3. The Cross and Factionalism (1 Corinthians 3)
3
The Cross
and Factionalism
1 Corinthians 3
1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe— as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.
10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.
16Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; 20and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” 21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.
Few passages of the New Testament have been abused by preachers and writers more than this one.
First, large branches of Christendom have appealed to this chapter to support a doctrine of purgatory. Unlike hell, the experience of purgatory is said to be temporary. Believers with unconfessed sin go there to suffer for awhile until God judges that they are ready for heaven. Such a person will be saved, “but only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Cor. 3:15). This is the only passage in the New Testament that has even a remote chance of supporting a doctrine of purgatory, so what we understand it to mean is clearly important. Generally speaking, those who adhere to a doctrine of purgatory rest much of the weight of their argument not on the Old or New Testaments, but on apocryphal books and church tradition.
Second (and more commonly in evangelicalism, especially American evangelicalism), some appeal to this passage for a threefold division of the human race. At one end is the “natural man” (KJV), the person without the Spirit (2:14), the unregenerate. At the other end is the “spiritual man” (2:15), the Christian who is walking with the Lord in joyful obedience and fruitfulness. In between is the “carnal” man (KJV; “worldly” in the NIV, 3:1–4), the person who is a Christian and who is assured of heaven, but who is living a life indistinguishable from the world. Such a person, we are told, “will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” Whatever work he or she has done “is burned up”; such people “suffer loss” (3:15).
At a superficial level, this interpretation sounds plausible enough, until one observes (as we shall) that verse 15, which talks about suffering loss and escaping through the flames, does not apply such language to the “worldly” person or the “carnal” Christian at all. Certainly there is such a thing as a carnal or worldly Christian, but the “carnal Christian” theory has in recent years taken on some fairly weird extremes that bear little relation to what this chapter actually says. When we remember that this is the only place where the New Testament uses this language, we are forced to recognize that it is important to get the interpretation of the passage right.
Two preliminary observations will start us off on the right course.
1. This chapter, 1 Corinthians 3, is part of one sustained argument that runs from 1:10 to 4:21. Primarily, Paul addresses the deep divisiveness, the wretched factionalism, that plagues the church at Corinth. Certain people from Chloe’s household have informed him how some in the church say, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos”—or someone else. That theme is still tripping along in this chapter (see vv. 5–6, 21–23) and continues on into chapter 4 (see 4:6). That the problem of factionalism was deeply rooted in the Corinthian church is probably supported by the fact that Paul felt the need to enlarge upon the nature and centrality of love (1 Cor. 13) as the Christian way, the “most excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31). So however we interpret 1 Corinthians 3, it must fit into the developing argument the apostle advances from 1:10 to 4:21.
2. Although Paul directly addresses the bitter factionalism of the Corinthian believers in these chapters, he does so in part by tackling two deeper problems that lie behind the factionalism and undergird it. The first is the Corinthians’ implicit misunderstanding of the gospel, and in particular of the centrality of the cross. Pragmatically, their love of pomp, prestige, rhetoric, social approval, publicly lauded “wisdom”—in short, their raw triumphalism— demonstrated that they had not reflected very deeply on the entailments of the gospel of the crucified Messiah. That is why Paul spends so much time on these points in the first two chapters of his epistle. But the second implicit misunderstanding displayed by these squabbling Corinthians concerned the nature of Christian leadership. As long as some Christians are saying, “I am of Paul [or Apollos, or Cephas, or Wesley, or Calvin],” making some Christian leader the prime point of their identification, they do not truly grasp the nature of Christian leadership. Clearing up these misapprehensions is what largely occupies the apostle in 1 Corinthians 3–4.
Paul hammers home three points in the first of these two chapters.
Factionalists Display Marks of Wretched, Unacceptable, Spiritual Immaturity (3:1–4)
Although Paul is about to berate the Corinthians in a devastating manner, not for a moment does he think that they are not Christians at all. After all, they have the Spirit of God, the mind of Christ, as he has just finished explaining in chapter 2. For Paul, that is the touchstone: “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Rom. 8:9). At heart, therefore, they really have grasped the message of Christ crucified, even if they have not brought their lives into conformity with this message. Moreover, Paul wants the Corinthian believers to recognize that this is how he thinks of them. That is why he now addresses them as “brothers” (3:1).
But although he does not tell his readers that they do not have the Spirit, what he does say is shocking: “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual [i.e., as those with the Spirit]” (3:1, emphasis added). Instead, Paul had to address them “as worldly.” The Greek word behind “worldly” is sarkinos, literally “fleshly.” (The word Paul regularly uses for “flesh” is sarx.) The Latin equivalent of “fleshly,” rendered into English, is “carnal,” the word used in the King James Version. And that is how we have come to speak of the “carnal Christian.” There is no doubt there is such a thing. But what is a “carnal Christian,” a “worldly Christian”? It will help us to see what Paul means if we take four steps.
