1 Corinthians 3:1-9

1Co 3:1-9

1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

2. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

3. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

4. For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

5. Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

6. I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

7. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

8. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

9. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

God's Fellow-Workmen

How wonderfully the tone of this wonderful man changes as he addresses the Church at Corinth. It is a dramatic study even, if it be nothing else; as a piece of literature it might arrest the attention of inquisitive and literary men. Paul addresses the Corinthians in the first instance as if they were everything that could be wished; and then he takes them to pieces bone by bone, and plucks off every feather, and asks them to look at themselves, and be ashamed of themselves; and in the very midst of all this pastoral desolation he tells them that they are the temple of the Holy Ghost. The whole method is Pauline, irregular, abrupt, sometimes violent, and then counterbalancing its violence by such tenderness as was never seen in woman. There is no mistaking this man's style; to read it is to walk over acres of rocks, miles of great boulder stones, coming every now and then upon large green places through which silver rills are running, and over which birds are singing, as if detained by unusual beauty.

He first speaks of himself in humbling terms. Before he comes to this tug he will lie down at the feet of the people whom he is going to rebuke. Perhaps, said he, that is the best way; I want to speak to these people as I never spoke to any other people in all my ministry; if I stand up, my attitude may be taken as expressive of self-consciousness, haughtiness, defiance; I will therefore lie down on the ground at their feet, and speak with that peculiar timidity which is the best consciousness of real might and power. "I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom.... I was with you in weakness, and in tear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom." That was the condition of the preacher. In the third chapter he turns right round upon them and says, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual." He had gained his standing-ground, he had conciliated his audience, he had prepared a highway for the Lord. He was a hundred men. We speak sometimes of imitating the style of this man or of that, and we are obliged to inquire which style, because the men spoken about have a hundred styles, they have all styles, they have the keys of the kingdom a great key that only a strong hand can turn, and a little key that a child could carry, but that opens, as if in oil, locks that preserve countless, inestimable treasures. Paul is in his mixed style. One sentence is a Bible, having Genesis in it and Revelation; then in another sentence he stands as a suppliant might stand, and asks to be allowed to speak: through all this humiliation he will make his way, and at the last we shall see him with the old port, his voice rich with all its tones, and his attitude vindicated as the pastor-soldier, the mother-judge, the pitying critic: contradictions to the ear, but reconciliations musical to the heart.

"And I, brethren": why these apologetic terms, why these conciliatory words? Why make quite sure about the brotherhood when he is going to tear it to pieces? He will insist upon brotherhood. In all this argument he insists upon the unity of the Church. That indeed is his foundation principle; he will sacrifice all accidental circumstances to that grand doctrine, namely, the Church is one: one architect, one builder, one Lord, one owner: under that great doctrinal wheel objections are ground to powder. The Apostle could not speak unto the Corinthians "as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal." The word "carnal" has no reference whatever to the flesh; it is the antithetic word to "spiritual": the paraphrase therefore would be: I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, as unto master minds in the kingdom, as unto those who have seen the secret of God; but as unto materialists, men who are still in the letter, men who are only groping around the door, men who have found a few elementary and alphabetic principles but have not yet entered into the mystery, the music, the liberty of the divinest literature; I have not been able to speak to you, brethren, as unto insiders, as unto those who have touched the altar and by that touch made it almost live; but as unto outsiders, men who are not a long way from the temple, men who have great interest in God's temple, but who have not yet entered in and claimed the heritage and liberty of children. Paul, therefore, exercises discrimination; he is a critic every inch: sometimes we think he is a poet; so he is, but he penetrates, distinguishes, separates, winnows, so as to keep the wheat and the chaff apart.

