1 Corinthians 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul tells the Corinthians he had to teach them like beginners, because their jealousy and their splits into rival groups show they are still living the way ordinary people do. He explains that he and Apollos are only servants doing different jobs, while God is the one who makes anything grow. He then compares the church to a building on the foundation of Jesus Christ, says each builder's work will be tested by fire on the coming day, and warns that the church is God's temple. He tells them to stop boasting about human leaders, since everything already belongs to them, and they belong to Christ, who belongs to God.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • Paul addresses his hearers as brothers.
   • Paul says he could not speak to them as to spiritual people.
   • Paul says he had to speak to them as to people of flesh.
   • Paul says he spoke to them as to infants in Christ.
2. 3:2
   • Paul gave them milk to drink, not solid food.
   • Paul says they were not yet able to take solid food.
   • Paul says they are still not able now.
3. 3:3
   • Paul says they are still fleshly.
   • There is jealousy among them.
   • There is strife among them.
   • There are divisions among them.
   • Paul asks whether this does not show they are fleshly.
   • Paul asks whether they are not walking according to merely human standards.
4. 3:4
   • One person says, I am of Paul.
   • Another person says, I am of Apollos.
   • Paul asks whether saying this does not show they are carnal.
5. 3:5
   • Paul asks who Paul is.
   • Paul asks who Apollos is.
   • Paul and Apollos are servants through whom they believed.
   • The Lord gave to each one his part.
6. 3:6
   • Paul planted.
   • Apollos watered.
   • God made it grow.
7. 3:7
   • The one who plants is not anything.
   • The one who waters is not anything.
   • God, who makes it grow, is what matters.
8. 3:8
   • The one who plants and the one who waters are one.
   • Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
9. 3:9
   • Paul says they are God's fellow workers.
   • The hearers are God's cultivated field.
   • The hearers are God's building.
10. 3:10
    • Grace was given to Paul by God.
    • According to that grace Paul laid a foundation as a skilled master builder.
    • Another person is building on that foundation.
    • Paul commands that each one watch how he builds on it.
11. 3:11
    • No one can lay any other foundation than the one already laid.
    • The foundation that is laid is Jesus Christ.
12. 3:12
    • Someone may build on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw.
13. 3:13
    • Each person's work will be made evident.
    • The day will make it clear.
    • It is revealed by fire.
    • The fire itself will test what sort each person's work is.
14. 3:14
    • If anyone's work that he built remains, he will receive a reward.
15. 3:15
    • If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss.
    • He himself will be saved.
    • He will be saved only as through fire.
16. 3:16
    • Paul asks whether they do not know that they are God's temple.
    • Paul asks whether they do not know that the Spirit of God dwells in them.
17. 3:17
    • If anyone destroys or corrupts the temple of God, God will destroy him.
    • The temple of God is holy.
    • The hearers are that temple.
18. 3:18
    • No one is to deceive himself.
    • If anyone among them thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool.
    • He should become a fool in order to become wise.
19. 3:19
    • The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.
    • It stands written in scripture.
    • The written words are: He catches the wise in their own craftiness.
20. 3:20
    • Another written passage is cited.
    • The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise.
    • The reasonings of the wise are futile.
21. 3:21
    • No one is to boast in men.
    • All things belong to the hearers.
22. 3:22
    • Paul belongs to them.
    • Apollos belongs to them.
    • Cephas belongs to them.
    • The world belongs to them.
    • Life belongs to them.
    • Death belongs to them.
    • Things present belong to them.
    • Things to come belong to them.
    • All things belong to them.
23. 3:23
    • The hearers belong to Christ.
    • Christ belongs to God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

"Carnal" renders a Greek word meaning "made of flesh." In 1611 it meant belonging to the body or to ordinary human nature generally; it had not yet narrowed to the modern sense of sexual. The contrast is between people shaped by God's Spirit and people still running on ordinary human instinct. "Babes" is the word for infants still nursing, which sets up the milk and solid food of the next verse.

3:2

"Meat" in the King James means food of any kind, not flesh specifically; the contrast is milk against solid food. Milk versus solid food was a stock image among ancient teachers for beginners' instruction versus advanced instruction.

