1 Corinthians 3
3
1 #
Rom 7.14; Heb 5.13. But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. 2#Heb 5.12-13; 1 Pet 2.2. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, 3for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? 4#1 Cor 1.12. For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely men?
5 #
2 Cor 6.4; Eph 3.7; Col 1.25. What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6#Acts 18.4-11,24-27; 1 Cor 1.12. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. 9#Is 61.3; Eph 2.20-22; 1 Pet 2.5. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.
10 #
Rom 12.3; 1 Cor 15.10. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. 11#Eph 2.20. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13#2 Thess 1.7-10. each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15#Job 23.10. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 #
1 Cor 6.19; 2 Cor 6.16. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 17If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.
18 #
Is 5.21; 1 Cor 8.2; Gal 6.3. Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19#Job 5.13; 1 Cor 1.20. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20#Ps 94.11. and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” 21#1 Cor 4.6; Rom 8.32. So let no one boast of men. For all things are yours, 22#1 Cor 1.12; Rom 8.38. whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; 23and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's.
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Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America
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.