1 Corinthians 3
3
Chapter 3
God wants his people to grow as believers
1My Christian friends, I could not teach you as I would teach people who have God's Spirit. I had to teach you as people who belong only to this world. You were like little children who could not understand the message about Christ very well. 2I had to teach you things that were easy to understand, like a mother gives milk to a baby. You were not yet ready to receive proper food. And you are still not ready to receive God's complete message! 3You still do what your human nature wants to do. You are jealous of each other, and you quarrel with each other. Yes! This shows that you do what your human nature wants to do. You live like people who do not know God. 4Some of you say, ‘Paul is my leader.’ And other people say, ‘Apollos is my leader.’ When you speak like that, you are talking like people who belong to this world.
5Is Apollos important? Is Paul important? No! We are God's servants. We told you God's good news and you believed it. Each of us is doing the job which the Lord has given to us. 6When I told you God's good news, I was like someone who planted seeds. Then Apollos was like someone who gave water to the young plants. But it was God who caused everything to grow. 7The person who plants the seeds is not important. The person who gives water to the plants is not important. The important person is God, because he causes everything to grow. 8The person who plants and the person who gives water both have the same purpose. God will pay each person what is right for their work. 9Apollos and I work together as God's servants. You are like God's field that we work in.
You are also like a building that belongs to God. 10I am like a good builder. God has given that job to me and he has helped me to do it well. I was the person who built the foundation. Now other people are building on that foundation. #3:10 Paul was the first person to tell God's good news to the people in Corinth. Other people, like Apollos, helped the believers to understand more about God's message. But each person must be careful how he builds. 11God has already put Jesus Christ as the only foundation of this building. So nobody can put any other foundation there.
12People may build on this foundation with gold, silver or valuable stones. Or they may build on it with wood, dry grass or leaves. 13One day, God will show clearly how good each builder's work is. God will put each person's work into a fire on that great day. #3:13 That is the day when Christ will return and judge everyone. The fire will show whether their work is good or bad. 14If the fire does not destroy the work, then that builder will receive good things from God. 15But if the fire destroys a builder's work, that person will lose everything. The person himself will be safe. But he will be like someone who has run through the fire to a safe place.
16You surely know that you are like God's special house. As God's people, God's Spirit lives in you. 17If anyone destroys God's special house, then God will destroy that person. And you are like that house. You belong to God in a special way.
18Be careful! Do not think that you are better than you really are. Maybe you think that you are wise, like people today want to be wise. But if you want to become truly wise, be ready for other people to think that you are a fool. 19People in this world think that some people are wise. But God thinks that those wise people are fools. It says in the Bible:
‘God causes the clever thoughts of wise people to confuse them.’ #3:19 See Job 5:13.
20In another place, the Bible says:
‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of wise people have no value.’ #3:20 See Psalms 94:11.
21Because of that, you should not be proud of any human leader. All leaders are there to serve you, as God's people. 22Do not be proud of Paul, Apollos or Peter. We belong to you. All of this world, and life and death belong to you. The things of today and tomorrow belong to you. Everything belongs to you, 23you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
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1 Corinthians 3: EASY
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MissionAssist 2018
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.