3:3

The King James lists three faults, "envying, and strife, and divisions." Many of the earliest Greek manuscripts have only the first two, which is why modern versions print two. "Walk" is a Hebrew and Greek idiom for the whole course of a person's conduct, not literal walking.

3:4

Apollos was a Jewish teacher from Alexandria in Egypt, known as a powerful speaker, who worked in Corinth after Paul had left (Acts 18:24 to 19:1). Nothing suggests the two men were rivals; the factions were made by the Corinthians, not by the teachers. The King James ends the verse "are ye not carnal"; the oldest manuscripts read "are you not merely human," which is the reading behind modern versions.

3:5

"Ministers" here carries its older English sense of servants or attendants, someone who waits on others. It is not a title for clergy. The Greek word is diakonos, the ordinary term for a household servant.

3:6

Paul started the church in Corinth. Apollos came later and taught the people more. Paul says that is like one man planting seed and another watering it: neither one makes the plant grow.

3:8

"Are one" does not mean the two men are interchangeable or that their work is identical. It means they belong to a single operation, one job with two assignments, which is why the next clause can still speak of separate pay for separate labor.

3:9

"Husbandry" is old English for cultivated farmland; a "husbandman" was a farmer. The Greek phrase behind "labourers together with God" is genuinely ambiguous: it can mean workers who belong to God and share the job with each other, or workers laboring alongside God. Translators divide on it, and the grammar permits both.

3:10

"Grace" here translates charis, a gift or favor freely given, and refers to the particular commission Paul says he was handed. "Masterbuilder" is architekton, the head craftsman or contractor who designed a structure and set out its foundation lines while others did the building on top.

3:12

Gold, silver and costly stones were the materials of temple construction; wood, hay and stubble were what an ordinary house or shed was finished and roofed with. "Stubble" means the dry stalks left standing after a harvest, used for thatch and for kindling. The two lists are sorted by what fire does to them: one set burns away, the other survives and is purified.

3:13

"The day" with nothing added was standing shorthand for the day of God's judgment, drawn from the Old Testament phrase "the day of the LORD." "Try" in the King James means test or assay, as fire was used to test the purity of metal; it does not mean attempt.

3:15

"Suffer loss" is commercial language: he forfeits the value of the work, the way a merchant loses cargo. "Saved; yet so as by fire" renders a phrase meaning "as through fire," the picture of a person who gets out of a burning building alive with nothing but himself.

3:16

"Ye" is plural in this verse. Paul is telling the congregation that together they are one temple, not telling each member that he is a temple individually; he makes that separate point about the individual body in 6:19. The word behind "temple" is naos, the inner sanctuary where a god was held to live, not the outer courts and precincts of a temple complex.

3:17

The King James uses two different English verbs, "defile" and "destroy," where the Greek uses one verb twice: whoever ruins God's temple, God will ruin him. The repetition is the point, a penalty shaped to match the offense.

3:18

"This world" translates a word meaning "this age," the present order of things as against the age to come, rather than the planet. The word for "fool" is moros, the root of the English "moron," and it was blunt, insulting language, not a mild word.

3:19

The quotation is from Job 5:13, following the Hebrew wording rather than the Greek Old Testament that most of Paul's quotations use. "Craftiness" in 1611 meant cunning or trickery; it has nothing to do with skill at a craft.

3:20

The quotation is from Psalm 94:11. The psalm reads "the thoughts of man"; Paul has "the wise," narrowing the line to the case he is arguing. "Vain" in the King James means empty, futile, coming to nothing, not conceited about one's appearance.

3:21

"Glory in" means to boast in or take pride in. In Corinth, students commonly attached themselves to a famous teacher and took pride in his name, which is what the slogans of verse 4 are; Paul is reversing the direction of that boast.

3:22

"Cephas" is the Aramaic name of the apostle Peter. Both words mean "rock," Cephas in Aramaic and Petros in Greek, and Paul usually uses the Aramaic form. Cephas is the third name attached to a party at Corinth in 1:12.