1 Corinthians 3:1

Here, I. Paul blames the Corinthians for their weakness and nonproficiency. Those who are sanctified are so only in part: there is still room for growth and increase both in grace and knowledge, Pe2 3:18. Those who through divine grace are renewed to a spiritual life may yet in many things be defective. The apostle tells them he could not speak to them as unto spiritual men, but as unto carnal men, as to babes in Christ, Co1 3:1. They were so far from forming their maxims and measures upon the ground of divine revelation, and entering into the spirit of the gospel, that is was but too evident they were much under the command of carnal and corrupt affections. They were still mere babes in Christ. They had received some of the first principles of Christianity, but had not grown up to maturity of understanding in them, or of faith and holiness; and yet it is plain, from several passages in this epistle, that the Corinthians were very proud of their wisdom and knowledge. Note, It is but too common for persons of very moderate knowledge and understanding to have a great measure of self-conceit. The apostle assigns their little proficiency in the knowledge of Christianity as a reason why he had communicated no more of the deep things of it to them. They could not bear such food, they needed to be fed with milk, not with meat, Co1 3:2. Note, It is the duty of a faithful minister of Christ to consult the capacities of his hearers and teach them as they can bear. And yet it is natural for babes to grow up to men; and babes in Christ should endeavour to grow in Stature, and become men in Christ. It is expected that their advances in knowledge should be in proportion to their means and opportunities, and their time of professing religion, that they may be able to bear discourses on the mysteries of our religion, and not always rest in plain things. It was a reproach to the Corinthians that they had so long sat under the ministry of Paul and had made no more improvement in Christian knowledge. Note, Christians are utterly to blame who do not endeavour to grow in grace and knowledge.

II. He blames them for their carnality, and mentions their contention and discord about their ministers as evidence of it: For you are yet carnal; for whereas there are among you envyings, and strifes, and divisions, are you not carnal, and walk as men? Co1 3:3. They had mutual emulations, and quarrels, and factions among them, upon the account of their ministers, while one said, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos, Co1 3:4. These were proofs of their being carnal, that fleshly interests and affections too much swayed them. Note, Contentions and quarrels about religion are sad evidences of remaining carnality. True religion makes men peaceable and not contentious. Factious spirits act upon human principles, not upon principles of true religion; they are guided by their own pride and passions, and not by the rules of Christianity: Do you not walk as men? Note, It is to be lamented that many who should walk as Christians, that is, above the common rate of men, do indeed walk as men, live and act too much like other men.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ch. 1Co_3:1-4. The partizanship of the Corinthians a hindrance to spiritual progress

1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual] The Apostle has said much of the superiority of the wisdom which is the result of spiritual illumination. He now warns the Corinthians that the majority of them do not possess it, or at best but in the scantiest measure, and thus remain on the threshold of the Christian life.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_3:1-12

And I… could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal … babes in Christ.

Incapacity in hearers

I. That the ignorance and sinfulness of a people are a just cause why faithful and wise ministers of the Word do not sometimes preach of the more sublime and excellent points in Christianity. Paul desired not only to lay a good foundation, but also to build an excellent superstructure, but the ignorance of his hearers restrained him. Even as the husbandman does not sow his best seed, wheat, and the like, because his ground is so barren that it will not bear it. As the schoolmaster teacheth not his choicest notions, because the scholar cannot receive them. To open the doctrine, consider that in Christianity, and so in our preaching, there is a twofold kind of matter.

1. That which is fundamental, plain, necessary, and easy, being the first principles of religion, the total ignorance whereof damneth.

2. There are admirable consequences and conclusions to be deduced from and improved out of these, unto which the godly are to grow, not resting in the former, but greedily desiring the latter. This is to show you that Christs school hath many forms, and it is a sin and a shame to be always in the alphabet. For further prosecuting the doctrine, consider, first, how ignorance doth restrain the ministers abilities. And ignorance is an impediment to our preaching, in these particulars: first, the more eminent and sublime mysteries of the gospel about Christ and His righteousness we cannot so frequently preach upon, but these things which may be known of God by the natural light of conscience and by the works of creation. There are things known of God partly by natural light of conscience, especially if furthered with education, and things by supernatural revelation and authority of the Scripture merely; such is the old doctrine about Christ and His offices. Now this later sort of matter, which is the marrow end life of all preaching, many of our congregations, as they now stand corrupted with blindness and ignorance, are not prepared to receive it. Secondly, as those sublime mysteries cannot be often preached on (though sometimes we must, because we are debtors to the wise as well as the foolish, and there are spiritual as well as carnal in our congregations), so likewise that growth in knowledge, and increase more and more in heavenly light and knowledge, cannot be pressed where gross ignorance is. Can we expect any increase or fruit when men are not so much as plants planted by God? Alas! the ministers of God have far higher and larger degrees of knowledge and grace to press you to if once the foundation were laid. Thirdly, there are many choice and excellent duties in the exercise whereof a Christian would have much joy and bring much glory to God; but the ignorance of a people makes the minister not so frequently urge those, because other things must be done first. The duties are these: Let the Word of God dwell plentifully in you, teaching and admonishing one another (Col_3:6). Fourthly, the ignorance of a people restraineth the ministers of God, that they cannot so powerfully press at first the pure and sincere worship of God, and the leaving of all superstitious and traditional ways of worship; but they must by degrees, here a little, and there a little, as they are able to bear it. Thus much for ignorance. Then the sinfulness of people makes them incapable of many precious truths in religion. As, first, the ministers labour is most spent in discovering the damnable nature of gross sins, taking them off from their brutish ways; and as for spiritual sins, unbelief, diffidence in the promises, carnal confidence in themselves, &c. These they cannot so much press against, because such auditors come far short of civility, and therefore much less reach to piety. Secondly, to a people living in gross sins we cannot so frequently and gloriously preach Jesus Christ in the offices of a Mediator. We cannot make it our work to set forth the promise of the gospel in its glory. We cannot preach of joy and peace in believing. Thirdly, the performing of duties in a spiritual and gracious manner, so as to have communion with God and to enjoy Him. This also is too high for wicked men. Use: To awaken people out of their ignorance and sinfulness. If Aristotle thought a young man no fit auditor for his morals because he was subject to unruly affections, how fit can people blind in mind, corrupt in affections, be to receive the truths of God! How much of the study, labour, parts, and godliness of a minister may be lost through the indocibleness of hearers! Though we preach not Latin, yet the matter we preach may be so spiritual, heavenly, that it may be as unintelligible as an unknown tongue.

II. That even among those who are truly and indeed of the visible Church of God, there is a vast difference; some are spiritual, some are carnal, some are men, some are babes. Though God created Adam and Eve in their full perfection, :yet He doth not regenerate us into a full stature in Christ. The apostle in the text speaks of two degrees only amongst the godly--the spiritual and the carnal, the men and the babes. These Corinthians are said to abound in all utterance, and they came behind no Church in any gift; yet no Church so carnal. Here were gross heresies, divisions, and several gross practices; so that a spiritual people is not a people of parts and knowledge and abilities only, but of grace and raised sanctification also. Now as there are these degrees in the truly godly, so there are peculiar duties required of them. The spiritual man is, first, to be charitable and indulgent to those that are weaker, not to despise them. Secondly, the spiritual man is to walk humbly, and to be always in an holy fear and trembling. Thirdly, the spiritual man is to consider God requireth mere of him than of others; his account will be the more terrible. Then as for the carnal or babes, two things belong to them. First, that they be not dejected, or quite out of hopes, because they are babes. Fathers have naturally tender affections to those children that are most infirm and weak. Secondly, take heed of resting in low things. To be always weak, to be always carnal, doth highly provoke God and grieve a faithful ministry; to grow in grace and bring forth much fruit are made necessary to our continuance in the state of grace.

Use 1. To confute that proud and arrogant doctrine that will have none members of a Church but who are perfect, and those also who arrogate perfection to themselves. Where can such be found?

Use 2. If those that are truly godly, yet imperfect, retaining some ignorance and some infirmities on them, are such a trouble unto the godly ministers, how unsufferable then are such as are altogether carnal! If wheat, because of some blemish in it, be to be blamed, what then is cockle and plain weeds? If imperfect fruit displease the gardener, what then do brambles and weeds? (A. Burgess.)

The comparative carnality of Christians

I. Christians are decidedly, though not wholly, spiritual. The marks of their spirituality are these:--

1. A freedom from wilful and habitual subjection to any sin.

2. The measurement of their obedience by the perfect law.

3. The ascribing of all the excellences attained by them to a Divine source.

4. Union among themselves.

II. But they have the remains of an opposite character still existing within them, in the midst of which this new one has sprung up. They remain too much carnal and become too little spiritual.

1. They bear not affliction well.

2. Their behaviour in the Church is not good; they quarrel and contend.

3. They pay too much attention to the pomp of this world. This state must be altered. Be no longer carnal, but walk ye in the Spirit. (J. Leifchild, D. D.)

Reflections for Churches

I. The graduating method of teaching (1Co_3:1-2). Truth is to be administered with regard to the receptive powers of the student, just as the administration of bodily food must have regard to the digestive capacities of those who need it. Though men might live on milk, strong meat would kill children. There are truths in the gospel of such an elevated character, requiring so much intellect and culture to appreciate them, that to enforce them on the attention of mental and moral children would be positively to injure them. Christ practised this method of teaching. He had many things to say which His disciples could not bear. This method of teaching shows--

1. That a minister that may be useful to one class of men may be unprofitable to another.

2. The necessity of all who would enjoy the higher teaching to cultivate their mental and moral powers.

II. The carnality of churchisms (1Co_3:3-4). By churchisms I mean sectarianisms, denominationalisms, &c. Paul says this is carnal. Carnal because it engrosses the soul--

1. In the human rather than the Divine.

2. In the personal rather than in the universal.

3. In the selfish rather than in the self-denying.

4. In the transitory rather than in the permanent.

III. The unity of all true ministers (1Co_3:5-8).

1. One, notwithstanding the diversity of talents and kinds of labour.

2. One in grand practical aim. What were they working for? The spiritual cultivation of mankind. One planting, another watering, &c. Different kinds of labour, but still one.

3. One in their connection with God.

(1) Whilst all depended on God for success, God gave the increase.

(2) All were co-workers with Him. Labourers together with God.

4. One in their ultimate reward (1Co_3:8). Each from the same God, each according to his work. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

St. Pauls spiritual treatment of the Church whilst in a state of faction

Note--

I. His economic management of truth. Economy in a household means frugality in opposition to extravagance. In the dispensation of truth it means that prudent distribution which does not squander it uselessly, but which apportions to each age and capacity the amount it can turn to good account. For different ages, different kinds of food. For childhood, or babes in Christ, milk, &c.; but reverse this, and what is strength to the man is injury to the child--it cannot bear it.

1. The doctrine which the apostle calls strong meat, if taught at first, would deter from further discipleship. No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, &c. Now strong meat does not mean high doctrine, such as election, regeneration, justification by faith, but strong demands on self, a severe, noble life. St. Paul taught the Corinthians all the doctrine he had to teach, but not all the conceptions of the blessed life which he knew of. He showed them that, leaving the principles of doctrine, they were to grow up unto Christ in all things, but by degrees. From a child we must not ask sublime forgiveness of injuries. That which would be glorious in a man might be pusillanimity in a boy. You must content yourself at first with prohibiting tyranny. Do not ask of your child to sacrifice all enjoyment for the sake of others; but let him learn first not to enjoy at the expense of another.

2. Another reason for this is the danger of familiarising the mind with high spiritual doctrines to which the heart is a stranger, and thus engendering hypocrisy--e.g., self-sacrifice, self-denial, are words easily got by rote; and while fluently talking of these high-sounding words, and of mans or womans mission and influence, it never occurs to us that as yet we have not power to live them out. Let us avoid such language, and avoid supposing that we have attained such states. It is good to be temperate; but if you are temperate, do not mistake that for self-sacrifice. It is good to be honest; but when you are simply doing your duty, do not talk of a noble life. The danger of extreme demands made on hearts unprepared for such is seen in the ease of Ananias. These demands were not, as we see, made by the apostles; but public opinion, which had made sacrifice fashionable, demanded it. And it was a demand like strong meat to the weak, for Ananias was unable to bear it.

II. His depreciation of the part played by man in the great work of progress, and his exhibition of the part of God (1Co_3:5).

1. In all periods of great social activity there is a tendency to exalt persons and means of progress. Hence, in turn, kings, statesmen, parliaments: and then education, science, machinery, and the press. Here, at Corinth, was minister-worship.

2. St. Pauls remedy was to point out Gods part and ours. Ye are Gods husbandry, we are only labourers. We execute a plan which we only slightly understand--nay, not at all, till it is completed, like workmen in a tubular bridge, or men employed in Gobelin tapestry, who cannot see the pattern of their work until the whole is executed. Conceive the labourer saying of some glorious piece of architecture: Behold my work! or some poet, king, or priest, in view of some progress of the race: See what I have done! Who is Paul, but a servant of higher plans than he knows? (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The ministerial once

As their dissensions had reference to their religious teachers, the apostle endeavours to correct the evil by presenting the ministerial office in its true light.

I. Ministers were not heads of schools or rival sects, as were the Grecian philosophers, but mere servants, without any authority or power of their own. One may plant, and another water, but the whole increase is of God (1Co_3:5-7).

II. Ministers Are One. They have one Master and one work. They may have different departments in that great work, but they are like fellow-labourers on the same farm, or fellow-builders on the same temple (1Co_3:8-9).

III. In the discharge of their respective duties they incur a great responsibility. If they attempt to build up the temple of God with the rubbish of their own wisdom, they will be severely punished. If they employ the materials which God has furnished, they will be rewarded (1Co_3:10-15). The Church is the temple of God, and ministers will be held to strict account for the doctrines which they preach and for the way in which they execute their office (1Co_3:16-17).

IV. No minister need deceive himself in this matter. He cannot preach a higher wisdom than the wisdom of God; and to learn that wisdom he must renounce his own (1Co_3:18-20).

V. Therefore the people should not place their confidence in ministers, who belong to the Church, and not the Church to them. To the interests and consummation of the Church all things, visible and invisible, are made subservient (1Co_3:21-23). (C. Hodge, D. D.)

Prod an example to Christian ministers

I. His wisdom

1. He discriminates the spiritual condition of his charge.

2. Unfolds it.

3. Adapts himself to it.

II. His humility.

1. He repudiates all the glory of his success.

2. Claims no superiority over his brethren.

3. Ascribes all honour to God.

III. His exalted views of his work

1. Co-operation with God.

2. Gods husbandry.

3. Gods building.

IV. His deep sense of his responsibility.

1. He would build on the right foundation.

2. With solid material.

3. Under the solemn conviction that his work must be tried by fire. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

I have fed you with milk and not with meat.--

Milk for babes

This second verse is a further amplification of Pauls complaint: they were babes, and not strong men. Wherein did this appear? By the meat he did provide for them. He compareth himself to a nurse, who does not provide strong meat, but milk for babes; for that were to kill them rather than to nourish them. Now this action of Pauls does denote the great skill and prudence which the apostle used, considering what was fit for his hearers, and condescending thereunto. He that was rapt up into the third heavens, what sublime mysteries might he have preached upon! But he preaches not to show his learning, but to do good to them.

I. There is a great deal of prudence and wisdom required in the ministers of god so to preach as that it, may be profitable to the hearers. The nurse is carefully to observe what meat the child may eat; the shepherd, what are the fit pastures for to lead his sheep into; the husbandman, what is the proper seed for such ground; the physician, what is the proper physic for such constitutions. To open this doctrine, consider that a ministers duty of feeding his flock lies in two things--his teaching of them and his governing of them--and both these require great prudence. If Solomon, above all things, prayed for wisdom to govern the people in civil things, how much more have we cause to pray for wisdom in the administration of spiritual things? How easily may we give you poison for bread without wisdom I

1. For information. There is required judgment and a sound mind to separate truth from falsehood; to know which is gold and precious stone, and which is hay and stubble; to winnow the chaff from the wheat.

2. As wisdom is required to choose out true and sound matter, so to proportion it to the capacity of the hearers.

(1) To preach the nature of God and His attributes; of original sin, of conversion, of justification; as also about Christ and His offices.

(2) To preach comfort, and dispense the grace of God in the gospel. But here is much wisdom required that he doth it not to impenitent sinners.

(3) To rebuke and reprove for sin. Now how great a skill is it wisely to reprove, to have zeal and knowledge together! Some must be reproved sharply (Tit_1:13), cuttingly. We must not spare. Thus John called some a generation of vipers (Mat_3:7), and our Saviour, Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, many times repeating that, upbraiding of them. Others, again, are tender, tractable; meekness will do more than austerity. As for Church government, the wise management of that is far more difficult than political. Let us consider the reason why this doctrinal feeding requireth such skill and prudence. First, because Divine truths are not to be managed by human, worldly wisdom, but by spiritual wisdom. As it is God that teacheth people to profit (Isa_48:17), so it is God that teacheth the minister to preach profitably. Secondly, therefore, is wisdom necessary in our preaching of Divine things, because the miscarriage of these precious truths is a far greater loss than any earthly loss. It is pity for want of skill in any calling to miscarry in a mans worldly affairs, but much more in heavenly; there needs not only faithfulness, but wisdom. Thirdly, therefore is wisdom necessary, because of the untowardness and unteachableness of people which have sundry humours, sundry appetites, sundry affections and desires. Use: To show peoples duty, how much they are to pray unto God for their teachers, that they may be directed into all good thoughts for their souls good. The second doctrine remaineth to be amplified, which is--

II. That it is very necessary to have a people instructed with the principles of religion before they make further progress in religion. Consider, first, and bewail the miserable atheism, ignorance, and blindness that every man naturally is born in about religion and Divine truths. Darkness covers our congregations, as it did the chaos at first. Secondly, as people are thins naturally ignorant of Divine truths, so also their wilful slothfulness about them is much more damnable. Thirdly, because naturally we are thus like a wilderness full of briars, therefore God hath strictly commanded this duty of instructing and informing those that are rude and ignorant in the ways of God. Fourthly, the two principles of religion are reduced to several heads, and are both short and easy, but necessary to be known. The doctrine about God, and Christ, and ourselves, which is the Credendum; the doctrine about faith and repentance, which is the Agendum; and about things to come, which is the Sperandum. But now, when we say these Divine principles are easy, you must take heed of two mistakes.

1. We do not mean that the Divine faith and belief of them is easy to flesh and blood. No; but they are easy supposing the grace of God in respect of other particulars in religion. The principles of religion are easy and plain to the mind enlightened, but they are either foolishness or absurdities to the greatest scholar, that is, if his heart be not opened.

2. We do not mean that the bare saying of the principles of religion by heart and rote is the true believing and knowing of them. As the child is not said to be fed with milk unless it swallow it down and be nourished by it, so neither can they be said to believe the principles of religion unless they do with understanding apply them and receive them into their hearts. Now the grounds for instruction in these principles are, first, because God accounts of no zeal nor devout affections if they be not the fruit of knowledge. Thus Christ told the woman that was so zealous for her Fathers worship, Ye worship ye know not what (Joh_4:22). Secondly, the principles are foundations, and are the root. Now, he would be an unwise artificer that should intend to rear up a house and lay no foundation. So that, so long as we preach to a people ignorant of these, we have no bottom to stand upon. Thirdly, without this good foundation laid, no preaching or duties can have any spiritual effect. Fourthly, conversion cannot be wrought without some knowledge of the principles. We cannot believe in Him we do not know. We cannot love Him we do not know. Fifthly, the knowledge of these principles is necessary to salvation. You that are ignorant totally of them cannot upon any just grounds hope for salvation. This is eternal life, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent (Joh_17:2). They are a people of no understanding, therefore He that made them will not save them (Isa_27:11). God would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth (2Ti_3:7). Sixthly, none can pretend excuses for their ignorance herein. That it is a great sin and just reproach to a people that have lived long under the means of grace if they have not got the true profit by it. The Word preached is commended in Scripture for several and Divine operations. Now if thou hast many years been under these droppings, and yet art a dry wilderness, how unsufferable is it! In other things of the world you think it not to be endured.

I. For opening this, let us consider what are those choice and noble effects of the ministry for the defect whereof a people may be severely blamed. First, illumination and enlightening of the understanding to believe the first principles and foundations of religion. Every science, and so that of Divinity, hath its first principles, which are easy and plain. They shine with their own light, as the sunshineth with its own light; you need not another sun to see it. So, though the sun be never so visible, if the eye be not prepared all is in vain to a blind man. What do such bats and owls in the sunshine of the gospel? Oh, if thou hadst lived in Sodom or Egypt, it had not been such a wonder; but in Jerusalem to be so blind argueth thy case damnable! Secondly, the Word preached expects this effect, not only to lay a foundation, but to build upwards; not only to plant, but to grow. Thus Eph_4:13, the offices in the Church are to bring us to a full stature in Christ. Where God gives talents, He looks for increase. The ministry is a talent of which God will require a strict account. As Paul doth sharply reprove the Hebrews for this want of growth (Heb_6:1-20.). Oh, then, sit not down at the lower round in the ladder, stay not at the bottom of the hill! Christianity is a race. There is work, and work enough for thee. Let all the world see there is a vast difference between living under no ministry, or a negligent ministry, and an instructing one. If corn should grow no better in improved grounds than in the barren heath it would be very strange. To a blind man the day and night is all one; he seeth as well at one time as another. Oh, fear thyself in a state of blindness, to whom preaching and no preaching, the ministry and no ministry, is all one; for thou makest no more progress! Thirdly, a third effect of the ministry is to establish and settle in the truth, to give a sound mind. For through mens corruptions, pride, and vainglory, the ministry, as it may increase mens parts, so accidentally increase their errors. As April showers that make the flowers fresh and sweet, so cause many croaking frogs also. Lastly, it is a shame to a people living under the ministry of the gospel a long while if they are not thereby furnished with abilities for those several personal duties that God requireth of them. Oh, the many duties God looks for at your hands which will not be expected from others!

