“Aren’t you living like people of the world? When one of you says, ‘I am a follower of Paul,’ and another says, ‘I follow Apollos,’ aren’t you acting just like people of the world? After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us.” 1 Corinthians 3:3-5
Our significance isn’t found in other people. The people at Corinth were attaching themselves to particular apostles and trying to make themselves feel significant by their connections and network of friends. Sometimes Christians today do similar things. They look for their significance by being connected to a particular pastor or belonging to a certain church or claiming to be baptised by a highly-regarded minister. However, we won’t find lasting significance by attaching ourselves to someone else. We find our significance in Christ alone.
Paul was also careful not to receive financial help from the Corinthians because in their culture, this would have made them Paul’s patrons, and he would have been their client. He didn’t want them to find significance through financially supporting him (2 Corinthians 12:14). (Whereas, Paul was happy to receive financial help from the Macedonians, as this was viewed differently there.) Paul would rather go without financial support than have their faith compromised.
Paul knew that relying on others to make ourselves feel significant leads to disillusionment and heartache when those people inevitably let us down. Sometimes it may even seem that God deliberately allows us to become disillusioned with those who led us to faith so that we become more reliant on him.
Let’s look for our significance in Christ alone and commit to being his followers.
Other posts on this topic here.
