1 Corinthians 4:21

“What will ye? That I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and with a spirit of meekness?”

It is as if Paul said to them: “Peace or war: choose!” The emotion caused by this challenge, so boldly thrown out, explains the asyndeton. The preposition ἐν, in, is applied in classic Greek, as here, to denote the use of a weapon.

The figure ῥάβδος, rod, is connected with that of father, used above. It is the emblem of the disciplinary power with which the apostle feels himself armed.

There is something startling in the antithesis: or with love. Supposing he required to use the rod, would he not do so in love? Certainly; but if there is love in the act of striking, there is also something else: hatred of evil. And this will have no occasion to show itself, except in so far as there shall be something to correct. Let us add that the Greek term ἀγάπη denotes the love of complacency which is expressed by approving manifestations.

Some have understood the phrase, spirit of meekness, as if it were, with a disposition of meekness. But it is impossible wholly to make abstraction of the Divine breath in the use of the word πνεῦμα, spirit. Paul knows well that the meekness he will use, if it is in his power, will not be natural good-naturedness, but the fruit of the Spirit, of which he himself speaks Galatians 5:23.

Already in these last verses we can discern the idea of discipline rising, which will be the subject of the following chapter. One is struck also at the degree of audacious hostility to which his adversaries in the Church had gone, in daring to express themselves in regard to him as they were doing (1 Corinthians 4:18), and in giving occasion to the use of so menacing a tone. But, as has been well observed by Weizsäcker, Paul does not wish for the present to open hostilities. He throws out a word in passing, then he resumes the course of his letter.

The first part of the Epistle is closed. The divisions which had arisen revealed to Paul the deep corruption which the gospel had undergone in this Church. He understood it: teachers are not changed into heads of schools, except because the gospel has been changed into a system. To ascend then to the true notion of Christianity, in order to deduce from it that of the Christian ministry, and to restore the normal relation between this office and the whole Church, such was his first task. The flock once gathered under the shepherd's crook, he may with hope of success attack the particular vices which had crept into it. These first four Chapter s are thus the foundation of the whole Epistle.