Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
What Do You Have That You Didn't Receive?
1 Corinthians 4:6-13
6 Now these things, brothers, I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to think beyond the things which are written, that none of you be puffed up against one another. · WEB
One question dismantles the boasting, and then Paul sets the apostles' actual conditions beside the Corinthians' self-image in the letter's most withering paragraph.
That in us you might learn not to think beyond the things which are written, that none of you be puffed up against one another 1 Corinthians 4:6.
The phrase puffed up is this letter's word for the Corinthian disease, used three times in this chapter and again of knowledge later 1 Corinthians 4:18 1 Corinthians 4:19 1 Corinthians 8:1. It pictures inflation: greater volume, no more substance. And note the direction of the offense — against one another. The pride was not chiefly toward God but comparative, which is why it produced parties.
For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn't receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? 1 Corinthians 4:7.
Three questions, and the second is the hinge of the whole letter. Everything the Corinthians were competing over — their gifts, their knowledge, their eloquence, their teachers, their standing — arrived as a present. The argument does not deny that they possess these things; it asks where they got them. And the third question exposes the mechanism of all boasting: it is behaving as if you had not received it, a kind of forgetting. Gratitude and pride cannot occupy the same fact.
You are already filled. You have already become rich. You have come to reign without us 1 Corinthians 4:8.
The irony is unmistakable and the three verbs are chosen with care: filled, rich, reigning. That is how they saw themselves — arrived, satisfied, in possession. The sting is without us: they had reached the kingdom's consummation while the apostles who founded them were apparently still waiting outside. Then a genuine wish breaks through the sarcasm — I wish that you did reign, that we also might reign with you — because the error is one of timing, not of hope. The reigning is real and is not yet 1 Corinthians 6:2 2 Timothy 2:12.
For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men 1 Corinthians 4:9.
Against their throne, the arena. Last of all and sentenced to death place the apostles among the condemned who fought at the end of the day's program, and spectacle is the word behind theater — the apostles as the entertainment. Then the comparison is drawn out clause by clause: we are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise... we are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor 1 Corinthians 4:10.
Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. We toil, working with our own hands 1 Corinthians 4:11–12.
And the plain facts, which need no irony. Hunger, thirst, exposure, beatings, homelessness, manual labor — Paul's trade supported him precisely so that Corinth would not have to 1 Corinthians 9:18 Acts 18:3. The response to it all is three participles that answer curse with blessing and persecution with endurance 1 Corinthians 4:12–13 Matthew 5:44 Romans 12:14. The paragraph closes at the bottom: we are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all. A church that ranked its teachers by impressiveness is shown what its most impressive teacher's life actually looked like.
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