Blessing the Crowd
1 Corinthians 4:8-13 - “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.”
Edwin Stanton once treated Abraham Lincoln with open contempt. In their earlier legal world, Stanton reportedly dismissed Lincoln as a “long-armed ape,” and other insults comparing Lincoln to an ape or gorilla were later associated with Stanton as well. It was cruel. And yet when Lincoln needed a Secretary of War in 1862, he chose Stanton. Not because Stanton had honored him, but because Stanton was capable. Lincoln didn’t need Stanton’s approval in order to recognize Stanton’s gifts.
And when Lincoln died, it was Stanton at his bedside who spoke the words history has remembered: “Now he belongs to the ages.”
Paul describes the same freedom in this passage, though his circumstances were far harsher than a cabinet appointment. He sets up two columns. In the first, the Corinthians, who by the world’s scoreboard had arrived: “Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings!” He’s being sarcastic; they were impressed with themselves, and the culture around them was impressed too. In the second column are the apostles: “God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world.” That word is the root of our word theater. Paul pictures the Roman arena, where the condemned were marched out last, unarmed, to die for the crowd’s entertainment. Same gospel, same Christ in both columns, and yet the world cheered the Corinthians and treated the apostles as garbage.
Then Paul names exactly what the crowd thought of the most faithful men who ever lived: “We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” Scum. The filth scraped off a dish, the garbage swept from the gutter. That was the world’s verdict on the apostles of Jesus. But buried in the middle of that grim list are these gems: “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat.” The crowd is calling them garbage, and they’re blessing the crowd in return, praying good over the very people spitting on them.
How is that even possible? How do you bless a world that’s calling you garbage? There’s only one way, and it’s the secret hiding under this whole passage: you can only bless a crowd you no longer need. As long as we still crave the crowd’s approval, their contempt will wreck us. And we answer it the way wounded people do, with defensiveness, retaliation, or despair. The blessing is the tell. It’s not the resentment that proves we’ve stopped performing for people; it’s the freedom to wish them well. Paul could bless the mob because he had already changed audiences. He had quit auditioning for the world’s applause long ago.
And where did Paul learn to bless a crowd that was destroying him? He learned it at the foot of a cross. The same crowd that waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna” on Sunday screamed for blood by Friday; five days was all the applause of the world lasted for the Son of God. They looked perfect faithfulness in the face and condemned Him. They made Him a spectacle. They treated the Holy One like refuse. And from the cross, Jesus did the very thing Paul describes: “Father, forgive them.”
That is the deepest reason the church can be a Winsome Witness. The world has watched countless people demand respect; it has rarely seen one who, secure in a love no crowd can give or take, simply blesses those reviling them. That freedom grows from one place: an audience of One who has already said over us, in Christ, the very thing we were starving to hear.
Today: Think of one person who has slighted, criticized, or dismissed you, someone whose disapproval still has a grip on your heart. Do something genuinely kind for them, or sincerely speak well of them, or simply pray a real blessing over their name. You may well find that the blessing loosens their hold on you more than any amount of resentment ever could.
Prayer: “Father, give me the freedom Paul had, the freedom to bless the very people whose approval I’ve been chasing. I adore you, Jesus, who, reviled and crucified, still prayed ‘Father, forgive them,’ and I stand amazed that this same Spirit now lives in me. Loosen the grip of the crowd’s opinion on my heart, and make me a person who can love the ones who wound me, because Your ‘well done’ is the only verdict I am waiting for. Amen.”
-PK