First, in modern English the expression carnal Christian is potentially misleading. The word carnal has come to be associated with sexual sin (there is no doubt what “carnal desire” means today)—and at this juncture Paul is certainly not accusing the Corinthians of lust or of sexual misconduct. That is probably why the translators of the New International Version chose worldly to render sarkinos: it suggests a broader failure than the merely sexual.
Second, the word sarkinos itself simply means something like “made of flesh”—that is, merely human. The same word is found in 2 Corinthians 3:3, where Paul tells us that under the new covenant the letter of Christ is written “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (emphasis added)—literally, “hearts of flesh.” Certainly in this latter passage there is no necessary overtone of evil. So what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 3:1, therefore, is that he discovered he could not address the Corinthians “as spiritual” (that is, as people with the Spirit) but would have to speak with them as “fleshly” (that is, as people without the Spirit).
So although on the one hand Paul believes his readers possess the Spirit, and therefore he calls them “brothers,” on the other hand he feels he cannot address them as people with the Spirit. That is why he has had to rearticulate the elementary gospel to them again in the first two chapters of this epistle. So what are they? Are they people with the Spirit, or not? Are they Christians, or not? Paul explains his paradoxical use of language: they are “mere infants in Christ” (3:1). Yes, they are Christians; yes, they do have the Spirit. But in certain particulars, still to be laid out, they simply do not act like it. Paul judges them to be spiritually immature—wretchedly, unacceptably, spiritually immature. “I gave you milk, not solid food,” he adds, “for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (3:2).
When my daughter was born, my wife found herself unable to nurse our infant. That gave me the privilege of sharing the midnight feedings. Tiffany was a dream: I could zap the formula in the microwave, change her, feed her the whole eight ounces, and tuck her back into her crib—all in under twenty minutes. Then our son came along. Midnight feedings with him were horrendous. Although he had an enormous appetite, he sucked and drank with only three speeds: slow, dead-slow, and stop. Worse, he had to be burped every ounce or so—a painfully slow process— or he would display his remarkable gift for projectile vomiting. Without any warning, he could upchuck what he had taken in and send it fifteen feet across the room. If there were an Olympic event in projectile vomiting, he would have taken one of the medals. I never got him back into his crib in under an hour; an hour and a half was more common.
At least he had an excuse. He was young, and his digestive system was obviously not as well-developed as his sister’s at the same age. Best of all, he quickly outgrew this stage. But there are Christians who are international-class projectile vomiters, spiritually speaking, after years and years of life. They simply cannot digest what Paul calls “solid food.” You must give them milk, for they are not ready for anything more. And if you try to give them anything other than milk, they upchuck and make a mess of everyone and everything around them. At some point the number of years they have been Christians leads you to expect something like mature behavior from them, but they prove disappointing. They are infants still and display their wretched immaturity even in the way that they complain if you give them more than milk. Not for them solid knowledge of Scripture; not for them mature theological reflection; not for them growing and perceptive Christian thought. They want nothing more than another round of choruses and a “simple message”—something that won’t challenge them to think, to examine their lives, to make choices, and to grow in their knowledge and adoration of the living God.
So the Corinthians, then, are wretchedly immature believers.
Third, this immaturity is something for which they will be held accountable. Unlike my son, who could not help his condition, these people Paul holds responsible for their “worldliness.” This Paul makes clear even by a small change in vocabulary from verse 1 to verse 3. The word behind “worldly” in verse 1, as we have seen, is sarkinos. In the two occurrences of “worldly” in verse 3, the word is sarkikos. If there is a difference in meaning between the two words, it is this: while sarkinos means “made of flesh” or “composed of flesh” (and thus refers to those who are acting as if they did not have the Spirit, but are merely human, “fleshly”), sarkikos means something like “characteristic of human flesh.” In other words, this word immediately takes on moral overtones. Human life apart from the Spirit of God is not neutral; it has certain characteristics that are entirely reprehensible. This meaning of sarkikos is made clear from its use in 2 Corinthians 1:12, where Paul testifies, “we have conducted ourselves . . . not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace” (emphasis added). In other words, Paul has behaved not in line with the “wisdom” that reflects the point of view of sinful human nature, but in line with God’s grace. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 3:3 Paul tells the Corinthians that they are acting in ways that are characteristic of people without the Spirit—of people who, precisely because they do not have the Spirit, have nothing to fall back on but their own sinful human nature, their “fleshly” nature. They are acting like pagans.