II. In the next place, let us observe what a sin it is if people are not able to bear or receive the practical operations of the Word. For all knowledge, if it be not after godliness, is a tinkling cymbal. The Word is not only the tree of knowledge, but the tree of life also. If ye would receive the Word in the light and efficacy of it, keep not any compliance with carnal lusts. The truth is above your natural understanding, and the duties above your corrupt lives and affections. Sore eyes cannot bear the light. Festered wounds cannot bear salt; and yet the ministry is both light and salt. (A. Burgess.)

The distinction between milk and meat

I. Negatively. This distinction is not--

1. That between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. Paul did not preach the wisdom of the world to babes in Christ, and the wisdom of God to advanced Christians.

2. Not that between the Disciplina Arcani, or doctrine of the hidden essence of Christianity, which was introduced in later times. For the sake either of conciliating the heathen, or of preventing beginners from forming false notions of the gospel, it became common deliberately to conceal the truth. This is the foundation of the Romish doctrine of reserve--inculcating a blind faith and keeping the people in ignorance.

3. That which prevailed in the early Church between truth as the object of faith and as the object of knowledge. This is a distinction true in itself, but, as then understood, it meant nothing less than the difference between the doctrines of the Bible and the speculations of men. Philosophers of our own and of every other age have been willing to allow the people the truth as presented in the Scriptures, provided they themselves were allowed to explain them away into philosophic formulas. The true nature of the distinction is to be learnt--

II. Positively.

1. From the import of the figure, which leads to the conclusion that the difference is rather in the mode of instruction than in the things taught. The same truth in one form is milk, in another strong meat. Christ, says Calvin, is milk for babes, and strong meat for men. Every doctrine which can be taught to theologians is taught to children. We teach a child that God is a Spirit, everywhere present and knowing all things, and he understands it. We tell him that Christ is God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever. This to the child is milk, but it contains food for angels. The truth expressed in these propositions may be expanded indefinitely, and furnish nourishment for the highest intellects to eternity. The difference between milk and strong meat, according to this view, is simply the difference between the more or less perfect development of the things taught.

2. From parallel passages. In Heb_5:11-14 the reference is to the distinction between the simple doctrine of the priesthood of Christ and the full development of that doctrine. The important truth is that there are not two sets of doctrine, a higher and a lower form of faith, one for the learned and the other for the unlearned; there is no part of the gospel which we are authorised to keep back from the people. Everything which God has revealed is to be taught to every one just so fast and so far as he has the capacity to receive it. (C. Hodge, D. D.)

The doctrines of the gospel the food of Christians

I. What doctrines the apostle preached to the Corinthians. In all teaching it is necessary to begin with essential and fundamental principles. The same holds good in preaching the gospel to those who never heard it, and 1Co_2:2; 1Co_3:10 show that this was the apostles practice in Corinth, and the contents of his two Epistles bear this out.

1. The moral depravity of man lies at the foundation of the gospel, otherwise he would not need that salvation which it offers. Accordingly we find the apostle bringing this into view (1Co_2:14).

2. This sentiment is intimately connected with regeneration. For if natural men are under the dominion of sin, then their hearts must be renewed before they can become heirs of the kingdom of heaven (2Co_4:6; 2Co_5:5).

3. The immediate effect of regeneration is love, which is the essence of all true religion (chap. 13.). Love to God produces love to Christ; and love to Christ is the very essence of that faith, which is connected with eternal life. Accordingly the apostle exhorted the Corinthians to embrace Christ as the only ground of salvation (2Co_5:18-21).

4. After men have become reconciled to God, they still need the Spirit of promise to carry on a work of sanctification in their hearts (2Co_3:18).

5. The doctrine of perseverance is a consequence of sanctification (2Co_1:22; 2Co_5:1; 2Co_5:5; 2Co_5:8).

6. As God begins and carries on a good work in whom He pleases, so Divine sovereignty is an essential doctrine of the gospel (1Co_3:6). Which leads up to the doctrine of the Trinity (2Co_13:14).

II. Why he called these doctrines milk. Heb_5:12-14 throws light upon the metaphor. The doctrines which Paul preached to the Corinthians may properly be called milk, because--

1. They are easy to be understood. Milk is much easier to digest than meat. So the first principles of the oracles of God are plain to the lowest capacity. They require attention rather than deep penetration.

2. They are highly pleasing to the pious heart. Peter represents all Christians as new born babes who desire the sincere milk of the word.

3. They are nourishing. The converts at Corinth made swift advances in knowledge and holiness, while they were fed by the doctrines according to godliness (1Co_1:4-7).

III. Why the apostle preached such plain and practical doctrines rather than any others.

1. Their internal state required such plain preaching. They were Genthes who had never been favoured with the knowledge of Divine revelation (1Co_1:21).

2. Their external state required the same mode of preaching. The heathen philosophers opposed the pure truths of the gospel, and endeavoured to persuade the Christians to renounce them and return to their former superstition. Nor were they altogether unsuccessful, for they overthrew the faith of some. By clearly unfolding the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, the apostle took the best method to guard them against the plausible arguments of infidels.

IV. Improvement.

1. If the metaphor of milk has been properly explained, then by meat Paul means some other sentiments less plain and necessary to be known by common Christians. Such as--

(1) The rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic dispensation. We can hardly suppose that he would teach the Genthe Corinthians these dark things, because they were not prepared to understand them.

(2) The types and predictions respecting the character and coming of Christ. It would have been very difficult to explain these things intelligibly to a people who were without the Old Testament.

(3) The predictions in the New Testament concerning the great apostacy; the rise and fall of the man of sin; the calling in of the Jews; the millennium; and the state of things to the end of the world.

2. It appears from what has been said, that Pauls doctrines have been greatly misrepresented. How many ministers have quoted his own words against himself, and employed the text to justify themselves, not only in neglecting to preach the doctrines which he preached, but in stigmatising those doctrines!

3. This subject affords an infallible criterion, by which to determine who are the plainest preachers in point of sentiment. Those who preach the doctrines which Paul called milk are the plainest preachers, and the easiest to be understood by every class of hearers. There never was, and there never can be, any false scheme of religion so easy to explain and understand as that which Paul taught.

4. If the foregoing observations are just, then there is no reason to think that any people are unable to bear the doctrines which Paul preached to the Corinthians. The inability lies in the heart, and not in the understanding.

5. It also appears that now is a proper time for ministers to feed their people with milk, and not with meat. Our congregations, in general, are in a situation very similar to that of the Corinthians. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

For ye are yet carnal … and walk as men.--

Carnality

The two ideas of the text are--Men, as men, are carnal; Christians, as Christians, ought not to be carnal. Note--

I. What it is to be carnal, and how far the charge may be made good against humanity.

1. The word is of the same kindred as flesh, fleshly, &c. Flesh, however, is sometimes used in a good sense, as the heart of flesh, and sometimes in an indifferent sense, as all flesh is grass. Mostly, however, it expresses what is bad. Perhaps the terms carnal and fleshly have become the equivalents of depraved humanity from the fact of mans being in the body, and therefore from the evil in him being more openly manifested by the lustings and corruptions of the animal appetites. There might have been sin without the body, but in that case men would not have been stigmatised as carnal. Having thus got the identity of carnal and fleshly, observe the kinds and gradations of their manifestation.

(1) The first sphere is that known as fleshly lusts--irregular animal appetites. Everything that partakes of brute impulse; gluttony, drunkenness, lust.

(2) Fleshly wisdom, by which is meant not only falsehood and cunning to gain ones own ends, but thought which has no regard for God or duty, but which may be quite moral.

(3) The fleshly mind--the actings of the intellect and heart in relation to truth and love which are irregular or defective. Note the forms in which it displays itself.

(a) The form in which the intellect rejects truth altogether and turns away from Gods revelations in nature and the Bible, to its own systems and philosophies.

(b) Or the revelations may be admitted, but so corrupted by hypotheses as to make the Divine in nature and the Bible merely the occasion for filling the invisible with monstrous creations, turning the truth of God into a lie.

(c) There may be a holding of the truth simply and uncorrupted; but they who hold it may be so little instructed in it as to know nothing but its first elements, and remain babes.

2. To be carnal in any of these forms is characteristic of man as man. In illustration take--

(1) The history of man as connected with civilisation. Begin with a nation in a state of barbarism and we see disgusting outbreaks of appetite and lust. Elevate them a stage. Let the nation rise into a really civilised society, and understand the nature of prosperity, social comforts, arts, arms, science and commerce; when all the energies look no further than the present life. You know what develops then--pride of prosperity, graspings of avarice, lust of power. Then, when things have advanced further, and minds appear with high spiritual capacity, they surround themselves with forms of beauty, and school themselves in philosophy. But speculation runs rampant, professing themselves wise they become fools. They are as far from God as when given up to the gratification of animal passion.

(2) Sacred history. Soon after the Fall, with abundant testimonies of Gods character before it, the world got so corrupted that it had to be purified by the flood. The little church preserved in the ark had a fresh earth to begin upon, and erected its first altar to the true God. But in a very short time all was wrong again. Next, for the maintenance of the Divine idea, out of the mass of idolaters one man was taken, and Abrahams seed were separated from the world and shielded from corruption. Alas! their constant effort was to break away and get back to the carnal. And when by afflictions and successive revelations the national mind was improved carnality broke out in Sadduceeism and Pharisaism. Then, when Jesus appeared and revealed His truth and established His Church, came the man of sin, and all men worshipped him.

(3) The history of the individual. He begins as the slave of his appetites. By and by he awakes as if another soul were given him, and becomes respectable; he now serves his passions instead of his appetites: a mere man instead of an animal. But some go farther. They get tired of their passions, as they did of their appetites, and take themselves to philosophy, taste, and science, vainly puffed up with their fleshly mind.

(4) Society and literature for the last two hundred years. At the close of the seventeenth century English literature and manners were licentious in the extreme. The latter part of the eighteenth century was an improvement; people got prudent, calculating, and respectable. Their understanding was developed; but there was a want of all high perception of the spiritual and the Divine. To come to the present day, men talk differently from the moralists of the last century. They speak of the Divine and of the vast things for which man was made, and there is a warmth and grandeur about their speculations. But, with all their grand thoughts, and their respect for Christianity and Christ, they have no idea of sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is just the worship of taste, beauty, and mind.

II. The reasons inherent in Christianity why Christians are not to be carnal. Because--

1. Christianity claims to be a system of supernatural dogmatic truth. The gospel meets man at the highest point in the development of the carnal mind, asking, What am I, whence and whither? and says, I can tell you; I can discover to you the unseen and the eternal. Listen to me with unhesitating faith. All who will do this will find there is not a single question respecting God, man, wants, duties, prospects, which it cannot answer, and by answering put an end to the intrusions of the fleshly mind.

2. The truth thus revealed aims at the purification of our spiritual nature, and must necessarily counteract carnality. It is the grace of God which bringeth salvation, and under it men live soberly, putting away carnality from the body, the first sphere of its manifestation; righteously, putting it away from social life--the second sphere; and godly, putting it away from the spirit--the third sphere.

3. Christianity as a system of influence forbids it.

(1) It is contained in a Book. I come to that Book that it may meet me in my spiritual condition as a sinner and teach me how to be reconciled to God; and if rightly studied it will be the instrument of constant development of intellectual and moral strength.

(2) It employs, in addition, the preacher, whose office it is to cause men to grow in righteousness and true holiness.

(3) It is a system of worship. Christians approach the Infinite. What an influence for purifying the heart, raising man above the carnal, inspiring him with the Divine.

(4) And all are under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

4. The opposite of this--the temper and habits of a spiritual life are essential to their character and preparation for a life to come.

5. They cannot give any other satisfactory evidence of their being Christians.

6. The work they have to do forbids it. They are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. The tendency of man as man is to darkness and corruption, which have to be counteracted by the strenuous efforts of the life of faith and spirituality.

III. General observations.

1. Christianity, whether true or false, contains those things which, carried out, would care all the disorders of the world, and make society everywhere virtuous and healthy. There can be no question that carnality in its grosser forms is the enemy of all purity, health, and joy; and in its higher manifestation tends to degrade and disorganise humanity.

2. The nature of Christianity demonstrates its truth. It would be a greater miracle for carnal man to have been its creator, than for it to be the supernatural thing it is.

3. He that hath this hope purifies himself even as Christ is pure. (T. Binney.)

The remains of corruption in the regenerate

I. That the relics of corruption, which do abide in the godly, ought to be a heavy burden to them, against which they are daily to strive and combat. Though the tree be cut down, yet here is the stump and root in the godly. To open this, consider--

1. That even the most spiritual that are, the Christians of the first magnitude, even those that shine like suns in the world, have yet blemishes in them. But the best gold will have some dross; the best garden will have some weeds.

2. Yet there are other Christians who have sin more prevalent over them, and are easier overcome, and these deserve more to be called carnal than the former, their corruptions are more visible than their grace. Oh, take heed that thy life be not as the sluggards field, all grown over with briers and thorns.

3. As corruption doth thus abide in all the godly, and worketh differently, so it doth sometimes flame out into open fire; so that it is no longer the lust and motions of sin within, but the gross operations without. In Peter you see what a leak there was ready to drown the whole ship.

II. Whence it is that the godly do not fully conquer sin. For if you respect Christ He is greater than the devil; and if you respect grace, that is more efficacious than sin. How, then, should any lusts, passions, or motions abide in us? Now the efficient grounds are these: and then the final grounds shall be mentioned afterwards.

1. The efficient, because original corruption, which is the fountain of those streams, is not wholly dried up. So that there cannot but be those sinful affections and corrupt desires stirring in thee; these noisome vapours cannot but exhale as long as that filthy lake or bog is within thee.

2. The Spirit of God by which we come to mortify these corruptions doth not put forth its full power.

3. Therefore doth corruption remain, because the instrument of sanctification and mortification, that also is imperfect and weak. Faith purifieth the heart (Rom_11:1-36). So that if our faith be weak, the effects of it also will be weak. Lastly, therefore doth corruption abide in us, because the Law of God is spiritual, pure, and exact.

This is not an efficient ground, so much as occasional, to discover and manifest that this sour leaven still is in us. In the next place, observe the final grounds.

1. Because God intends in this life to glorify evangelical grace, and the righteousness of the gospel by faith, as the Epistles of Paul abundantly witness. Take the advantage to glorify the grace of the gospel; say thou needest Christs robes all the day long for thy nakedness.

2. God suffers these relics in us, that there may be daily exercise for faith, patience, and other graces, so that these are left to increase the crown of glory, not to diminish it. Tempests and winds discover the skill of the mariner. Thou mayest turn these clods of earth into chains of pearl.

3. That we might not he puffed up in ourselves, nor others lift up by admiration. Lastly, These thorns are still in thy side, that heaven may be the sweeter. Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. (A. Burgess.)

For whereas there is among you envying, strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal?--

Envying

The apostle generally declared the ground of their incapacity of heavenly truths. Now he enumerates the particulars, whereof envy stands in the front.

I. That envying, wheresoever it is, is a fruit of the flesh, and such a sin that a godly man should especially watch against. Are ye not carnal because of this envying? To open this doctrine, consider--

1. That the original and fountain of this envy is the same with the other great impieties that are committed in the world, viz., the flesh, or corrupt part in a man. So Gal_5:1-26. and Jam_4:1-17.

2. This sin of envy may either be in the full predominancy of it, or only in motions and combats; or if breaking out into act, bewailed and repented of. In the former manner it is in wicked men; in the latter sort it may be even in the godly. The Church of God would always abide like an ark, compacted so close together that no waters could enter in; did not envyings and evil eyes upon one another dissolve the cement and soldering whereby they are united. We shall find the disciples of John and of Christ, even those sweet roses, to have these worms breed in them.

3. Consider that envy is accompanied with a grief and a trouble, that others are indeed, or in an apprehension, in a better condition than themselves.

Now, the good that is in others, for which this envy may work, may be of several natures. As--

1. Because of the riches, power, greatness, and outward prosperity of others. And shalt thou be bad to thy own soul because God is good to others?

2. It may be because of the applause and honour, or esteem others have.

3. It may be still higher because of the parts and abilities that others have better than theirs. And it is a greater sin to envy others because of their religious parts and abilities than for any outward mercy, because these are the free gift of Gods Spirit. Now for this were the great envyings amongst the Corinthians. It is far more happy to have sanctifying graces than enlarged gifts; far more glorious to have love than large knowledge. Lastly, that is the highest wickedness that can be in envy, viz., when it is for the graces and godliness of others. How many men are reproached, envied by their neighbours and others, merely for their godliness!

Thus much for the object of envy. In the next place let us consider the subject, who are prone to it and--

1. Those that are of weak, ignorant, and narrow spirits (Job_5:21). Envy slayeth the silly one. It is the fruit of weakness in a man, his very envy betrayeth his thoughts, that he thinks others are above him.

2. Those are subject to this sin of envy, who are in a similitude of condition, estate, trade, or profession, or where there is any competition for one thing, and both cannot have it. One tradesman envieth another of the same trade. These were teachers, and they thought Paul like themselves, ambitious of glory.

3. Such are subject to envy who, because they cannot abide the good of others, they therefore study all the ways to disparage, and obscure the name and excellency of such. Thus where charity covereth a multitude of sin envy covereth a multitude of graces.

(1) Of all envyings take heed of that which is against men, because they are godly, because they live more holily than thou dost.

(2) You that are godly especially take heed of this. How contrary is this spirit of envy to that love Christ hath put into you! Let us, in the next place, consider the aggravation of this sin.

1. The wickedness of this sin may be excellently illustrated by that admirable good it is opposite to; for this is a rule, that privation is the worst whose habit is the best, that is the greatest evil which is opposite to the greatest good.

2. It opposeth that admirable goodness in Christ. Oh, come with admiration, and read, and consider the life of Christ and His death, and you will see envy is as direct contrary to Him as the serpent to the dove.

1. The grace of love and charity is often prayed for, and that by Christ Himself, that His people might have it. He prayeth for nothing so earnestly as that. It is made the sign of Christs disciples, not by miracles, not by prophecies, but by love, shall all men know Christs disciples.

2. There is still further abomination in this sin; for it is the very lively image of the devil.

3. This sin of envy is a mother-sin, a fountain-sin. There is no wickedness in the world but this sin will conceive it and bring it forth.

4. This sin is a just torment to him that commits it.

5. This sin of envy doth deprive Christians of all exercise and comfort of common graces. Lastly, it is a tenacious inbred sin. These worms will breed in the sweetest roses; these moths in the finest garments. So that the more contumacious and inherent this sin is, the greater cause to be afraid of it. Well, if it be so dangerous a sin, what remedies may be used against it?

1. Turn envy into pity; and this is an excellent cure. Nothing breaketh envy so soon as pity. He hath received more talents, and so greater increase is expected; so that he is more to be prayed for. He having a greater treasure is more obnoxious to thefts and dangers.

2. Consider that if instead of envy thou wouldst bless and praise God for the gifts and graces bestowed upon others, they would thereby be made thine. Lastly, be contented with thy condition. Envy commonly comes from discontent at what is ours. (A. Burgess.)

Strife.--

Contentions

We are come to the second sign specified. This thorn argued them to be brambles, not figs. In a great measure carnal, not spiritual. Observe that strifes and quarrelling contentions among Christians argue them to be so far carnal. Consider--

1. That the true ground of all love and peace, all concord ,and agreement, can only be upon a motive of godliness and honesty. Only godly men can truly love one another, because the motive of it is the image of God. The cause of it is Gods command, and the end of it is to do good, temporal and spiritual, to one another. Hence this is called love in the faith (Tit_3:15), and in the Spirit (Col_1:8). And therefore, if the people of God at any time quarrel, and strive with one another, there is so much manifestation that their love was not because they were godly, but for other ends. In the second place, take notice there is a twofold striving or contention.

1. That which is good and laudable. Thus Jude commands to contend for the faith once delivered. To be in an agony for it (verse 4).

2. There is a sinful and ungodly striving, And that may be about a twofold object. Either in civil worldly things quarrelling and wrangling about them, or in religious matters.

(1) Show the sinfulness of the causes.

(2) The effects wherein they manifest themselves, and--

(3) The aggravation of the sin. The cause in the general is that bitter poisonous fountain of corruption within every man. Man by nature is a spider, a toad. He can spit nothing but venom. He is a bramble that tears every one that cometh near him. Thus Gal_5:1-26.; strifes and contentions are made the manifest works of the flesh.

