The Cure for Church Conflict

By Robb Brunansky

Published February 21, 2025

The Corinthian church was riddled with conflict among its members – something that the Apostle Paul addressed early in his first letter to this congregation. After laying out the call for unity and the causes for conflict, Paul gives the cure for church conflict through a series of questions and his own personal example.

Notice Paul’s first question: “Has Christ been divided?”

This question, like the subsequent two, is rhetorical with an obvious answer. Of course Christ has not been divided! People cannot separate Jesus into component parts and divide His person or His work however they please. While the body of Christ contains many members, it remains only one body. As soon as members decide they will split from others, a monstrosity results. To divide the church is to mutilate Christ in an outrageous act of desecration.

The cure, then, for church conflict begins by understanding that Christ Himself is united. Christ is not at rivalry, or in competition, or at war within Himself. Christians must recognize that if we are separating into factions, creating divisions, or seeing fellow believers as rivals, then we are out of step with who Christ is. To cure church conflict, we must all recognize the unity that exists within Christ Himself.

This brings us to the second question: “Paul was not crucified for you, was he?”

Paul makes a very wise decision and limits this question to himself, omitting the names of Apollos and Cephas, in order for his readers to understand that he is not for rivalry. Paul doesn’t want a faction named after him; he is nobody compared to Christ, and he was crucified for no one.

When Martin Luther first discovered that Christians were called Lutherans after his name, he said in response, “What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone…How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?” The apostle Paul was of the same mind in this passage. He did not want the church to follow him, but to follow Christ!

This caution is exactly why we must be careful with spiritual labels. Labels can serve a useful function of describing a set of beliefs, but we can also find ourselves reveling in sinful pride. The one label we should be glad to take is Christians, as Peter says in 1 Peter 4:16; and we should seek to glorify God with this name because Christ is our only Savior. We all stand level before the cross of Christ, who is our Lord. When pride begins to creep into our hearts, when selfish ambition arises within us, and when we begin to be tempted toward quarrels, dissensions, rivalries, and disturbances, we must remember there is but one Savior of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ – and we all belong to Him!

The final question Paul asks is this: “Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

When people were baptized or ushered into various religious beliefs in the ancient world, they often took on the name of the one who initiated them. Paul, however, is opposed to such pagan thinking. Christians were not baptized into the name of the individual who baptized them; we were baptized into Christ’s name. The name of Christ is the only identity of true disciples of Jesus.

Readers should see the absurdity of taking on the name of Paul, or the name of Apollos, or the name of Cephas, and the hypocrisy of taking the name of Christ, using those identifications to divide the church still further. We were baptized into the name of Christ to underscore our unity as His body. Church conflict, then, is cured when we recognize that we all have been baptized into the same name, the name of Christ.

These questions, asked with a somewhat sharp tone, serve to rebuke the Corinthians for their divisions by showing how nonsensical and contrary these conflicts are to everything they believe and are as the church. Having such rivalries and factions divides up Christ, implies there is more than one Savior, and defiles the name of Christ as a common thing, when in fact His name is above all names and set apart with no equal.

Paul continues to reveal the cure for church conflict by showing his own example, telling the Corinthians that he is happy that he didn’t baptize very many of them because then more members of the congregation might be tempted to say they were baptized in his name.

Then, Paul begins to unpack various aspects of his ministry, which will be the topic for the rest of the chapter. Here, however, Paul focuses on one aspect of ministry, that he was not sent by Christ to baptize but to preach the gospel. In the early church, baptizing was more prestigious than preaching the gospel because leaders could keep track of how many people they baptized and boast about those numbers. It seems that’s how the Corinthians viewed this ordinance. This idea of greatness fit in well with their concerns over honor and status.

Paul, though, shares that he has no interest in such temporal, worldly systems of honor and glory. He did not come to make a name for himself, to be praised by men, or to draw attention to himself and his ministry. Rather, Paul was sent to preach Christ, to draw attention to Christ, and to point people to Christ. Paul didn’t need to baptize anyone because he wasn’t concerned with the perceived honor of those actions; his only concern was for people to be saved by the gospel’s great power. Others could do the baptizing while Paul focused on his mission of preaching.

Because of the nature of true gospel ministry, Paul also made clear that the power of the gospel is in the message, not the messenger. Paul preached the gospel in such a way that he would not draw attention to himself but to Christ. This is the goal of every faithful minister of Christ, that, at the end of the preaching, the hearers would not say, “What a great sermon!” but rather, “What a great Savior!” because their hearts are overwhelmed by Christ.

Paul’s example helps us cure church conflict by showing us that the gospel demands humility. If selfish ambition drives rivalries and quarrels in the church, then the cure is a Christ-centered humility. Paul was never concerned about what other people thought about him, his ministry, his honor, or his status for his own sake. He was supremely concerned with what his hearers or readers thought about Christ. The cure for church conflict is an unrelenting focus on Christ that puts our selfish ambitions to death.

The danger, of course, is that our selfish ambitions will merge into what we believe is a focus on Christ. Human hearts are easily deceived by our flesh and pride. All men and women can justify ungodly behavior and unnecessary church conflict by saying that they are standing for Christ, when they are simply beholden to their own opinions, desires, and preferences. We become like the ‘Christ-party’ – in name representing Christ, but in reality, representing ourselves.

These four elements are so crucial to keep together in curing church conflict: Christ is united; Christ is the only Savior; Christ’s name is our identity; and Christ’s gospel demands a humility that regards others and their preferences as more important than our own.

Church conflict is inevitable because of our flesh and sin, but church conflict does not have to end in disaster. Church conflict can, as we observed in Acts 6, be a refining process that leads to greater progress of the gospel. It can be used of God to further increase the number of disciples. When we respond to church conflict by applying the biblical cure, God gets the glory, and we experience the growth He desires for us individually and collectively as the church.