1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 4
The Work of the Ministers of Christ. 1 Cor. 4, 1—21.
The status of the heralds of salvation: V. 11. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; v. 12. and labor, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; v. 13. being defamed, we intreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.
Purposely Paul continues in his strain of describing his own condition: To this very hour we both hunger and thirst and are ill-clad, v. 11. He shared the fate of the people poor in this world's goods, as so many of his followers have since his time. And we are violently treated, the violence sometimes extending to physical mistreatment, to blows and fisticuffs. We have no definite home; Paul might always expect to be obliged to flee on account of persecutions. And we work hard, laboring with our own hands. All the work of his ministry was hard labor; but, in addition, Paul chose to support himself with manual labor, Acts 18, 3; 20, 34.
Note that the words of the apostle find their application to this very hour, in the midst of our so-called enlightened civilization, and that many a minister endures the same afflictions, even to the last, not from choice, but from necessity — more's the pity!
With this sad condition, with the specific hardships which he had to endure, agreed the spirit which Paul was wont to show at all times: Reviled to our faces, deeply insulted, we bless. What the world believes to be an abject, cowardly spirit is the mark of the servants of Christ, and it takes more character to bear an insult in silence and reply with a blessing than to revile in return.
Persecuted, we endure it; the servants of Christ use neither physical force to resist the evil, nor do they try to evade it by betraying their Lord; they put up with all such conditions patiently.
Being slanderously spoken of, we entreat; for defaming speeches the ministers of Christ return dissuasions. In everything their aim is, if possible, to gain the enemy: they beg men not to be wicked, but to return to a better mind, to be converted to Christ.
And now the apostle presents the very climax of degradation: As the rinsings of the world we have become, as the scraping of all things. He compares himself and the other ministers of Christ to the scum, the dregs, the last sediment in a dirty kettle that must be scraped off; and to the dirt which is scraped from the shoes after one has waded through filth and mire. That is what the faithful ministers of the Gospel are in the eyes of the world, like "the filth that one gets rid of through the sink and the gutter."
And these terms, as here used, may have a further significance. For the words were used "especially of those condemned criminals of the lowest class who were sacrificed as expiatory offerings, as scapegoats in effect, because of their degraded life. It was the custom at Athens to reserve certain worthless persons who in case of plague, famine, or other visitations from heaven might be thrown into the sea, in the belief that they would 'cleanse away,' or 'wipe off,' the guilt of the nation." (Lightfoot.)
Note: The temper of the world has changed but little since the time of Paul, although there is a veneer of kindness and toleration for the ministers of the Gospel. At the slightest supposed provocation and suspicion, however, the mask is withdrawn, and it is plainly shown that, as Luther says, they are regarded "as the world's sweepings and everybody's refuse and doormat" ( Concordia Triglotta, 627).