1Cor 4:14-16 - After the Smack, the Cuddle

14-16 I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me.


The purpose of Paul’s sarcasm in the prior verses (and it is sarcasm) is not to elicit shame through guilt, but to bring about a change in attitude and behaviour. Shame might be a stop on the journey, but it is not the final destination. Paul is telling them that his motive is not their shame, but their sanctification.

But do you see the mechanism? Christ has saved them (justification) and Christ will save them (glorification) but, for those that live in Christ at God’s pleasure, there remains still the means by which they are brought to that end. The means include the preaching of Christ, rebuke, reproof and admonishment - as well as exhortation. They include Paul, just as they include you and me. We are part of the means, but not the cause, of all spiritual ends in Christ. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

Here is the balance that Warfield and all the "reformed" saints way back to Augustine and beyond have always spoken of. God uses means to accomplish His ends, though His ends have been decreed from eternity. And so Paul is used to admonish the Corinthians for their waywardness, believing and hoping that he himself is the very means appointed by God to keep them in the Way. It is not so much a question of whether, as true believers, they could be lost, but that they are preserved through the very things Paul is saying and doing, as he tries to obey the Lord’s calling upon his own life.

And the principle of a right heart and a right motive holds true, as Paul demonstrates. As said above, his aim is their preservation and not to simply to box their ears for any gratification it might bring to him personally. A false teacher or a lording teacher might work that way, but not God’s apostles and his true shepherds.

True under-shepherds are fathers to the flock of Christ. Note - it is the flock of Christ. True shepherds know it. They are guardians entrusted with the apple of Jesus’ eye, His beloved for whom He died and made atonement. They act as fathers in the Name of Christ. Father’s encourage, protect and correct. Fathers set an example for their children in word and deed. This has been Paul’s sincere purpose, right from their initial evangelization, in all that he has said to these Corinthians.

At first glance it might seem that Paul is contradicting much that he has said earlier and elsewhere by calling upon the Corinthians to imitate him. Isn’t that the very demagoguery against which he has been railing? No. Contextually he has been demonstrating the difference between mere demagoguery and true shepherding. He has been showing it not so that he will be seen, but so that Christ will be seen. "Be imitators of me even as I am of Christ." Or better still, "Be imitators of me (only) insofar as I am an imitator of Christ." This is the underlying concept of Paul’s teaching. He points to Christ by what he does and what he teaches.

But there can be little doubt that Paul not only feels, but also calls upon them to remember his foundational role in their church. Because he was there at the beginning he feels a special bond with them. His message - the one they first believed - has not changed. It is still "Christ in you, the hope of glory".