1 Corinthians 3
July 29
Reading: 1 Corinthians 3
1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.
10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw-- 13 each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," 20 and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile."
21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future-- all are yours, 23 and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
In the previous chapter, Paul has just made a distinction between the spiritual man and the natural man, who he calls here “men of flesh.” Now Paul gets back to the rebuke of 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 aimed at the immaturity and divisiveness within the church. In chapter 3 he describes these so-called Christians as “acting like mere men.” They are behaving like babies. Because of their fighting they are no different than people who think and act like the rest of the world.
Conflict in the church is often a sign of immaturity. James delivers a similar rebuke in James 4:1-4.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
Instead, in 1 Corinthians 3:9-15, Paul argues that we ought to be growing and we ought to be people who are building and encouraging growth in others. What does it mean to be building with materials that will survive the judgment of God? It has to do with our motives and methods. If we are building for our own selfish motives and according to our desires, we will have nothing that lasts. If we build for the Lord and according to His methods, we will have lasting fruit.
How do we know about our motives and methods? A simple test is offered in verses 16-17. The “you” in these verses is plural. It refers to the church. If what you are doing is causing strife, if it is hurting God’s holy church, then it is the wrong way. Verses 18-23 caution the reader against strategizing and figuring out how to win against others in God’s church. We are to simply obey God and do things His way.