The New Testament

The New Testament › 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 3

1Brothers, I too was unable to address you as spiritual people. I had to address you as people of flesh, as infants in Christ. 2What I gave you to drink was milk, not solid food, because you were not yet able to take it. You are still not able, even now, 3because you are still fleshly. With jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, walking in a merely human way? 4When someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and someone else, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

5What is Apollos, then? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, each as the Lord assigned to him. 6I planted and Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the growth. 7So neither the planter nor the one watering amounts to anything; it is God who gives the growth. 8The planter and the one watering are one, but each will receive his own wage according to his own labor. 9For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

10In keeping with God's grace given to me, I laid a foundation as a wise master builder, and someone else is building on it. But each person must watch how he builds. 11For no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If someone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, 13each person's work will become visible, for the day will disclose it. It is revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test what sort of work each person has done. 14If the work someone has built remains, he will receive a wage. 15If someone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself, however, will be saved, but as through fire.

16Do you not know that you together are God's temple, and that God's Spirit lives among you? 17If someone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person, for God's temple is holy, and that is what you are.

18Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become foolish so that he may become wise. 19For this world's wisdom is foolishness before God. It is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20and again, “The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are futile.” 21So let no one boast in people, for everything belongs to you: 22Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, the present, the future—everything belongs to you. 23And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Translation notes 5

3:1–4 — Flesh and infancy. “Brothers” includes the community's women. The Greek uses related but different flesh adjectives in verses 1 and 3; “people of flesh” and “fleshly” retain their connection without implying two fixed categories of Christians. Jealousy and strife explain the criticism. Milk and solid food picture their ability to receive instruction. “Merely” makes the rebuke about human conduct intelligible; it is not a separate Greek word.

3:5–9 — Workers and ownership. Paul and Apollos are servants through whom belief came, with distinct tasks and one purpose. “God's fellow workers” can mean coworkers belonging to God or workers alongside God; the repeated “God's” emphasizes his claim on workers, field, and building. “Wage” is also commonly translated “reward.”

3:10–15 — Building and fire. The day is the time of divine disclosure and judgment. The building image concerns what is built on Jesus Christ, and the fire tests the quality of the work. Verse 15 distinguishes the lost work from the person saved, “as through fire.” The translation does not add a named place, a duration of punishment, or an explanation of purification beyond the image given.

3:16–17 — One temple. “You” is plural and “temple” singular: Paul addresses the community as God's dwelling. “Together” makes this explicit, and “among you” is also literally “in you.” The same Greek verb appears in both halves of verse 17, rendered “destroys” and “will destroy”; the warning is not weakened by changing the second occurrence to mere disapproval.

3:18–23 — Wisdom and belonging. The quotations draw on Job 5:13 and Psalm 94:11 in Paul's wording. Cephas is Peter's Aramaic name. Paul's conclusion reverses the claim “I belong to Paul”: the workers belong to the community's provision, while the community belongs to Christ and Christ to God. It is not an instruction to exercise unrestricted possession of other people.