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?3:3 Here was the evidence that they were “carnal”. For jealousy and quarreling among believers do not come from God’s Spirit, but from the fallen nature in people (Gal 5:19-20; Jam 3:14-18). Believers in Christ have no right to behave like unbelieving men. They are God’s holy people, having God’s Spirit, and are called to a higher way of living.⚜
4 📚For while one says, “I am of Paul”, and another, “I am of Apollos”, are you not carnal?
3:4 See 1 Cor 1:11-12. Still today many believers show their worldliness and carnality by their factions, by their pride in their sect or church or denomination, and by their giving glory to men.⚜
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.
3:8 Verse 14.⚜
9 📚For we are workers together with God 📖. You are God’s field 📖, you are God’s building 📖.
3:5-9 Believers should see that the Lord alone is the important one and that all who preach and teach His Word are mere servants, and in themselves nothing (v 7). The Lord is the one who assigns different tasks to different servants (v 5), and it is God who prospers the work, not men (v 7). God alone is the source of truth and spiritual life and blessing. The true servants of God, such as Paul and Apollos, have one purpose (v 8), and believers should recognize this and with one heart and mind accept them all (1 Cor 1:10), but should not make too much of any of them.⚜
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.
3:10 In v 7 Paul says he is not anything. Here he says that all he has done as a servant of Christ was by the grace of God. God freely gave him all his abilities and opportunities. See also 2 Cor 3:5-6.⚜
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,
3:12 If builders are spiritual and practice and teach the treasures of God’s Word, it is as though they were using precious metals and gems. But if builders are worldly and behave like unbelieving men (v 3) and build with their own ideas of how to build, it is like using wood, hay, or straw. All that comes out of self in believers, from the “flesh”, will come to nothing on the day of judgment, even if it is work related to the church, and said to be done in Christ’s name. (And is there not a great deal of such effort in the churches?) But all work that comes from God’s Spirit in them will stand the test on that day.⚜
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?
3:16 Both individually and as a whole Christ’s believers are God’s temple. A temple is where worship goes on and offerings are given to God (Rom 12:1-2; Heb 13:15-16; 1 Pet 2:5). It is where God’s presence is (Ps 11:4; John 17:23; Acts 2:4; Rom 8:9). Christ’s believers are now the only temple God has on earth. Those who reject Him or them may go to man-made temples, but God is not there (Acts 17:24).⚜
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.
3:20 Ps 94:11. Since our own wisdom is futile and foolish we should reject it.⚜
The believer’s possessions in Christ
21 📚Therefore let no one boast about men. For all things are yours,
3:21 Verse 4; 1 Cor 1:12, 29, 31. Men are instruments in God’s hands. All praise should go to God Who made the instruments and uses them, and not to the instruments themselves.⚜
22 📚whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.
3:22 God has appointed His servants for the benefit of believers (v 5; Eph 4:11-13). The whole earth is the field where believers are planted, watered and caused to grow. All the events of this present life work for their good (Rom 8:28). Death too is theirs – it is a gift which frees them from the mortal body and from the presence of all sin and all troubles. For the believer in Christ death is a door which opens into a higher, better life with God. All things in the future are also theirs – they are God’s heirs, joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17; Matt 5:5; Eph 1:14; Rev 21:7). Then why this boasting in men, this exalting one over another?⚜
23 📚And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God 📖.
3:23 Believers do not belong to men, but to Christ (John 6:37, 39; 17:6). They must boast in Him alone (1 Cor 1:31).⚜