Fourth, Paul gives some content to his charge. It is very important to grasp what evidence Paul adduces to support his conclusion that the Corinthian believers are worldly. One bit of evidence we have already looked at: Paul finds the Corinthians stuck at the “milk” stage. They are not growing in their understanding and application of the Word of God generally, and of the gospel in particular. But now he adds two more pieces of evidence, and they are related to each other. (1) The Corinthian believers display “jealousy and quarreling” (3:3). As long as they manifest such sins, they are worldly (sarkikos), exhibiting what is characteristic of fallen human nature. They are “acting like mere men” (3:3), that is, as if they did not have the Spirit. (2) The Corinthian believers have succumbed to factionalism, one group claiming to follow Paul, another group associating itself with the name of Apollos, another with Peter, and so forth (1:11–12; 3:4). This factionalism and all the petty animosities it engenders are characteristic of “mere men”—not of men and women who possess the Spirit of the living God.
So this is what Paul means by a “worldly” Christian, by a “carnal” Christian (if we adopt older English). Paul does not have in mind someone who has made a profession of faith, carried on in the Christian way for a short while, and then reverted to a lifestyle indistinguishable in every respect from that of the world. After all, these Corinthian believers are meeting together for worship (1 Cor. 14), they call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:2), they are extraordinarily endowed with spiritual gifts (1:5, 7; 12–14), they are wrestling with theological and ethical issues (1 Cor. 8–10), and they are in contact with the apostle whose ministry brought them to the Lord. Far from being sold out to the world, the flesh, and the devil, they pursue spiritual experience, if sometimes unwisely.
Of course, if professing Christians slip far enough, some further category has to be found for them. Paul has one. In 2 Corinthians, after he has discovered that the Corinthian church, despite temporary restoration, has succumbed yet again to false apostles (2 Cor. 11:13) and to a lifestyle that does not glory in the cross (2 Cor. 10-13), Paul finally feels forced to this extreme injunction: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Cor. 13:5). In other words, if their drift away from the gospel becomes serious enough, Paul questions whether they are Christians at all. And this takes place at a point when the Corinthian congregation is still holding together as professing Christians.
What this means is that it will not do to apply “carnal Christian” or “worldly Christian” to every person who has made a profession of faith, perhaps years ago, but who for umpteen years has lived without any evidence of Christian faith, life, repentance, values, or interest. In such instances it is far more likely than not that we are dealing with spurious conversions.
Once this is clear, Paul’s point becomes potent. Those who have the Spirit, and who therefore come to grips with the message of the cross (1 Cor. 2), are expected to mature rapidly. Such maturation will disclose itself in a growing ability to take in more and more Christian truth (3:2). It will also show itself in a large-hearted attitude that avoids quarreling and jealousy, and refuses to sink into narrow factionalism. If some who have the Spirit are slow to display this rising maturity, the kindest interpretation is that they are “worldly.” In these matters they are acting like “mere men” instead of like Christian men and women, men and women empowered by the Spirit of God. They are wretchedly, unacceptably, spiritually immature.
Factionalists Ignore Two Important Truths about Christian Leaders (3:5–17)
The two truths can be simply set out:
1. Christian leaders are only servants of Christ and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone.
2. God cares about his church, and he holds its leaders accountable for how they build it.
No less interesting than these two truths is the way Paul establishes them. He makes his points by painting two analogies, an agricultural one (3:5–9a) and an architectural one (3:9b–15), following them up with a powerful rhetorical question and an alarming conclusion (3:16–17).
The Agricultural Analogy (3:5–9a)
Having berated the Corinthian Christians for their spiritual immaturity, attested by their squabbling and fractious attachment to particular human leaders, Paul judges it necessary to say something about how such leaders should be viewed. “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul?” (3:5). The answer is devastatingly simple: “Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task” (3:5). Christian leaders are, in the first place, “only servants.” In this context, Paul does not mean “servants of the church,” but “servants of Jesus Christ,” for here it is the Lord who “has assigned to each his task.” Moreover, they are specifically called “servants of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 4:1. If the Lord Jesus himself “has assigned to each his task,” it is idiotic to rank them according to their jobs. These servants have not gained their status by ambition and “natural gift” (as if in God’s world there can be any gift that he himself has not given!), but by the specific assignment of the Lord. Discharging the responsibilities assigned them, they have become the agents who brought the Corinthians to faith—“servants [of Christ], through whom you came to believe” (3:5).
Now the agricultural analogy is laid out. In a large farm, one person may sow the seed and another may water it, but only God can make it grow. To heap unqualified and exclusive praise on the sower is to focus too narrowly; to praise those who handle the irrigation and forget those who sow the seed is to be myopic. In any case it is God alone who makes things grow. Should not he be praised?