But the particular lusts are--

1. Pride. Where pride is there is contention (Pro_13:10). A proud man, he cannot but strive, no more than fire cannot but set all on a flame where it is. The chimney that is higher than other parts of the house, puts out all the smoke and dark vapours; and those sometimes that would exalt themselves above others, they must needs evaporate their loathsome stomach against others.

2. Ambition and vain-glory, which comes near to pride. Absaloms ambition for the kingdom, what a terrible shake did it make in Israel!

3. Malicious froward dispositions. There are some of that rancorous, turbulent nature that they cannot be quiet but in the disturbing of others. Salamanders that can live nowhere but in tire, never at rest but when they are in brawlings or contentions.

4. Covetousness and sinful love to the things of the world that makes men quarrel and brawl. Lastly, impatience, when men know not how with patience and godly wisdom to pass by many injuries and wrongs.

Now the sinful effects

1. Of striving about worldly things is discovered--

(1) In passionate and railing speeches. Let all clamour and evil speaking be laid aside (Eph_4:31; Mat_5:22).

(2) It is seen in backbiting, slandering, inventing of lies against others, whispering, and secretly reproaching of others where they are not present to justify themselves.

(3) A delight to go to law, and to implead others at the courts of judicature (chap. 6.).

(4) Lastly, this civil or uncivil contention, rather, is seen in the procuring of all that hurt and mischief to others we can, either in name or estate.

2. As for striving in religious matters, that is seen two ways.

(1) When men are given to cavil and contradict the truth, though never so evidently discovered, especially because of the purity of it, because it convinceth and arraigneth thy lusts, greatly condemning them.

(2) When men dote about questions and disputes that have no profit, or if profit, yet attend not to them in their place (Tit_3:9).

3. I come to the aggravation of this sin of contention.

(1) This striving temper is directly opposite to many commands that vehemently press love, brotherly kindness, peaceableness (Rom_12:18; 1Pe_3:8).

(2) These strifes and quarrellings make all our prayers and religion in vain.

(3) The relation we are in commands peace and unity. There is one God, one Christ, one Spirit, one baptism (Eph_4:5). (A. Burgess.)

Divisions.--

Discord

That divisions and factions do quickly creep into the best and purest Churches. This Church of Corinth was a garden planted by Paul, and, notwithstanding all his care, his constant inspection, yet these weeds grow up in it.

1. Divisions or factions may be either--

(1) Civil or ecclesiastical. Civil are all those rents and ruptures that are made by the lusts of men in a commonwealth. Thus Jeroboam made a division, he rent ten tribes from the other two. The other divisions are in the Church, and they are of two sorts, either when different doctrines or opinions are maintained, and these are called heresies. Or when there is a soundness of doctrine, yet men break the bonds of love, and live in malice and uncharitableness, and this is called schism.

(2) Factions or divisions are either personal, between godly men particularly, or more public between societies and societies, Churches and Churches. Between persons. Thus Paul and Barnabas, they were in a bitter dissention one with another (Act_15:39). So Paul and Peter; Paul reproved Peter, and withstood him to the face (Gal_1:1-24.). Or more public. Thus many Jews that believed raised great dissensions about circumcision, and the retaining of the customs of the law.

2. In the next place, what makes division or faction? And--

(1) That is, when men promote any false or wicked way against truth and godliness.

(2) Faction and division is seen when though the matter be true or good they strive for, yet they do it not in a godly, orderly way. A good intention, even in a good matter without good order, is not warrantable.

(3) A third thing in division is when men do not keep to their proper places, to their offices.

(4) Thus it is division and faction when the affections and passions of men are embittered with any carnal distempers; so that this sin doth affect the heart and spirit of a man, and then it breaks out into actions.

3. In the next place, what are the causes that make these the efficient causes?

(1) The ignorance of men, as long as men know but in part, have not perfection in the understanding; and this breedeth difference of opinions, and difference of opinions difference of affections.

(2) Self-confidence and arrogancy.

(3) The last efficient are worldly hopes and desires of carnal advantages.

(4) Lastly, there is an occasional cause, but not efficient, and that hath been the tyranny and scandalous lives of Church officers. This hath many times made sad rents. (A. Burgess.)

And walk as men.--

Walking as men

The apostle in this phrase, To live as men, or, According to man, may imply these things.

1. Mere men have no Divine faith in the matters of religion, wrought in them by the Spirit of God, but walk according to the natural dictates of conscience and education, and so are for that religion which they have been brought up in and accustomed to, whether it be right or wrong, whether good or bad. This our Saviour cleareth, when Peter made that excellent confession of faith, that Christ was the Son of God. Our Saviour graciously accepts of it, and tells him, Flesh and blood hath not revealed this to him (Mat_16:17).

2. To walk as a mere man is to propound some outward inferior comforts as the ultimate end and chief felicity of our souls. Take a man, as a mere man, and the utmost end for which he labours and strives in this world is some earthly advantages. Oh, but what saith the apostle of true Christians? We walk not by sense, but by faith (2Co_5:7).

3. To walk as mere men is to put confidence and hope only in second causes and visible instruments, not trusting the promise of God or believing His power, that He reigneth and ruleth in heaven and earth, doing what He pleaseth.

4. To walk like men is to be full of falsehood, deceitfulness, or hypocrisy, to have no truth in heart or word one to another.

5. To walk as men is here in the text to be in anger, hatred, and revengeful thoughts one against another; whereas all beasts agree among themselves, even the savage bears and tigers, yea, the devils are not divided one against another. Man naturally finds nothing so sweet as revenge upon others.

6. To walk as men is to make a mans self the Alpha and Omega, the centre wherein all the lines must meet. All seek their own, and not the things of Jesus Christ (Php_2:21).

7. Lastly, to walk as man is to commit any sin rather than to be persecuted for the truth of God. To swear, or foreswear, to turn into all shapes, to avoid danger. How are all our congregations? How live they? How walk they? Do they not live as men? Yea, how many like brute beasts? (A. Burgess.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 3:1-3. And I, brethren — The apostle having, in the latter part of the preceding chapter, observed that mere natural men, still unenlightened and unrenewed, receive not the things of the Spirit, begins this chapter with informing the Corinthians, that though he was an apostle, fully instructed in the mind of Christ, he could not, during his abode with them, speak to them as to truly spiritual persons: inasmuch as they really were not such, but still in a great measure carnal, even mere babes in Christ; as little acquainted with, and experienced in, the things of God, as babes are with respect to the things of the world. He had spoken before (1Co 2:1) of his entrance, now he speaks of his progress among them. I have fed you with milk — With the first and plainest truths of the gospel, alluding to milk being the proper food of babes: not with meat — The higher truths of Christianity; such as are more difficult to be understood, received, and practised, and therefore belong to those believers who have made some considerable progress in Christian knowledge and holiness. For ye were not able to bear it — Your state of grace has been, and still is, so low, that it would not properly admit of such a way of teaching. So should every preacher suit his doctrine to the state and character of his hearers. For ye are yet carnal — That is, the greater part of you are so in some degree; for whereas there is among you envying — One another’s gifts in your hearts, or uneasiness of mind that others have greater gifts than yourselves: or the word ζηλος may be rendered, emulation, a kind of rivalry, or a desire of superiority over others; and strife — Outward contentions in words and deeds; and actual divisions — Of one party from another; are ye not carnal — Is not this a clear proof that you are so; and walk as men? — Κατα ανθρωπον, according to man; as worldly men walk, who have no higher principle from which to act than that of mere nature, and not according to God, as thorough Christians walk.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Fault of Party Spirit

The immaturity of the Corinthian converts and their unfitness for anything but elementary instruction in the faith is proved by their mutual jealousies and their disagreements about their teachers.

1-9. Paraphrase. 'Te yourselves, brethren, are an illustration of what I say. (2) I have treated you as beginners and given you elementary Christian teaching, for hitherto you have been unfit for any other. (3, 4) You are still but immature Christians, as the strife and division about your teachers show. (5-7) We apostles are but instruments in the hands of God to secure your salvation; we are powerless of ourselves. (8, 9) Both of us are alike in this respect, and all we are concerned with is the faithfulness of our work. For we co-operate to carry out God's purpose in tilling the field of your spiritual life, or, as we may put it, in contributing to the building of your Christian character.'

1. Not.. as unto spiritual] The hidden wisdom of which the Apostle has been writing is not for them. Carnal] The Gk. means 'fleshy,' and points to the fact that they were mere infants, so to speak. It is interpreted by the words which follow.

2. Milk] the rudiments of the gospel; the alphabet of Christianity. We find samples of it in Paul's preaching (Act_13:14-43; Act_17:2-3; Act_18:22-28; Act_19:2-4).

Meat] more advanced teaching regarding the purpose of Christ's coming and the faith and hope of Christians, such as is presented in the Epistles to the Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians.

3. Carnal] The Gk. here is different from that in 1Co_3:1, and means 'fleshly,' i.e. walking in the lusts of the flesh.

4. Carnal] The Gk. is again different from 1Co_3:1 and 1Co_3:3, and means, as RV, 'men.'

5. Ministers] i.e. servants who ministered to your needs. Even as the Lord gave] i.e. according to the ability given by God.

6. I have planted] St. Paul founded the Church at Corinth (Act_18:1-18). Apollos watered] Act_18:27.

8. One] lit. 'one thing,' i.e. having a common aim.

9. Labourers together with God] RV 'God's fellow-workers.' Perhaps, better, 'fellow-workers for God,' the emphasis all through being on God's power and work. The Apostles were fellow-workers with one another, but not fellow-workers with God in quite the same sense. Husbandry] i.e. tilled field. Building] The Apostle in the next few vv. develops the illustration taken from building, with which as a frequenter of cities he was more familiar. For this metaphor cp. Eph_2:20-22; Col_2:7.

10-15. Paraphrase. 'Let me remind you that by the favour of God I was the founder of your Church. Those who followed me took up my work. (11) The foundation I laid was faith in Jesus Christ. (12) No one can lay any other; but every builder is responsible for what he builds upon it. (13) The tests applied to the spiritual lif e and character of the Church will prove his faithfulness or his unworthiness in the day when the Lord returns in judgment. (14, 15) If the spiritual life of his converts be healthy and their growth in goodness evident, he will be rewarded; but if not, he will lose his reward and barely secure his own salvation.'

10. Another buildeth] Apollos and others carried on the work begun by St. Paul. How he buildeth] The Apostle indicates the great responsibilities of Christian ministers and teachers,

11, 12. Other foundation] Faith in Christ as Saviour and willing submission to His influence are the foundation on which Christian character must be built. If these are set aside, the character is not based on Christ, and all teaching which does not begin from the statement of these principles and retain them as its basis is not in any true sense Christian.

13. The day] i.e. the day of judgment or the day of the Lord. The imagery of fire testing the building is both natural and suggested by the OT. accounts of the manifestations of Jehovah.

15. Saved] because of his own Christian life. Yet so as by fire] As the builder may escape with his life while the flames destroy the building on which he is engaged, so the Christian teacher may be saved himself, though his teaching be proved worthless for edification. 'Sincerity does not verify doctrine, but it saves the man' (F. W. Robertson).

16, 17. Woe to the teacher who by pernicious teaching or example injures or destroys the spiritual life of members of the Church of Christ: God shall do even so to him. If any man defile] A worse case than 1Co_3:15. There the merely unprofitable teacher himself escapes; here the positively hurtful is punished. Holy] i.e. sacred, not to be injured with impunity.

Which temple ye are] RV 'and such are ye,' i.e. holy.

18-23. Paraphrase. 'Do not deceive yourselves; but if there be any of you priding himself on his worldly wisdom let him quickly unlearn it, that he may learn the true wisdom. (19, 20) For as Holy Scripture teaches, worldly wisdom is but folly in God's sight. (21-23) Do not, therefore, use the names of your teachers as party watchwords, boasting about your devotion to this or that one. Learn what is good from them all, for they all alike belong to you. And not only do they belong to you, but all things belong to you; and you belong to Christ; and Christ Himself belongs to God.'

19. The wisdom of this world] The conceit and vanity of men are folly with God. The results of this folly in Christian teachers are indicated in 1Co_3:15, 1Co_3:17. It is written] Job_5:13.

20. And again] Psa_94:11.

21. Glory in men] boast of their preference for this or that teacher, as they had been doing (1Co_1:12).

21. All things are yours] To him who is united to Christ all things belong, contributing to the growth of his Christian character and the increasing perfection of his spiritual life. He learns from all teachers; the world provides him with the means of growth in grace, for all his experiences in its possessions and work influence his spiritual life; life is full of divine meaning and purpose; death is revealed to him as the gate of life; he is delivered from any danger to his spirit arising from the perplexities of the present or the problems of the future (things to come).

23. Ye are Christ's] i.e. you belong to Christ, not to Paul or Apollos or Cephas. And Christ is God's] i.e. God is over all; even Christ belongs to Him. And as we are Christ's, we belong to God. Theodoret remarks, 'Christ belongs to God, not as God's creature, but as God's Son.' Perhaps the Apostle simply desires to assert that God is supreme over all: cp. 1Co_15:24; Joh_4:34.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. This God-revealed philosophy not understood by the partisan carnality of the Corinthians, 1Co_3:1-4.

1. And I—In accordance with the elevated character of the spiritual in 1Co_2:14-16.

Could not—Consistently with the reality of the case.

Spiritual… carnal… babes—In 1Co_2:14-15, the spiritual man is opposed to the natural, or entirely unregenerate; here he is opposed to the regenerate, who are in Christ, and yet, by being in a degree carnal, are but babes. Were they wholly carnal they would not even be babes, but be unregenerate. Short-comings, infirmities, and sins, have reduced them from spiritual manhood into babyhood. For these carnal are clearly a part of that whole who are called in 1Co_1:2, saints, sanctified in Christ Jesus. They are that same class as in 1Co_6:1-11 are guilty of the shame of going to law, and yet, 1Co_3:11, are in part sanctified. And throughout this epistle the class so severely reprehended, and even menaced, by St. Paul, are held by him Christians, but faulty Christians, who needed to ascend into a higher level of holiness. From this it follows that there may be “sin in believers.” Not every sin forfeits regeneration. Such sin dwarfs the spiritual stature, and lessens the glorious reward. But not until all justifying faith is lost is the name blotted from the book of life. As babes is the antithesis in the Greek to perfect— adult, in 1Co_2:6—so it duly defines it. Babes implies childhood; perfect simply implies adulthood. So the Jews had the distinction of novices or babes, and adults or full grown, in knowledge of the law. And Alford quotes Philo as saying, “Since to babes the food is milk, and to adults (same Greek word as perfect, 1Co_2:6) cookeries of grain, so also there are of the soul milk diets suited to child-stature; adult foods for men.” A perfect man in Christ Jesus is simply an adult man in Christ Jesus. But this adult man is also the spiritual, and includes the full attainments and privileges of 1Co_2:12-16. Any thing short of this is short of adulthood in Christian life, and approximates toward childhood.

But many commentators err in making this adulthood, or Christian perfect growth or perfection, depend, as in physical development, upon time. Scripture and experience show that in spiritual life there is many a babe of two and threescore; many a soul that springs almost from spiritual birth, by a strong, living, persevering faith, to vigorous adulthood.

These two classes may not be divided by a sharp line; they may, indeed, shade into each other, just as the old and the young are classes that shade into each other; but they are, on the whole, so clearly diverse that they can be classified and specified by two different terms. Such a spiritual class is recognised in 1Co_14:37. It does not appear, here or elsewhere, whether the individual made a distinct profession of being spiritual; though others may have recognised him as such from his life and spirit. Yet it cannot be required of the man who lives in nearness to God that he should withhold full statement of the fact, whether profession or not. It is the best kind of profession of holiness when a man does not so much profess it himself as oblige his friends, by his holy life, to profess it for him.

Carnal—According to the best readings, the Greek word here rendered carnal differs in termination from that in 1Co_3:3-4. The former is σαρκινοις, the latter σαρκικοι. The terminations differ needy as our English terminations ine and ic differ; the former indicating the material of which a thing consists, the latter the quality of the thing. The former word, signifying consisting of flesh, is used in 2Co_3:3 in a good sense. As σαρκικοι is a New Testament word, not used in the classics, Stanley thinks that the other word has here been substituted by copyists, to make a confirmation with classical usage; but Alford believes it to be the true reading. The meaning would then be, as unto beings made of flesh— human—like the men of 1Co_3:3.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

1Co_3:1. And I.—Q.d. “As any other ‘spiritual’ teacher would have to do.” So Ellicott; but perhaps laying undue stress upon the “and,” which, if more than merely a half-colloquial redundance, may rather be parallel with 1Co_2:1; q.d. “Accordingly I,” etc., i.e. in agreement with the broad lines of necessary procedure laid down in 1Co_2:6-16. Spiritual.—In the precise and quasi-technical sense of chap. 2 [or inter alios, Gal_6:1]. Carnal.—We should have expected “natural” (= “psychical, animal-souled”). But this would have denied to them any participation in the grace and awakening and renewal of the Spirit. They are Christians of a low type, but not so low as that. They are “in Christ,” but only as “babes.” Note the reading: only appearing in the Received Text in 2Co_3:3, but now here also and in Rom_7:14; Heb_7:16. Some deny any distinction between the old form and the new, except of literary rank. Trench would (§ 72) distinguish as between “fleshly” (= the displaced reading) and “fleshy” or “fleshen,” parallel to “wooden” (= the new reading, and in 2Co_3:3); as if distinguishing between men in whom “the flesh” was indeed predominant, but with many gracious checks and restraints, and men in whom the one apparent feature in life was so much the literal “flesh” that they were “not anti-spiritual, but un-spiritual, … flesh and little more, when they might have been much more.” Yet he regards the word as conveying a less grave accusation than the ordinary word for “carnal” (“fleshly”) does. The varying judgments of the authorities show how slight at best is the distinction.

1Co_3:2.—Cf. Heb_5:11 to Heb_6:4, where note that the doctrine of 1 Corinthians 15 is amongst the “elements,” the “milk” for babes. Also Paul “preached the Resurrection” to the merely “natural” men of Athens (Act_17:18). Cf. “New wine in old bottles”; “new cloth on old garment.” So Christ only spoke plainly to the disciples about His death, when, e.g., Peter’s faith in His Godhead had first risen into a bold confession; and then also the announcement, so perplexing to a Jew, and so distressing to a friend like Peter, was followed up by a view of his Master in His true, native glory (Mat_16:20-21). Cf. “Neither yet now are ye able” with “Ye cannot bear them now” (Joh_16:12). Also cf. “earthly things” and “heavenly things” (Joh_3:12).

1Co_3:3.—Helps to a definition of “the flesh”; as does Gal_5:19-20, by no means a catalogue of bodily sins alone. See life in the flesh plainly differentiated from life in the material body (Rom_8:9), “Ye are not in the flesh.” Note the changes of translation in After the manner of men.—So in 1Co_15:32. But the special colouring of the phrase, whether neutral or condemnatory, varies from instance to instance of its use.

1Co_3:4.—Less complete enumeration than in 1Co_1:12. Perhaps for the reason explained in 1Co_4:6. Also he and Apollos were more closely connected than any others with the origin and growth of the Corinthian Church.

HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_3:1-4

“Babes in Christ.”—(Read Critical Notes, on “carnal.”)

I. The Creator has stamped His own unity upon His many-sectioned creation in the many homologies which link together part and part, and, above all, natural things and spiritual things, physical facts and the facts of the world of morals and religion. Just because Christ knew these links of idea and these correspondences most perfectly, He spake parables as never man spake. He saw Nature parabolic as never man saw it. He stood at the central point of God’s Idea, and saw its radiating lines of expression touching, traversing, connecting, the concentric [and, as the geometer says, “similar”] areas of diverse classes of facts. The physical history of the human body, the natural, morally neutral history of the development of the human mind, is a Parable in Nature, easily, early, always read. [1Jn_2:12-14 is a good example of this way of reading. (a) There are the “little children” who barely know more, but who do know this, that they “know their Father,” and that because of forgiven sin there is nothing but love between them. Loving, happy, living childhood, content to be alive and know Him and His favour. (b) There are the “young men,” victorious over the Wicked One, with well-knit body, and the firm tread of vigorous early manhood, to which the indwelling Word is bread and life. (c) There are the “fathers,” of whom only one thing is said—“they know Him that is from the beginning.” The strength, élan, enterprise, of manhood is perhaps gone; in a sense, the life has returned to its starting-point—as “children” they “knew Him”; but now with a deeper insight, with the experience of an intercourse of long years’ standing; as an adult, mature man who is a father, for the first time “knows” his father.] In St. Paul “babes” is never a word of praise. He hurries forward to, and hurries forward his converts to, “perfection”; the adult manhood, with its perfection; of harmonious development of every power and faculty and grace; of “knowledge of the world” of spiritual things with which for years the man “in Christ” has been conversant; of ripeness of character without any first touch of senile failure or weakness or decay. These are “babes” at Corinth.

