Against Originality - By: Phillip Ross

In the final phrase of verse 1 Corinthians 4:17 Paul tells us that he didn't change his message depending upon who he was talking to. Rather, he was teaching the Corinthians just as he taught all Christians "everywhere in every church." Paul endeavored to make his preaching and teaching message always serve the same purpose -- to encourage the growth of genuine Christianity through imitation. Paul's primary message was always the same -- salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone in Scripture alone. This was not just the message of Paul's teaching, it was the message or central core of his life.

How is this done? How are we to imitate Paul? First of all, we must understand that imitation is not accomplished through original thinking. Christians are not called to be original thinkers. This is important to understand because it goes completely against the grain of contemporary belief and training. We are taught in our schools, colleges, universities and through the media that being human means being original, that we become most human when we are most original. Indeed, Humanism is the celebration of original thinkers as embodying the best that humanity has to offer. Artists will know what I'm talking about. At its root, we tend to think that to be human is to be original -- authentic, and the more authentic we are, the more human we are. When we say that something is authentic we mean that it is a genuine original, not a copy, or that it has original authority. Authentic and authority come from the same root.

Here's the rub. The Bible teaches that only God is original and authentic. Please hear me. The Bible teaches that human beings were created in God's image. We are not originals, but some sort of copies of the Original. Nor do we have original authority. Rather, all human authority is derived authority, human being is derived being, and all we are derived from God. That's what the Bible teaches.

We don't think about these things much, but over the centuries Christian theologians have understood the Bible to teach that Christians are called, not to think original thoughts, but to think God's thoughts after Him. We are not called to be original thinkers but to meditate upon God's thoughts, to study and ruminate on Scripture. Only God is original. Everything and everyone else is derived. This issues from the fact that God is not a created being, but is the Creator of all other beings. So, to try to think original thoughts is to try to become what only God actually is.

From a practical standpoint this means that God -- God's thoughts (Scripture) -- are to be at the center of all our thinking. We are not to try to think what no one has ever thought before. Rather, we are to think about what God has thought and written in Scripture. The most faithful Christians are those who emulate God's thoughts most accurately and most consistently. The problem with trying to think original thoughts (other than the fact that it is impossible) is that being original means that we must make a conscious effort to not think God's thoughts -- to avoid Scripture -- because all thought about God's thought is imitative. Original thinkers cannot be followers because followers imitate their leaders (at least ideally they do). To be a follower of Christ or Paul or Calvin or Luther or Buddha means to follow them in their thinking, to imitate them, to think and live the way that they thought and lived.

Paul sent Timothy to Corinth so that the Corinthians could see how Timothy imitated Paul, so they could learn from Timothy's example how to imitate Paul, who was himself imitating Christ. They would find in Timothy the same concerns and teaching that they found in Paul.

Paul was passionate about this, even angry that some Corinthian teachers were not imitating him. 1 Corinthians 4:19-20 must be understood to convey a single thought: "But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power." Here Paul threatened those Corinthian leaders who disagreed with him with public exposure of their pride, the very pride that was the source of their worldly mindedness.

Note that Paul was not interested in talking to his detractors. He wasn't coming to debate them. He was coming to demonstrate the power -- the effectiveness -- of the gospel. He used the Greek word "dunamis," which in other places is sometimes translated as "miracle" when it describes the work of God. Jesus used this word when the Sadducees were arguing with him about the reality of resurrection. "Jesus answered them, 'You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God'" (Matthew 22:29).

Paul conditioned his plans to visit them upon his own submission to the will of God. Paul was saying that his plans would only manifest if the Lord decided to use those plans to accomplish His purposes, if his visit conformed to the will of God. And, of course, all Christian planning should submit to God's will, not just in words but in actuality. And that is the point that Paul underscores in 1 Corinthians 4:20; "For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power." Talk is cheap. Talk is easy. But Paul wanted results that conformed to God's will.

About the Author

Phillip A. Ross, author of many Christian books, has been a pastor for over 25 years. He founded http://www.Pilgrim-Platform.org in 1998, which documents the church's fall from historic Christianity. He published an exposition First Corinthians In 2008 that demonstrates the Apostle Paul's opposition to worldly Christianity. Ross's book, Arsy Varsy -- Reclaiming the Gospel in First Corinthians, shows how Paul turned the world upside down.

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