Even though the workers are assigned different tasks, they “have one purpose” (3:8). No one worker’s task has any independent importance. It is in the bringing together of the tasks, crowned by God himself who makes things grow, that the harvest is finally brought in. Doubtless each worker “will be rewarded according to his own labor.” Paul does not want to deny the importance of individual faithfulness and industry. But in terms of the great task at hand—making things grow and bringing them to harvest—it is important to get the big picture straight. “We are God’s fellow workers” (3:9), Paul writes. He does not mean that he and Apollos and others are co-workers with God, as if he, Apollos, other workers, and God are all on the same level. Rather, he means that he and Apollos and any other workers are simply fellow workers, co-workers, owned by God, used by God. The word God’s is here possessive. We are fellow workers, Paul says, and we are God’s. Clearly, as far as Paul is concerned, to be a servant of Jesus Christ and to be one of God’s workers amounts to the same thing.
The entire sweep of the analogy now becomes clear. The field represents the Corinthians, and it belongs to God (“you are God’s field,” 3:9); the workers in the field are people like Paul and Apollos, and they belong to God (“we are God’s fellow workers,” 3:9). God owns the field and the workers; he assigns the workers their task, and he alone makes the seed grow.
Before we press on to the next analogy, we must make sure that two points of the agricultural analogy are clear. The first is that the analogy as a whole strongly sets out one of the two truths that the Corinthians are ignoring: Christian leaders are only servants of Christ and are not to be accorded allegiance that is reserved for God alone. It is not that gratitude to Paul or Apollos or some other worker is inappropriate. Rather, what Paul finds inexcusable is the kind of fawning and defensive attachment to one particular leader that results in one-upmanship, quarreling, and jealousy. Implicitly, such allegiance is making too much of one person. It verges on assigning that person godlike status. In fact, a little sober reflection reminds us that many Christian leaders properly contribute to our spiritual growth and fruitfulness, but in any case it is God alone who gives life and fruitfulness, however much he uses means. No Christian leader is to be venerated or listened to or adulated with the kind of allegiance and devotion properly reserved for God alone. That is folly; it betrays a deep ignorance of the nature of true Christian leadership and of the corporate and mutually supportive ways in which Christian leaders complement one another’s work under God. Implicitly, of course (though Paul has not yet made the point), this also means that Christian leaders should refrain from presenting themselves as if they had the corner on the truth, or all the gifts, or exclusive authority or insight. We are all “only servants.” We are “fellow workers,” and we are God’s.
The second detail we must observe from this analogy is that the entire thrust of the argument depends on a distinction between the Corinthian believers and Christian workers such as Paul and Apollos. That is made clear not only from the context, in which groups of Corinthian believers are trying to align themselves with specific leaders, but from the structure of the analogy: “we [that is, Paul, Apollos, and, in principle, other workers] are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field” (3:9, emphasis added). In other contexts, of course, Paul can talk of all Christians as serving the Lord, as being his servants. But in this context, it is essential to Paul’s argument to maintain the distinction. That distinction, we shall see, carries over to the next analogy— and this is a crucial factor in the proper interpretation of the passage.
The Architectural Analogy (3:9b–15)
The end of verse 9 is transitional. “You are God’s field,” Paul writes, bringing the agricultural analogy to a close. And then he adds, “[you are] God’s building.” So we move from the farm to the construction site. Once again a distinction is maintained between the “ordinary” believers and the leaders. Here the believers are “God’s building”; the leaders are the builders.
The general point of this analogy, especially the first part of it, is exactly the same as that of the agricultural analogy. We will understand it better if we remember what a slow process building a great edifice was before the days of power equipment. Cathedrals in Europe often took four or five centuries to complete, sometimes longer. In Paul’s day, a temple, a much more modest edifice than a medieval cathedral, sometimes took decades. So one builder might lay the foundation; others would complete various phases of the building project and then would move on, retire, or die, while still others would take their places. The lesson is clear: Paul laid the foundation, and others have built on his work. It is the project as a whole that is important, and, implicitly, it is foolish to focus all praise on just one of the builders who has contributed to the project. The builders themselves, after all, have shared a common vision, a common purpose.
But there are two elements to this analogy that differentiate it from the previous one, and these are related. The first is that God plays a rather different role in the two “parables.” In the agricultural analogy, God is represented by the owner of the field who also employs the workers; moreover, God is praised as the One who alone gives life: he makes the crops grow. Here, however, in the analogy drawn from the building industry, there is nothing organic, there is nothing growing, and so God necessarily plays a somewhat different role. Jesus Christ himself becomes the foundation that Paul laid (3:11). God is not specifically mentioned in verses 11 through 15, but he stands behind the judgment implicit in “the Day” and “the fire” that will reveal the quality of each builder’s work. In other words, God owns the building, and he judges the quality of the work of each builder. This point becomes explicit in 3:16–17, as we shall see.
