1 Corinthians 3

Today’s Passage: 1 Corinthians 3

Paul has spent two chapters showing the Corinthians that the wisdom of God is not the wisdom of the world, and now he turns and applies it straight to their quarreling. He tells them plainly that he could not feed them solid food because they were infants, and that the proof of it is the jealousy and the arguing that go on among them. Then he takes the very names they have been fighting over, his own and Apollos’s, and empties them of all the weight the Corinthians had been piling on them. One planted, one watered, and God made the seed grow, so the two men are nothing and the growth is everything. From the field he moves to a building, and the building becomes the great center of the chapter: there is one foundation and only one, Jesus Christ, and every worker who builds on it will one day watch his work meet the fire of the Day of Christ. Some of it will stand and be rewarded. Some of it will burn, and the builder himself will still be saved. Then Paul lifts the whole picture higher still and tells them what they actually are: God’s temple, with the Spirit of God living in them. The chapter closes by turning their boasting inside out. They had been dividing themselves up among their favorite teachers, and Paul tells them that in Christ all of it already belongs to them, and they belong to Christ, and Christ to God.

As you read, hold this: There is only one foundation, Jesus Christ, and the Day is coming when fire will test what each of us has built upon it.

1 Corinthians 3:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—as infants in Christ. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for solid food. In fact, you are still not ready, ³ for you are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and dissension among you, are you not worldly? Are you not walking in the way of man? ⁴ For when one of you says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?

Notice first that he calls them brothers. Whatever he is about to say, he says to family, and he never once suggests that these squabbling people are outside of Christ. They are infants in Christ, which is a real and living place to be, but it is not where a person is meant to stay. Then hear his diagnosis. He could not give them solid food, and the reason is not that they lacked intelligence or had not heard enough sermons. He calls them worldly (σάρκινος) sarkinos, pronounced SAR-kee-noss. Strong's G4560, made of flesh, fleshly, still governed by the old nature. The word Paul uses in the first verse is sarkinos, and it is built straight off the word for flesh, meaning quite literally “made of meat,” fleshy, the stuff a body is made of. It is not in itself an insult; it is a description of what a person is composed of and governed by. Then in verse three he shifts to a close cousin, sarkikos, which carries the sense of belonging to the flesh, characterized by it, taking its orders from it. The two words together sketch a Christian who is genuinely alive in Christ but still running on the old fuel, still steered by appetite and pride and the instinct to be thought well of. That is the honest picture, and it is one every believer recognizes if he looks. The flesh does not disappear at conversion. What Paul refuses to do is treat it as normal or permanent. He names it as infancy, and infancy is a thing you are meant to grow out of. The remedy is not scolding but food, the solid food of Christ Himself, chewed slowly and often, until the appetites of the flesh no longer have the last word. Praise God that He does not leave His children on milk forever. , and then he tells us what the symptom is. Not doctrinal ignorance. Not moral collapse. Jealousy and quarreling. That is a searching thing to sit with, because we are so used to measuring spiritual maturity by how much a person knows, and Paul measures it here by how a person behaves when someone else is preferred. A congregation can be full of people who could pass an examination on the deep things of God and still be, by this measure, a nursery.

And look at what their quarrel actually was. It was not over Christ. It was over which servant of Christ they liked best. “I follow Paul,” says one, and another, “I follow Apollos,” and Paul’s reply cuts the ground out from under both of them at once: “are you not mere men?” To bind yourself to a teacher’s name rather than to the Lord is not a mark of loyalty or of discernment. It is simply a return to the way everyone in Corinth already thought, the way of man, the ordinary human habit of forming parties and keeping score. The gospel had come to lift them clean out of that, and here they were, climbing back in.

