Quarreling Infants
QUARRELING INFANTS
1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-9
What are we like: children on a school playground or mature co-workers with God?
Humanity is apparently divided into two camps: those who do not know God (Galatians 4:8), the “unspiritual” (ie lacking the Spirit’s regeneration) of 2:14; and those who have received the Spirit (2:12) and so who appreciate the apostle’s message (2:13). To them is given the inestimable gift of “the mind of Christ” (2:16). Does Philippians 2:5 help us to understand this phrase?
There is, however, a third group, “people of the flesh” (3:1) (Greek sarkinoi). The background here is Galatians 5:16-24, which pictures the internal conflict set up by the opposing forces, Spirit versus flesh. Sarkinos, then, means a Christian in whom the “flesh” (ie the old life-principle) still retains the upper hand and dominates their entire personality. Into this category the Corinthians put themselves, partly because of their spiritual immaturity (“babes in Christ”), but more reprehensibly because they cherished some worldly notions. They were “behaving in a merely human way” (3:3), not measuring up to the stature of redeemed maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:13-16). What was the mark of this stunted growth which characterized their childish and worldly ways (3:3-4)?
Paul returns to the earlier theme (1:10-16) and confronts a church split into rival parties and claiming allegiance to several of the apostles. They needed the reminder that these people whom they exalted were “servants of Christ” (3:5) who, if they had accomplished anything of lasting worth in their ministry, owed it to the enabling of the Lord. Certainly, they should not be held to be in competition with one another, thought of as gathering followers and so (unwittingly) promoting jealousy and a party-spirit (3:3).
In Christian service the keynote is cooperative endeavor (3:6-9). Paul teaches with metaphors drawn from horticulture and the building trade. Apollos and he are like farmers whose duty it is to sow and to tend the young plants—in time a harvest will be their reward (Galatians 6:9; 2 Timothy 2:6). But only God can make the seed germinate and grow (3:7). Similarly, the apostles are construction workers, giving time and energy to the erecting of a building. But as the harvest field is God’s, so also is the finished building (3:9; Hebrews 3:4). The lesson should be obvious to this faction-ridden church: all God’s servants are useful; each has a particular job; but none is indispensable.