The second element that distinguishes this analogy from the previous one is the heavy emphasis placed on the accountability of the builders. Paul no sooner gets going than he warns, “But each one should be careful how he builds” (3:10b). He himself “laid a foundation as an expert builder,” and “no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” (3:10–11). If what is being built is the church of God, the only possible foundation is Jesus Christ, or, more fully, “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” to use the expression of 2:2. Paul is still thinking of the exclusive power, wisdom, and authority bound up with the gospel. If anyone tries to lay down some other foundation, then it must be for some other building. It is certainly not the church that will rise on any competing foundation.
But even where the foundation is “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” there is the danger of later shoddy workmanship and inferior materials. Builders may use “gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw” (3:12). Paul does not make anything of this descending scale of values. Rather, he distinguishes between only two kinds of building materials: the kind that cannot withstand the fire that “will test the quality of each man’s work” on “the Day” when each builder’s work “will be shown for what it is” (3:13), and the kind that survives. “The Day” is the day of the Lord, the time of final sifting; “the fire” distinguishes good and bad. As frequently in the Old Testament, fire consumes the dross and leaves the precious metal. At first glance we might think that “gold, silver, [and] costly stones” are strange building materials. Probably Paul has chosen them not only because they will pass unscathed through fire (gold, for example, may melt, but it is still gold, no more and no less), but also because gold, silver, and precious stones featured so prominently in the building of Solomon’s temple. And, as Paul develops his analogy here, the building that is going up is nothing less than “God’s temple” (3:16).
This fire, then, is not purgatory. Nothing is said about tormenting the builders and purging them in the flames. Rather, it is the quality of their work that is revealed by the fire. If a builder’s work is burned up, “he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames” (3:15). The picture is of someone running out of a building engulfed in a great fire. That person escapes. But how much of the building on which he has been working survives the flames?
Two things must be said to clarify this picture Paul has painted and to drive his points home into our lives. First, those who “suffer loss” but who escape “through the flames” are not the “carnal” or “worldly” Christians of 3:1–4, but are Christian leaders who build the church with materials that will not withstand the final conflagration. The worldly Christians of 3:1–4 constitute all or part of the Corinthian church, and the church is represented, in the first analogy, by the field, and in the second, by the building. What we might call the “church builders,” people like Paul, Apollos, and other evangelists, preachers, and teachers, are either the workers in the field or the builders of the building. It is they whose work is tested by fire.
This means that the sophisticated form of the “carnal Christian” theory, which postulates that some people make a profession of faith, shortly thereafter return to a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of any unbeliever, yet finally make it into heaven by the skin of their teeth (“as one escaping through the flames”), finds no warrant whatever in this passage. Even the “worldly” or “carnal” Christian is still identifiably a Christian, and in this passage it is the church builders who barely escape the flames, not the “ordinary” church folk themselves.
This ought to be extremely sobering to all who are engaged in vocational ministry. It is possible to “build the church” with such shoddy materials that at the last day you have nothing to show for your labor. People may come, feel “helped,” join in corporate worship, serve on committees, teach Sunday school classes, bring their friends, enjoy “fellowship,” raise funds, participate in counseling sessions and self-help groups, but still not really know the Lord. If the church is being built with large portions of charm, personality, easy oratory, positive thinking, managerial skills, powerful and emotional experiences, and people smarts, but without the repeated, passionate, Spirit-anointed proclamation of “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” we may be winning more adherents than converts. Not for a moment am I suggesting that, say, managerial skills are unnecessary, or that basic people skills are merely optional. But the fundamental nonnegotiable, that without which the church is no longer the church, is the gospel, God’s “folly,” Jesus Christ and him crucified.
If we see this clearly, then many other things will fall into place. We will perceive that it is God’s revelation to us of his Son that is of paramount importance. Recognizing the need for the Spirit of God to illumine the minds of men and women who otherwise will not grasp the gospel, we will emphasize prayer. We will live and serve in the light of the final judgment, for we must give an account of our ministry. It is not that we shall refuse any practical help from those who have something to say about technique or sociological profiles; rather, we will remain utterly committed to the centrality of the cross, not just at vague, theoretical levels, but in all our strategy and practical decisions. We will be fearful of adopting approaches that might empty the cross of Christ of its power (1:17), and the only approval we shall seek is his who tests the quality of each builder’s work on the last day.
Second, the prospects before the builders of the church are not merely negative. There is an alternative: “If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward” (3:14, emphasis added). Some Christians are constantly afraid that any mention of rewards will jeopardize the freedom of grace. They ignore not only that Jesus promised rewards to his followers (e.g., Matt. 6:4, 6, 18), but that the passage before us prepares the ground for the notion. Already in the agricultural analogy we are told that each worker “will be rewarded according to his own labor” (3:8). In the analogy drawn from the building industry, God is the One who judges the quality of each builder’s labor—and in principle that opens up the possibility not only of loss but of reward.