1 Corinthians 3:5–7 (BSB)

⁵ What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed, as the Lord has assigned to each his role. ⁶ I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. ⁷ So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

Here is the answer to every quarrel about which preacher is the greatest, and it is beautifully simple. Paul does not ask who Apollos is. He asks what Apollos is, as though the man were a tool in a hand, and the answer is: a servant. Not a patron with a following. Not a master with disciples. A servant, and one who did not even choose his own assignment, since it was the Lord who assigned to each his role. Then the picture of the field. Paul went to Corinth first and put the seed in the ground. Apollos came after and carried the water. Both did real work, and neither of them could do the one thing that actually mattered, because God made it grow (αὐξάνω) auxanō, pronounced owx-AH-no. Strong's G837, to make grow, to cause to increase. The verb here is auxanō, the ordinary Greek word for growing and increasing, the word you would use of a child getting taller or a crop coming up in a field. What makes it remarkable is the grammar Paul puts around it. He does not say that God helped the growth or blessed the growth. He says God made it grow, putting Himself in the place of the one who causes the increase, while the men who worked so hard are left standing off to the side as nothing at all. The same word runs quietly through the New Testament wherever the kingdom is spreading and no human hand can explain it, the seed sprouting while the sower sleeps, the church multiplying across the empire, the believer growing up into Christ. It is a word that keeps the credit where it belongs. And it carries an enormous comfort for anyone who has labored over another soul, a child, a friend, a class, and seen nothing come of it. Your job is the planting and the watering, faithfully done. The growing was never on your shoulders. It rests with the God who alone gives life, and He has never yet failed to bring up what He intends to bring up. . No farmer in history has ever made a seed live. He can only put it where the life can reach it and then wait on a power entirely outside himself.

And then verse seven, which is one of the great humbling sentences of the New Testament: “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything.” Not less than the other. Not lower than God, though of course they are. Nothing. The whole scaffolding of Corinthian celebrity comes down in four words. Sit with that for a moment, because it is a mercy and not a cruelty. If the growth is God’s, then no teacher can take credit for your soul and no teacher can be blamed for its slowness. And it means the man in the pulpit and the woman teaching children on a Sunday morning and the neighbor who quietly answers a hard question over a fence are all doing the same kind of work: putting seed and water where God has said He gives life. The glory belongs to Him alone, and that is exactly where every servant of His most wants it to be.

1 Corinthians 3:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ He who plants and he who waters are one in purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. ⁹ For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Having reduced the workers to nothing, Paul now says two things that keep us from swinging too far the other way. First, the planter and the waterer are one in purpose. They are not rivals at all, and the Corinthians had been staging a competition between two men who were on the same side of the same work. Second, each will be rewarded according to his own labor. So the work is not worthless. God has taken note of every hour of it, and He intends to repay it. The servant is nothing in the sense that the harvest was never in his power, and yet his labor is precious enough to God that heaven keeps a record of it. Both things are true, and holding both is what keeps a worker humble without making him lazy.

Then verse nine gathers it up in three short phrases that ought to be carried around in the pocket. “We are God’s fellow workers.” What a dignity that is, that the God who makes seeds live should stoop to call men His coworkers in the field. “You are God’s field.” The Corinthians thought they were the audience deciding between performers; Paul tells them they are the soil, the thing being worked on, and it is God who owns the ground. “God’s building.” And with that word the metaphor turns, the field becomes a structure going up, and the rest of the chapter is about what men are putting on it.

1 Corinthians 3:10–11 (BSB)

¹⁰ By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one must be careful how he builds. ¹¹ For no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Even here, where Paul speaks of his own skill, he begins with grace. He was an expert builder, and he says so, but only after saying that the whole ability came to him as a gift. That is the tone a Christian worker keeps. And what he laid in Corinth was the foundation (θεμέλιος) themelios, pronounced theh-MEH-lee-oss. Strong's G2310, foundation, the footing laid beneath a building. The word is themelios, from a root meaning to lay down or set in place, and it names the footing of a building, the courses of stone sunk into the ground before anything visible goes up. In the ancient world this was the most expensive and least admired part of a house. Nobody praised a foundation. Nobody could see it once the walls were up. But every mason knew that whatever was built above would only ever be as sound as what had been buried below. Paul takes that word and puts a Person in it. Christ is not the first item in a list of things Christians believe; He is the load-bearing reality under all of it, and the weight of every soul in the building rests on Him and on nothing else. The same word appears in Ephesians for the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Himself as the cornerstone, and again in Hebrews and Revelation for what is settled and permanent. There is real rest in that. You did not lay this foundation and you cannot crack it. It was set in place by God before you ever came to build, and it will hold. , the preaching of Christ crucified that he described in chapter two, and now other men are building on top of it. To all of them, and to us, he gives one sober instruction: “each one must be careful how he builds.” Not careful that he builds, as though effort were the point, but careful how, because the material matters more than the busyness.

