1 Corinthians — Chapter 3

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Ephesus around AD 53–55 (16:8), a few years after spending eighteen months planting the church in Corinth (Acts 18:11). Corinth was a rebuilt Roman colony, a rich and crowded port on the isthmus between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese, proud of its orators and its "wisdom." Word has reached Paul that the church is splitting into fan clubs: "I follow Paul," "I follow Apollos," "I follow Cephas," "I follow Christ" (1:12). Chapters 1–2 set God's wisdom, the message of a crucified Christ, against the world's wisdom, and ended by describing the "spiritual person" who has the mind of Christ (2:15–16). Chapter 3 turns that around on the Corinthians: they have the Spirit, but they are not acting like it.

Divisions in the Church (vv1–23)

• "I… could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh" (v1). After describing the spiritual person in 2:15, Paul says plainly that the Corinthians do not fit the description. "People of the flesh" is sarkinos. The -inos ending describes what something is made of, "made of flesh," the word used for "hearts of flesh" (2 Cor 3:3). When Paul first came, they were brand new believers, and he expected them to be weak and human.
• "As infants in Christ" (v1). Nēpios is a small child, the opposite of the "mature" (teleios) of 2:6 and Hebrews 5:13–14. The phrase cuts both ways. "In Christ" means they really belong to him, so Paul does not doubt their salvation. "Infants" means they have not grown up.
• "I fed you with milk, not solid food" (v2). Milk is the basic message of Christ crucified that Paul preached at the start (2:2). Solid food is not a different gospel but the same truth taken deeper (2:6–7; Heb 5:12–6:3; 1 Pet 2:2). Being an infant was fine then. The rebuke is "even now you are not yet ready." Five years on, they still want the bottle.
• "For you are still of the flesh" (v3). Here the word changes to sarkikos, "fleshly" in the moral sense: controlled by the flesh and its appetites. The first word described weakness, which is natural in a newborn. This one describes a way of living that chooses the flesh. The Corinthians prided themselves on wisdom and spiritual gifts (1:5–7), and Paul tells them their behavior is ordinary unspiritual human behavior.
• "Jealousy and strife" (v3). This is the evidence. Paul does not point to their theology or their gifts but to how they treat each other. Both words appear among "the works of the flesh" in Galatians 5:20. Spiritual maturity shows up in relationships, not in knowledge.
• "Merely human" (v4). Literally "are you not men?" The best manuscripts read "men" (anthrōpoi) here, while later ones repeat "fleshly." The sense is the same: they are acting like people who have never received the Spirit. In Greek city culture, students attached themselves to a famous teacher and boasted of their school. The church had imported that habit, and Jesus had forbidden it among his followers (Matt 23:8–10).
• "What then is Apollos? What is Paul?" (v5). Paul asks what, not who. The answer: "servants," diakonoi, a word that describes a servant in relation to the work he does, like a waiter at a table. They are the ones "through whom" the Corinthians believed, not the ones "in whom." And each one's role was "as the Lord assigned."
• "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth" (v6). Acts tells both halves: Paul founded the church (Acts 18:1–11), and Apollos came later and strengthened it (Acts 18:27–19:1). In Greek, "planted" and "watered" are single past actions, while "gave the growth" is in a tense that pictures ongoing activity. The farmers came and went, but God kept making things grow the whole time.
• "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything" (v7). This is strong. Paul is not being falsely modest. Next to the God who gives life, the human workers are nothing. The Corinthians were arguing about whose gardener was better while ignoring the one who makes seeds grow.
• "He who plants and he who waters are one" (v8). Paul and Apollos are not rivals. They are one team with one goal. Paul never criticizes Apollos, and later he urges Apollos to visit Corinth again (16:12). The rivalry was entirely on the fans' side.
• "Each will receive his wages according to his labor" (v8). Being "one" in purpose does not erase personal accountability. The measure is "labor," the work put in, not the visible results, which are God's.
• "God's fellow workers… God's field, God's building" (v9). The word "God's" comes first in each phrase in Greek, three times over, for emphasis. "Fellow workers" is synergos, co-worker. Most read this as "fellow workers belonging to God," that is, working together under him, while others read it as "working together with God." Both are true elsewhere in Scripture. Either way, the field and the building belong to God, not to Paul or Apollos. The image now shifts from farming to construction, which carries the rest of the chapter.
• "According to the grace of God given to me" (v10). Before Paul calls himself anything, he credits grace. His calling to build was a gift, not an achievement (15:10).
• "Like a skilled master builder" (v10). "Master builder" is architektōn, the source of our "architect." In Paul's world it was the man who directed the works on a building project, the general contractor. His job was to lay the foundation right, and he did.
• "Someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds" (v10). Paul probably means all the teachers and leaders who came after him, not Apollos alone, whom he has just called a co-worker. The warning is aimed at anyone shaping the church.
• "No one can lay a foundation other than… Jesus Christ" (v11). There is only one foundation. Isaiah 28:16 promised a "tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation" laid in Zion, and the New Testament applies it to Jesus (Rom 9:33; 1 Pet 2:6; Eph 2:20). The Corinthians were in danger of treating their favorite teacher as the foundation. No teacher can be. The question is never whose foundation, only what each person builds on it.
• "Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw" (v12). Two groups of three. The first set survives fire and the second burns. "Precious stones" probably means costly building stone like marble, the materials of the temple (1 Chr 29:2), not jewels. Corinth itself had marble temples standing beside the wood and thatch huts of the poor. Most commentators take the materials to be the teaching and ministry built on Christ, including the people it shapes. Wood, hay and straw are not necessarily heresy that denies Christ, but teaching mixed with human cleverness or cheap methods that will not last.