It is important to recognize that Paul found it necessary to combat two extremes. On the one hand, many forms of Hellenistic religion bought into an enormous dichotomy between “spirituality” and conduct. Individuals could be ever so “pious,” ever so “religious,” ever so “spiritual,” without it making a scrap of difference to their ethics, to their daily conduct. By contrast, believers depicted in the Bible, whether under the old covenant or the new, could not allow themselves to think that way. In the Bible, spirituality and ethics go hand in hand; piety and conduct cannot be divorced. There are consequences to our beliefs and spiritual commitments, and these pertain not only to this life but also to the life to come. So Paul’s emphasis on reward was an important safeguard against the sheer libertinism of much first-century Hellenistic religion.
But on the other hand, some forms of Judaism tended to tie rewards rather tightly to the quality of one’s personal obedience. Sooner or later, it becomes difficult to avoid some brand of “merit theology.” But for Paul, “wages” are not credited “as an obligation” (Rom. 4:4); they are the result of grace. If Paul worked hard, it was because of God’s grace in his life: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). That God’s grace empowers our works destroys all mechanical merit theology: so much work, so much pay. At the end of the day, we work and serve with the end in view and constantly remember that if we are fruitful it is because God’s grace is at work within us. We work out our own salvation but must remember that this is God at work within us, enabling us both to will and to act according to his good purpose (Phil. 2:12–13). This stance enables Paul to avoid legalism.
By now it should be clear that this second analogy, based on the building industry, establishes not only the first important truth that the Corinthians were ignoring (Christian leaders are only servants of Christ and are not to be accorded allegiance reserved for God alone.), but also the second major truth: God cares about his church, and he holds its leaders accountable. That is a desperately important lesson. If leaders are too greatly elevated in the popular mind, they can do almost anything, and large numbers of their followers will trail along unquestioningly. We marvel how many educated Germans followed Adolf Hitler without protest; we marvel how many religious people followed Jim Jones to their death. But examples that are not so extreme may be more difficult to detect. It is possible so to lionize some Christian leader that we start making excuses for his or her serious, perhaps even catastrophic, faults. What we must remember is that the leaders are no more than servants. Meanwhile, God loves his church, and he holds accountable those who seek to build the church.
These points are powerfully brought home in the next verses.
Paul’s Rhetorical Question and His Alarming Conclusion (3:16–17)
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (3:16), Paul asks. The building now clearly becomes “God’s temple.” It is crucial to understand that in this context “God’s temple” does not refer to the human body, but to the church. Elsewhere, the same metaphor is used to foster sexual purity in the individual human being (1 Cor. 6:19): if “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” it is important to keep that temple pure. But here in 1 Corinthians 3 that is not the issue. Paul is not saying, “Look here, if God’s Spirit takes up residence in the body of the individual Christian, it is important not to contaminate that body with sexual sin, indolence, bad habits,” or whatever. Rather, he is saying something like this: “Haven’t you grasped that the Spirit of God animates the body of Christ on earth, the church, the community of the redeemed? That is the ‘building,’ the ‘temple,’ on which all the builders have been working. And you must understand that God loves the church and jealously guards it as the dwelling place of his own Spirit.” But there is an entailment: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (3:17).
In the light of the immediately preceding verses, this warning is surely directed, in the first place, against builders who have resorted to combustible materials (wood, hay, stubble) that cannot withstand the fire on the last day. But it is quite possible that Paul’s generous language opens up the warning to apply to others than leaders alone. After all, he does not now say, “If any builder destroys God’s temple . . .” but “If anyone destroys God’s temple . . .” (emphasis added). By such inclusive language Paul may be considering the kind of damage being done to God’s temple, the church, by the Corinthians themselves. By diverting attention away from the gospel while focusing on the plaudits and approval of the world and its “wisdom,” the Corinthian believers are in danger of undermining the very message that called the church into existence.
The ways of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it—admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively on the long haul. Building the church with superficial “conversions” and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembly of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism—all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. And to do so is dangerous: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:17). It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
These kinds of truths the factionalists of Corinth ignored. And these truths are all too frequently ignored by their modern counterparts. This calls for thoughtful self-examination and quiet repentance.
Factionalists Ignore the Wealth of the Heritage We as Christians Properly Enjoy (3:18–23)
The first part of this paragraph in 1 Corinthians 3 (18–21a) pauses for a review. Paul returns to the contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God, between the foolishness of the world and the foolishness of God. But although Paul is, in part, reviewing one of his central themes in these chapters, he is also leading us into fresh thought. He begins with a warning. In the light of the fact that God cares about his temple and holds to account those who destroy it, Paul sternly writes, “Do not deceive yourselves” (3:18). Do not think that you can adopt the philosophies and values of the world as if such choices do not have a profoundly detrimental impact on the church. Do not think you can get away with it. Do not kid yourself that you are with it, an avant-garde Christian, when in fact you are leaving the gospel behind and doing damage to God’s church.
