1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 1.
A Reproof of Disharmony. 1 Cor. 1, 10–16.
VV. 16. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas; besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
It is with a feeling of relief that Paul cries out: I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest any one should say that you were baptized into my name. However, I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; but I baptized no one else, so far as I know, vv. 14—16.
Because the very suggestion of a party spirit based upon personal preferences appears horrible and hideous to him, Paul regards it as a veritable dispensation of Providence that so few people had been baptized by him personally in Corinth. Crispus and Gaius had been among his earliest converts, Acts 18,8; Rom. 16,23, and now that he thought of it, he remembered also that Stephanas with his entire household had received baptism at his hands; but he could recall no other instance.
And this fact, that only so few had been baptized by him personally, is a source of much satisfaction to him, lest any one should, under the conditions now obtaining in Corinth, bring the accusation against him that his intention had been to bind them to his person and to form a party named after him.
Note the deep humility of the great apostle, as well as his carefulness of expression, lest he be under suspicion.
The Wisdom of God and the Foolishness of Men. 1 Cor. 1, 17–31.
The foolishness of the Gospel-message: V. 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
The apostle here characterizes his office, trying to make it clear to the Corinthian Christians wherein the ministry of the Gospel really consists. He says of himself that Christ did not send him, did not entrust him with the office of an apostle, for the purpose of baptizing, but for that of preaching the Gospel. The appointment to this office did indeed include the work of administering Baptism, Matt. 28, 19. Incidentally, however, the work of preaching, of bearing testimony of Christ and His atonement, was the chief calling of the apostle. Without the Word of the Gospel the Sacraments have no efficacy.
"Without the Word of God the water is simple water and no Baptism." The function of administering the sacrament of Baptism follows from the greater function, that of spreading the Gospel-message.
"In the command to preach the command to baptize is included in this way, that he who is called to preach the Gospel is also empowered to baptize; but, on the other hand, not everyone that is empowered and has the right to baptize thereby also is qualified and called to preach. Therefore Paul can say that Christ had not sent him to baptize, without thereby undervaluing Baptism as a means of grace. . . . The actual performance of the act of baptism, which belongs to the office of the Church, Matt. 28, 19, the apostles could have carried out through others, Acts 10, 48; compare John 4, 1. 2, who were their hands and Christ's in this service. But the preaching of the Gospel, through which alone the practice of baptizing is made possible, they could indeed carry on in fellowship with others, but they could not personally omit this function or have it done only through a delegation of preachers, for they were trumpets in the world of nations and lights in the darkness" (Besser, Bibelstunden, 8, 55).
The apostle now shows wherein the true power of the Gospel consists, first from the negative side: Not in wisdom of speech, not in the rhetorical argumentation of Greek philosophy, lest the cross of Christ be rendered void, without effect.
To clothe the preaching of the Cross in the words of man's wisdom, to seek for great oratorical effect in teaching its glorious truths, is not only not doing a service to the message of Christ, but it is fraught with the greatest danger to the Gospel, it works harm; it shuts off the power of the divine message. The true Gospel-preacher is not to stand before his congregation primarily as an orator trained in the art of rhetoric, but as a witness of Christ, bearing testimony to the great facts in and through which God has chosen to reveal Himself to men.
The doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner, whose center is the cross of Calvary, is bereft of its efficiency by any deliberate display of art, which brings forward the person of the messenger rather than his message. In many modern churches in which the Gospel of Christ is occasionally, incidentally, mentioned, the very intellectual or esthetic pleasure which the hearers feel under the sway of the speaker's artful eloquence will tend to shut off the influence of the Gospel contained in the minister's message.