Corinth’s carnal Christians
3
📚And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to infants in Christ. 2 📚I fed you with milk, and not with solid food, for until now you were not able to receive it, and you still are not able. 3 📚For you are still carnal. For while there are envy, and strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal, and behaving like unbelieving men? 4 📚For while one says, “I am of Paul”, and another, “I am of Apollos”, are you not carnal?
God’s servants
5 📚Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to each man? 6 📚I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. 7 📚So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. 8 📚Now he who plants and he who waters are one. And each man will receive his own reward according to his own labour. 9 📚For we are workers together with God. You are God’s field, you are God’s building.
Every believer’s work to be tested
10 📚In accordance with the grace of God which is given to me, as a wise master builder, I laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let everyone take care how he builds on it. 11 📚For no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 📚Now if anyone builds on this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, 13 📚every man’s work will be made clear, for the day will make it known, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test everyone’s work as to what sort it is. 14 📚If anyone’s work which he has built on the foundation remains, he will receive a reward. 15 📚If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but as if through fire.
Foolishness and wisdom
16 📚Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God lives in you? 17 📚If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy. And you are that temple.
18 📚Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become foolish so that he may become wise. 19 📚For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. For it is written, He catches the wise in their own craftiness.
20 📚And again,
The Lord knows that the thoughts
of the wise are useless.
The believer’s possessions in Christ
21 📚Therefore let no one boast about men. For all things are yours, 22 📚whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours. 23 📚And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.