The Apostle spoke unto the Corinthians "as unto babes in Christ." How does that correspond with the introduction? "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in everything ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift." Do these two parts coincide? Is this consistency? Only those who live in the letter should ask so frivolous a question. There is an ideal Church, and there is an actual society; there is a public conception, a public totality, and there is a mechanism that takes to pieces. There is a public health. It may be said consistently that the health of a nation is superb at the very moment when thousands of men are dying within the limits of that very nation. It may be said the public credit of the country never stood so high, and whilst the patriot is making that declaration concerning his country the key may be turned by the jailor upon such thieves as never disgraced the history of the country before. The Apostle speaking unto babes in Christ is a picture full of pathos. Under this declaration there lies that heroic egotism which never deserted the Apostle Paul. We might infer that the man who spoke thus meant that he could have addressed the Corinthians as men, he could speak to an audience of giants, he could summon the Titans of the ages and hold them in easy play by that infinite skill with which God had made him rich. Yet, as an economic householder, a wise tender-hearted pastor, he said, Today the food must be milk, not meat, "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat." Why? For a tender reason, for a pastor's reason "For hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." This great preacher considered his audience. The one thing that is forgotten by most preachers is the congregation. Paul knew that every congregation was a congregation of infants. He is the mighty preacher who goes along the line of infancy, simplicity, trustfulness; who explains things winningly, intelligibly, who breaks the bread into little pieces, who gives the milk in spoonsful. Only Paul had the courage to say that he was doing it. Others do it as if they were not doing it, but this man did it with avowed reasons. Then may it be true that even an apostle may not be preaching all he knows? Certainly. May even a Paul be talking alphabetically when he could talk in the very highest literature of the Church? There can be only one reply. How is this? Because Paul never preached to himself; he preached to others; he preached to those who were behind him in every spiritual acquisition; he preached that he might gather up into his arms all who needed to be loved. This entitled him to be called what he will presently designate himself, "a wise masterbuilder."

Now for faithful talk, such as could not be endured in modern times, now for a speech that would dispossess a pope of his chair. "For ye are yet carnal;" ye are yet outsiders, ye are yet objective, dealing only in personalities, and frivolities, and fashions; ye are not subjective, spiritual, introspective, gifted with the vision that sees the book and reads it before it is opened. What will Paul do with such people? Dismiss them? That would not be good pastoral oversight. He will accommodate himself to them; he will say, You cannot take what I could prepare for you, but I will prepare something that you can take; you shall have milk, you shall be treated as little children. There is no reproach in childhood, it so be ye be growing children: but an infant thirty years old is a monstrosity.

Why were the Corinthians "carnal," outsiders, superficialists? "For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" Is not this what they do on the streets, in the clubs, in the ordinary social relations of Corinth? I do not hear any music in your voices, I hear only clamour, turbulence, self-assertion, party cries; you are a clique. Yet Paul would not crush them as a strong hand might crush an insect; he will reason with them, he will put interrogatively what he might have put didactically and judicially. There is a great oratorical secret in this interrogation. It was thus that Demosthenes maddened his hearers; he made them parties to his orations, there was a silent antiphony as he approached the conclusion of his appeal; he rained interrogations upon the listening Greeks until they sprang to their feet and said, "Let us fight." Paul will ask a question "Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" "Are ye not carnal? who then is Paul, and who is Apollos?" What does it amount to? what is the man who plants? what is the man who waters? Bethink ye, O ye childish Corinthians; you are exciting yourselves about the wrong objects; your enthusiasm is fine, your anger is not without a touch of sublimity, your contention is sharpened sometimes into a suggestive agony: but you are exciting yourselves upon the wrong topics. What shall we say to a man who, instead of knocking at the door, has all the while been bruising his bones against the wall? Enthusiasm is nothing in itself; it acquires all its quality and all its worth from the object on which it is expended, or the inspiration to which it owes its flame and sacrifice. So to-day the Church may be very busy with all manner of councils, meetings, congresses, conferences, intercommunications; but it may all be along the wrong line and about the wrong topic, and will end in vapour.