The path of true wisdom, as Paul has already explained in detail in the first two chapters of this epistle, is to side with God. There one discovers that the Almighty utterly reverses so many of the values cherished by the world. What the world judges wise, God dismisses as folly; what the world rejects as foolishness is nothing less than God’s wisdom. The world loves power and prestige; God displays himself most tellingly on the cross, in sublime and wretched weakness—yet that “weakness” effects God’s utterly breathtaking redemptive plan, and thus proves stronger than all the world’s “strength.” The world pants after strong leaders, but leaders in the church must first of all be servants of the Lord Christ. The world parades its heroes and gurus; Christians remember that God loves to choose the weak and the lowly and the despised—the nobodies—so that no one may boast before him. The world tries to impress with its rhetoric and sophistication, cherishing form more than content. The apostles of Jesus Christ prize truth above style and quietly refuse to endorse any form that may prove so attractive, even diversionary, that the centrality of gospel truth is jeopardized.
That is the kind of great reversal that anyone who understands the cross must come to grips with. “If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (3:18b–19a). Paul has not only returned us to the themes of chapter 1, but, in the light of his intervening discussion, he has invested them with a powerful new emphasis. Don’t kid yourself, Paul says; part of what it means to be a Christian is to side with God’s values in this great reversal. And be assured that God knows your heart and is never deceived; still less is he outsmarted by human plots and pretensions. “As it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’ [citing Job 5:13]; and again, ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile’ [citing Ps. 94:11]” (1 Cor. 3:19b–20).
The immediate application of this exhortation is the frank prohibition of factionalism: “So then, no more boasting about men!” (3:21a). To boast about some hero or guru is wrong for two reasons. It is wrong because the focus is wrong; the concentration is on some human being and not on the Lord God. The agricultural analogy has reminded us that God alone assigns the task, and God alone gives life; therefore God alone should be praised. The analogy from the building industry reminds us that God is the Judge, and he deeply cares what kind of edifice, what kind of “temple,” we are putting up. He holds the builders accountable for their work—and, in principle, he threatens to destroy anyone who destroys his temple. So why should we be boasting about our attachment to some particular builder? Paul has already defended the simpler, more fundamental priority: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1:31). Now the negative corollary is put forward: “So then, no more boasting about men!” (3:21a).
But the second reason why it is wrong to boast about some human leader or other is that it cuts you off from the wider heritage that is rightfully yours. You may be boasting because you think you have the best part; in fact, you are robbing yourself, because you are restricting yourself to only one part of the heritage that is yours in Christ Jesus.
That is Paul’s point in the closing lines of this paragraph: “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God” (3:21b–23). Part of the meaning of this sentence is clear enough. Paul, Apollos, Cephas (and, in principle, any other bona fide leader in the church) all contribute to the church. They belong to the church, in exactly the same way that the farm workers all belong to the field and its harvest, and the contractors and builders all belong to the building project. To focus on one part of the project as if it were everything is to cut oneself off from the project as a whole. To fasten undue and exclusive affection and loyalty on one leader is to depreciate how much there is to receive from all the others. In other words, factionalists overlook the wealth of the heritage we as Christians properly enjoy.
But Paul casts this truth in a form that goes beyond people. “All things are yours,” he says. And in the list that follows, although he begins with Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, he then adds, “or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” What does he mean?
The five things that follow “Paul or Apollos or Cephas” represent the fundamental tyrannies of human life, the things that enslave us, the things that hold us in bondage. (1) The world squeezes us into its mold (compare Rom. 12:1–2). It demands so much of our attention and allegiance that we seldom devote thought and passion to the world to come. This world ties us down; it does not encourage us to soar into the unexplored dimensions of the new heaven and the new earth. (2) Similarly, this present life clamors to be treated as if it were worthy of ultimate respect. We cling to life as if the Bible had never told us that our lives are but vapor that quickly vanishes when the first puff of breeze passes by. We forget that Jesus told us not to fear those who can take away this life, but to fear him, rather, “who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). So where is the wisdom in endlessly serving the noisy pressures of this life if we take no thought for the life to come? And at the end of this life, there is only (3) death, which hovers over us, the ultimate specter. Death is a tyranny that no one escapes. Its power extends far beyond the mere experience of it. Because it looms just over the horizon, it casts its long shadow backward and constrains us all our lives. Even the attempt to live our lives by suppressing the thought of death is an abysmal response that mutely attests the power of its tyranny. So also does our habit of setting “life goals,” on the morbid assumption that all we have is threescore years and ten, more or less. How would our life goals change if we were planning not only for seventy years of existence here, but also for eternity? Isn’t this partly what Jesus meant when he told us to lay up treasure in heaven (Matt. 6:19–21)? But we find it very hard to heed his admonition, because death tyrannizes us. (4) Thus the constant urgency of the present and (5) the vague promises and threats of the future combine to divert our attention away from the God who holds both the present and the future in his hands.