• "The Day will disclose it" (v13). Capital D. This is the day of the Lord, the day of Christ's return and judgment (1:8; 4:5). "Revealed by fire" pictures the fire of that day sweeping through the building. "Test" is dokimazō, the word for assaying metal, testing it with the hope that it proves genuine (1 Pet 1:7). The fire tests "what sort" of work it is, its quality, not its size.
• "He will receive a reward" (v14). "Reward" is the word for wages, the builder's pay, as in v8. Paul elsewhere calls the believers he served his "boast" on the day of Christ (2 Cor 1:14; Phil 2:16).
• "He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (v15). This is a builder who stood on the right foundation but built poorly. He loses his work and his reward, but not his salvation, because salvation was never wages for work. He escapes like a man running out of a burning house with nothing but his life. The Old Testament has a similar picture of a stick pulled from the fire (Amos 4:11; Zech 3:2).
• Readings differ on vv12–15. Roman Catholic teaching has used this passage, along with others, as support for purgatory, a cleansing after death for those who die in grace but not fully purified. Protestant readers, and many Catholic scholars too, observe that the fire here tests works rather than purging souls, that it happens on "the Day" rather than in an interim state, and that it applies to every builder, Paul and Apollos included. Christians also differ on how far these verses apply beyond church leaders. The context is about teachers, but the principle that every believer's service will be evaluated runs through the New Testament (Rom 14:10–12; 2 Cor 5:10).
• "Do you not know…?" (v16). Paul asks this ten times in this letter (5:6; 6:2–3, 9, 15–16, 19; 9:13, 24). It is a mild rebuke: this is something they should already know.
• "You are God's temple" (v16). The "you" is plural, and "temple" is singular. Paul is talking about the whole congregation together, not each believer individually. That comes later, in 6:19, about the body. "Temple" is naos, the sanctuary building itself where God's presence lived, rather than the whole temple complex. When Paul wrote this, the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. He tells a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles in a pagan city that they are the place where God now lives (2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21–22).
• "God's Spirit dwells in you" (v16). The building image of vv10–15 reaches its high point. What the builders are working on is not a lecture hall but a sanctuary. In the Old Testament, God's glory filled the tabernacle and the temple (Exod 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10–11). Now the Spirit fills a congregation.
• "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him" (v17). The same verb, phtheirō, appears in both halves, meaning to destroy, ruin or corrupt. The KJV's "defile… destroy" hides that. The ESV keeps the repetition, and the punishment matches the crime. In context, the people "destroying" the temple are those tearing the church apart with factions and with teaching that undermines the foundation. They are not the poor builders of v15, who are saved. This is a much stronger warning about people who wreck the church itself.
• "God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" (v17). Holy means set apart for God. Corinth was full of temples, to Apollo, Aphrodite, Asclepius and others. God has one in Corinth too, and it is a group of quarreling believers. Paul wants them to see what is at stake when they split it into parties.
• "Let no one deceive himself" (v18). The danger is not just that others will mislead them but that they will fool themselves, imagining they are wise.
• "Let him become a fool that he may become wise" (v18). This picks up 1:18–25: the cross looks like foolishness to the world but is God's wisdom. Anyone who wants to be truly wise has to accept looking foolish by the world's standards. Paul will say it of himself in 4:10: "We are fools for Christ's sake."
• "He catches the wise in their craftiness" (v19). A quotation from Job 5:13, spoken by Eliphaz. Eliphaz was wrong about Job, but this line about God is true and Paul treats it as Scripture. "Catches" is drassomai, to grab with the hand. "Craftiness" is panourgia, cunning or trickery. Paul's wording is closer to the Hebrew than to the usual Greek translation of his day. The picture: the clever think they are getting away with it, and God simply reaches out and takes hold of them.
• "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile" (v20). Psalm 94:11. The psalm says "the thoughts of man." Paul applies it to "the wise," the very people the Corinthians admired. Even at their best, human reasonings without God come to nothing.
• "So let no one boast in men" (v21). This is the conclusion of the whole section since 1:10. The fan clubs were a form of boasting, taking pride in their teacher as if it made them important.
• "For all things are yours" (v21). Paul turns their slogan upside down. They said "I belong to Paul." Paul says, "Paul belongs to you." Many scholars note that Stoic philosophers taught that "all things belong to the wise man," and Corinthians who prized wisdom may have known the saying. Paul gives it to every believer, not because they are wise but because they are in Christ.
• "Paul or Apollos or Cephas" (v22). All three of the leaders named in the factions (1:12) are gifts to the whole church. No one has to choose. Choosing one actually makes a person poorer, because they cut themselves off from the others.
• "The world or life or death or the present or the future" (v22). The list widens until nothing is left out. Even death belongs to believers. It is not their master but their servant, the door into God's presence (Phil 1:21; Rom 8:38–39).
• "And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's" (v23). The chain runs upward and ends with God. They own everything, but they are owned by Christ. "Christ is God's" speaks of the Son in his role as Messiah and Savior, sent by the Father and returning everything to him (15:28). It does not make the Son less divine, but it puts the glory where it ends.

