When we become part of the Church, we bring with us unhealthy ways of thinking that the Lord wants to change. One thing we bring is an unhealthy form of hero worship. From time to time, this misdirected understanding of a leader’s role needs to be excised from our lives. This is especially true when sin dethrones a leader that we have exalted in ways that are not spiritually and emotionally healthy.

In the Corinthian church followers of the Lord were boasting about what leader they followed. It was getting unhealthy, and Paul needed to address that mistake.

Paul instructed the Corinthians, “Don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you—whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (I Corinthians 3:21-23). If we understand that we do not belong to a favored leader, but to Christ, it will keep us aligned with the only leader who can ultimately be trusted – Jesus Christ. 

Paul described himself as a servant of God’s truth who was “put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries” (4:1).  When a difficult truth was presented to the Church, Paul cared little about human judgments that came against his teaching. “It matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority” (4:3). Paul’s evaluation came only from his confidence in the Lord, not from people. That kept Paul spiritually courageous and unaffected by human praise.

Paul formed his theology from God’s word, not from human opinion, “If you pay attention to what I have quoted from the Scriptures, you won’t be proud of one of your leaders at the expense of another. For what gives you the right to make such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?” (vs. 6-7).

Healthy leaders will not promote themselves or accept such adulation. They will always point us to the Lord. Everything we receive from God is a gift. No leader should ever assume they are the givers of those gifts. To do so will lead a leader and their followers to an unhealthy place resulting in human boasting that will not reveal the heart of God. It will reveal a misunderstanding of God and His Kingdom and those He has chosen to lead the Church.