II. Babes and carnal.—

1. “Natural” (chap. 2) would hardly have been too strong for the fact. “Envying,” “strife,” “schisms,” and these ruling and raging, are incompatible with the “spiritual” man’s life. These are “works of the flesh.” In fact, the discrepancy, as to area and included human contents, between the Ideal Church and its actual, historical, disciplinary expression and embodiment and enumeration, had already begun to appear. The Church, as its Lord reckons its census, may here and there overpass the bounds of the Church, as our humanly designed and most faithfully administered methods mark it off from “the world.” But much oftener it shrinks far within the boundary-line of our survey, and leaves the Church, of any real, effective, sanctified life, a central area of occupation within a much larger one which is hardly more than in name and claim and ownership still Christ’s. These men are still within the bound of the external organisation; the branch most utterly dormant, if not utterly dead, is still in mechanical connection with the Vine, as Paul cultivates and cares for it. He had not cut these off, as he bade them without pity or delay do with incestuous man (1Co_3:5). Indeed, in the hopefulness of charity, he goes further than logically would be possible, and speaks of these men over whom “sin has” such clear “dominion” (Rom_6:14), as “in Christ,” though “babes.” [Does he? Has he really given to those who had lapsed from any but the external, mechanical connection with Christ, the elementary lessons which, elementary as they are, belonged really to a stage in advance of them?] But it is at most the tender judgment which without any tampering with, or disloyalty to, the inevitable distinction between “natural” and “spiritual,” is willing for the moment to look no deeper than the outward profession and the still maintained connection with the Church. None but a reckless hand will lightly disturb even the outward connection, if it has at one time meant life, and is not manifestly declared unreal by flagrant sin or long-continued indifference. So long as it continues, there is always the happy possibility that the branch may again fill and thrill and throb with life; it will not lightly be disturbed. The claim of the Church is paramount that it should be kept pure; the claim of the Head of the Church demands that all dead or unworthy membership be cut off; but the claim of the redeemed soul demands that the membership, once admitted, shall be tenderly dealt with, and rated at its most hopeful value. “Envying, strifes, partisanship,” and the like; yet Paul will concede to them a place “in Christ,” if it be only as “babes,” and will “speak to them” accordingly.

2. How many members never get beyond the stage of “babes in Christ.”—There is a beauty about infancy, in nature and in grace. Nothing more charming than the simple, unaffected, direct love of God’s “little children” towards Him and towards each other. Happy manhood, both in nature and grace, which never loses the affectionate, childlike heart; keeping it fresh under, and along with, all the manly gains in knowledge and experience. A beauty about the simple directness of a child’s trust in all that is told to it; it may be deceived and misled, but the faith of a little child is more beautiful and more receptive of grace than the cynical scepticism of the man who always begins by suspecting, and presumes the worst. A beauty about the loving obedience which belongs to at least the ideal of childhood, and is one of the first, most tender fruits of the Spirit’s new birth. What music in God’s ear, and how delightful to a “perfect man” in the life of God, the first, unschooled, open, spontaneous, unconventional utterances of their thoughts and experiences, from the lips of God’s little children! But this beauty is no beauty when it becomes permanent. Fifteen, or fifty, with the face and mind and powers of five years of age, would be a calamity to the grown child, an agony to parents, a subject of mockery or of pity to outsiders. She sees of the travail of her soul and is satisfied,—that mother into whose arms is laid the helpless babe, that does not yet know her, or know itself, but simply lives, and is perfectly formed and healthy. To Him who died that His people “might have life,” that He might Himself “see His seed,” life is better than death; life is full of all possibilities; death has no possibilities, no future, but corruption. It is some measure of reward for His “pangs,” some measure of “satisfaction,” when His people begin to live, even as “babes in” Him. In a human home, in Christian lands at any rate, the child that grows weakling, puny, sickly, deformed, often calls out a love that seems intensified by the very need of love in the dependent creature; the tenderer the child, the tenderer the love. But the “satisfaction” is in the children who grow hearty and strong, who develop girlish beauty and youthful strength, until at last womanhood and manhood fill the parents’ heart with satisfying joy. What a disappointment to Paul [may the same human word be attributed to Christ also?] that after these years, since he first went to Corinth, these members of the Church there, “enriched in” everything for the sustenance and training of the new-born life (1Co_1:5-7), were still, at the most favourable estimate, only “babes in Christ”! There was no beauty or satisfaction or honour in such a standstill life. There are such in every Church. Always learning to stand, to walk, to do; never accomplishing much at either; indeed, spiritually always learning to live. To them the Church is hardly yet a school; certainly not a workshop; more truly a nursery. Every pastor has many such, who must not only be “looked after” incessantly, lest, like naughty or heedless children, they stray away into the world, but who must be nursed lest the feeble flicker of life be extinguished in death. How large a part of the work of the Churches, how large a part of the care of the ministry, must be absorbed in the working of keeping up to the level of even “babes in Christ,” some who have been in outward membership for years! [The coincidence of our paragraph with Heb_5:11-14 is noteworthy.]

3. Paul refers to their food: “Milk, not meat.”—No humble child of God’s family but acknowledges how often, in some of the lessons of God’s school, he has never seemed to get beyond the A B C of teaching. The same discipline year after year, the same trials, because the one lesson has never been perfectly learned yet. To promote His scholar into the work of the next higher “form,” whilst yet the lessons of the lower have never been mastered, would only be to ensure bad work, to attempt to “rush up” a building upon a badly laid foundation. The Jerusalem scoffers in Isaiah’s day cried half in scorn, half in anger, “Whom shall he [the prophet] teach knowledge?… weaned babes? Does he take us for such, with his precept upon precept, … here a little, there a little?” (Isa_28:9-13). The words are read by some, and are as true, if they be seriously spoken, perhaps by the prophet himself. What they said in scorn was a simple, sad necessity. They were fit only for such lessons. There are truths which alone the children can take in. There are truths which are of “the secret of the Lord,” only revealable to the grown men. There must not be on the part of the human teachers—from any mistaken policy, or from any fear of being misunderstood by their youngest pupil—any such keeping back of truth as makes what is taught all but falsehood. Economy, reserve, are not for man, for ecclesiastics, to practise. If the Spirit of God has only gradually (Heb_1:1) brought out the full round of truth, it has been from no desire to conceal anything; the disclosure has been conditioned by the receptiveness of the scholars, and by that only. To Nicodemus the Master Himself distinguished between “earthly things” and “heavenly things” (Joh_3:12), as being of different grades of comprehensibleness. Human teaching will adapt; it will not for the teacher’s sake reserve anything which is needful and can be communicated. The human difficulty is to teach elementary truth without so far distorting it that before anything more can be added, something must be unlearned; we must often pull down a little before we can “graft” the new work upon the old. The model should be the teaching of the Revealing Spirit; all absolutely true, so far as it goes; no need for unlearning in order to new learning; from milk to meat in His teaching is one orderly, harmonious progress and growth of truth. But how long He has to say, “Ye were not able to bear it; neither yet now,” etc.

4. Note the special token of carnality, of infancy.—They are children with their favourites, over whom they boast and wrangle and quarrel. No sign of “manhood in Christ,” to be so devoted to one man, or one type of minister, as to appreciate and be helped by no other.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

IV. THE UNFITNESS OF THE CORINTHIANS TO RECEIVE TRUE WISDOM

1Co_3:1-4

1And I, [I also1] brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, [fleshy2] even as unto babes in Christ. 2I have fed you with milk, and [om. and3] not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither [nay, not even4] yet now are ye able. 3For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, [om. divisions5] are ye not carnal, and walk as men? 4For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal [men6]?

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1Co_3:1. As in 1Co_2:1, so here Paul turns from his more general exposition to the consideration of his own ministry at Corinth. The points of connection are furnished in 1Co_2:6; 1 Corinthians 14. The communication of wisdom on the part of the Apostles belonged only to the sphere of the perfect, of the spiritual; it could not be extended to those who were natural psychical (Seelische) and unreceptive of that which was of the Spirit. As every other person must have done therefore, I also was obliged to treat you as persons of the latter class.—was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto (merely) fleshy (persons), as unto babes in Christ.—Instead of ψυχικός, natural, lit. psychical, Ger. seelisch, he now uses σάρκινος and σαρκικός, fleshy and fleshly or carnal, the ordinary antithesis to πνευματικός, spiritual. The sense, however, is not changed by this, for the natural or psychical man is also at the same time a “fleshy” and “carnal” man (comp. 1Co_2:14), and we can neither say, with Bengel, that these latter expressions are milder, nor with Rückert, that they denote simple weakness, while the former implies hostile opposition; nor with Theophy. that they are stronger epithets than “psychical,” nor that the latter refers to the intelligence, while the former apply to the moral side of human nature, such as the desire and passions. Meyer 2d ed., “ψυχικός denotes the category to which σαρκινός and σαρκικός belong.” 3d ed., “ψυχικός: one who stands outside of the influence of the Spirit, who either has not received Him at all, or has been again deserted by Him.” Such a person is also σαρκικός. But not every σαρκικός as such is still a ψυχικός, because a σαρκικός may be also one who experienced the influences of the Spirit, but is not sufficiently actuated by his enlightening and sanctifying power to overcome the hostile power of the flesh; he still thinks, feels, judges, acts , κατὰ σάρκα (according to the flesh). “He is here not speaking of Christians as distinguished from the world, but of one class of Christians as distinguished from another.” Hodge.—Again it is a question how σάρκιυος, fleshy, and σαρκικός, fleshly, stand related to each other. The former elsewhere is used to denote made of the flesh, carneous. [Barytones in ινος denote the material of which a, λιθινος of stone, ξύλινος of wood, etc.]. The LXX. employs it to signify partly the earthliness and weakness of man in contrast with God (2Ch_32:8), and partly what is tender and easily impressed in contrast with what is hard and stony (Eze_11:19; Eze_36:26. In like manner it occurs in 2Co_3:3). But σαρκικός is used in the New Testament, and afterwards by the church fathers, to designate the disposition and character as contrasted with πνευματικός. [Denominatives in κός express that which pertains to the noun from which they are derived, and are like our adjectives ending in ly]. Bleek in Heb_7:16 is of the opinion that in the first introduction of these terms they were used alike, and that it was hot until later that the ordinary ethical signification was limited to the form σαρκικός which occurs but rarely in the classics. Meyer on the contrary sharply distinguishes. According to him σάρκινος designates the unspiritual state of nature which the Corinthians still had in their early Christian minority, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit had as yet changed their character so slightly that they appeared as if consisting of men flesh still. But σαρκικός expresses a later ascendancy of the hostile material nature over the divine principle of which they had been made partakers by progressive instruction. And it is the latter which, as he thinks, the Apostle makes the ground of his rebuke. In so far, however, as both epithets are of kindred signification, he could, notwithstanding the distinction between them, affirm, “for ye are yet carnal.” So Meyer. The distinction between an intellectual weakness and narrow-mindedness in the first beginnings of Christianity (to which also the parallel expression νηπίοις, babes, refers), and a moral impurity and perverseness manifesting itself in the progress of Christian development, and involving also an intellectual incapacity for a true heavenly wisdom, is a distinction fully justifiable and consonant with the use of the terms σαρκικός and σάρκινος by the Apostle elsewhere. But that the term σαρκίνοιζ is to be here understood relatively, and as not denoting an entire lack of the πνεῦμα is clearly indicated by the phrase “as unto babes in Christ.” The time here referred to is that when they had just begun to receive Christian instruction, and were but recently admitted into fellowship with Christ by faith and baptism, and so become the children of God. They were of course then wholly immature and spiritually dependent, so that their conduct did not indicate the full impress of the Spirit. Their conscious will, the I, was still fettered by carnal and selfish habits, and their ability to comprehend the deeper grounds and relations of Christian truth was yet undeveloped. In short the allusion is to that crudeness which is seen in children. [And does not the word “fleshy,” seeing that the Apostle had in mind the image of babyhood, also clearly refer to the appearance of the babe also—a little lump seemingly of mere flesh, as yet evincing but little signs of mind or conscience, although containing these elements in the germ? One can hardly avoid discovering here one reason of the use of the word “fleshy” instead of fleshly, which is an opprobious epithet, applicable only to later years. That mere animalness, which is one of the beauties of the babe, becomes deformity and a disgrace in an adult. Hence the change of terms when the Apostle comes to speak of their after condition. They were σάρκινοι at first, but not developing their spirituality they become σαρκικόι]. That fondness for showy eloquence which was natural at the first passed over into the vanity and corruption of an egotistical partisanship, and so instead of attaining progressively a confirmed Christian character, they become carnal. In like manner the Rabbins also speak of little ones and sucklings. Schoettgen in loco. Wetstein 1Pe_2:2; Mat_10:42. On νηπίοις. comp. 1Co_14:20; Heb_5:13; otherwise Mat_11:25.

1Co_3:2. The figure introduced in the previous verse is still further carried out.—I gave you milk to drink.—That is, he gave them nourishment suited to their age. To the beginners in the Divine life, He imparted such instruction as was easy to be understood, the rudiments of Christian knowledge (Heb_6:1), not strong meat such as adults only could digest, not the deeper truths of wisdom, which only those who had advanced in religious experience could properly receive, 1Co_2:6 ff.—not meat.—This is connected to the foregoing in the way of a zeugma. [Winer, § 66.100.]. Instead of ἐπότισα, have given to drink, which can only be asserted of the “milk,” and not of the “meat,” some other verb, such as ἔδωκα, have given, is to be supplied. “The distinction between ‘milk’ and ‘meat’ can lie only in the formal treatment of the same fundamental truth.” Neander. “To refer the distinction here to the subject-matter of the preaching, is required neither by the figure used, nor by the connection.” Burger. [“The same truth in one form is milk, in another form, strong meat.” Hodge. “Christ is milk for babes, and strong meat for men.” Calvin]. The reason of the above precedence was,—for ye were not as yet able to bear it.—The time here referred to was the commencement of his ministry, and that of their first conversion, and the verb ἐδύνασθε, able is to be taken in an absolute sense, as it is used also in the classics, “ye were not strong or capable enough.” Meyer.—nay, nor yet now are ye able.—The ἀλλά. [which we render “nay”], is climacteric: not only were ye unable, but indeed ye are so still.” It might appear inconsistent with this declaration that Paul proceeded in the 15 to expound to them the doctrine of the resurrection which certainly is strong meat rather than milk; but there was a special demand for such an exposition, which saved him from the charge of contradicting himself.

1Co_3:3. [Assigns the reason of the inability.—For ye are yet carnal—here we have σαρκικόι—not σάρκινοι, as the word of censure applicable only to their advanced stage, and showing that though they had been Christians for a long time, they had yet the fleshiness of children upon them, now become fleshliness. The proof of this]—for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions [?], are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?—Here he refers back to what was said in 1Co_1:10, ff. In Gal_5:20 he also counts these same things as among the works of the flesh, comp. likewise Rom_13:13. Ζῆλος, envying; in classic as well as in Hellenic usage, this word occurs in a good sense, zeal, emulation, and in a bad one, jealousy, envy. Here it signifies partisan rivalry. Out of this arose ἔρις strife, i.e. verbal disputation. If διχοστασίαι, divisions (see Crit. notes) were genuine, we should have in this a climax, indicating the schisms before referred to. ̔́Οπου, whereas, occurs in the classics, also in a causal sense, because, in so far as, since. Passow. According to de Wette, it is like εἰ, a conditional designation of the reason, “if there be,” etc. According to Meyer it implies a local conception of the conditional relation: “where there is” (comp. Heb_9:16; Heb_10:18).—Κατὰ ἄνθρωπον (also Rom_3:5)=σαρκικῶς. It is the opposite to “walking in the Spirit,” Gal_5:25. What he means to say is, ‘your conduct conforms to the ways of men as they ordinarily are in their apostate and irreligious condition.’

1Co_3:4. A further confirmation.—“For when one says, ‘I am of Paul;” and another, ‘I am of Apollos.’—The allusion to the parties is not as full as in 1Co_1:12, inasmuch as he has in this paragraph only to do with that of Apollos, or rather with the opposition existing between this and that called after himself.” Meyer. “These were at the same time the most important parties at Corinth.” Osiander. Here likewise the distinction is not stated according to grammatical rules. The ἐγὼ μέν, however, brings out the contrast with emphasis: “I, on my part;” or, “I, at all events.” (Comp. Passow μέν, A. I., II. 7; vol. II. 1. p. 175 and 177),—are ye not men.—The same usage as in 1Co_3:3 : κατ̓ ἄνθρωπον “after man’s fashion.” It was natural for the Jews to see in man (אָדָם), the earthly, an implication of what was defective, imperfect, indeed the exact antithesis to God, and whatever was godlike. Hence the expression in the Old Testament: “the children of men,” and especially “the daughters of men” (Genesis 5), in opposition to “the sons of God.” (This is, according to the only interpretation suited to the connection and the spirit of the Old Testament, which sets the sanctified portion of the race over against those who represent men, human nature severed from God). The expression as here used, is certainly unique, but entirely in accordance with the analogy of Scripture. “It means people who have not been lifted above human infirmity, and in whom the Divine element is utterly wanting.” Meyer.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

Comp. on 1Co_1:12 ff.; 1Co_2:6 ff.; 1Co_2:1 ff.

1. [Christian truth is of different grades, and suited to different capacities. It has rudiments for the simplest child, and profundities which the angels desire to look into, and can never fully penetrate. It begins with the plainest facts of history, furnishing in these the foundation of a saving faith, but every one of these facts conduct us down into the deep things of God. Thus the Gospel is adapted to all classes of mankind. Its storehouse is furnished with all kinds of provisions, from the milk for babes to the strong meat for adults. In this we have one token of its Divine wisdom, and of its celestial origin and eternal destiny. Infinitude lies back of all its lowliest approaches to man in his fallen state, and in all it presents to faith, it furnishes that on which mind and heart shall feed for evermore].

2. The vanity of man apart from God. Human nature, originally so exalted in its likeness to God, so glorious in knowledge and voluntary power, has sunk so low by reason of sin, that God’s word, uttering ever the language of truth, associates with man (when regarded apart from the person of Jesus, and from what may be realized through Him) the conception of something small, weak, incapable, transient, vain, false; in short, of such imperfection and depravity as results from a rupture of our communion with God. Hence the inquiry, “who art thou, O man?” (Rom_9:20; comp. 1Co_2:1; 1Co_2:3); and, “what is man?” Psa_8:4; Psa_144:3, ff.; and the saying, “all men are liars.” Rom_3:4. Indeed, as used in common parlance, the term is often one of contempt. Luk_22:60 : “Man, I know not what thou sayest.” Mat_26:72 : “I do not know the man.” On the contrary, in Christ everything wins a different aspect. While in the Old Testament the term, “children of men,” is a disparaging epithet, Christ on the other hand, as “the son of man,” wears the honors of One, who, though He entered into all the weakness of human nature, and incurred its worst ills, yet rose again, and on this very account became the Mediator of a perfect communion with God, and the vehicle of all its consequent blessedness to the human race. By His righteousness He counterbalanced the sin of the old Adamic nature, and averts all its bitter results. He becomes also the sole Mediator between God and man, and appears as the One who from the lowest depths of humiliation, has been raised to utmost height of majesty. Comp. Mat_20:18; Mat_24:27, Mat_25:31; Mat_26:64, etc. All this was foreshadowed in the vision of Daniel, where the Son of man is seen to come in the clouds of heaven, and to whom is given eternal power and a kingdom without end (1Co_7:13), and where human nature thus honored by God, is contrasted with the brute nature, the beast, which develops itself in the kingdoms of this world. The oft-repeated title conferred on Ezekiel, בֶּן אָדָם: thou Son of man, may also be regarded as typical of this One who is preëminently the Son of man. It was bestowed on the prophet as the receiver of the Divine communications, and was as honorable as it was humiliating (comp. Gerlach on Eze_2:1). Of the same sort was the epithet, “Man of God,” which was conferred on the prophets and other messengers of God, and passed out from the Old Testament into the New Testament. In fine, it may be affirmed generally that wherever, and to the degree in which communion with God is in any way predicable, the designation “man” at once obtains a higher signification, and becomes one of honor, and is prophetic of exaltation. Elsewhere it carries the opposite import.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Heubner:—1. The wisdom of the Christian teacher is shown in knowing how to adapt himself to different ages, and to regard the necessities of his congregation; and to build up beginners unto perfection (1Co_3:1). 2. To the carnal nature belong self-love, vanity, ambition; these traits are exhibited in strife and partizanship. There is a zeal which is nothing more than an eagerness to maintain our own opinion, cause, or party, simply because it is ours, and we expect to stand or fall with it, and not because conscience bids. From this comes strife, contention about points of difference. The issue is division. Since neither will yield, they separate. This accords with man’s fashion. Just as if Christianity were an affair of schools and sects, or as if one could act in the Church just as he does in the political world where factions and jealousies abound (1Co_3:2).

Rieger:—1. God’s method of instruction requires that we do not overload. Novices are to be treated as children. We are to be considerate of their weaknesses, and not to crowd upon them those deeper doctrines which can be properly judged of only by such as are spiritual and strong. 2. In regard to “milk” and “strong meat” let us not err. “Milk “is a designation not of cheapness and meanness, but of what is most truthful and most nourishing to the spiritual life.—“Strong meat” signifies not every thing which our intellectual curiosity may lust after, but the deeper disclosures of the fundamental verities of God’s kingdom, the knowledge of which promotes growth in grace. 3. The carnal mind, suspicious, opinionated, and thus divisive, not only begets oppositions in doctrine, but also diversities in practice, which end in schism.