• Commentators: All three see the foundation as Christ and the building as the teaching and ministry raised on him. Guzik uses vv1–3 to defend the term "carnal Christian": these people are truly "brothers" and "in Christ," yet run by the flesh in key areas. The lexicon supports his two-word distinction, though in the best texts Paul uses the "weakness" word in v1 and the moral one in v3. JFB sees an "ascending climax" in v3 from envying to strife to divisions, and stresses that the reward is measured "by faithfulness, not success." Henry calls ministers "mere instruments used by the God of all grace" and warns against making them "lords of their faith." All three reject purgatory in vv12–15. Henry's reasons: the fire is figurative, it tests works and not sins, and it would include the apostles themselves, so "it can have no countenance from this text." JFB calls the fire "probatory," a test rather than a punishment, and glosses v15 as "Saved, yet not without fire." Guzik passes on D. L. Moody's principle that converts should be weighed as well as counted, and applies the passage to every believer, not just leaders. On vv16–17, JFB and Guzik both note that "you" is plural and naos is the sanctuary itself, and JFB points out that "the Greek verb is the same in both cases" of v17. On the close, Henry calls death "the kind messenger that will fetch you to your Father's house," and JFB sums up v22: "They belong to you, not you to them." Guzik pairs "all things are yours" as the believer's liberty with "you are Christ's" as the believer's responsibility.

Pointing to Christ

The chapter takes every human name the Corinthians loved and sets it in its place. Paul and Apollos are gardeners and builders. Christ is the foundation no one else can lay. The church is a temple because his Spirit lives there. Every work will be tested by fire on his Day, and the only thing that survives is what was built on him. The final line gathers it all up: everything belongs to those who belong to Christ, because Christ belongs to God.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines spiritual infancy, the garden metaphor, the building metaphor, the judgment of works, and the church as temple.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 1 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Division as a Sign of Immaturity (v.3) — Paul says envy and strife among the Corinthians prove they are still spiritual infants, not sophisticated believers. Where does envy or strife show up in your relationships with other Christians, and what would it look like to grow past it?
• God Alone Gives the Growth (vv.6-7) — Paul planted and Apollos watered, but Paul insists neither of them mattered — only God gives the increase. Are you trying to manufacture spiritual results through your own effort, or can you trust God with outcomes you can't control?
• Christ, the Only Foundation (v.11) — Paul declares that no one can lay any foundation other than Jesus Christ. What is your life actually built on, and would it collapse if Christ were removed from it?
• Work That Survives the Fire (v.13) — Paul says a coming fire will test the quality of each believer's work, not just its quantity. Are you more focused on doing a lot, or on doing what will actually last?
• The Church as God's Dwelling Place (v.16) — Paul reminds the Corinthians that they, together, are God's temple where His Spirit dwells. How seriously do you take the health and unity of your church community — are you building it up or contributing to its division?
• Everything Already Belongs to You in Christ (vv.21-23) — Paul tells the Corinthians that leaders, the world, life, death, the present, and the future all belong to them because they belong to Christ. How would that kind of abundance change the way you relate to other believers instead of competing with them?