And then the great fixed sentence of the chapter, which no argument and no fashion can move: “no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Notice that the foundation is a Person, not a doctrine about a Person, not a program or a method or a tradition. Notice also that it is already laid, and laid by God, so that no man is at liberty to dig it up and pour another. Men have tried in every century, propping a church on a personality, on an experience, on a political cause, on the taste of an age, and every one of those substitutes has cracked and settled and finally come down. There is one stone under the whole household of God, and He was quarried at Calvary. Everything else in the Christian life is masonry laid on top of Him.

1 Corinthians 3:12–13 (BSB)

¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, ¹³ his workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work.

Six materials, and they fall into two clear groups. Gold, silver, and precious stones are costly, hard to come by, slow to gather, and they do not burn. Wood, hay, and straw are cheap, quick, close at hand, and they go up like a torch. Both kinds of material can be laid on the same true foundation. That is the sobering part. A man may be genuinely standing on Christ and still be building a life out of straw, filling his years with work that looks impressive at a distance and has no substance in it, ministry done for applause, service done to be seen, words piled up that were never true and never costly. The materials are hidden for now, because from the street you cannot tell painted timber from stone.

But the Day is coming that will bring it to light. Paul does not even bother to say which day; he simply calls it “the Day,” as the prophets did, the day of the Lord, the appearing of Christ when everything hidden is finally shown for what it is. And it comes with fire, and the fire is not described here as punishment but as a test. It proves the quality of each man’s work, the way an assayer’s furnace proves whether the metal is what it claims to be. Every believer’s life goes into that fire. Nothing is skipped, nothing is estimated, nothing is graded on the impression it made on other people. The fire simply tells the truth about the material. That thought ought to change how a person spends a Tuesday.

1 Corinthians 3:14–15 (BSB)

¹⁴ If what he has built survives, he will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.

Now come the two outcomes, and both of them need to be heard exactly as they stand. If the work survives the fire, the builder receives a reward, and we should not be shy about that. God has bound Himself by promise to repay what is done for Him, and there is no false humility in wanting to hear Him say that a life was well spent. Then the other outcome, and here Paul is unflinching: if the work burns, the man suffers real loss. Not a small thing. Years given to what turns out to be nothing, and standing before Christ with empty hands where there might have been gold. Scripture does not soften that, and neither should we.

But read the second half of verse fifteen slowly, because it is one of the tenderest sentences in the letter. “He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.” The work burns; the man does not. Paul draws the sharpest possible line between what a believer builds and whether a believer is his own. This verse has sometimes been made into a threat hanging over the head of a struggling Christian, as though a poor showing might cost him his salvation, and that is precisely the opposite of what Paul says. He is telling us that even the man whose whole structure goes up in smoke comes out the other side saved, like someone dragged from a burning house with nothing but his life. Why? Because he is standing on a foundation he did not lay and cannot lose, and the God who laid it does not lose His people. Hold both halves together and the verse does its proper work. The loss is real, and it should make us serious about our materials. The salvation is certain, and it should make us glad past all telling. We build with care not to stay in God’s hands but because we are already, and forever, in them.

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (BSB)

¹⁶ Do you not know that you yourselves 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.