Starke:—1. Cr: to become a believer is not the result of a fit of enthusiasm, as if the wind were to blow upon a person and he straightway became perfect; but we must hear, learn, pray, read, inquire until we are transformed from one degree of conviction unto another. 2. Hed: God’s children often have gross and unacknowledged faults which linger in them until they have waxed in faith and grown strong to overcome. 3. To discourse to young converts of the deeper mysteries of Christian doctrine were as irrational as to give strong meat to babes. And since with the majority growth is slow and difficult, we must often continue longer to deal out to them “the sincere milk of the Word.”

Gossner:—Every one thinks his party has the kernel and others only the shell. Whereas they all are apt to let the kernel alone and dispute about the shell, as if that were the kernel (1Co_3:4). So is it with those who, having begun in spirit, go back to the flesh. Mistaking incidentals for essentials, they grow weak in the inward man and are soon puffed up (1Co_3:1; 1Co_3:21).

W. F. Besser:—The mind of Christ tolerates no party-spirit, and no love of divisions. The conscience of many in this day is not sufficiently tender on this point. Indeed there are numbers who consider their Christianity so much the purer in proportion as they disregard the visible exhibition of Church unity, and are reckless in breaking the bond of peace which outwardly unites companions in one faith.

[R. W. Robertson:—“Strong meat” does not mean high doctrine such as Election, Regeneration, Justification by faith, but “Perfection,” strong demands on Self, a severe and noble Life. The danger of extreme demands made on hearts unprepared for such is seen in the case of Ananias.]

[N. Emmons. 1Co_3:2. Doctrines of the Gospel food for Christians. I. What doctrines the Apostle did preach to the Corinthians: a. Depravity; b. Regeneration; c. Love; d. Faith; e. Sanctification; f. Final Perseverance; g. Divine Sovereignty; h. Election. II. Why these are called milk:7 a. Because they are easy to be understood; b. Because they are highly pleasing to the pious heart; c. Because they are nourishing. III. Why the Apostle preached these rather than others to the Corinthians: a. Their internal state required such preaching; b. Their external state required it. Improvement. 1. If these doctrines are milk, what is meat? a. The rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic Law; b. The types and predictions of the Old Testament; c. The predictions of the New Testament. 2. The doctrines which Paul preached to the Corinthians, as shown above, have been misrepresented. 3. We have a criterion to determine who are the plainest preachers. 4. No people are incapable of hearing the doctrines Paul preached to the Corinthians].

Footnotes:

[1]1Co_3:1.—The Rec. has καὶ ἐγώ, but with the far better and preponderant authorities A. B. C. D. E. F. G. Cod. Sin. Lach. and Tisch. read κᾀγώ [which, as Words says, “gives less prominence to the I, and accords more with the Apostle’s humility”].

[2]1Co_3:1.—The Rec. has σαρκικοῖς according to 1Co_3:3, where a preponderance of authorities declares for σαρκικοί, and only a few, governed by the original reading in 1Co_3:1, have σάρκινοι, Here as in Rom_7:14; Heb_7:16 we must read according to best authorities σαρκίνοις. [So A. B. C. D. Cod. Sin.—followed by Gries., Lach., Tisch., Words.. Alf., etc.].

[3]1Co_3:2.—The καὶ, according to the best manuscripts [A. B. C. Cod. Sin.], is rejected by the great majority of translators and by the old church fathers.

[4]1Co_3:2.—The Rec. ον̓τε instead of ον̓δέ is feebly supported and verbally incorrect.

[5]1Co_3:3.—Καὶ διχοστασἰαι is wanting in good authorities, A. B. [C. Cod. Sin.] and in the majority of versions and church fathers. Its omission is not to be explained. Probably inserted as a gloss from Gal_5:20. [Wordsworth retains it].

[6]1Co_3:4.—Rec. ον̓χὶ σαρκικοὶ ἐστε. [Instead read ον̓κ ἄνθρωποί ἐστε. So A. B. C. Cod. Sin. Alf.. Stanley, Lach., Tisch., etc.] ονκ is better attested than ον̓χὶ and ἄνθρωποι still better. The Rec. reading is probably taken from 1Co_3:3.

[7]One would suppose the aforementioned doctrines to be the strongest kind of meat. The sermon is interesting as a specimen.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 3

1. The Carnal state of the Corinthians. (1Co 3:1-9).

2. The Workmen and their Work. (1Co 3:10-15).

3. The Church the Temple of God. (1Co 3:16-17).

4. Warning against Deception and Glorying in Men. (1Co 3:18-23).

Their condition is next uncovered. They did not depend on the Spirit of God and did not enjoy the hidden wisdom and walk in it. They were carnal, mere babes in Christ, in the sense that their growth, their spiritual development had been arrested. Carnal (fleshly) is not equivalent to “natural.” The believer is no longer a natural man, for he is born again. Carnal describes a condition in which the believer walks when he is not subject to the Spirit of God, but is led and governed by natural instincts and motions. Such was their condition. What was merely of man; wisdom, learning, intellect, eloquence and other things, were highly esteemed by them. They were wise in their own conceits and gloried in men. They delighted in and longed for that which is of man, and admired it, therefore the real spiritual truths communicated by the Spirit were unknown to them.

The evidence that they walked not according to the Spirit and the wisdom of God, was the strife and factions which existed among them. They were carnal and walked according to man. This party spirit among them had its source not in the Spirit Of God, but in the flesh. In it, not the Lord was glorified, but man was exalted. They were more occupied with Paul and Apollos, their persons and talents, than with the Lord Jesus Christ. In this way sectarianism began, as the fruit of the flesh. And the remedy for it is “seeing no man but Jesus only.” If the Lord Jesus Christ is owned in His glory, and union with Him is enjoyed, then the carnal condition ends and the believer walks in the Spirit and glories no longer in man. Paul and Apollos were but servants by whom they had believed. It is true Paul planted; Apollos coming after him, watered, but God gave the increase. God is all. And any man, whether he planteth or watereth, shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. They were God’s fellow-workmen and the Saints are God’s husbandry (tillage), God’s building. And so all true servants of the Lord, though differing in gifts, are one in this that they are instruments in God’s hand.

Next ((1Co 3:10-15), God’s fellow-workmen and their work is considered in view of the time “when each shall receive his own reward according to his own labor.” Paul here calls himself a wise master-builder (an architect). It was not of himself. He did not plan the great building, the church, but it was according to the grace bestowed upon him. The Lord had chosen him for that. The mystery concerning the church which was hidden in former ages, had been made known to him by revelation. Laboring in Corinth, by preaching the Gospel, he was used by the will and the grace of God to establish the church there. The foundation was laid by him in sound doctrine, according to the revelation given to him. But neither Paul nor Peter nor any other man is the foundation upon which the building rests ; there is but one foundation, Jesus Christ, the Son Of God. The church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Eph 2:20-21). The foundation is laid, but the question is what fellow-workmen are going to build upon this one foundation.

Those who are not at all building upon the one foundation, Jesus Christ the Son of God, are of course, not considered. (The different anti-Christian cults, like Christian Science, Spiritism, New Thought, theosophy, etc., all lay claim to the name of Christ, but they reject Him and belong therefore to that class who destroy the Temple of God.) Those who own the one foundation may build upon it either gold, silver, precious stones; or wood, hay, stubble. The first three things mentioned are precious and durable; the other three things are worthless and perishable. Gold, silver and precious stones are the fit adornment of the church as the temple of God, but wood, hay and stubble are worthless material fit not for a temple, but for a mud hovel. Gold, silver and precious stones typify the service of the workman which is of faith, done in obedience to the Word and manifesting the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, while wood, hay and stubble represent what is not of faith, the work and service done in self-will, exalting man instead of the Lord, and therefore disfiguring the temple of God.

The workman whose aim is to please God and not man, whose one ambition is to exalt Christ in all his service, who labors for the perfecting of the Saints, the edifying of the body of Christ (Eph 4:12), builds that which is durable and which can never perish. The workman who pleases men, seeks the applause of man, uses the means and schemes of the world to carry on what is called “Christian work” and in it all is not obedient to the Word of God, builds that which is worthless and his work will perish.

A day is coming in which each man’s work shall be made manifest. The day is the day of Christ when all believers shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ. He is a consuming fire; and before Him whatever is of man and not of Himself will be burned up. That fire shall try every man’s (who is a believer saved by grace) work of what sort it is. Then those who toiled in an unostentatious way, who built upon the one foundation that which glorifies Him, whose work was done in faith, shall find that their work abides and they will receive their own reward. The others will see all their work go up in smoke. They shall suffer loss. There is no reward for them. They shall be saved, yet so as by fire. Like Lot who escaped out of Sodom; but all that he had wrought in Sodom, his righteous soul being vexed, was burned up. But the salvation the believer has is independent of his service and work. Every believer will be saved and live, though what he wrought may be found in that day only fit for the fire.

And the building of which the Apostle speaks is the church, the temple of God, the habitation of God through the Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit is dwelling in every member of the body. The temple of God is holy and such are ye. Then the solemn warning “if any man destroy (not defile) the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” God’s temple in which He dwells, the church, is founded on His truth. The destruction of that temple means therefore the denial of the truth of God or the introduction of false doctrines; critics of the Word, who deny the fundamentals of the faith have well been called “destructive.” They are the enemies of the cross, whose end is perdition. They are not saved as by fire, but God is going to deal with them in an awful judgment.

In the professing church today are uncountable numbers, who have crept in unawares: they were never born again and therefore they work corruption and will perish. Therefore “let no man deceive himself.” The Corinthians were setting aside the wisdom of the Spirit and were being seduced by the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness with God. They marred the temple of God by their carnal spirit, trusting in men and glorying in men. In God’s gracious purpose as revealed by the Spirit of God all things were theirs. Paul, Apollos and Cephas were the chosen instruments of God for blessing them. As believers they had all things and belong to none but Christ and through Christ to God Himself.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Section 4. (1Co 3:1-23; 1Co 4:1-7.)

Corinthian failure, and the testing of human work.

Thus we have seen the full provision made for the Church in the midst of a hostile world. The wisdom and power of God are ministered to them in Christ, all that would bring a cloud over the face of God for them being removed. And the Spirit of God is in them to give the power of the revelation in their souls, and to lead them into the deep things of God.

Yet, spite of all that has been done for them, the history of the Church, as we find almost from the beginning here, has been one of saddest failure. The spirit of the world was infecting them at Corinth, and the first brightness was departing from them. They were divided into parties, headed by teachers who were building with bad material into the house of God. The apostle warns them of the testing that all their work would receive, and of the vanity of the world-wisdom with which they were adulterating the truth of God. The recompense would not fail to follow.

1. In view of their condition the apostle first of all would lift their eyes to Him who was the Giver of all gift, the only effectual Worker of all good in any. He was pleased in wisdom as in grace to work through instruments, which the carnal, with eyes only for the visible, might put into His place, and clothe with a halo of glory which was His alone. So, alas, with the Corinthians: with all the wisdom upon which they prided themselves, they could not be addressed, as spiritual, but as carnal merely, showing the inability of the flesh to receive the things of God. They were, no doubt, Christians, but so hindered in true spiritual development as to be still mere babes in Christ; Not that a real babe in Christ is carnal; but the lack with them of freshness and simplicity showed plainly what the condition was, -that it was not really the sweet child-state, but disease. Yet, let us remember, they "came behind in no gift." Gifts they had, and the Gift! there was no lack of ability in any way, had not the whole spring of true energy been kept back by the incoming of that with which it could not mingle and had no affinity. This is the one secret of all lack of growth, and the state of the Corinthians has thus a most real, if the saddest importance for us. Wherever you hear the cry, "Too deep! too deep!" as to the things of God, be sure it is not the voice of Him who in the Christian "searcheth the deep things of God." Not that there are not for all, in every stage of growth, things that may he yet too deep; but the question has to be made: does this depth yet attract and draw us on to "search" it? does it charm us with a vision of glories yet unknown, and wake us to new earnestness of purpose? or is it but the cry of spiritual sluggishness that thinks all labor in such fields mere hard-handed servitude, or perhaps, but fancy-gardening, with not enough recompense in it to invite toil like this? And these are God’s things, the very Paradise of God made ours, of which our hearts may yet venture to say things like these!

It is such material as this which nevertheless furnishes apt scholars in the schools of men, as we may see again by these Corinthians. It is those with no deep earnestness in the things of God who naturally yield themselves to the guidance of others, and may even learn to debate over the respective merit of their chosen teachers. The flock is not kept together, but disperses under leaders, not hearing, or but indistinctly as afar off, the one commanding Voice of the true Shepherd. To Him, in fact, they are not near enough; and that is the meaning of all sects whatever.

Paul had to adapt himself to such indeed. He had to feed them with milk, and not with meat, though doubtless they would have desired this; but they could not assimilate it. He would fain have them grow, but they could only grow by what they could digest. He must therefore take them back to the first elements, and teach them to distinguish between the wisdom of the world and what was God’s wisdom for them, between the power of the Spirit and the incapacity of the flesh, between the human instrument and the divine Accomplisher. Their moral condition showed indeed how little they could be trusted to receive any higher truth. In strife and emulation they exhibited clearly the manner of men; while their engrossing topic was Paul and Apollos, and not Christ. Who then were these? Servants, by whom God indeed had been pleased to bring them to faith -faith in them? Were not the very differences of which they made so much, differences of God’s appointment, who ordered as He pleased? Paul had planted; Apollos had watered: what could have come of it, had not God given the increase? What then were these human instruments? Merely a mode of working on God’s part: God was really all. And despite all differences, those who wrought thus were only fellow-workmen God’s workmen, who among themselves were fellows; the husbandry was God’s; the building God’s. What a degradation for them to forget this, and to make themselves the work of men! Yet God would not overlook or forget to recompense these laborers of His, for whom they seemed so needlessly concerned.

2. The apostle now pursues the subject of these differences, and in view of the coming recompense. But here he takes pains to show what the most real and noteworthy differences were as before God. He could well speak, whom God had given in His grace the place of master-builder, and necessarily, therefore, the gifts for the place. This was the character of the apostolic office; which was in fact to lay the foundation upon which the whole Church was to be built. There could be but one foundation, and no one could lay another; they could only build upon that which was already laid. Here there could be therefore no strife, no variance, but entire unity of purpose, so long as the after-comer were a builder at all and not a destroyer -an open enemy. Now in building on this foundation it was not really a question of the various qualifications of the builders, so much as of the carrying on, with suitable material and workmanship, the plan and purpose of the building. It is of the Church as the temple of God that Paul is speaking here, as he says almost immediately, ordained because of the defectibility of human workmanship, to pass the test of fire -of the holiness that belongs to God necessarily -in the day of revelation, when the final results shall be revealed of all that has been wrought for Him upon the earth. What cannot stand the fire is thus unsuited to such a building, as is plain; and the difference of material from this point of view only divides it into two classes. The "gold, silver, precious stones," would abide the fire; the "wood, hay, stubble," would not. it seems evident that we have not before us in these, however, the "living stones," of which, as Peter speaks, the "spiritual house" is composed, but what we might consider more the decoration of the building. Nor is this of inferior importance when we consider that this is what, according to the figure, meets the eye of the occupant, and when we consider who this occupant is and is to be. Gold, which is the symbol of divine glory, was that which covered the whole temple that Solomon built: as "in His temple," says David, "all of it speaketh of glory" (Psa 29:9). The gold speaks therefore of a character of things, the result of them for God, and which is fullest blessing for all His creatures; as silver speaks of redemption, the meeting of man’s deepest need. The precious stones, as in the high-priest’s jewelled breast-plate, or the foundations of the eternal city (Rev 21:19), are the Urim and Thummim, the "lights and perfections" of Him, who is the "Father of lights," the various display of the divine attributes. It is plain how all this must be borne witness to in the work of every true workman, whose handiwork is to endure in the final temple to God’s endless praise. The "wood, hay, and stubble" are more difficult to interpret, but seem to speak of what is in contrast with these: of what is simply human, though with what is to man noble and venerable, as the tree is (xulon is both "wood" and "tree"). Much below this is the "hay," more perishable, and the food of the beast and not of man; while the stubble is simply worthless, and fit fuel for the flame. We cannot perhaps characterize what is here more closely,* and indeed the broadest generality may be most effective for the warning which is given, -a warning deeply needed always, and now certainly as much as ever. What a reversal of much of our human judgments will be the judgment of the great day that comes!

{*There are two suggestive papers on this topic in Help and Food for 1894, pp. 18, 48, from which it will be seen I have derived help. Would that more would communicate what they have learnt individually from the precious Word.}

For the work is revealed (only then perfectly) in fire, a fire to whose power all man’s work must be yielded up. How needful to anticipate that judgment, ever seeking to be and work before God now, so that the light of His Presence now may manifest us to ourselves as we are manifest to Him. Apparent success, the applause of man, the inspiration of benevolent, philanthropic motives, yet Christless or antichristian, as is so much today, -how little will such things avail to save much specious service from the condemnation that is at hand! The sanction of antiquity, of fathers, and church-fathers, of even the conscience unenlightened by the word of God, how little will all this avail to set aside the decree of absolute righteousness and holiness of truth! One might ask with consternation, what will survive the unswerving sentence of infinite perfection upon that which is so thoroughly imperfect at the best, so positively defiled often with impure intermixture! Yet the judge is He who has taught us to take forth the precious from the vile, that we may be as His mouth! How encouraging is this! for this character is what will be evidenced then in these judgments of His mouth. And how tender and reassuring the apostle’s words in this connection, but a little further on, "Then shall each have his praise from God" (1Co 4:5). That is what His love continually seeks; and what the blood-washed robes of the saints will attest in the day that they come forth with their Lord to take their destined place of rule with Him (Rev 19:8; Rev 19:14; comp. Rev 7:14; Rev 22:14, R.V.). And so here, there are those whose work shall abide, and who shall receive a reward; and even where the work is burned, yet if the soul has built upon the foundation, though he suffer loss, yet "he himself shall be saved, though so as through the fire." As a man escaping out of a burning house may be untouched by the flame, though the fire consume all that he has. We have no reason to believe either that this last will be true of any true saint -that is, that he will lose all reward. Nay, "each shall have his praise from God."

3. The apostle appeals to the Corinthians now, briefly but energetically, with regard to the character of this building, of which he has been speaking. It is not a new truth that he is announcing to them, but something very well known; which nevertheless they had, not in just appreciation. What a marvel of divine grace that they should be indwelt by the Spirit of God! We are familiar with it -as a doctrine, surely as much as they; has the wonder of it diminished with us? and do we need to be exhorted as to our responsibility in view of this relationship to the Supreme?

It is only here and in Ephesians that we have the Church spoken of as the temple of God; but in Ephesians this is not a present but a future thing: it "groweth unto a holy temple." The character of the epistle being predominatingly heavenly and so eternal, it is the eternal condition that is emphasized, while there is a present building that goes on to this. The epistles to Timothy give us more the present "house of God;" with Hebrews and Peter also in different aspects. But Corinthians (both epistles): alone speak of a present "temple." It is remarkable too, that only for the purpose of admonition is it referred to: in the second epistle to emphasize the refusal of idolatry (2Co 6:16); here to warn against sacrilege. The destroyer is of course not a builder, but the opposite; yet: ostensibly he might be that: different even from those who built, with wood, hay, stubble," for these might be after all at bottom Christians, and thus building upon the foundation, whatever the incongruity of the material used. Here the very existence of, the Church is threatened; the man is an: enemy, although he may own -nay, all the more supposing that be does own -some monstrous fiction as the Christ of his allegiance. Yet even Christians may require warning against the profanation of terms and names, which is as common, today as at any time, and with the same witchery about it for too credulously confiding souls. The end is destruction none the less surely for the deception, which may have carried away the deceiver also: for "if any man destroy the temple of God, him will God destroy."

"For the temple of God is holy, and such (holy ones) are ye." It is plain that it is not of practical holiness that the apostle is speaking, but of that resulting from the Spirit dwelling in them, -which is indeed the power of practical holiness. The apostle presses the responsibility of those who act in presumptuous defiance of Him who has taken in grace this place of relationship to the redeemed people of God. And in this there is indeed a call for reverent and responsive recognition on their part of a grace so great.

4. But in fact the state of the Corinthians little answered to what this implied. Instead of the wisdom taught of the Spirit, the wisdom of the world had seduced them. No doubt they had little realized it, and taken according to human estimate what in God’s account was foolishness instead of Wisdom. To be really wise they must be content to strip themselves of it all, so as to be fools in men’s eyes, whose subtle cleverness was merely a craft which, according to the righteous principles of divine government, entrapped those inspired by it. Its reasonings were vain, as all must be that does not begin and end with God. How entirely beneath time divine thought for them was this glorying in men in which they were indulging! In God’s intent Paul and Cephas alike were theirs, God’s instruments alike for blessing to them; and why then pit them one against another as if antagonistic in their aims or interests? Nay, even the world, they did not belong to it, belonged to them in this way: for it is a very different, and even opposite thing, to belong to the world, and to have the world belong to you: in the one case it is your master; in the other, your servant. Life too, and death, belonged to them, and with such a thought we are familiar. Things present too, and things to come: anything that could happen; -a, wonderful summing up. And here is what certifies and makes all right, "ye are Christ’s," to belong to Christ is more than to have all else belong to you; and that "Christ is God’s" brings all the universe together into fulness of blessing. He who is Heir of all things is the Son of the Father; by whom and for whom also all things were created; and He who is above all created things has, come down to. the lowest parts of the earth to reconcile in Himself all things to God.

