God Speaks
3 Dear brothers, I have been talking to you as though you were still just babies in the Christian life who are not following the Lord but your own desires; I cannot talk to you as I would to healthy Christians who are filled with the Spirit. 2 I have had to feed you with milk and not with solid food because you couldn’t digest anything stronger. And even now you still have to be fed on milk. 3 For you are still only baby Christians, controlled by your own desires, not God’s. When you are jealous of one another and divide up into quarreling groups, doesn’t that prove you are still babies, wanting your own way? In fact, you are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord at all. 4 There you are, quarreling about whether I am greater than Apollos, and dividing the church. Doesn’t this show how little you have grown in the Lord?
5 Who am I, and who is Apollos, that we should be the cause of a quarrel? Why, we’re just God’s servants, each of us with certain special abilities, and with our help you believed. 6 My work was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos’ work was to water it, but it was God, not we, who made the garden grow in your hearts. 7 The person who does the planting or watering isn’t very important, but God is important because he is the one who makes things grow. 8 Apollos and I are working as a team, with the same aim, though each of us will be rewarded for his own hard work. 9 We are only God’s coworkers. You are God’s garden, not ours; you are God’s building, not ours.
10 God, in his kindness, has taught me how to be an expert builder. I have laid the foundation and Apollos has built on it. But he who builds on the foundation must be very careful. 11 And no one can ever lay any other real foundation than that one we already have—Jesus Christ. 12 But there are various kinds of materials that can be used to build on that foundation. Some use gold and silver and jewels; and some build with sticks and hay or even straw! 13 There is going to come a time of testing at Christ’s Judgment Day to see what kind of material each builder has used. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire so that all can see whether or not it keeps its value, and what was really accomplished. 14 Then every workman who has built on the foundation with the right materials, and whose work still stands, will get his pay. 15 But if the house he has built burns up, he will have a great loss. He himself will be saved, but like a man escaping through a wall of flames.
16 Don’t you realize that all of you together are the house of God, and that the Spirit of God lives among you in his house? 17 If anyone defiles and spoils God’s home, God will destroy him. For God’s home is holy and clean, and you are that home.
18 Stop fooling yourselves. If you count yourself above average in intelligence, as judged by this world’s standards, you had better put this all aside and be a fool rather than let it hold you back from the true wisdom from above. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As it says in the book of Job, God uses man’s own brilliance to trap him; he stumbles over his own “wisdom” and falls. 20 And again, in the book of Psalms, we are told that the Lord knows full well how the human mind reasons and how foolish and futile it is.
21 So don’t be proud of following the wise men of this world. For God has already given you everything you need. 22 He has given you Paul and Apollos and Peter as your helpers. He has given you the whole world to use, and life and even death are your servants. He has given you all of the present and all of the future. All are yours, 23 and you belong to Christ, and Christ is God’s.
Source: The Living Bible: BibleGateway.com
We Respond
Reflection: Paul continues to deal with the problem of disunity in the body of Christ in Corinth. He states that this disunity (divisions and quarreling) is evidence of their fleshliness, worldliness, and immaturity. Different bible translations use fleshly, carnal, worldly, or infantile to describe operating out of our old human nature instead of out of the new spiritual nature God gives us when we believe. The Corinthians’ quarrels arose over whether following Apollos or Paul was better. Paul’s point was that people should look to Christ not to human leaders. Human leaders like Paul and Apollos were to work as a team, each contributing according to his or her own special God-given gifts and abilities. Paul and Apollos were merely fellow servants of God. It is God who causes things to grow and develop according to His sovereign plan. Remember, we believers are God’s house, and we should be careful how we build on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Eventually our work will be inspected. Godly people don’t want to just get by “by the skin of their teeth.” The corporate unity among believers flows from our individual unity with Christ which comes from His special unity with the Father who is the ultimate source of everything.
Prayer: Dear only true and triune God, thank You that when Your people live in harmony it demonstrates the maturity that comes through our union with You. Lord, please don’t let me worry about what other people think about my service to You. Father God, I want to grow up in my faith. Make me a fruitful garden or a beautifully designed building that brings honor to Your name. May my focus be on faithfully carrying out what You have called me to do, not on comparing myself with anyone else. May I humbly reach out to help others to grow in You as well. May all Your people grow so enamored with You that we come together to form the unified building You had in mind, not a defiled and desecrated building that You need to destroy. Let each believer realize that through their union with Christ, everything they are and have belongs to You, and everything Christ is and has is available to them. All for the glory of God. AMEN
Action: (Ask God, the Holy Spirit, which one of these He wants you to work on or something else more personal that He points out.)
- I will look for a way to live in harmony with other believers, then do it.
- I will extend forgiveness and/grace to someone who has acted in a carnal, fleshly, or worldly manner toward me. (Be specific.)
- I will ask forgiveness and/grace from someone with whom I have acted in a carnal, fleshly, or worldly manner. (Be specific.)
- I will rejoice in the unity I have with other believers, with Christ Jesus, and with the Father through the Spirit.
Share: I plan to share what I’ve learned with __________.