“Do you not know?” There is a gentle rebuke in the question, because they should have known, and so should we. And then Paul says the thing that ought to stop a quarreling church in its tracks: “you yourselves are God’s temple (ναός) naos, pronounced nah-OSS. Strong's G3485, the inner sanctuary of a temple, the room where God dwells. Greek had two words for a temple. Hieron covered the whole sacred complex, courts and colonnades and all, the place where crowds came and money changed hands. Naos is the word Paul chooses here, and it means the inner shrine, the holy place itself, the one room where the deity was believed to dwell. In the Jerusalem temple that was the Most Holy Place, behind the veil, entered once a year and never carelessly. Corinth had its own naos buildings crowning the hill above the city, and everyone knew what the word meant. So hear what Paul is actually claiming. He does not say the church is like a temple courtyard where God might occasionally be met. He says the church is the inner sanctuary, the very room where God lives, and the Spirit of God is not visiting but dwelling. The veil is torn, the shrine is no longer a building, and the presence that once made a hilltop tremble now rests on a gathering of forgiven people. If that is true, then the way we speak to one another on a Sunday is not a social matter. It is done inside the Holy of Holies. , and God’s Spirit dwells in you.” Every “you” in these two verses is plural. He is not speaking here of the individual body, as he will in chapter six, but of the congregation together. This gathering of ordinary, arguing, half-grown Corinthians is the place on earth where the living God has chosen to dwell. The glory that once filled a stone house in Jerusalem now rests on a company of people who cannot agree about their favorite preacher. What a staggering mercy that is, and what a weight of holiness it lays on how they treat each other.

And that is why verse seventeen is so severe. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. In the flow of the argument, the destroyers are the party-makers, the men tearing the church apart with their rivalries and their clever, worldly wisdom. Paul is saying that to shred a congregation is not a matter of poor manners; it is vandalism against the sanctuary of God, and He will deal with the one who does it. We tend to think of church divisions as unfortunate and rather ordinary. Scripture treats them as an assault on holy ground. “God’s temple is holy,” Paul says, “and you are that temple.” Let that settle where it lands. The person across the aisle whom you find difficult is a stone in the house where God has come to live.

1 Corinthians 3:18–20 (BSB)

¹⁸ Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. ¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.” ²⁰ And again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

“Let no one deceive himself.” Of all the people who can fool a man, he is the easiest, and the particular self-deception in view is the belief that one is wise by the standards of the age. Paul’s remedy sounds like nonsense until you see it. Become a fool, he says, so that you may become wise. He means what he said in chapter one: take up the message of a crucified Messiah, which the whole clever world calls stupidity, and be willing to be thought stupid for holding it. There is no other road to real wisdom. A man must be willing to lose his reputation for cleverness before he can gain the mind of Christ.

And then Paul does something worth watching. He backs up his point with two quotations from the Old Testament, one from Job and one from the Psalms, as though to say that this is not a new idea he has invented but the settled testimony of Scripture. God “catches the wise in their craftiness,” which in Job’s setting is the confident speech of men explaining the ways of God to a sufferer, and the Lord “knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” Not merely limited. Futile, empty, a breath. It is a striking thing that the God who made the mind is entirely unimpressed by the finest reasoning of men when it is aimed against Him. The cleverness that Corinth prized so highly, and that our own age prizes just as highly under different names, is not merely inadequate in God’s sight. Paul says it is foolishness, and he says it without apology, because the wisdom of God has already been displayed on a cross and it does not need our approval.

1 Corinthians 3:21–23 (BSB)

²¹ Therefore, stop boasting in men. 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 of them belong to you, ²³ and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

And here is the glorious turn at the end, where Paul shows them how small their boasting had made them. They had been carving up the church into parties, each little group clutching one teacher and shutting out the rest, as though a man could be owned. Paul says, stop it, and then he opens his hands and gives them everything. Why fight over Paul when Paul is yours? Why choose between Apollos and Cephas when both belong to you already, given by God for your good? And he does not stop with the teachers. The list runs out past every boundary a person might imagine: the world, life, death, the present, the future. All of it yours. Death itself, which owns every other man, has been handed over to the servant of Christ as a possession rather than a master. There is nothing left outside the inventory.

Then the last line puts the whole universe in its proper order, and it is the sentence the entire chapter has been climbing toward: “and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” All things are yours because you are His. The wealth is real, but it comes to you only by way of belonging, and the moment a person tries to grasp any of it apart from Christ it turns to straw in his hand. Everything is yours. You are not your own. And the Christ to whom you belong belongs to the Father, so that the line runs unbroken from the smallest thing in your life all the way up into the heart of God. That is the answer to a divided church, and it is the answer to a divided heart.