For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. – 1 Corinthians 3:4-5

Today's Scripture Reading (February 11, 2021): 1 Corinthians 3

English actor Kenneth Williams quipped that "A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he's not alone in the way he feels about himself." Maybe that is why we all kind of, deep down, want a fan club. We want people to come alongside us and remind us that we are valuable and worthy of others' praise. But the problem is that fan clubs are also shallow. And what most of us need, along with the fan club, is something more substantial, something that has the capability of making us better people. Part of the phenomenon of the fan club is that it doesn't take long for us to start playing for the club. We want to make sure that the fan club doesn't leave us. What we say and do eventually becomes just those things that feed our fan club and keeps them loving us. And while we like to be liked, what is even more important is that we also have people around us that agree with us on what is essential. We need to be the shapers of the fan club, and the fan club should not be the shaper of us.

The Corinthian Church had developed several fan clubs. What would be wrong would be to believe that the leaders that the Corinthians had decided to cheer on were in any way competitors. Paul had never said anything negative against Apollos. And in the same way, Apollos was not one of Paul's detractors. Paul and Apollos, along with Cephas (the Apostle Peter in 1 Corinthians 1:12), had become placeholders for what appears to be political differences within the Corinthian Church.

And Paul was not going to give in to that message, not even to his own fan club. Paul was adamant that his fan club was not going to shape him. Paul and Apollos were nothing more than the messengers. They had only ever said that they were servants of Christ. The message that they had brought to the Corinthians originated with Jesus, not with them. Therefore, it made no sense for the people to become fans of the servants; they needed to become fans of the Master of the House, Jesus Christ, because he was the only one with the message of salvation that they needed to hear.

Paul knew that he was just a servant of Christ. What he needed was for his fan club to come to understand his servanthood and to comprehend that they, too, were merely servants of Christ. He required the Christian Church to understand their position in the world as defined by a humility that reflected Jesus Christ and his love for the world in which we live.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 4