The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
S. Chrysostom again ( Hom. 17 in Ep. ad Rom.) says : “Just as boys in play put on each other’s heads crowns of hay , and often laugh behind his back at the boy they have crowned, so too do those who speak you fair to your face jeer at you quietly among themselves. What else is this but placing crowns of hay on each other’s heads ? Would it were nothing else but hay! But as it is, this crown of ours is full of warning to us, for it destroys all that we have rightly done. Consider , then , its value ; flee from the loss it entails. For if there are a hundred, or a thousand, or a host without number to applaud you, yet all of them are nothing more than chattering jackdaws. Nay, if you but think of the cloud of angel-witnesses they will seem viler than worms, and their words more flimsy than cobwebs, more fleeting than smoke, or than a dream of the night. Say to thy soul what Paul said, ‘Knowest thou not that we shall judge angels?’ Then call it away from such a feast, and chide it, and say, ‘Dost thou that art to sit in judgment on angels wish to be judged by such unclean spirits?’”
S. Jerome too (ad Pammach.) wisely says : “The first monastic virtue is to despise the judgment of men, and always to bear in mind the words of the Apostle, ‘If yet I pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ.’ Some such saying, too, did God address to the Prophets when He told them that He would make their face as a city of brass, and an adamantine stone, and an iron pillar, that they might not tremble at the threats of the people, but with unmoved brow tread under foot the impudent jeers of their adversaries.”
Lastly, Anselm says here : “The righteous look not for man’s judgments but for the award of the Eternal Judge, and therefore with Paul they despise the words of detractors.”
This is what one of the Saints meant when he said, “If you wish to be happy learn to despise and to be despised.” Yea, I judge not mine own self. I cannot certainly judge myself my works, my motives, my conscience.
Ver. 4. — For I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified . I do not judge myself. For though I am not conscious of any unfaithfulness in my Apostolic office, yet I am not really just : I do not mean in the sight of men, for I do not care for their judgment: I mean in the sight of God, who perhaps sees in me sins that I do not Hence S. Basil ( Constit. Monas t. . c. i) says : “ Although in many things we all offend, yet we have no conception at all of the greater part of our offences . This is why the Apostle once said, ‘I know nothing by myself yet am I not hereby justified.’ It is as if he had said, ‘I commit many venial sins of which I am not aware.’ For the same reason the prophet said, ‘Who understands his offences?’ You will not then be saying what is not true if you call yourself a sinner .”
From this we can argue against the Protestants that the justified have no sure knowledge, much less faith that they are justified. They reply that S. Paul means here that as regards his works he did not know that he was justified, but that he had a sure knowledge of it from faith and Holy Scripture, which promise justification to every one that believeth on Christ In other words, they say that they know that they are justified, not because they are free from sins, and live holy lives, but through God’s mercy accepting their belief in the free gift of justification by Christ. But this answer of theirs is frivolous and feigned, for the Apostle goes on to say,
Ver. 5. — Therefore judge nothing before the time , until the Lord come, who both will bring to light, &c. He will reveal the thoughts and actions of men that lie hid in darkness. He means, then, that to God alone are naked and open the hidden things of man, his intentions, his secret motives, and the depths of his heart, which is to him like a bottomless sea, and therefore that none but God sees man’s justification. None, therefore, save God should judge another, or even himself, for his faith, his works, or the grace of Christ. For we often think that we are doing right when we are acting amiss : we often suppose that we are led by the grace of Christ, and act out of love for Him, when all the time we are impelled by our own lust or by the love of our own fame. Cf. Chrysostom and Ambrose and S. Jerome (Dial. 2 contra Felag.). S. Augustine, too, has some beautiful remarks on this point in his sermon on Ps. xlii., where he says that the deep of human misery and blindness calls to the deep of Divine mercy and illumination.
