Scripture Daily

Context No. 1935 of 4322 · 1 Corinthians

Context · Reflection

1 Corinthians 3:1-9: in context

1Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ. 2I fed you with milk, not with solid food, for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, you aren’t ready even now, 3for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men? 4For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly? 5Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed, and each as the Lord gave to him? 6I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase. 7So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. 8Now he who plants and he who waters are the same, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 9For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.

Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their immaturity, shown in their jealousy and quarreling and their party spirit, one saying I follow Paul, another I follow Apollos. Such divisions, he says, are the mark of the merely fleshly. And he corrects their view of the leaders they were rallying behind: who is Paul, who is Apollos, but servants through whom you believed? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

The heart of Paul's correction is a truth that both humbles and frees: God gives the growth. The Corinthians were exalting their favorite leaders, dividing into parties behind Paul or Apollos, as though the leaders were the source of their spiritual life. Paul dismantles this: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth; the planter and the waterer are nothing, and God who gives the growth is everything. The leaders were only servants, doing their part, planting and watering; but the growth, the actual spiritual life and increase, came from God alone. No human worker produces the growth; God does. This is a truth to hold in all our work for God. We plant and water, we do our part, we labor and serve; but we do not produce the results. The growth, the increase, the actual fruit, whether in another person's life or in any work we do for God, comes from God, not from us. And this both humbles and frees us. It humbles us, guarding against the pride that takes credit for what God alone accomplishes; if someone comes to faith through our words, or a work flourishes under our hand, we did not produce that growth, God did, and the credit is his. Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything. But it also frees us, from the crushing anxiety of thinking the results depend on us. We are responsible to plant and water faithfully, to do our part; we are not responsible to produce the growth, which is God's to give. This lifts a weight: we need not agonize over outcomes we cannot control, straining to produce results that are not ours to produce. Our task is faithful planting and watering; the growth we leave to God. So we work without pride, knowing the increase is God's and not ours, and without crushing anxiety, knowing we are not responsible for what only God can give. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth; and to hold this is to be freed both from the pride that claims the results and from the anxiety that thinks they depend on us.

In my work for God, do I take pride in results as though I produced them, or agonize with anxiety over outcomes as though they depended on me, or can I hold Paul's truth that I plant and water but God gives the growth, freed both from the pride that claims the increase and from the anxiety that thinks the results rest on me, faithful to my part and leaving the growth to God?

Sources