The History of the Local Churches

1. The Church in Corinth

The local church in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:2), problematic though it was, could still be addressed by Paul as the church of God in Corinth. Watchman Nee and Witness Lee often pointed to the church in Corinth to illustrate the principle of unity and boundary of locality with respect to a local church.

We must notice that Paul did not pay attention to any problem arising between the brothers at Corinth and the brothers at Ephesus, or between the brothers at Corinth and the brothers at Colossae. He did not point out any problems between the brothers at Corinth and the brothers at Laodicea, or between the brothers at Corinth and the brothers at Philippi. Paul only paid attention to the divisions between the brothers at Corinth. They said, “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, and I am of Christ,” but in effect Paul said, “Brothers! You are brothers at Corinth; you must not have envy, strife, and divisions at Corinth.” A boundary does exist. There should not be envy, strife, and divisions in the church at Corinth. To whom does you refer? It refers to the church at Corinth. Unity in the Scriptures involves the unity of the Holy Spirit and of the Body. However, the unity of the Holy Spirit and of the Body has a minimum boundary requirement; that is, this unity must be expressed within a local church.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 3, Vol. 56, 362)

We read in 1 Corinthians 1:2 of “the church of God which is in Corinth.” Corinth was a unit-locality, and the church in Corinth, a unit-church. When discord crept in and its members were on the point of splitting the church into four different factions, Paul wrote, rebuking them: “Each of you says, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ….Are you not men of flesh?” (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4). Had these people formed four different groups, they would have been sects, not churches, for Corinth was a city, and that is the smallest unit which warrants the forming of a church. The church of God in Corinth could not cover a lesser area than the whole city, nor could it comprise a lesser number of Christians than all the Christians who lived there. This is Paul’s definition of the church in Corinth—“to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, the called saints” (1:2). To form a church in an area smaller than a unit-locality is to form it on a smaller basis than a scriptural unit, and it follows that it cannot be a scriptural church. Any group of believers less than all the believers in a place is not qualified to be a separate church. The unit of the church must correspond with the unit of the locality. A church must cover the same area as the locality in which it is found. If a church is smaller than a locality, then it is not a scriptural church; it is a sect.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 57-58)

“Now I mean this, that each of you says, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:12). Here Paul points out the carnality of the Corinthian believers in attempting to divide the church of God in Corinth, which, by the divine ordering, was indivisible, being already the smallest scriptural unit upon which any church could be established. They sought to divide the church on the ground of a few leaders who had been specially used of God in their midst. Cephas was a zealous minister of the gospel, Paul was a man who had suffered much for his Lord’s sake, and Apollos was one whom God certainly used in His service, but though all three had been indisputably owned of God in Corinth, God could never permit the church there to make them a ground of division. He ordained that His Church be divided on the basis of localities, not of persons. It was all right to have a church in Corinth and a church in Ephesus, and quite all right to have several churches in Galatia and a number in Macedonia, for difference of locality justified division into these various churches. It was also all right for the believers to esteem those leaders whom God had used among them, but it would have been quite wrong to divide the churches according to the respective leaders by whom they had been helped.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 83)

1. The Church in Corinth

2. The Churches in Asia

Main

Two Aspects of the Church

Who is the Church?

Local Churches in the N.T.

Degradation

Bibliography

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