How were the Corinthians conducting themselves? "One saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos." That was the difficulty in Corinth, the difficulty of party feeling. Partisanship is always an evil, unless restrained by very high motives and considerations. In the Church there should be no party name: in politics there may be, and to a certain extent properly, because politics are nothing; they may be represented by a feud of words, a clamour of opinions, a contention of more or less selfish interests, as politics are at present conducted: but in the Church there is a name and by that name all things are regulated, adjusted, and settled. Compare one candle with another, but when the sun rises put out both the candles; if there were no sun it would be interesting to compare one artificial light with another, and to say, I prefer this to that, but when the sun has risen and claims the whole firmament for his dominion, then all our little sparks must vanish. It is because there is a Christ in the Church that there must be no Paul in it, no Apollos, except in a secondary and subservient and collateral sense, helping assisting, contributing to the general smooth ongoing of the household, but nothing more. "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos?" This is the very question that ought to make the Church ashamed of herself to-day. Paul would be lost in anger if he knew the use that is being made of his name in the Church at this moment. There is now a Paulianity. There are men who follow Paul, as they falsely suppose, who do not follow Paul's Lord. Paul simply wants to be known amongst us as a "minister," a servant, one who runs errands, and carries messages, and explains what his Lord wishes us to understand; he does not want to be received as Christ but for Christ's sake. Let us take care lest we make an idol of Paul and an idol of Apollos, and lest we be quoting the Epistles instead of living upon the Gospels. Are they not one? Certainly they are, but they may be perverted in their unity, they may be misunderstood in their relation: it is because they are one that we go to the fountain, it is because they are one that we cannot be content with the stream.

Paul will not have his work ignored. He says, I have planted; my eloquent friend Apollos, to whom speaking is breathing, and whose breathing is the fragrance of the garden of the Lord, has watered; we have done the little that lay in our power, but God gave the increase. Paul uses the word "God" with effective expressiveness. He lifts the discussion to its right level. The Corinthians were setting Paul against Apollos, reasoning against eloquence, eloquence against reasoning, rhetoric against logic, logic against rhetoric, and so were frittering away their time and their energy; the Apostle comes and says, you need both the logician and the rhetorician, but you must put them into their right places, they are servants, helpers, contributors; "but God gave the increase." If there is any light, any hope, any love, any joy, any truth, it is of God, and not of Paul or Apollos. "So then, neither is he that planteth anything" anything to be spoken about or made much of "neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." When did Paul so frequently use the word God? He repeats it, he returns to it, he seals every sentence with it. The Corinthians were debaters, not worshippers; partisans, not sons of the living God in the highest sense of the term.

"Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one;" Paul is as good as Apollos, and Apollos is as good as Paul, and neither of them is worthy of being mentioned, because they are only deacons, ministers, servants, errand-bearers, slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ; when you think of the Church and praise the Church, think of God, and let every doxology fly heavenward, not a syllable lost upon the earth. To this sublimity of conception would Paul call us. "And every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." Thus Paul recognises what he himself has done, and what Apollos has done, and each of them shall receive his own wages. Paul has been planting ten years or fifty, the Lord will not forget him; Apollos has been charming the Churches with that unrivalled eloquence, and with that unsurpassed knowledge of the Scriptures, in which he is so mighty; at eventide God will give him his crown. But there the matter will rest; Paul has no authority, Apollos has no authority. Paul never wants to have his name quoted; he would seem to cry in spiritual agony, "Brethren, let me alone! do not quote me, quote the Lord; I am an echo, not a voice; do not seal your letters with my authority, seal them with the superscription of Calvary."

"For we are labourers together with God." That is the highest tribute that can be paid to us. The whole administration is one, and if we are in that administration we are in it simply as helpers, called to co-operate with God; not that God needs co-operation, but that by co-operation he educates and strengthens the world. "Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." What other man dared have said so? No modern speaker dare have flashed out his words thus elliptically. "Ye are God's husbandry" is one figure, and with only a comma the Apostle continues, "Ye are God's building." We are afraid of mixed metaphors, because we are small thinkers and petty speakers, who have a reputation to take care of. Paul was a great, urgent thinker, a man who said, "The king's business requireth haste," and a man who left a good deal to be filled up. So he said, Ye are God's field, ye are God's building. We should be more expressive and instructive if less conscious of literary proprieties. "Ye are God's husbandry." Literally, ye are God's George, ye are God's field. This accounts for the popularity of the name of George in the early ages of the Church. The literal meaning is field ye are God's George, ye are God's acre. Virgil wrote the Georgics, the field pieces, the field lays and criticisms and experiences. Brethren, your name is George; ye are a field under the Lord; you want tilling, ploughing, watering, planting, all agricultural processes: but ye are God's field. Paul may have done a little ploughing, but he never made the field; Apollos may have done a little watering, but he never made the field; Paul and Apollos may have sowed a great deal of seed, but they never made the seed, they got that out of God's garner. It is God's seed, God's truth, God's wisdom, God's purpose "Ye are God's husbandry." He will not let go of that word "God," he who was so free in the use of the term, "our Lord Jesus Christ," yet in all this introduction keeps up the word God as probably he never kept it up before, that he may make the least of the human, the mechanical, and the ecclesiastical, and lift it into its broader altitude and light and colour, the Divine conception and the Divine sovereignty of humanity. "Ye are God's building, God's house." He is speaking now, not of each individual, but of the Church. Of that Church he has said, "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in everything ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge... so that ye come behind in no gift."