This argument is confirmed by the following reflections : (i.) that God even does not look upon us as justified by works but by faith, and this, according to the Protestants, we know of as well as God does; for we believe, they say, by faith. Therefore, according to them, what the Apostle says is false ; for he says that God alone knows it and not we. (2.) The words which say that God brings to light the hidden things of darkness, and makes manifest the counsels of the hearts, do not mean that God surveys and manifests men’s faith, but their designs, their motives, and works. (3.) Just as the nature of our works is uncertain to us, so too is our faith, which according to Protestants alone justifies : for no man can know for a certainty that he believes on Christ with a faith that is firm and Divine, and therefore still less can he know that he is justified by it. The Holy Spirit often says the same elsewhere. C£ Eccl. ix 1 ;
Ver. 6 . — And these things , brethren , I have in a figure transferred to myself &c. “ Above that which is written ” may refer (1.) to ch. i. 2, 3; or (2.) with S. Chrysostom it may mean “contrary to that which is written ” in Holy Scripture against pride. It is foolish, therefore, for the Protestants to abuse this passage into an argument against tradition. S. Paul evidently means that what he had said against their idle boasting of the gifts of their teachers, and about not caring for the applause and opinion of men, but only for God’s, had been said of them in the person of himself and Apollos. He had been speaking of others in his own name, so as to avoid offending any of the Corinthian teachers, or their disciples, by mentioning their names. That ye might learn in us, therefore, is the expression of his desire, that when he speaks of himself or Apollos, they may apply what he said to the other teachers, who had been the occasion of the schism, of which he and Apollos were guiltless. He urges the Corinthians by his own example of moderation and conciliatory disposition not to be puffed up, or boast of one against another, viz., for this or that catechist or teacher, by saying, “ I was baptized by Paul; I was converted by Apollos.” It is, too, an exhortation to the teachers not to be proud and puffed up because they might be wiser or more eloquent than other teachers, or boast of their disciples as being better instructed than those of other teachers, above that which he had just now written. Do not boast of your own teaching, nor give occasion of boasting to your disciples, is the gist of this verse.
For in what follows he is reproving the teachers rather than disciples ; but he does it in a mild way and under another name, the teachers, I mean, who had been the chief cause of the empty contention and divisions among his Corinthian disciples. This will be seen by reference to ch. iv. 15, 18, 19, and also ch. iii. 10, as well as to the whole of ch. xi. of the Second Epistle. For the false teachers whom he here speaks of mildly, because they had not yet disclosed their true nature, are the same apparently as those that in 2 Cor. xi. he speaks more severely of as impostors, and guilty of Judaising, and teaching false doctrine. Hence, as Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Œcumenius point out, S. Paul first censures the teachers in the words, “ that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written,” i.e., that you, teachers, might learn from me and Apollos that you are, as I said before, merely stewards of God. Then he proceeds to rebuke the disciples in the words, “that no one of you be puffed up for one against another,” i.e., that no disciple boast of his teacher as wiser or more eloquent than another. S. Paul, then, while he seems to continue his address to the Corinthians, is in them and through them reproving their teachers. Just so a tutor endowed with tact and judgment will, when he wishes to chide a king’s sons, chide their servants, as if they were guilty, that so the princes may take it to themselves.
The expression " puffed up, ” to describe one that is proud and swollen with arrogance, is a figure borrowed from wine skins. They are said to be puffed out when by being filled with air they resemble in form and size a solid body. Similarly, the proud man who is well satisfied with his knowledge, or eloquence, or some such gift, but within is devoid of all such powers, is just like a wine-skin that is swollen out with wind.
Ver. 7 . — For who maketh thee to differ from another ? 1. The Greek word denotes as much the act of placing a man above others as separating him and dividing him off from them. So Theophylact paraphrases it, “ By whose suffrage was it that this separation and pre-eminence was given thee ? ” It was not of men, but of God. It is God’s to make to differ and to judge, and therefore you ought not to care for man’s judgment. So understood, these words hark back to ver. 4.