5. The apostle goes on to show the responsibility of the laborer to be to God, who as knowing the hearts can alone give judgment rightly, and award due praise. The differences among the workmen also were according to His good pleasure, every gift being from Him; so that there was no ground for glorying in any way.

People were to account of them as accredited servants of Christ, and stewards of time mysteries of God. This last, as we have often seen, is the peculiar character of Christianity, that it is the unfolding of things until then, hidden. There is no thought in it of things beyond comprehension, -of the "mysteries," or magic, rather, of sacramental ritualism. They are the "new things" of Christianity added to the old things revealed before. For such a stewardship faithfulness was a primary necessity; but to whom then was this faithfulness to be? They were not the stewards of men, but of God; what matter then about that judgment of them by men, so easily passed, so utterly uncalled for?

In fact, it was not in that character that they were then judging, but according to their own tastes and sympathies, which were sure to be all wrong, therefore, Would those in this Corinthian state favor most those teachers who were most faithful to them? The question answers itself, and now when the custom is for men to choose their own exclusive teachers, time same principle will necessarily work, and how complete is Satan’s opportunity when men can choose those to whom they shall devote themselves as teachers, shutting out, as far as possible, all other ministry by which God might awaken their consciences! The apostle here manifests entire independence of all their judgment. There was no spirit of pride in him in this, but simply the consciousness of responsibility to God, and if God and man were measured together, of what account could man be? He was not careful, therefore, to justify himself to them, or as to what judgment they might pass upon him. It was man’s day, the day in which he had the earth to himself; not indeed without the restraining hand of God upon him, but still in such:a way that, if once faith were not active, he might preach to himself the entire liberty which he loves. As a fact, man’s day will end in the judgment of God. What a thing simply to think of! The day of the Lord begins in judgment and is upon everything that is high and lifted up, upon all that is exalted in man’s wisdom, to cast it down. If this be the character of things completely in the world at large, yet amongst Christians also the spirit of it will invade them, as we see at Corinth here, if they are not self-judged before God.

As for the apostle, in that respect in which they were judging, he did not even judge himself; he did not consider himself to be able to give a sufficient estimate of his acts and ways, although he might be, and was, conscious of nothing. After all, that did not justify him. He who justified was the Lord alone. He is not, of course, in this thinking of salvation, nor does that question enter in at all. Every Christian is, as that, a man saved already, and will himself personally, as the Lord has assured us, never come into judgment, but his ways and acts will do so; and in this respect not even an apostle could be considered a fully competent judge of his own condition. It was not that he would not be exercised about it. On the contrary, as he has himself told us, he always exercised himself to have a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man, but that is a very different thing from forming an estimate of one’s self as a whole, which these Corinthians were doing, putting himself into a place as compared with others. How completely will that day to come in this way reverse the judgments which we may form with the greatest assurance even here on earth!

He had, as he says, transferred these things, -made application of these principles, to himself and Apollos simply, omitting all others. There were, in fact, others, and even enemies, as we know, amongst them, as he has already hinted; but if there were a Petrine party, for instance, in their midst, he says nothing about it here. Had he done so, that might well look as if, with the one opposition between himself and Peter on one important matter, he was giving judgment against Peter of the very sort he blamed; but he does not even name those who were actually moving at Corinth, teachers of quite another character from any of these. They could Hardly refuse an application to himself and to Apollos, between whom there was certainly no disagreement, and who had been, in fact, the main workers at Corinth; Paul laying the foundation and Apollos building upon it.

As to the differences between God’s workers, such there really were, but not of the character to be apprehended by those in this Corinthian state; and whatever differences there were, God Himself it was who had made them. Thus they would be really judging Him. They had nothing that they had not received, and if they had received it, and thus there was a difference, how could any one glory as if he had not received it!

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:1–4:7 Having contrasted human and spiritual wisdom, Paul now returns to the divisiveness in the Corinthian church (see 1:10-12), particularly their misplaced devotion to himself and Apollos.

3:1-4 Paul rebukes the Christians in Corinth for their spiritual immaturity.

3:1 The Corinthians’ behavior was not that of the spiritual people whom Paul described in 2:15, but like that of unbelievers who are attracted to the wisdom and values of this world. • infants in Christ: Though they were converted, their lives and thinking did not reflect maturity in Christ and the transforming perspective of his Spirit.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Co 3:1. Καὶ ἐγὼ, and I) He spoke, 1Co 2:1, of his first ‘coming’ among them: he now speaks of his progress.—ὡς σαρκικοῖς, as to carnal) This is a more gentle expression, than natural, especially with the additional mitigation, as babes in Christ, in regard to the degree of attainment, which immediately followed.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_3:1. Κἀγώ] I also. This also of comparison has its inner ground in the reproach alluded to, that he ought to have taught in a higher strain, and so ought to have delivered to the Corinthians that Θεοῦ σοφίαν spoken of in 1Co_3:6 f. Even as no other could have done this, so I also could not. There is no reason, therefore, for holding, with de Wette (comp Billroth), that καὶ ὑμῖν would have been a more stringent way of putting it.

ἀλλʼ ὡς σαρκίνοις] namely, had I to speak to you. See Kühner, II. p. 604. Krüger on Thuc. i. 142. 4, and on Xen. Anab. vii. 2. 28. This brevity of expression is zeugmatic. Σάρκινος (see the critical remarks) is: fleshy (2Co_3:3), not equivalent to σαρκικός, fleshly. See on Rom_7:14. Winer, p. 93 [E. T. 122], and Fritzsche, a[450] Rom. II. p. 46. Here, as in Rom. l.c[451] and Heb_7:16 (see Delitzsch in loc[452]), the expression is specially chosen in order to denote more strongly the unspiritual nature: as to fleshy persons, as to those who have as yet experienced so little of the influence of the Holy Spirit, that the σάρξi.e. the nature of the natural man, which is opposed since the fall to the Spirit of God, and which, as the seat of the sin-principle and of lust, gives rise to the incapacity to recognise the sway of the Divine Spirit (comp 1Co_2:14), and to follow the drawing of the νοῦς towards the divine will (Rom_7:18; Rom_7:25), by virtue of the Divine Spirit (see on Rom_4:1; Rom_6:19; Rom_7:14; Rom_8:5 ff.)seemed to make up their whole being. They were still in too great a measure only flesh born of the flesh (Joh_3:6), and still lay too much, especially in an intellectual relation, under the ἀσθενεία τῆς σαρκός (Rom_6:19), although they might also be in part φυσιούμενοι ὑπὸ τοῦ νοὸς τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτῶν (Col_2:18),so that Paul, in order strongly to express their condition at that time, could call them fleshy. By σάρκινος, therefore, he indicates the unspiritual nature of the Corinthians,i.e. a nature ruled by the limitations and impulses of the σάρξ, not yet changed by the Holy Spirit,the nature which they still had when at the stage of their first noviciate in the Christian life. At a later date (see 1Co_3:3) they appear as still at least σαρκικοί (guiding themselves according to the σάρξ, and disobedient to the πνεῦμα); for although, in connection with continued Christian instruction, they had become more effectually partakers also of the influence of the Divine Spirit, nevertheless,as their sectarian tendencies (see 1Co_3:3) gave proof,they had not so followed this divine principle as to prevent the sensuous nature opposed to it (the σάρξ) from getting the upper hand with them in a moral and intellectual respect, so that they were consequently still κατὰ σάρκα and ἐν σαρκί (Rom_8:5; Rom_8:8), τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς φρονοῦντες (Rom_8:5), κατὰ σάρκα καυχώμενοι (2Co_11:18), ἐν σοφίᾳ σαρκικῇ (2Co_1:12), etc. It is therefore with true and delicate acumen that Paul uses in 1Co_3:1 and 1Co_3:3 these two different expressions each in its proper place, upbraiding his readers, not indeed by the former, but certainly by the latter, with their unspiritual condition.[454] The ethical notions conveyed by the two terms are not the same, but of the same kind; hence ἔτι in 1Co_3:3 is logically correct (against the objection of de Wette and Reiche).

[450] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[451] .c. loco citato or laudato.

[452] n loc. refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[454] According to Hofmann,who, for the rest, defines the two notions with substantial correctness,the distinction between σάρκινος and σαρκικός answers to that between εἶναι ἐν σαρκί and κατὰ σάρκα, Rom_8:5; Rom_8:8. But the latter two phrases differ from each other, not in their real meaning, but only in the form of representation.Holsten, too, z. Ev. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 397 f., has in substance hit the true distinction between σάρκινος and σαρκικός.

The difference between σαρκικός (also σάρκινος) and ψυχικός is simply this: ψυχικός is one who has not the Holy Spirit, and stands wholly outside of the sphere of His influence; whether it be that he has never yet received Him and is therefore still in the natural state without Christ (homo naturalis, as in 1Co_2:14), or that he has been forsaken again by the Spirit (as in Jud_1:19). Σαρκικός, on the other hand, may not merely be predicated of the ψυχικός, who is indeed necessarily σαρκικός, but also (comp Hofmann) of one who has, it is true, received the Holy Spirit and experiences His influence, but is not led by His enlightening and sanctifying efficacy in such a measure as to have overcome the power of sin (Gal_5:17) which dwells in the σάρξ and sets itself against the Spirit; but, on the contrary, instead of being πνευματικός and, in consequence, living ἐν πνεύματι and being disposed κατὰ πνεῦμα, he is still ἐν σαρκί, and still thinks, judges, is minded and acts κατὰ σάρκα.[456] The ψυχικός is accordingly as such also σαρκικός, but every σαρκικός is not as such still or once more a ψυχικός, not yet having the Spirit, or having lost Him again. The expositors commonly do not enter upon any distinction between σάρκινος and σαρκικός, either (so the majority) reading σαρκικοῖς in 1Co_3:1 also, or (Rückert, Pott) arbitrarily giving out that the two words are alike in meaning. The distinction between them and ψυχικός also is passed over in utter silence by many (such as Rosenmüller, Flatt, Billroth), while others, in an arbitrary way, make σάρκινος and σαρκικ. sometimes to be milder than ψυχικός (Bengel, Rückert, holding that in σαρκ. there is more of the weakness, in ψυχ. more of the opposition to what is higher), sometimes to be stronger (Osiander; while Theophylact holds the former to be παρὰ φύσιν, the latter κατὰ φύσιν, and the pneumatic ὑπὲρ φύσιν), or sometimes, lastly, refer the latter to the lower intelligence, and the former to the lower moral condition as given up to the desires (Locke, Wolf, and others).

ὡς νηπίοις ἐν Χριστῷ] statement justifying the foregoing ὡς σαρκ. by setting forth the character of their Christian condition as it had been at that time to which οὐκ ἠδυνήθην κ.τ.λ[457] looks back. The phrase denotes those who, in their relation to Christ (in Christianity), are still children under age, i.e. mere beginners. The opposite is τέλειοι ἐν Χ., Col_1:28. See, regarding the analogous use in Rabbinical writers of תינוקות (sugentes), Schoettgen in loc[458]; Wetstein on 1Pe_2:2; Lightfoot, Hor. p. 162; and for that of קטנים, Wetstein on Mat_10:42. Before baptism a man is yet without connection with Christ, but through baptism he enters into this fellowship, and is now, in the first instance, a νήπιος ἐν Χριστῷ, i.e. an infans as yet in relation to Christianity, who as such receives the elementary instruction suitable for him (the γάλα of 1Co_3:2). The εὐαγγελίζεσθαι, on the other hand, which leads on to baptism, is preparatory, giving rise to faith, and forming the medium through which their calling takes place; and accordingly it has not yet to do with νήπιοι ἐν Χριστῷ. The inference is a mistaken one, therefore (on the part of Rückert), that Paul has in mind here a second residence in Corinth not recorded in the Acts. His readers could not understand this passage, any more than 1Co_2:1, otherwise than of the apostles first arrival, of the time, consequently, in which he founded the Corinthian church, when he instructed those who gave ear to his ΕὐΑΓΓΕΛΊΖΕΣΘΑΙ in the elements of Christianity.

By ἘΝ ΧΡΙΣΤῷ is expressed the specific field to which the notion of ΝΗΠΙΌΤΗς is confined; viewed apart from Christ, he, who as a new convert is yet a νήπιος, may be an adult, or an old man, Comp on Col_1:28.

[456] Ewald says truly, that the strict distinction between spiritual and fleshly came in first with Christianity itself. But so, too, the sharply-defined notion of the ψυχικός could only be brought out by the contrast of Christianity, because it is the opposite of the πνευματικός, and cannot therefore occupy a middle place between two former notions.

[457] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[458] n loc. refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

1Co_3:1-4. Application of the foregoing section (1Co_2:6-16) to the Apostles relation to the Corinthians.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 3:1-5 . § 12. CHRIST’S SERVANTS ANSWERABLE TO HIMSELF. The Ap. has shown his readers their own true position so high and yet so lowly (§ 11); Paul, Apollos, Cephas are but part of a universe of ministry that waits upon them. But more is to be said about the Christian leaders , whose names are sc much abused at Cor [629] If the Church is to understand its proper character, it must reverence theirs. They are its servants; it is not their master. They are its property, because they are Christ’s property; and His instruments first of all. P. thus resumes the train of thought opened in § 10, where the work of Church-builders was discriminated in relation to the building ; now it is viewed in its relation to God the Householder . Here lies another and the final ground of accusation against the Cor [630] parties: those who maintained them, in applauding this chief and censuring that, were putting themselves into Christ’s judgment-seat, from which the Apostle thrusts them down.

[629] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[630] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

1Co 3:1 . Κἀγώ , ἀδελφοί : The Ap. returns to the strain of 1Co 2:1-5 , speaking now not in general terms of ἡμεῖς , οἱ τέλειοι , etc.; but definitely of the Cor [455] and himself. They demonstrate, unhappily, the incapacity of the unspiritual for spiritual things. The καὶ carries us back to 1Co 2:14 : “A natural man does not receive the things of God …, and I (accordingly) could not utter (them) to you as to spiritual (men), but as to men of flesh”. Yet the Cor [456] were not ψυχικοί (see note, 1Co 2:14 ). For λαλῆσαι , see 1Co 2:6 ; and on the receptivity of the πνευματικός , 1Co 2:13 ff. Cf. Rom 8:5-9 : οἱ κατὰ πνεῦμα ὄντες τὰ τοῦ Πνεύματος φρονοῦσιν . ( οὐκ … ὡς πνευματικοῖς ), ἀλλʼ ὡς σαρκίνοις : “on the contrary, (I was obliged to speak to you) as to men of flesh” grammatical zeugma, as well as breviloquence: the affirmative “I was able,” carried over from the negative clause οὐκ ἠδυνήθην , passes into the kindred “I was obliged,” that is necessarily understood ( cf. Eph 4:29 ); 1Co 3:7 , 1Co 7:19 , 1Co 10:24 , are similarly expressed, without the zeugma. Σάρκινος (see parls.) differs from σαρκικός (1Co 3:3 , 1Co 9:11 , etc.) as carneus from carnalis, fleischern from fleischlich (as leathern from leathery ) - ινος implying nature and constitution ( ἐν σαρκὶ εἶναι ), - ικὸς tendency or character ( κατὰ σάρκα εἶναι ). So σάρκινος is associated with νηπιότης , σαρκικὸς with ζῆλος καὶ ἔρις : see Trench, Syn [457] , § lxx. The distinction is one of standpoint, not of degree: in the σάρκινος the original “flesh” remains (a sort of excuse , as in Rom 7:14 ); the σαρκικὸς manifests its disposition. Both words may, or may not (1Co 9:11 , 2Co 3:3 ), connote the sinful , according to the σὰρξ in question.

[455] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[456] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[457] synonym, synonymous.

The apposed ὡς νηπίοις ἐν Χριστῷ softens, almost tenderly, the censure: the Cor [458] are “ in Christ”; they possess, in a measure, His Spirit; but they are “ babes in Christ,” not fairly grown out of “the flesh” ( cf. Gal 5:13-18 ); the new nature in them is still confronted with the old. The νήπιοι are the opp [459] of the τέλειοι (1Co 2:6 ; see other parls.). “I could not” suggests that Paul had attempted to carry his Cor [460] converts further, but had failed.

[458] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[459] opposite, opposition.

[460] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

1Co 2:10 to 1Co 3:2 . § 8. THE REVEALING SPIRIT. The world’s rulers committed the frightful crime of “crucifying the Lord of glory,” because in fact they have only “the spirit of the world,” whereas “the Spirit of God ” informs His messengers (1Co 2:10-12 ), who communicate the things of His grace in language taught them by His Spirit and intelligible to the spiritual (1Co 2:13-16 ). For the like reason the Cor [377] are at fault in their Christian views, being as yet but half-spiritual men (1Co 3:1-3 ).

[377] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:1-4.] He could not speak to them in the perfect spiritual manner above described, seeing that they were carnal, and still remained so, as was shewn by their divisions.

1.] κἀγώ, I also; i.e. as well as the ψυχικός, was compelled to stand on this lower ground,—he, because he cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God: I, because you could not receive them. Or perhaps better, with Stanley, ‘καὶ ἐγώ, as in 2:1, “What I have just been saying, was exemplified in our practice.” ’

σαρκίνοις is certainly the true reading, being, besides its manuscript authority, required by the sense. He was compelled to speak to them (this affirmative clause is to be supplied from the former negative one) as to men of flesh: not ὡς σαρκικοῖς, for that they really were, and he asserts them yet to be, ver. 3. I quite agree with Meyer (against De Wette) that the distinction between σάρκινοι and σαρκικοί is designed by the Apostle, and further regard it as implied in the very form of the sentences. Here, he says that he was compelled to speak to them as if they were only of flesh,—as if they were babes, using in both cases the material comparison, and the particle of comparison ὡς. But in ver. 3 he drops comparison, and asserts matter of fact—‘Are ye not still σαρκικοί (= ὡς σάρκινοι), fleshly, carnal, living after the flesh, resisting the Spirit?’—q. d. ‘I was obliged to regard you as mere men of flesh, without the Spirit: and it is not far different even now: ye are yet fleshly—ye retain the same character.’

Both the σάρκινοι, the mere men of the flesh, and the σαρκικοί, the carnally disposed, are included under the more general ψυχικοί, which therefore, as Meyer observes, is not here used, because this distinction was to be made.

ὡς νηπ. ἐν χρ.] The opposite term, τέλειοι ἐν χρ., is found Col 1:28, and in connexion with this, Heb 5:13, Heb 5:14. Schöttgen (on 1Pe 2:2) and Lightfoot adduce the similar Rabbinical term תִּינוֹקוֹת, sugentes, used of novices in their schools. A recent proselyte also was regarded by them as a newborn infant.

He speaks of his first visit to Corinth, when they were recently admitted into the faith of Christ,—and excuses his merely elementary teaching by the fact that they then required it. Not this, but their still requiring it, is adduced as matter of blame to them.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:1-4. In following to its application his contrast between the spiritual and the animal character, the Apostle is led back to his main subject, the σχίσματα. These dissensions show which type of character predominates among his readers. The passage corresponds to 2:13 (see note there), and forms its negative counterpart, prepared for by the contrast (2:13-16) between the spiritual and the animal man.

Κἀγώ, ἀδελφοί. See on 1:10 and 2:1.

ὡς πνευματικοῖς. Ideally, all Christians are πνευματικοί (12:3, 13; Gal 4:3-7): but by no means all the Corinthians were such in fact.* Along with the heathen, they are in the category of ψυχικοί or σαρκικοί, but they are not on a level with the heathen. They are babes in character, but ‘babes in Christ’; and, apart from the special matters for blame, there are many healthy features in their condition (1:4-9, 11:2).

ἀλλʼ ὡς σαρκίνοις. The word is chosen deliberately, and it expresses a shade of meaning different from σαρκικός, placing the state of the Corinthians under a distinct aspect. The termination -ινος denotes a material relation, while -ικος denotes an ethical or dynamic relation, to the idea involved in the root. In 2Co 3:3 the tables are made of stone, the hearts are made of flesh (see note on ἀνθρώπινος, 4:3). Accordingly, σαρκίνος means ‘of flesh and blood,’, what a man cannot help being, but a state to be subordinated to the higher law of the Spirit, and enriched and elevated by it. We are all σαρκίνοι (ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, Gal 2:20), but we are not to live κατὰ σάρκα (15:50; Rom 8:12; 2Co 10:2, 2Co 10:3). The state of the νήπιος is not culpable in itself, but it becomes culpable if unduly prolonged (13:11, 14:20).

There are two other views respecting σαρκίνος which may be mentioned, but seem to be alien to the sense. Meyer holds that the word means ‘wholly of flesh,’ without any influence of the spirit (Joh 3:6). In the σαρκικός, although the flesh still has the upper hand, yet there is some counteracting influence of the spirit. This view makes the state of the σαρκικός an advance upon that of the σαρκίνός, and is really an inversion of the true sense. Evans regards σαρκικός as a term free from any reproach. It is “the first moral state after conversion, in a figure borrowed from an infant, which to outward view is little more than a living lump of dimpled flesh, with few signs of intelligence.” This is an exaggeration of the true sense. Cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. III. ix. 2.