Then dealing with individuals in that Church he says, ye are carnal; ye are milk-drinkers, ye are milk-fed babes; you could not eat strong meat if I gave it to you, it would be too much for your feeble digestion. Now, returning to the corporate idea of the Church, he says, ye are God's field, God's house. Who takes that view of the Church to-day? Only one man here and there. Now, we have in the Church what is called discipline, so that little, mouldy, pharisaical respectabilities gather themselves together into what they call Church Meetings, and expel from their company anybody that has been doing what they call wrong. That was not Paul's idea of the Church. He would keep every man in the Church, and rebuke the defaulter night and day, but he would never let him go out if he could help it Looking at the Church in its totality he said, "I thank my God always on your behalf"; looking at the Church individually he says, "I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ"; for ye are clamouring amongst one another in a spirit of debate as to whether Paul is greater than Apollos, or Apollos is greater than Paul; I am ashamed of you! Then once more the great total idea glows like a discovered planet, and Paul says, Ye are God's field, and he wants every blade of grass; ye are God's house, a poor little hut indeed, but when he dwells in it his occupancy shall give it its only glory.

Thus we come upon great conceptions of the Church, and great conceptions of the nation. There are those who say that a nation is no better than the individuals composing it. That is fallacious; because, by the very association of individual with individual, each acquires something he could not otherwise possess. A nation is not a gathering of individuals who retain their individuality in some isolated and selfish sense; it is the friction of individuality, that clash and collision, out of which come light, motion, progress. There are those who say a church is only what its individuals are. That is wrong, or only in a very narrow sense can it be defended as right; because when the Church comes together we lose a great deal of individuality and we merge into one another; and herein is that saying true, "We are labourers together with God." The ministry is one, the Church is one; if you are rich, you hold your riches for the man who is poor; if you are gifted with wisdom, that wisdom is not to be spent on your own little fortune and destiny, it is to be shared by those on whom the spirit of genius has not alighted; and those who are most honoured and most exalted will feel an additional elevation, arising from the fact that they are the brothers of the humblest, and the trustees of him who has no helper. Ye are God's George, God's field; ye are God's house, God's building; and when God has once undertaken the ownership of the field he will see that the wheat is all garnered; when God has once owned the house he will watch every door and fill every window with noontide light. Ye are God's field; ye are God's building.

Prayer

Almighty God, we would speak to thee as the healer of sorrow, the deliverer of bondsmen, the Saviour of souls. Thy Son lived for us, died for us, and for us rose again, and for us he intercedes; we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. May we feel that we are involved in Christ, inwrought into his very thought and purpose and prayer; therein may we find our steadfastness, the assurance of our heaven, and our immortality. Dry the tears no human hand can touch; take hold of the hand of the blind, and lead them by a way they cannot see, but may their hearts glow with love as they think of the sacred end. Make the bed of the sick: watch by those who are suffering from solitariness: save the minds that tremble on the brink of madness: turn back the purposes of all wicked hearts: break the arm of tyranny, and humble in the dust the pride that is not founded upon righteousness: and thus bring us all, by a way short or long, difficult or easy, to the home, the resting-place, the sanctuary, of thy throne. Amen.