The Word Made Fresh
1So, I felt I couldn’t address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, infants in Christ. 2I fed you with milk instead of with solid food because you weren’t ready for solid food, and you still aren’t. 3If you continue living according to the flesh, and as long as there is jealousy and arguing among you, aren’t you still being controlled by the desires of the flesh? Aren’t you still inclined toward your human longings? 4If one of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and another says, ‘I belong to Apollos,’ aren’t you giving in to human foibles?
5Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Why, we are servants through whom you began to have faith as the Lord led you. 6So, I planted and Apollos watered, but it was God who helped you grow. 7Those who plant and water are nothing – only God who gave the growth is to be revered. 8Those who plant and those who water have a common purpose, and they will each be paid for their labors. 9We are God’s servants, you see, and we work together. You are God’s field. You are God’s building.
10God gave me the grace to lay a foundation as a skilled master builder, and others are building on it. Each of us must decide how to build on it. 11Jesus Christ is our foundation, and no one can lay any other foundation. 12Anyone who builds on the foundation, whether they use gold, or silver, or stones, or wood or hay or straw – 13their work will be seen in the light of day, and will be tested with fire to determine what sort of work has really been done. 14If the building survives, the builder will be rewarded. 15But if the building burns down, the builder will suffer the loss. The builder can still be saved, but only as someone who has survived the flames.
16Don’t you realize that together you are God’s temple, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17And God will destroy anyone who destroys the temple, because God’s temple is sacred, and therefore God’s people are sacred.
18Don’t be deceived. If you think you are wise, then become foolish so that true wisdom may find a place in you. 19The wisdom of this world is foolishness as far as God is concerned. After all, it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20and “The Lord knows that human wisdom is silliness.” 21So you should never boast about human wisdom. Everything belongs to you: 22everything – Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world itself, life, death, things present and things to come – it all belongs to you. 23But you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Commentary
1-4: Paul tells them that they are still “of the flesh,” not “of the spirit;” that is, they are living according to the whims of human nature rather than as children of God born of the Spirit of God. The whims of human nature result in jealousy and quarreling, and that is what is going on in Corinth between the different factions.
5-9: Apollos had been in Corinth after Paul (Acts 19:1), so Paul uses the metaphor of the field to illustrate their different but connected roles: Paul planted, Apollos watered. Neither of those activities is worth anything, however, unless God blesses the labor by giving the growth.
10-15: He piles image on image. Now he speaks of the Corinthian church as a building for which he, Paul, laid the foundation upon which others built. Whatever is added to the foundation will be tested, and will either survive or collapse, he says. In either case the builder will be saved, but not because he built it. What he means is that any teaching that is contrary to his foundational teaching about Jesus Christ will be judged based on that original foundation. Their petty disputes and jealousies cannot stand under the “fire,” the test of true faith.
16-17: Now his imagery shifts again and the church — that is, the believers who make up the church – is compared to the temple. They are warned that no teaching (or behavior) against the foundation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen will survive.
18-23: Human nature is so far from God’s nature that the “wisdom of the world” is foolishness to God; while the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to those who are trapped in the world of human nature. To the world, faith is foolishness, but to God the lack of faith is foolishness (see Job 5:13 and Psalm 94:11 for the source of the quotes in verses 19-20). So, Paul tells them, what matters is how faithful they are, not how famous or eloquent or popular their preacher is.
Takeaway
Only in God can faith be sustained and grow. No human being is capable of such steady progress in the faith. Without fully relying on Christ, faith is in a constant struggle with the world’s foolishness.