σαρκίνοις (א A B C* D* 17) is the original reading, of which σαρκικοῖς (D3 E F G L P) is obviously a correction.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:1-4.

After demonstrating that though the gospel is not a wisdom, yet it contains one, but one which cannot be expounded except to those who by their spiritual maturity are in a condition to understand it, the apostle applies this truth to his relation to the Church of Corinth. The passage 1Co 3:1-4 is the pendant of 1Co 2:1-5. Edwards well says: I preached to you the gospel as a power (1Co 2:1-5); I could not preach it to you as wisdom (1Co 3:1-4).

Vv. 1, 2. “And I also, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. 2. I have fed you with milk, not with meat: for hitherto ye were not strong enough, and not even yet are ye.”

The apostle, after rising to the height assigned him by the revelation which he has received, severely humbles the presumption of the Corinthians.

The κἀγώ (T. R. καὶ ἐγώ) surprises; it seems as if it should be, “But I,” instead of, And I also. “This wisdom we have, but I could not declare it to you.” Yet the And I also is easily explained. Paul does nothing more than apply to himself, in his relation to the Corinthians, what he has just said of the relation of the spiritual man to purely natural men. “And I also, as a spiritual man, judged and acted accordingly; comp. the κἀγώ absolutely parallel, 1Co 2:1.

The word ἀδελφοί, brethren, serves to soften this personal application. — The I could not is an implicit answer to the disdainful charge of his enemies: “He knew not.” It was in themselves the obstacle was; his not being able was caused by theirs; comp. the “he cannot understand,” in speaking of the natural man, 1Co 2:14.

Paul no longer uses here ψυχικός, the natural man, which would have been too strong. For he did not mean that the Corinthians were entirely destitute of the Divine breath; how could they have been in possession of the χαρίσματα (gifts), the presence of which he had recognised in them (1Co 1:5; 1Co 1:7)? Hence it is he uses the term carnal, which does not exclude the possession, to a certain degree, of the new life. The Spirit is there, but He has not yet taken a decided preponderance over the instincts of the flesh, the unregenerate nature. By these, indeed, must not be understood merely sensual inclinations. This is plain from 1Co 3:3. For what was there sensual in the divisions which were produced at Corinth? The word flesh, which denotes strictly the soft and sensitive parts of the body, denotes also by extension natural sensibility, quick, even purely moral receptivity, for agreeable or disagreeable impressions in general. Thus the man who prefers the intoxicating pleasures of speaking in tongues to the holy austerity of prophesying, or the noble simplicity of teaching, is in Paul’s eyes like a yet carnal babe; comp. 1Co 14:20. Consequently those who have found in the different forms in which the preaching of the gospel has appeared in Corinth an occasion for inflating themselves or disparaging others, and thereby tearing the Church into factions, while satisfying their personal vanity, have shown how the flesh, self-complacency, still ruled the new life, and the action of the Spirit in them. Paul would not, however, have called such men psychical, as if the Spirit of God were not within them in any sense. Indeed, the psychical man may also be called carnal. But there is this difference,—that if in the regenerate man the flesh hinders the action of the Spirit, in the unregenerate man, who possesses only the breath of natural life (the ψυχή), it reigns as lord (Rom 7:14-18). The T. R. with some Byz. and Greco-Lats. reads σαρκίκοις, while the Alex. with D read σαρκίνοις. The two adjectives signify carnal. But the latter refers to the substance and nature of the being so qualified (2Co 3:3; Heb 7:16), the former to his tendency and activity. The word σάρκινος is rare in the New Testament, while σαρκικός is pretty frequently used. Thus we are not allowed to think that the first has been substituted for the second by the copyists, the more that σαρκικός reappears in 1Co 3:3 almost without a variant. The copyists had therefore no great inclination to substitute for it σάρκινος; while the relation between 1Co 3:1; 1Co 3:3 could easily lead in 1Co 3:1 to the substitution of σαρκικοῖς for σαρκίνοις. We must therefore read σαρκίνοις in 1Co 3:1, and see in this term, which indicates the hurtful persistence of the state of nature, not so much a reproach as the statement of a fact fitted to explain Paul’s conduct when he was among them. This is confirmed by the expression, babes in Christ, which he adds as an equivalent term. The word characterizes a state of transition in a sense natural in the development of the believer. Time is needed to become a πνευματικός, as in the natural life there is need of growth to pass from the infant state to that of the mature man. It is obvious how much better than the other the term σάρκινος, carnal in nature, suited the ideas expressed in 1Co 3:1; and how far Meyer is mistaken in regarding it as conveying a more emphatic rebuke than the term σαρκικός in 1Co 3:3.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter III

Transition from the defense of his mode of preaching to the subject of their divisions, 1Co_3:1-5. The true relation of ministers to the church as servants, and not party leaders, vv. 7-23.

Reproof of the Corinthians for Their Dissensions about Their Religious Teachers 1 Corinthians 3:1-23

The apostle resumes the subject of the contentions in the church of Corinth. He passes to that subject from the defense of his mode of preaching by a natural association. One of the objections against him was, that his preaching was too simple. He answers, he could not make it otherwise, because they were there babes in Christ. The proof of their being in this infantile or carnal state was that strifes and divisions existed among them; one saying, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos, 1Co_3:1-4.

As their dissentions had reference to their religious teachers, the apostle endeavors to correct the evil by presenting the ministerial office in its true light:

1. Ministers were not heads of schools or rival sects as were the Grecian philosophers, but there servants, without any authority or power of their own. One may plant, and another water, but the whole increase is of God, 1Co_3:5-7.

2. Ministers are one. They have one master and one work. They may have different departments in that great work, but they are like fellow-laborers on the same farm, or fellow-builders on the same temple, 1Co_3:8, 1Co_3:9.

3. In the discharge of their respective duties they incur a great responsibility. If they attempt to build up the temple of God with the rubbish of their own wisdom, they will be severely punished. If they employ the materials which God has furnished, they will be rewarded, 1Co_3:10-15.

4. is because the church is the temple of God, that ministers will be held to this strict account for the doctrines which they preach, and for the way in which they execute their office, 1Co_3:16, 1Co_3:17.

5. No minister need deceive himself in this matter. He cannot preach a higher wisdom than the wisdom of God; and to learn that wisdom he must renounce his own, 1Co_3:18-20.

6. Therefore the people should not place their confidence in ministers, who belong to the church, and not the church to them. To the interests and consummation of the church, all things, visible and invisible, are made subservient, 1Co_3:21-23.

1Co_3:1

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal,‹4› (even) as unto babes in Christ.

There were two classes of opponents of the apostle in Corinth. The false teachers, some of whom he denounces as anti-Christian, and others he speaks of as only errorists; and secondly, those members of the church whom these false teachers had seduced. As against the false teachers and the unconverted Jews and Greeks he upheld the simple gospel as higher man the wisdom of the world. His only answer to their objection that he did not preach with the wisdom of words, was that the wisdom of the world was foolishness with God. To the objection, as urged by believers, that his preaching was too elementary, he answered, it was adapted to their state. He could only speak to them as to children.

They were babes in Christ, that is, children in Christian knowledge and experience. This idea he expresses by saying they were not spiritual but carnal. Now as all Christians are spiritual, in the sense in which that term is used in the preceding chapter, to say that men are not spiritual in that sense, would be to say they are not Christians. Here, however, the apostle tells those whom he admits to be Christians, and whom he calls brethren, that they are not spiritual. He must use the word therefore in a modified sense. This is a very common usage. When we predicate spirituality of a Christian as compared to other Christians, we mean that he is eminently spiritual. But when the distinction is between Christians and the world, then every Christian is said to be spiritual. In like manner we speak of some Christians as worldly or carnal, without intending to deny that they are Christians. It is obvious that the apostle uses the terms here in the same manner. He is not speaking of Christians as distinguished from the world, but of one class of Christians as distinguished from another.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He calleth them carnal, which are as yet ignorant, and therefore to express it the better, he termeth them babes.

Having declared the worthiness of heavenly wisdom, and of the Gospel, and having generally condemned the blindness of man’s mind, now at length he applieth it particularly to the Corinthians, calling them carnal, that is, such in whom as yet the flesh prevaileth against the spirit. And he bringeth a double testimony of it: first, for that he had proved them to be such, insomuch that he dealt with them no otherwise than with ignorant men, and such as are almost babes in the doctrine of godliness; and secondly, because they showed indeed by these dissensions, which sprang up by reason of the ignorance of the virtue of the Spirit, and heavenly wisdom, that they had profited very little or nothing.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

CHAPTER III.

Because of the carnal, divided state of the people at Corinth,

the apostle was obliged to treat them as children in the

knowledge of sacred things, 1-3.

Some were for setting up Paul, others Apollos, as their sole

teachers, 4.

The apostle shows that himself and fellow apostles were only

instruments which God used to bring them to the knowledge of

the truth; and even their sowing, and watering the seed was

of no use unless God gave the increase, 5-8.

The Church represented as God's husbandry, and as God's

building, the foundation of which is Christ Jesus, 9-11.

Ministers must beware how and what they build on this

foundation, 12-15.

The Church of God is his temple, and he that defiles it shall

be destroyed, 16, 17.

No man should depend on his own wisdom; for the wisdom of the

world is foolishness with God, 18-20.

None should glory in man as his teacher; God gives his followers

every good, both for time and eternity, 21-23.

NOTES ON CHAP. III.

Verse 1. I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual] This is a continuation of the preceding discourse. See the notes there (1Co 2:14, 1Co 2:15, and 1Co 2:16).

But as unto carnal] σαρκικοις, Persons under the influence of fleshly appetites; coveting and living for the things of this life.

Babes in Christ.] Just beginning to acquire some notion of the Christian religion, but as yet very incapable of judging what is most suitable to yourselves, and consequently utterly unqualified to discern between one teacher and another; so that your making the distinctions which you do make, so far from being a proof of mature judgment, is on the contrary a proof that you have no right judgment at all; and this springs from your want of knowledge in Divine things.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. And I, brethren He begins to apply to the Corinthians themselves, that he had said respecting carnal persons, that they may understand that the fault was their own — that the doctrine of the Cross had not more charms for them. It is probable, that in mercantile minds like theirs there was too much confidence and arrogance still lingering, so that it was not without much ado and great difficulty that they could bring themselves to embrace the simplicity of the gospel. Hence it was, that undervaluing the Apostle, and the divine efficacy of his preaching, they were more prepared to listen to those teachers that were subtle and showy, while destitute of the Spirit. Hence, with the view of beating down so much the better their insolence, he declares, that they belong to the company of those who, stupefied by carnal sense, are not prepared to receive the spiritual wisdom of God. He softens down, it is true, the harshness of his reproach by calling them brethren, but at the same time he brings it forward expressly as a matter of reproach against them, that their minds were suffocated with the darkness of the flesh to such a degree that it formed a hindrance to his preaching among them. What sort of sound judgment then must they have, when they are not fit and prepared as yet even for hearing! He does not mean, however, that they were altogether carnal, so as to have not one spark of the Spirit of God — but that they had still greatly too much of carnal sense, so that the flesh prevailed over the Spirit, and did as it were drown out his light. Hence, although they were not altogether destitute of grace, yet, as they had more of the flesh than of the Spirit, they are on that account termed carnal This sufficiently appears from what he immediately adds — that they were babes in Christ; for they would not have been babes had they not been begotten, and that begetting is from the Spirit of God.

Babes in Christ This term is sometimes taken in a good sense, as it is by Peter, who exhorts us to be like new-born babes, (1 Peter 2:2,) and in that saying of Christ,

Unless ye become as these little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God, (Luke 18:17.)

Here, however, it is taken in a bad sense, as referring to the understanding. For we must be children in malice, but not in understanding, as he says afterwards in 1 Corinthians 14:20, — a distinction which removes all occasion of doubt as to the meaning. To this also there is a corresponding passage in Ephesians 4:14.

That we be no longer children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, and made the sport of human fallacies, but may day by day grow up, etc

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

III.

(1) And I.—Again, as in 1Co_2:6, the Apostle shows how general principles which he has just explained were exemplified in his own conduct. In the closing verses of 1 Corinthians 2 St. Paul has enunciated the general method of teaching spiritual truth as being dependent upon the receptive powers of those who are being taught. He now proceeds to point out to them that their own character, as being wanting in spirituality, was the real hindrance to his teaching them the higher spiritual truth which may be called “the wisdom” of the gospel.

As unto carnal.—Better, as being carnal. Our version may seem to imply that the Apostle spoke to them as if they were carnal, though they really were not so; but the force of the passage is that they were indeed carnal, and that the Apostle taught them not as if they were such, but as being such. “Carnal” is here the opposite of “spiritual,” and does not involve any reference to what we would commonly speak of as carnal sin.

Babes in Christ.—This is the opposite of the “full grown” in 1Co_2:6, to whom the “wisdom” could be taught. (See also Col_1:28, “full grown in Christ.”) It may be an interesting indication of the “manliness” of St. Paul’s character and his high estimate of it in others, that he constantly uses the words “babe” and “childhood” in a depreciatory sense. (See Rom_2:20, Gal_4:3, Eph_4:14.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you,.... Though the apostle was a spiritual man himself, had spiritual gifts, even the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, could judge all things, had the mind of Christ, and was able to speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, yet could not speak it to them,

as unto spiritual; not but that they had the Spirit of God in them, and a work of grace upon them; for they were, as the apostle afterwards says, the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelt in them; they were washed, sanctified, and justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God; but had not that spiritual discerning, or judgment in spiritual things, which some believers had, at least when the apostle was first with them; and now they were under great spiritual declensions, and had not those spiritual frames, nor that spiritual experience and conversation, which some other Christians had:

but as unto carnal: not that they were in a carnal state, as unregenerate men are; but had carnal conceptions of things, were in carnal frames of soul, and walked in a carnal conversation with each other; though they were not in the flesh, in a state of nature, yet the flesh was in them, and not only lusted against the Spirit, but was very predominant in them, and carried them captive, so that they are denominated from it:

even as unto babes in Christ; they were in Christ, and so were new creatures; they were, as the Arabic version reads it, "in the faith of Christ"; though babes and weaklings in it, they were believers in Christ, converted persons, yet children in understanding, knowledge, and experience; had but little judgment in spiritual things, and were unskilful in the word of righteousness; at least this was the case of many of them, though others were enriched in all utterance and knowledge, and in no gift came behind members of other churches.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

Ver. 1. Could not speak unto you] Unless I would beat the air, and lose my sweet words: q.d. You quarrel me for a shallow trivial teacher, when yourselves are in fault, as not yet capable of more mysterious matter. Our Saviour preached (not as he could have preached, but) "as the people were able to hear," Mar 4:33. So the author to the Hebrews, 1Co 5:11. Some impute not their profiting to the minister, as he in Seneca, that having a thorn in his foot complained of the roughness of the way as the cause of his limping. Or as she in the same author, that being struck with a sudden blindness, bade open the windows, when as it was not lack of light, but lack of sight that troubled her.

As unto carnal, even as unto babes] Or, at least as unto babes, not yet past the spoon, and that must have their meats masticated for them by their nurses.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And I, brethren - See 1Co 2:1. This is designed to meet an implied objection. He had said 1Co 2:14-16 that Christians were able to understand all things. Yet, they would recollect that he had not addressed them as such, but had confined himself to the more elementary parts of religion when he came among them. He had not entered upon the abstruse and difficult points of theology - the points of speculation in which the subtle Greeks so much abounded and so much delighted. He now states the reason why he had not done it. The reason was one that was most humbling to their pride; but it was the true reason, and faithfulness demanded that it should be stated. It was, that they were carnal, and not qualified to understand the deep mysteries of the gospel; and the proof of this was unhappily at hand. It was too evident in their contentions and strifes, that they were under the influence of carnal feelings and views.

Could not speak unto you as unto spiritual - “I could not regard you as spiritual - as qualified to enter into the full and higher truths of the gospel; I could not regard you as divested of the feelings which influence carnal people - the people of the world, and I addressed you accordingly. I could not discourse to you as to far-advanced and well-informed Christians. I taught you the rudiments only of the Christian religion.” He refers here, doubtless, to his instructions when he founded the church at Corinth. See the note at 1Co 2:13-15.

But as unto carnal - The word “carnal” here σάρκινοῖς sarkinois is not the same which in 1Co 2:14, is translated “natural” ψυχικός psuchikos. “That” refers to one who is unrenewed, and who is wholly under the influence of his sensual or animal nature, and is no where applied to Christians. “This” is applied here to Christians - but to those who have much of the remains of corruption, and who are imperfectly acquainted with the nature of religion; babes in Christ. It denotes those who still evinced the feelings and views which pertain to the flesh, in these unhappy contentions, and strifes, and divisions. “The works of the flesh are hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, envyings” Gal 5:20-21; and these they had evinced in their divisions; and Paul knew that their danger lay in this direction, and he therefore addressed them according to their character. Paul applies the word to himself Rom 7:14, “for I am carnal;” and here it denotes that they were as yet under the influence of the corrupt passions and desires which the flesh produces.

As unto babes in Christ - As unto those recently born into his kingdom, and unable to understand the profounder doctrines of the Christian religion. It is a common figure to apply the term infants and children to those who are feeble in understanding, or unable, from any cause, to comprehend the more profound instructions of science or religion.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The apostle plainly returneth in this chapter to reprove them for their divisions and factions, for which he had begun to reprove them, 1Co 1:11; and (as some think) here he anticipateth an objection, which they might have made against him, against his reproving and judging of them, whereas he that is spiritual (as he had now said) is judged of no man.

I, ( saith he), brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, that is, as to Christians who had made any great proficiency in the ways of God, and had arrived to any just degrees of spiritual perfection;

but as unto carnal, that is, persons who, though you axe not under the full conduct and government of your flesh and sensitive appetite, yet are far from being perfect, either in faith or holiness.

In Christ, but not as grown men, but as babes, as the apostle fully explaineth this term, Heb 5:12,13, such as had need be taught again which are the first principles of the oracles of God; and have need of milk, and not of strong meat: for every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 1-4. The carnal conceit of the spiritually immature.

I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual. Though softened by the word brethren, there was a crushing irony of reproof in these words: "You thought yourselves quite above the need of my simple teaching. You were looking down on me from the whole height of your inferiority. The elementary character of my doctrine was after all the necessary consequence of your own incapacity for anything more profound." As unto carnal. The true reading here is sarkinois, fleshen, not sarkikois, fleshly, or carnal; the later and severer word is perhaps first used in ver. 3. The word sarkinos (earneus), fleshen, implies earthliness and weakness and the absence of spirituality; but sarki-kos (carnalis) involves the dominance of the lower nature and antagonism to the spiritual. As mite babes in Christ. The word "babes" has a good and a bad sense. In its good sense it implies humility and teachableness, as in 1Co_14:20, "In malice be ye babes;" and in 1Pe_2:2, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word;" and in Mat_11:25. Here it is used in its bad sense of spiritual childishness.

Vers. 1-8.

Reflections for Churches.

I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual," etc. In these verses are three subjects worthy of the profoundest contemplation.

I THE GRADUATING METHOD OF TEACHING. "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk," etc. Truth is to be administered with a practical regard to the receptive powers of the student, just as the administration of bodily food must have regard to the digestive capacities of those who need it; "milk" for children, "meat" for men. This is Paul"s metaphor; though men might live on milk, strong meat would kill children. There are truths in the gospel of such an elevated character, requiring so much intellect and culture to appreciate them, that to enforce them on the attention of mental and moral children would be positively to injure them. Christ practised this method of teaching. He had many things to say which his disciples could not bear. Had he preached to them the doctrines of the cross at first, they would have been shocked. When at one time they were merely intimated, they produced a kind of revulsion in Peter, and he exclaimed, "That be far from thee, Lord." This method of teaching shows:

1. That a minister that may be useful to one class of men may be unprofitable to another.

2. The necessity of all who would enjoy the higher teaching to cultivate their mental and moral powers.

II THE CARNALITY OF CHURCHISMS. "For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" etc. By Churchisms I mean sectarianisms, denominationalisms, etc. What are Churches? The best Churches in Christendom today are but the organization of certain opinions concerning Christ and his gospel. Some men extol one class of opinion more than another, and they set up one Church in opposition to another, and so on. Paul says this is "carnal. Carnal, because it engrosses the soul:

1. In the human rather than the Divine.

2. In the personal rather than in the universal.

3. In the selfish rather than in the self denying.

4. In the transitory rather than in the permanent.

III THE UNITY OF ALL TRUE MINISTERS. "Who then is Paul? and who is Apollos? but ministers by whom ye believed," etc. Again, "He that planteth and he that watereth are one.

1. One, notwithstanding the diversity of talents and kinds of labour. Paul, Peter, and Apollos differed in many personal respects; they differed in,the kind and measure of their faculties, in their temperaments and attainments; still they were one in spirit and aim.

2. One in grand practical aim. What were they working for? The spiritual cultivation of mankind. One planting, another watering, etc. Different kinds of labour, but still one.

3. One in their connection with God.

(1) Whilst all depended on God for success, God gave the "increase.

(2) All were coworkers with him; "labourers together with God.

