1 Corinthians 3
3
Following Men Is Wrong
1Brothers, in the past I could not talk to you as I talk to spiritual people. I had to talk to you as I would to people of the world—babies in Christ. 2The teaching I gave you was like milk, not solid food. I did this because you were not ready for solid food. And even now you are not ready. 3You are still not spiritual. You have jealousy and arguing among you. This shows that you are not spiritual. You are acting like people of the world. 4One of you says, “I follow Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos.” When you say things like this, you are acting like worldly people.
5Is Apollos important? No! Is Paul important? No! We are only servants of God who helped you believe. Each one of us did the work God gave us to do. 6I planted the seed of the teaching in you, and Apollos watered it. But God is the One who made the seed grow. 7So the one who plants is not important, and the one who waters is not important. Only God is important, because he is the One who makes things grow. 8The one who plants and the one who waters have the same purpose. And each will be rewarded for his own work. 9We are workers together for God. And you are like a farm that belongs to God.
And you are a house that belongs to God. 10Like an expert builder I built the foundation of that house. I used the gift that God gave me to do this. Others are building on that foundation. But everyone should be careful how he builds. 11The foundation has already been built. No one can build any other foundation. The foundation that has already been laid is Jesus Christ. 12Anyone can build on that foundation, using gold, silver, jewels, wood, grass, or straw. 13But the work that each person does will be clearly seen, because the Day# The day Christ will come to judge all people and take his people home to live with him. will make it plain. That Day will appear with fire, and the fire will test every man’s work. 14If the building that a man puts on the foundation still stands, he will get his reward. 15But if his building is burned up, he will suffer loss. The man will be saved, but it will be as if he escaped from a fire.
16You should know that you yourselves are God’s temple. God’s Spirit lives in you. 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him, because God’s temple is holy. You yourselves are God’s temple.
18Do not fool yourselves. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this world, he should become a fool. Then he can become truly wise, 19because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. It is written in the Scriptures, “He catches wise men in their own clever traps.”# Quotation from Job 5:13. 20It is also written in the Scriptures, “The Lord knows what people think. He knows they are just a puff of wind.”# Quotation from Psalm 94:11. 21So you should not brag about men. All things are yours: 22Paul, Apollos and Peter; the world, life, death, the present, and the future—all these things are yours. 23And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
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Copyright © 2015 by Tommy Nelson™, a Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
1 Corinthians 3
3
1-4But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? When one of you says, “I’m on Paul’s side,” and another says, “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally childish?
5-9a Who do you think Paul is, anyway? Or Apollos, for that matter? Servants, both of us—servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual Master. We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.
9b-15 Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely.
16-17You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
18-20Don’t fool yourself. Don’t think that you can be wise merely by being relevant. Be God’s fool—that’s the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid. It’s written in Scripture,
He exposes the hype of the hipsters.
The Master sees through the smoke screens
of the know-it-alls.
21-23I don’t want to hear any of you bragging about yourself or anyone else. Everything is already yours as a gift—Paul, Apollos, Peter, the world, life, death, the present, the future—all of it is yours, and you are privileged to be in union with Christ, who is in union with God.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.