In the church, we've been so used to institutional functioning that it's difficult to conceive of any other form of functionality. The box of our thinking, with respect to where the church operates, is that it's institutional; members derive their authority from the institution. This is the model that the Romans introduced in the 4th century AD when Constantine gave the church power and instituted the church of a state. Then, it didn't matter what the relationship was between the leaders and the people because the people were compelled by the state to observe certain norms. And, in fact, when you have a church that is the church of the people's culture, then you're automatically in it just by being born into it and so the institutions supplant the organic nature of the church and the result is: people feel no connection to the leadership but they're members.
And a strange and interesting culture develops as a result of that disconnect: People will speak of, on one hand, of their being members of a particular church, on the other hand, they'll speak disparagingly about the leaders of that church. “Since your pastor was so obviously a reprobate, why did you stay in the church?” And the answer that comes right back from that particular constituency is, “Look at what the priests do in the Roman church or what the bishops do in the Episcopal church, why are you still a member, why do you not quit?” And it highlights the point, that in an institutional church there is no assumed relationship between the leadership and the people; the people have a relationship to the organization, to the institution, and the institution determines who the leaders are by the particular polity that delivers that answer. And so the people have little connection to the leadership.
Jesus said, “Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father who is in heaven,” and on the other hand Paul said to the Corinthians in 1st Corinthians 4, “I became your father by this gospel.”
There are nine different meanings to the word 'father' in the Scriptures. The most intrusive meaning is the word progenitor, it means “the one from whom your origin is derived.” But there are other meanings such as such as one saying, “So and so is the father of this business,” or “he's the father of modern science.” In these examples, the two things that are being spoken of, the father and the thing he fathered, are conceptually very different beings or very different entities; one is a human being, the other is an idea or a concept. So, Paul was not the actual biological father of the Corinthians, he was not their progenitor in that sense. So when Jesus said, “Call no man on the earth your progenitor,” what He's saying is there's no one on the earth from who you derived your innermost being because we have our very being from Him; we live in Him, we move in Him, etc.
God, as our Father, is the ultimate relationship one may have with God. What Paul was saying, when he wrote, “I became your father,” is not he supplants God as their Father, for obvious reasons; Paul didn't give birth to them in any way like that; he's not their Creator. But, what Paul did do is he was the father of the faith to which they had come, they now believed in Jesus Christ through his gospel, as he himself would say it.
Furthermore, Paul not only preached the gospel to them, he modeled what the gospel meant to them. So, everything that they would become through the gospel, namely that they would become sons of God, that they would become believers in Jesus Christ and that they would grow from infancy to maturity, Paul would be the indispensable party to that entire process, his stamp on them was undeniable. Therefore Paul had a right to correct them because part of his fathering them in the gospel was to model the gospel, another part was to teach them what they were watching him do and yet another was to encourage them to follow. Even yet another facet of this same concept was to correct them or rebuke them when they would go astray or would miss the mark. All these things are among the things that a father would do, even if you didn't give birth to their being.
And a strange and interesting culture develops as a result of that disconnect: People will speak of, on one hand, of their being members of a particular church, on the other hand, they'll speak disparagingly about the leaders of that church. “Since your pastor was so obviously a reprobate, why did you stay in the church?” And the answer that comes right back from that particular constituency is, “Look at what the priests do in the Roman church or what the bishops do in the Episcopal church, why are you still a member, why do you not quit?” And it highlights the point, that in an institutional church there is no assumed relationship between the leadership and the people; the people have a relationship to the organization, to the institution, and the institution determines who the leaders are by the particular polity that delivers that answer. And so the people have little connection to the leadership.
Jesus said, “Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father who is in heaven,” and on the other hand Paul said to the Corinthians in 1st Corinthians 4, “I became your father by this gospel.”
There are nine different meanings to the word 'father' in the Scriptures. The most intrusive meaning is the word progenitor, it means “the one from whom your origin is derived.” But there are other meanings such as such as one saying, “So and so is the father of this business,” or “he's the father of modern science.” In these examples, the two things that are being spoken of, the father and the thing he fathered, are conceptually very different beings or very different entities; one is a human being, the other is an idea or a concept. So, Paul was not the actual biological father of the Corinthians, he was not their progenitor in that sense. So when Jesus said, “Call no man on the earth your progenitor,” what He's saying is there's no one on the earth from who you derived your innermost being because we have our very being from Him; we live in Him, we move in Him, etc.
God, as our Father, is the ultimate relationship one may have with God. What Paul was saying, when he wrote, “I became your father,” is not he supplants God as their Father, for obvious reasons; Paul didn't give birth to them in any way like that; he's not their Creator. But, what Paul did do is he was the father of the faith to which they had come, they now believed in Jesus Christ through his gospel, as he himself would say it.
Furthermore, Paul not only preached the gospel to them, he modeled what the gospel meant to them. So, everything that they would become through the gospel, namely that they would become sons of God, that they would become believers in Jesus Christ and that they would grow from infancy to maturity, Paul would be the indispensable party to that entire process, his stamp on them was undeniable. Therefore Paul had a right to correct them because part of his fathering them in the gospel was to model the gospel, another part was to teach them what they were watching him do and yet another was to encourage them to follow. Even yet another facet of this same concept was to correct them or rebuke them when they would go astray or would miss the mark. All these things are among the things that a father would do, even if you didn't give birth to their being.
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