1 Corinthians 1:13-17 – The Basis for unity in the Body of Christ

When believers are united with Christ, they belong to His Body and are also united to each other. In these verses Paul identified several unifying factors for the church. They are: Christ, His crucifixion, our baptism and the Gospel. When we believers choose not to stay united, we would infringe on these factors. 

When Paul asked “Had Christ been divided?” He wanted the Corinthians to know that by being divisive, they have acted as if Christ was cut up into several pieces and every group in the fellowship gets a part of Him. The point of Paul is this: Christ is not divided into several parts and distributed to different groups in the fellowship. Christ is either totally in a fellowship as a whole or He is not there at all. And since Christ is present in a fellowship, everyone in the fellowship belong to each other. Everyone belong to the same body and should remain in unity.

In Paul’s second question, he could have particularly targeted at the group that says “I belong to Paul.” When he asked, “Paul was not crucified for you, was he?”  This question presupposes no for an answer. His implication was that He was not crucified for them but Christ was. And Christ’s crucifixion should unite the church and not divide it. Hence, a divisive fellowship would contradict the effect of His crucifixion.  

Christian Baptism is another unifying factor. In baptism, believers are united with Christ, hence to one another. Paul here implied that: it’s important to know that in baptism a believer is united to Christ and not to the one who does the baptizing. It was obvious that some of them were championing for the leader who baptized them. So Paul was glad that in Corinth, he only baptized the household of Stephanas. He couldn’t recall baptizing anyone else. By not being too involved in baptizing others, Paul was not saying that baptism is unimportant. But that it’s not his primary role. His calling and role was to preach the Gospel.

The Gospel is another unifying factor for the Body. In the preaching of the Gospel, Paul did not rely on his eloquence. He wanted to amplify the effect of Christ’s death on the cross. He didn’t want to dilute what is spiritual and render it powerless by his human effort.         

When we choose to live in discord with other believers, we violate the purpose and meaning of Christ, His crucifixion, our baptism, and the preaching of the Gospel. What we say we stand for and how we act must be congruent. We need to reaffirm the four cardinal factors Paul brought up in these verses by realigning our attitudes towards other Christians who have a different opinion from us. Let’s recommit ourselves to the purpose of Christ, His crucifixion, our baptism and the proclamation of the Gospel. Recognize that there will always be differences in personalities, abilities, and functions. Let’s go for unity and not total conformity. Let’s seek unity in variety.