For that, surely, is Paul’s point. If we truly belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God, then we belong to God. And what a God! He is sovereign over these petty tyrannies; he has shown his great love to his people; he has paid for their redemption at the cost of the death of his dear Son. All five realities look very different if we examine them from the secure position of belonging to Jesus Christ. (1) This world becomes the gateway to the next. Here God has placed us, and, recognizing his sovereign sway, we delight in the good gifts he has given us here, even as we recognize that allegiance to Christ means we can no longer “belong” to the fallen order in rebellion against its Maker. No, we do not belong to it anymore; but in one important sense, this world belongs to us. Everything belongs to our heavenly Father, and we are his children; so everything belongs to us. Of course, the world is not “ours” for our ruthless and selfish exploitation. It is “ours” only in connection with our relationship to our God and Father. But that means we belong to the One who will one day create a new heaven and earth and will enable us to delight in it. We are the heirs of God; we are coheirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17). If we suffer in this world, as he did, it is a relatively trifling matter, considering that God in his grace has joined us to the “winning side.” We can no longer be tyrannized by this world, for its sway is not absolute; our allegiance belongs to another, and our vision is cast beyond this world to the world to come.
Similar things can be said about the other four tyrannies. (2) This present life is no longer merely something to cling to. It is the sphere in which we may serve our God and Redeemer, in anticipation of the life to come. (3) Death, that fearsome “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26), cannot have the last word, for our Master has vanquished death. His resurrection presages our own. At one level death can even be embraced, for, with Paul, we recognize that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). We even understand what Paul meant when he said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). (4) The present is where I live and serve God, but it cannot devour me. God is no less sovereign over the present than he was over the past and will be over the future. (5) And if he is sovereign over the future, then the future, too, is not something to be feared, but to be embraced—simply because I belong to Christ, Christ belongs to God, and God controls the future.
So none of these tyrannies—“the world or life or death or the present or the future”—control us any longer. They have been decisively beaten. They are under the sway of the sovereign Redeemer, and since we are the company of the redeemed, they are ours.
There is an exquisite compass of vision here that is tragically lost when all of our Christianity means nothing more than “finding fulfillment” or seeking personal peace or—worse yet—identifying with the “right” party or Christian guru. We are God’s, and that transforms everything. If we truly understand this, there are no tyrannies left. We will want all that God has for us, both in this life and in the life to come. And that means we will never reduce the God-sized dimensions of biblical Christianity to all that can be embraced by just one Christian teacher or worker, no matter how able or wise. Factionalism is utter folly. Not only does it hurt the church, it impoverishes all those who embrace it, for it cuts them off from the wealth of the heritage that rightly belongs to all the children of God.
What might this mean for us today, in practical terms? It certainly does not mean that every Christian leader and every Christian heritage has the same worth. In other passages Paul deals with the importance of discernment, of weighing things in order to pursue what is best (e.g., Phil. 1:9–11). Nor does it mean that everything that calls itself “Christian” is necessarily Christian. But it does mean that if you are, say, a Lutheran, you must not cut yourself off from what is right and good in the Wesleyan, Reformed, charismatic, Anabaptist, and other lines. (And of course, I could have rephrased that sentence in any combination.) At the local church level, it will not do to lionize one particular leader (preferably recently retired or deceased!) at the expense of all the others. Ultimately, to do so is to assign him or her almost tyrannical powers. Not only does it breed factionalism, it ignores the vast heritage and wealth that are ours simply because we are Christians and we belong to God. And, in the sense already expressed, what belongs to God belongs to us. Must we have fights over church music? We should have the best, the most God-centered, the most truthful, the most edifying. But must it all be in one style? Is there nothing to be gained from wide exposure to the company of saints in many parts of the world who have expressed their adoration of the Savior with richness of hymnody we can never exhaust, but which we ignore to our detriment?
“All things are yours . . . and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
Questions for Review and Reflection
1. According to Paul, who are “carnal” or “worldly” Christians?
2. How does their spiritual immaturity show itself?
3. What two principal truths about Christian leaders do verses 5–17 teach us?
4. Whose works are burned up in verse 15? Articulate the warning in your own words.
5. Explain the last few verses of the chapter in your own words.