Our Will, Their Will, and God's Will

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 16:12

Paul concludes his first letter to the Corinthians in his usual style. He sends greetings from himself and others. Here in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, he gives some details about his travel plans and his intention to send other leaders like Timothy to help the Corinthian church. We might be tempted to skim over texts like this. They lack the vibrancy of his gospel expositions, the conviction of his ethical exhortations, and the encouragement of his hopeful assurances.

Still, these are inspired texts. While not every text is of equal weight, every text is equally inspired and has a spiritual purpose. One of the values of texts like this is that we get a glimpse into how Paul dealt with everyday life decisions. In chapter 16, for example, we see Paul has some uncertainty about when he will visit Corinth and on what basis he is making that decision.

One of the helpful things Paul includes in this chapter is information about his decision to send some other men to Corinth to help them in his absence. One of the men Paul had hoped would go to Corinth was Apollos. Verse 12 tells us that Paul “strongly urged him to visit…” I believe Paul had a fairly strong personality. I’m guessing Paul didn’t take “no” without pushing back. Apollos did refuse Paul’s request though and didn’t go to Corinth. As the ESV puts it, “it was not at all his will.”

It was Paul’s will that Apollos go. It was not Apollos’ will to go. Though some read into the text that it means it was not God’s will that Apollos go, that is more of an interpretation than a translation. Sticking to the actual words of the text, the idea is Apollos didn’t want to go at that time. We aren’t told why. We can only speculate that he didn’t think it wise because of the factions that favored him over other teachers and maybe he thought it would be counterproductive. Maybe Apollos had other stuff going on that he didn’t want to leave those things unfinished. We don’t know. We just know he didn’t want to go to Corinth at that time.

Here are some lessons for us:

 While Paul is clear that he believed Apollos should go and that he strongly urged him to go, we don’t get the sense that Apollos’ decision created any rift in their relationship. Paul doesn’t seem to take it as a personal insult that Apollos had a different plan than he did.

A second thing I notice is that Paul is very open about their disagreement, but he is also not throwing Apollos under the bus or setting him up for an “I told you so” in the future. He is just stating what the facts were and that they disagreed about what to do and when to do it, but Paul doesn’t come across like he thinks Apollos is making a big mistake. He isn’t trying to embarrass Apollos in the eyes of the Corinthian believers.

Then, we also see that we know what Paul’s will was (for Apollos to go), and we know what Apollos’ will was (to not go), but we aren’t directly told what God’s will was. Let me say it this way, Paul didn’t try to impose his will on Apollos as if his will in this matter was God’s will. It is fine if we want to tell someone what we think they should do, but we need to be careful about making our will and God’s will synonymous. Now, I’m not talking about clear matters of doctrine and morality. For example, I think we can tell someone it is God’s will to abstain from sex outside of marriage. That is a clear biblical ethic. What I am referring to are decisions about what job to take, who to marry, whether or not to live in one town over another, etc. We might have opinions about what other people should do, but our opinions, even when we have prayed about them, are not to be equated with the will of God. Even the Apostle Paul refrains from doing that sort of thing with Apollos.

There is a lot of wisdom for us tucked away in texts like this. By their example, we see how these believers and church leaders related to each other. From their example, we can learn how to better relate to one another.