I am arguing that the world runs on the energy of accusation and condemnation. This is how people are kept in line. I am also arguing that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross has fundamentally undone that system of condemnation. Since Jesus died and rose, the whole thing has been unraveling, and cannot do anything but unravel. I also want to maintain that this not just a great idea that occurred to me one day in the shower. It is the message of the gospel, the message of the New Testament.
Take, for example, the detailed argument for this glorious liberation that Paul presents in the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians. He is distressed by the divisions that exist among the Corinthians (1:10), and has heard reports about their contentions (1:11). He then asks rhetorically if Christ was divided (1:13). The answer is no — He was accursed, buried under all the accusations of the world — but He was not divided. The accusations were all in one place — on the cross where He was.
So the problem Paul begins by addressing is the problem of division and controversy. And what kind of gas do we need for that particular road trip? Right. We need the fuel of accusation. Without the spirit of accusation, controversies are like fire with no oxygen.
Paul then moves smoothly into his point about how God’s wisdom in the cross collides fundamentally with the “wisdom of the wise” (1:18-19). It is crucial for us to realize that there is a contradiction between these two ways because they are addressing the same subject. The wisdom of the wise and the foolishness of the cross are working on the same problem. They are contending for the same territory. Paul is not maintaining any contradiction between the cross of Jesus and upper level calculus. There is no contradiction between being smart and being wise. There is a contradiction between being proud and accusative, wanting to run the world that way, and being wise.
Notice the progression. God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the wise (1:27), but this is a weakness that has an archetype — the death of Jesus. The princes of this world are devils; they are princes of accusation. The wisdom that Paul declares in his “weak” preaching is a wisdom that is found in the potency of weakness crucified (2:2). And these princes of accusation are therefore coming to nothing (2:6).
We have not received the spirit of the world (2:12), but the Spirit of God. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discerned (2:14). The natural man just doesn’t get it. But the man who is spiritual can exercise judgment in all things (2:15). He himself is judged by no man (2:15). “Judged by no man.” Now where did that come from? Paul did not just drag that observation in by the ears. It is the point of his argument. We are free from accusation.
He was unable to address them as spiritual men though. Remember from earlier that spiritual men are men who do not receive the spirit of the world. They are men who exercise wise judgment. They are men who are not subject to accusation themselves. They have been liberated from that prison. But because they were not spiritual, Paul addresses the Corinthians as carnal (3:1; 3:1). How is this carnality expressed? The answer is blunt and clear. It is characterized by envy, strife, and division. Accusation.
Glorying in one man over against another is how the spirit of accusation works. In order to accuse a “them” there must be an “us.” But since Christ is not divided, those who are in Christ must not be divided. To be a member of a faction within the church, and to give your allegiance to that faction as a faction, is to confess yourself to be a member of the devil’s faction.
But let’s be careful. Over against those who think they get this principle and who then turn it into a misplaced absolute, Paul proceeds immediately to the necessity of the Corinthians dividing from a man who had done the unthinkable deed of taking his father’s wife. This discipline that Paul required, this dividing, was not a contradiction. It crowns his argument. If you don’t want division, you must separate from the principle of division. If you don’t want accusations, you have to cast out the devils.
It is striking how sex comes into in the mix here (5:1). Paul has judged this fornicator (5:3). He insists that this man has to be put out of the church, with the church of course hoping for his salvation. He must be turned over to Satan — remember that the title Satan means adversary; he is the accuser, he is the devil (5:5). And why? The offender must be removed because believers in the new covenant are called to get rid of the leaven of malice and wickedness (5:8). There it is again — malice. Anybody who thinks this guy wound up with this woman simply because she happened to be the prettiest woman he knew probably thinks that Herod was unlucky in a similar way with Herodias, his brother’s wife. Total coincidence.
No, malice is a major factor in all of this kind of thing. Malice, striving, competition, glory, envy . . . all of it. Sexual sin is not just a matter of simple self control. Reflect on some of our language for a moment — scoring, trophy wives, and so on.
This point we are making is one we could just keep on making in this same book if we had the time — in the sixth chapter, Paul begins looking at some of the pathologies of their envy and strife under the microscope. He takes them to task for their mind boggling display of how captive to the spirit of the world they were. Going to court? In front of unbelievers? Are you crazy? No — not crazy, just carnal. Just diabolical.
The church was to be a haven from accusations, and these Corinthians had just inverted everything. They were accusing each other inside, and were then going to the outside world to adjudicate the whole mess. This is like a hospital farming out its patients so that they might recuperate in some disease-riddled dump. This is why Christians who take fellow believers to court in front of unbelievers, unwilling to be defrauded instead, and who dismiss Paul’s outrage here as unrealistic “in the modern world,” are missing the entire point of the gospel. This was every bit as unrealistic in the ancient world. The point is not to be “realistic” in a world of accusation — the point was to build a new world. But I have seen Christian leaders as guilty of this staggering myopia as anyone.
The world runs on accusation and condemnation. The world outside is full of it. The church was designed to be the place of “no condemnation.” The church is the only possible alternative to this. The entire pagan apparatus was built upon condemnation. “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Cor. 10:20). The center of all culture is cultus, worship, and so the pagan world system was a culture built upon the centrality of accusation. The pagan world worships accusations. This is why one of the most momentous events in the history of the world was when Constantine — to whom we should be eternally grateful — ordered the cessation of the sacrifices to these devils.
And this is also why it is no contradiction to mark the divisive man, and to have nothing to do with him (Rom. 16:17). You don’t make the most conspicuous leper the official in charge of hygiene at the hospital. This is the disease we must keep out if we are to grow up into the kind of people the Lord intends for us to be — free from accusation, strife, and envy.
But of course, because some of these divisive men are quite clever, they will often take this passage and use it to mark the genuine brothers in order to demand their expulsion. Later in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul does not hesitate to defend himself against those who would wield such accusations against him. He strives with the strife-mongers, and contends with the accusers. One of the reasons we have so many fights in the church is because the pastors don’t fight nearly enough.
“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (1 Cor. 10:21).
The cup of blessing and the cup of accusation are utterly inconsistent. Whatever happens, there must never be two cups there.