Bible Commentaries
1 Corinthians 3

Three Kinds of Men (2:6-3:4)

Some people in Corinth saw no point in Paul’s preaching and teaching. They did not get his meaning. Others did; and of these, some were greatly changed by it and others were changed but little. Paul has words (Greek, of course) for each of these kinds of men. There are no three words in English to match exactly these three Greek words. At the lowest level is the "unspiritual" man (2:14), or "natural" man (see margin), who is deaf to the gospel story and blind to Christ—and quite content to be so. The other two levels are those whose hearts have been touched by the Holy Spirit. But the middle level is of those who are un­developed Christians, "babes in Christ" (3:1), Paul calls them. They are "in Christ"; they are on his side. But they have never lived up to their faith, nor appreciated it. At the top level are mature Christians. It was said of a certain Christian that he lived in a different "climate of the spirit" from other men. His whole attitude to life was "out of this world." He was a very practical man too, but he marched to the drums of heaven. The first-level men are like dead seed. The second-level men are like living plants, but stunted ones. The third level are the fruit-bearers. Show a light to a stone, and the stone does not change. Show a light to a baby and he will blink his eyes, but it does him little good. Show a light to a grown person and he will find his way by it.

Verses 5-9

God’s Workmen, the Apostles; God’s Workmanship,
the Church (3:5-4:21)

The Apostles’ Unity in Service (3:5-9)

You might expect, after all Paul’s talk of "spiritual" and "un­spiritual" men, that the "spiritual" were clear out of this world, that "spiritual" truths are so lofty they cannot be expressed in human language. Far from it. You can make a simple diagram to show Paul’s idea here.

Unspiritual men: discord, quarreling. Spiritual men: harmony, unity.

The "babes in Christ" are spiritual men who keep acting like unspiritual ones. Church quarrels are just as mean and unreason­able as any other kind of quarrel. It is unreasonable, and ridicu­lous too, to quarrel about which apostle is the Top Apostle. All three men whose names marked the parties in the Corinth church are simply God’s workmen on God’s farm, and the Co­rinthian Christians are the farm itself. The famous sentence, "We are fellow workmen for God," or better, "We are fellow work­ers with God" (3:9; see also margin), does not here mean Paul and the Corinthians, it means Paul and Apollos and Cephas.

Verses 10-23

The Church’s Unity in Christ (3:10-23)

Without warning, Paul changes metaphors. He often does this in the middle of a stream of thought. A moment ago the Church was a field where God’s laborers worked; now it is a building on which God’s stonemasons are employed. (This is the passage back of the famous hymn, "The Church’s One Foundation.") The building is a temple. Elsewhere Paul thinks of individual Christians’ bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:19), but here and in II Corinthians 6:16 it is the Christian community which is such a temple. At this point Paul puts in another word for Christian unity. To split a church is like wrecking a beautiful building. Indeed, splitting a church is one of the worst sins, just because the temple of God is holy.

Finally—yet not quite finally—Paul rises in an eloquent ap­peal: why do you quarrel as if Paul and Apollos and Peter were things to be owned and fought over? "All things are yours" (3:21)—all these leaders belong to all of you, they are not only God’s servants but yours. That is all Paul needed to write, but he goes on in one of his great sayings: not only do these men belong to you, but so do the world, life, death, the present, the future. And they belong to you because you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.