1 Corinthians 4:14

14 I am not writing all this to shame you, but I am offering you advice as my dearly-loved children.

1 Corinthians 4:14 Meaning and Commentary

1 Corinthians 4:14

I write not these things to shame you
Though they had a great deal of reason to be ashamed of the vain opinion they had of themselves, and that they suffered the faithful ministers of Christ to want the necessaries of life, when they abounded so much with the good things of it; and though the apostle's view in giving this narrative was to bring them under a sense of their faults, and to a conviction of them, and so to shame for them, in order to their future reformation and amendment; yet it was not merely to put them to the blush, but to admonish and instruct them, that he enlarged on these things:

but as my beloved sons I warn you;
they being his children in a spiritual sense, for whom he had the strongest love and affection, as their spiritual Father; and as it was his place, and became him standing in such a relation to them, he warned, admonished, and put them in mind of their obligations and duty to him.

1 Corinthians 4:14 In-Context

12 Homes we have none. Wearily we toil, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we bear it patiently;

13 when slandered, we try to conciliate. We have come to be regarded as the mere dirt and filth of the world--the refuse of the universe, even to this hour.

14 I am not writing all this to shame you, but I am offering you advice as my dearly-loved children.

15 For even if you were to have ten thousand spiritual instructors--for all that you could not have several fathers. It is I who in Christ Jesus became your father through the Good News.

16 I entreat you therefore to become like me.