TOUGH LOVE!

“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your human nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world? When one of you says, ‘I am a follower of Paul,’ and another says, ‘I follow Apollos,’ aren’t you acting just like people of the world?

“After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow” (1 Corinthians 3:1-7, NLT).

Paul began the church in Corinth, a highly pagan and very immoral city. The Corinthians would have been quite at home in today’s American culture and probably would have felt most comfortable in cities such as San Francisco or New York.

In 1990, Carol and I were in Greece for a time of ministry and a short vacation. We were able to visit the ruins of “Old Corinth,” the city of Paul’s day. As we walked through the central marketplace, it was fascinating to realize that this place had been very familiar to the apostle Paul. He had walked on these very streets and shared the gospel with the Corinthians.

Interestingly, First Corinthians is actually the second letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians; somehow the first letter has disappeared. However, we get a little insight into the message of the “lost letter” in 1 Corinthians 5:9 where Paul indicates that he had written to them about their immoral behavior and lack of maturity. He pointed out that they were not breaking free of their old lifestyle.

Paul sees the potential in the Corinthians and he is trying to lovingly push them toward becoming more mature, responsible believers. He admonishes them for being babies and for showing their immaturity through their behavior.

Paul is practicing “tough love.” He loves the Corinthians enough to say some strong things to them. Why? Because he wants them to become fruitful believers who are not caught up in the seduction of self-centered, childish thinking and behavior.

How does he know they are still babies, aside from the fact that they are still on the bottle, unable to eat solid food? Paul lists a number of issues that show the childishness of the Corinthians— including envy, jealousy, quarreling, and factions (see verse 3).

In verse 4 Paul really gets personal about the whole issue when he says, “When one of you says that you are a Baptist, and another responds by saying he is Assembly of God or Methodist or a fundamentalist, you are actually proving just how childish and immature you are in your faith.”

Verse 7 kind of puts it all in perspective for me. Let me put it in my own words: “All your talk about what church you belong to, and who you know in the church, doesn’t mean a thing! We are all in God’s family and it is God who does the work and brings the increase. It is time to grow up and get off the bottle.”

Tough words, tough love—’cause it’s tough to grow up!

Human nature causes us to be kinder, gentler to those who are close to us. It is so much easier to say something direct and even punishing to someone you hardly know—at least it is for me. In my years in leadership in ministries, the hardest thing for me to do, ever, was to discipline or fire someone whom I had known and worked with for several years. I hated to have to do that and still do.

In dealing with inappropriate behavior, what is the kindest thing to do? Is it right to avoid dealing with the issue, allowing the guilty person to get into even more serious difficulty or cause more serious damage? Or is it kinder to risk being misunderstood by lovingly and firmly pointing out the dangers of continuing a bad behavioral pattern?

To me, there is no alternative but to risk being misunderstood because you have the person’s best interests at heart—and that is what the apostle was displaying to the Corinthians.

Real love is never unkind . . . but it can be tough!

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:6, NKJV).