocking to popular preachers to the neglect of all others. Paul would chastise such practices. While we may have our favorite teachers of the Word, we must never forget our commitment is to the Word, not the preacher.

Lord, I confess that too often I have relied on what I have been taught by my favorite teacher of the Word without checking his teaching in Scripture.