4. One in their ultimate reward. "Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." Each from the same God, each according to his work.

HOMILIES BY C. LIPSCOMB. Vers. 1-4.

Spiritual condition of these Corinthian partisans characterized.

These men were in a low state of Christian development, their growth in grace having been arrested by the jealousy and strife dominant in their midst. Under such circumstances, personal progress and Church progress were impossible. Individual self assertion and arrogance could net but lead to the depreciation of others, nor could envious rivalries tolerate merit and worth in those whom it sought to crush. On the other hand, looking at the Church as an organic body, its virtue was a common stock, to be cherished, honoured, and diligently maintained by every one of its members. Its zeal was not a solitary flame burning on an isolated altar, but the combined warmth of many hearts. Diversity, too, is God"s law, diversity reaching down into temperament, diversity in the highest realm of gifts, diversity of insight and experience, and this factious temper was fatal to diversity. Agreeably to the Divine method, diversity was preliminary to unity, and men were allowed free action of individuality, that the strongest and best elements of character, and especially its latent qualities, might be brought out and incorporated in the totality of the Church. A very miscellaneous world environed these Corinthians; the Christian community itself was made up of Jews, Greeks, and Romans; and the reasons were, therefore, exceptionally stringent that they should, as brethren, be very closely banded together in one mind, "the mind of Christ." Had they been a homogeneous people, circumstantial motives, which have a very important part to play in the scheme of providence, would not have been so imperative. But these dissensions involved their national peculiarities, and hence the antecedents of blood, the residuum of former bitterness, would surely come in to aggravate their animosities. They were "babes in Christ," and furthermore, they were "carnal;" and this infantile and carnal state, in which all growth had been stopped, was due solely to intestine discord. Had they considered what a grievous evil it was? Paul and Apollos, Tarsian and Alexandrian, had been put by no choice of theirs in a position very unenviable, nay, in despite of their earnest remonstrance. Leaders they were, leaders they must be, leaders of the Church; and on this very account, nothing could be more ill timed, nothing more abhorrent to their personal feelings, nothing so little like "the mind of Christ," as the attempt to make them heads of factions. Alas for such unwise friends, blocking up their way and multiplying the hazards, already enormous, of their ministry in Achaia! If this audacious effort continued, how could they withstand their enemies? The heart of St. Paul is stirred, and, in this chapter, it swells to the full compass of his apostleship. Intellectual heroism is needed now, and in that, as in the other qualities of a habitual hero, he is never wanting. L.

HOMILIES BY E. HURNDALL

Ver. 1.

Carnal Christians.

I MANY SUCH ARE FOUND IS THE CHURCH. Christians in whom Christianity is not dominant. They have a portion of the Spirit, but a very large portion of the flesh. They allow Satan to hinder them. The world has still much power over them and much attraction for them. They love Christ, but not enough to lead them to live very near to him. They are conspicuous chiefly for fault and failure. They reach the verge of Christianity and stay there. They desire "to be saved," and beyond this they have few spiritual longings. They are no credit to Christianity, but make it questionable in the eyes of the world. Spiritual dwarfs, who have not even the advantage of stimulating curiosity, seeing they are so numerous.

II THEIR RELATION TO THE FAITH. They are babes; but note babes in Christ. It is better to be a babe in Christ than a full grown man apart from him. Still, these are babes in Christ when they ought to be men in Christ. As babes, they are:

1. Of no practical use in the Church. They cannot be relied upon for service; they are not fitted for real work. In spiritual things they are weaklings. They draw upon the resources of the Church rather than add to them. They are encumbrances sources of weakness rather than of strength. They require much looking after. The Church has to nurse them when she should be converting the world. Yet withal they often have a very high opinion of their own powers, and sometimes are exceedingly anxious to take up a great work as anxious as they soon become to put it down again. Childish instability of purpose, as well as lack of spiritual power, prevents them from being useful. And work that is done is done after so carnal a manner that often it had better have been left undone. It is child"s work, having in it more marring than making.

1. Not a source of joy. A babe in Christ delights the hearts of all true Christianswhen it ought to be a babe; but continuous babyhood is monstrous and revolting. Carnal Christians are babes without promise; often it seems as though they would never get out of their spiritual long clothes. They sadden the heart of their spiritual parent. They are disappointments. Hope deferred concerning them has made the heart sick. Neither to Christ, nor to man, nor to themselves, are they satisfactory. The

2. Church which has many of them will have its share of spiritual depression. Carnal Christians are kill joys.

3. Often fretful and peevish. Carnal Christians are often quarrelsome Christians. They are fault finders, and if they cannot find faults they can always make them. Into the Church they bring ill temper, which is contagious, and thus they become the cause of not a little mischief. They have considerable destructive power. They have only enough Christianity to make them miserable. They are fractious and self willed, and always want to have their way, whether it is a good way or an ill.

1. Fond of toys. They must have their playthings, even in Church. Things pleasing to the senses are the things pleasing to them. Ornate ritual, pretty pictures, gaudy decorations, elaborate but unsuitable music, have been brought into the Churches by those babes in Christ, carnal Christians. Where they have their way the sanctuary resembles nothing so much as a toyshop or an opera house.

2. Not very open to reasonable appeal. They are wilful. Having very little knowledge, they believe that they possess all. They are hard mouthed, and the bit of reason controls them but little. To argue with a babe is not promising, but it is quite as hopeful as to reason spiritually with a carnal Christian.

III CONSPICUOUS SIGNS OF THE CARNAL STATE.

1. Jealousy. Partisan spirit, rivalry, pride; in opposition to "in honour preferring one another." Leading to:

1. Strife. Active opposition instead of hearty co-operation. Creation of causes of strife; evident fondness for it. The carnal Christian is seldom at peace except when he is at war. Love of fighting other Christians rather than love of fighting Satan. The disciples at the table had a strife for preeminence, and thus showed their carnality.

2. Leading to:

3. Division. Estrangement, separation, hatred; instead of unity, peace, love. The carnal Christian"s progress is very different to the true pilgrim"s progress.

1. Men followers rather than Christ followers. The carnal Corinthians showed their carnality conspicuously in this respect.

2. Arrest or retardation of development. "Not even now are ye able" (ver. 2). If the carnal Christian does not go back, he tends to stand still.

3. Weak spiritual digestion. (Ver. 2.) Poor spiritual appetite. Little power of assimilation. Spiritual food does not seem to feed the carnal believer. He is lean. There are many religious dyspeptics.

IV HOW TO BE DEALT WITH.

1. To be fed. (Ver. 2.) Not to be neglected as of no account or cast out as evil. Whilst some of these babes may have little appetite, others of them may be noisy because they are hungry. To be fed; if the rod is not to be spared, still less are the spoon and cup. Carnal Christians are in the care of the Church, and must be dealt with kindly and helpfully, in the hope that, by the Spirit"s working, manhood may be attained at last.

2. With milk. Food suited to their condition. With milk good food; unadulterated, for they need the best the "sincere milk of the Word." Sweet milk; for babes like sweetness, and sour milk can only injure them. With milk, which may nourish and strengthen; not with the vinegar of scolding condemnation, which some seem to favour. Not too much physic; abundance of milk.

3. Not with meat. This would choke them. Babes may cry for strong meat, but they must not have it. The Corinthians found much fault with the simplicity of Paul"s teaching; but Paul knew what they needed, though they clamoured for something else. Not with the deeper things of God, which can be appreciated only by the matured (ch. 2:6); but with the more elementary truths put in elementary forms. The carnal Christian can appreciate only the exterior parts of gospel truths; these must come first; the surface must be passed before the internal can be reached. So, though Paul did not conceal any doctrines from the carnal Corinthians, he could only carry them with him in his teaching as far as they were prepared to go. Milk is the simple religious view; meat, the profounder. The same doctrine can be presented as milk and meat; the carnal Christian only goes so far in comprehending it, the spiritual searches into its depths. The doctrine of Romish reserve is not sanctioned by Paul. H.

HOMILIES BY H. BREMNER Vers. 1-9.

Christian teachers and their work.

The apostle has still in view the dissensions prevailing in the Corinthian Church. Throughout the first four chapters this subject is never absent from his mind, even when it is most in the background. The spirit of party, with the various phases of thought and life that found expression therein, suggests the several topics on which he enlarges.

I THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER ADAPTS HIS TEACHING TO THE CAPACITIES OF HIS HEARERS. (Vers. 1-4.) Paul has already said (ch. 2:6) that he " spake wisdom among the perfect," and here he presents the other side.

1. At Corinth he had to deal with carnal Christians. In the last verses of the previous chapter he has contrasted the natural man and the spiritual man, the latter alone being able to discern the things of the Spirit. Here the comparison is not between Christians and non Christians, but between

2. different classes of Christians, distinguished according to spiritual attainment. Every believer in Christ is a spiritual man as compared with those who do not believe; but one believer may be carnal in comparison with another believer. The new nature may be weak and sickly and all but overlaid by the old. This was the case with the Corinthians, whose fleshliness of mind appeared in the prevalence of "jealousy and strife" and of party spirit. These things spring from the flesh, (Gal_5:20) wherever they are found. When the Church is rent by faction, and men think mainly of the aggrandizement of their favourite party, no further proof is needed of the reign of carnality. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, peace." A fleshly Christian! What opposites must we unite in describing real character!

3. They were as yet babes in Christ. Conversion is a new birth: young converts are newborn babes. (1Pe_2:2) They have in germ all that is to be found in the full grown man; but they are weak, dependent, immature. Young Christians have the rudiments of the Christian character in more or less clear outline, but only the rudiments. Infancy is beautiful in its season, and so is the young life of the new convert; but out of season, its beauty is gone. A child with the years of a man is a monstrosity in nature; an old Christian with the crudeness of a young convert should appear to us as great a monstrosity in grace. The "babe in Christ" is meant to develop into "a full grown man, into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ". (Eph_4:13)

1. As babes, they must be fed "with milk, not with meat. Infants and men must each have food suitable to their capacity. The doctrines of the faith may be presented in the form of milk or of solid food. Milk has in it all the nourishing elements to be found in strong meat, though in more diluted form. The facts of the gospel history contain all the truths of the most elaborate theological system; a child can digest them in the one form, but not in the other. Every wise teacher will adapt his teaching to the capacity of his hearers. He will give to each only such food as he can receive and assimilate. He will not give solid food to infants, nor will he feed full grown men merely with milk. The preacher should consider the wants of women and children, as well as of men, and adapt some part of the public service to them. (comp Heb_5:12-14)

II MINISTERS ARE GOD"S SERVANTS, NOT PARTY LEADERS. The childish condition of the Corinthians was shown in their party divisions. They gloried more in the leader after whom their faction was called than in Jesus Christ. To correct this the apostle presents the right view of spiritual teachers and their work.

1. Ministers are but servants. They are not heads of sects or schools, whose object is to gather disciples for themselves. They are servants of God, doing his work. Therefore they are not to be lifted above their position, as they are when they are regarded as masters in the Church; nor are they to sink below it, as they do when they take the law from any other but God.

2. Each minister has his own peculiar work. "I planted, Apollos watered." Paul began the work at Corinth; Apollos continued it. One minister is sent to preach the gospel to sinners, another to edify believers, another to teach the ignorant, another to comfort the sorrowful; but all are contributors to the same great interest. The servant"s work, however, is but a subordinate instrumentality. Planting and watering are the ordinary conditions of growth, but they do not of themselves cause growth. It is "God that giveth the increase." In the spiritual sphere, as in the natural, the life giving power is Divine; but in both cases this power usually works through human ministries. It is only in connection with diligent planting and watering that we can expect the increase.

3. Each minister has his own peculiar reward. All are one, inasmuch As all are servants of one Lord and engaged about the same work. Hence they are not to be set against each other as rivals. Their work is one, yet diverse; and so is their reward. No faithful servant shall go without a recompense at his Master"s hand; but each shall receive his own, alike in kind and in degree. The principle that determines this is to his own labour." It is not according to the fruit or result of our labour, but simply according to the measure of our labour. What reversals of human opinion are in store for us! Men applaud success; God praises fidelity. Many an obscure but faithful worker shall receive a greater reward than he who has been less faithful but more prominent and successful.

4. Ministers are God"s fellow workers. All God"s servants are fellow servants as workers for him; but here the fellowship is carried still higher. We are workers along with God, who is pleased to associate us with himself in the great work of his kingdom. What a thought is this!

(1) What dignity it gives to the Christian ministry! It is to work with God.

(2) How inspiring to the Christian worker! Who would not labour when God is with him?

(3) How sure the reward! Will God leave his fellow workers without a due recompense?

III BELIEVERS ARE GOD"S FIELD. The same idea is elsewhere expressed under the figure of a garden (Isa_58:11) and a vineyard. (Isa 5) Consider:

1. The Proprietor of the field. The Church is God"s field. It is not the Church of Paul, or Apollos or any other; but "the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood". (Act_20:28) It belongs to him; it exists for him; it is called by his Name. Hence the spirit of faction, which ranges parties and sects under the names of rival leaders, robs God of his glory as the Church"s Lord.

2. The labourers in the field. These are apostles, evangelists, pastors, teachers, etc. (see above).

3. The field itself.

(1) Its original condition. Wild, untilled, full of merely natural growths. Believers are originally a part of the world, living in a state of sin, under no gracious culture.

(2) The work bestowed upon it. Preparatory work: trenching, ploughing, gathering out stones, fencing; and then the sowing of seed, planting, weeding, etc. Corresponding to this there is a preparation of heart for receiving the truth, an awakening to a sense of sin and need, a quickening into spiritual life, a culture of the new life into fulness and strength, etc. For these ends every true labourer works, but always in dependence on the rower of the Holy Spirit, who alone can make our labour fruitful.

(3) Its produce. The farmer looks for a return from his field in the form of fruit in harvest; God expects his Church to yield fruit to his glory. Christian character, life, usefulness, productiveness, these are some of the returns for which the Lord of the field looks. (comp Luk_13:6-9; B. Joh_15:1, etc.)

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1.

The carnal mind.

In view of St. Paul"s description of the immoralities and sensualities of the pagan peoples, given in Romans 1., and in special lists of prevailing iniquities, such as are given in Gal_5:19-21, his sense of the hindrance the carnal mind presents to the reception of spiritual teachings can be fully apprehended. Probably the severest thing St. Paul said about the carnal mind is that it is "enmity against God: for it is net subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. They that are in the flesh cannot please. (Rom_8:7, Rom_8:8) Possibly a distinction between the "natural" man and the "carnal" man may be intended. The natural man is one "whose hopes and desires are bounded by the limits of the physical principle of life;" the carnal man is regarded as more or less under the influence of the sensual passions. But St. Paul seems to recognize that the Corinthian tendency to disputes and religious strife was a sign that the carnal principles were yet strongly working in them; and "an appetite for religious strife prevents us from discerning the deeper truths of the Christian faith." It is broadly true that the reception of spiritual truth mainly depends on the openness and preparedness and culture of those to whom such teaching is given. The teacher may indeed be unskilful, but more often the hindrance is that the hearer is unspiritual. The preparation of the teacher is considered to be essential, the preparation of the taught is left to the accident of personal earnestness.

I THE SIGNS OF THE CARNAL MIND. With the hints given above two signs may be fully dealt with and illustrated.

1. Inability to receive advanced spiritual instruction. Self indulgence in meat or drink, inordinate pursuit of pleasure, the captivity of mind and heart to business schemes, the deteriorating influence of worldly ambitions, all destroy interest in Divine things, and take from us the very possibilityof apprehending the higher mysteries of the kingdom.

2. A spirit of strife and division. It is never the best people in a Christian community who are the cause of strife. Contention and controversy are only interesting to those who are not really growing in likeness to and nearness to Christ. Schism and strife are sure signs of carnality. Men who get soul visions of the truth never can want to contend over words. It would seem that St. Paul recognized signs of remaining carnality in the regenerate members of the Church, and found this to be a principal hindrance to the advance of his teaching. Such signs of the "carnal mind" are still observed by Christian pastors, and are the occasions of their deepest depressions and constant grief.

II THE FOOD FOR THE CARNAL MIND. St. Paul does not neglect it or refuse to consider it. And it is remarkable that he does not deal with it by warnings or threatenings, but by food, and that of a kind carefully appropriated and adapted. So the physician deals with some classes of disease; he gives no medicine, but nourishes the general health, with a full expectancy that the renewed vitality will throw off, out of the system, the specific disease. St. Paul evidently thinks the real cause of carnality to be low spiritual vitality, want of capacity to digest and assimilate good strong food of truth. These religious men were, m regard to religious truths and principles, really only babes, and religious food suited to babes, to beginners, must be provided for them. They must have the "milk" of gospel simplicities until they are strong enough to take the "meat" of gospel mysteries. Only the milk was to be given with the purpose of nourishing the powers for better food. First principles duly apprehended would prepare the way for higher teachings.

Impress that in Christian congregations there is always a call for the gospel simplicities, but that call should not be continually made, as it so often and so sadly is, by the same persons. Milk prepares the way for meat. It may be earnestly urged that, after all these centuries of Christian teaching in the home and in the Church, there ought to be an earnest and a mighty cry for advanced and spiritual preaching of the great revealed mysteries of God in Christ. We ought to be "men. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And I, brethren -- he spoke before, ver. 1, of his entrance, now of his progress, among them. Could not speak to you as unto spiritual - Adult, experienced Christians. But as unto men who were still in great measure carnal, as unto babes in Christ - Still weak in grace, though eminent in gifts, chap. i, 5.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

carnel

(See Scofield "Rom 7:14").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A Reproof of Spiritual Pride.

The marks of carnal men:

v. 1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

v. 2. I have fed you with milk and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

v. 3. For ye are yet carnal; for, whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men?

Paul has held before the Christians of Corinth the wonderful blessings which belong to all believers through the Gospel, and which should be used and exercised by them in a proper way. To his great sorrow, he is obliged to state that the Corinthians whom he addresses do not yet measure up to the standard which should be found in those that have the proper understanding. But to show his confidence in them, he addresses them also in this section as "brethren. " His words are harsh, for he connects his reprimand with the statement that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: And I, consequently, was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. He implies that he might well have expected by this time that he could address them as men that were governed in all things by the Spirit of God. Instead of that, however, he finds that he is obliged to speak to them as men that follow the thoughts of the flesh, that are governed by their unregenerate nature, by the old Adam. As to little children, to veritable babes in Christ, he must speak. Note how the addition "in Christ" softens the harshness of the censure and pleads with the better knowledge of the Corinthian Christians. But the rebuke stands: they are indeed children of God in Christ, but as yet without the experience and maturity which might justly be expected of them. This thought he drives home with an emphatic comparison: Milk I gave you to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet equal to t. He was obliged to give them nourishment suited to their age for the entire length of time that he was with them on the second journey. He could impart to them instruction only in the rudiments, the fundamentals, of Christian knowledge. See Heb 5:13-14. They made such slow progress in Christian knowledge that the apostle could not go beyond the simplest and easiest truths in his instruction. But the matter would not have been so serious if now, after an interval of several years, they would have been able to receive solid food and to go on to perfection in knowledge. However, even at the present time they were not yet strong enough in spiritual apprehension, they had made no progress in proportion to the expectations of their teacher. And the more presumption they showed in their party spirit, as though they had been graduated from the elementary department of Christian doctrine, the sharper was the reproof of their teacher telling them that he could not consider their promotion. And the reason he flatly tells them: For yet are you carnal. They were still governed by considerations of their flesh, of their unspiritual nature; they permitted the desires of the flesh to control their actions instead of yielding to the gentle leading of the Spirit. There was still jealousy, dissension, wrangling among them, which are essentially works of the flesh, Gal 5:20; they permitted partisan rivalry to hold sway among them. And that was proof positive that they were carnal, that their unregenerate, carnal self, Rom 7:1-25, had gained the ascendency. And so the conclusion, which Paul puts in the form of a question, was right, namely, that they were conducting themselves as unregenerate men are apt to behave under like circumstances, Rom 8:5, that they were conforming to the average person’s irreligious condition.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 3:11

Consider how Christ is the True foundation.

I. The nature of Christ. It was Godhead divested of its circumstance. His great power, the secret of His wonderful, unparalleled career, was not His Godhead, but the immeasurableness of the Holy Spirit which was in Him, which, never being grieved by the slightest approach of sin, wrought in Him infinitely. But He was a man generally subject to the same physical and spiritual laws as any other divinely commissioned and supernaturally furnished messenger of God. And this entire manhood of Christ is one of our foundations.

II. The work of Christ. It was complete. Sealed with the anointings of the Father for this very end, He worked out sacrificially as a Priest what now He gives and applies royally as a King. When that representative Man died, it was the same as if the whole race of mankind, which He was representing, died at that moment, in His death. So the debt is more than paid, the ransom is more than equivalent, the justice of God is more than satisfied. This is the work of Christ, and this again is the element of our Christianity.

III. And, thirdly, the claim of Christ. What return has not such a work a right to ask? As God, He demands His own twice-created work, your body, soul, and spirit—all you have and all you are to be His and only His, to love Him, to serve Him, to glorify Him for ever and ever. If the foundation is once set, our life will have in it that triple power, without which it is not worth living. (1) There will be a mind at rest. (2) The composure of a soul at ease will sustain a confidence which always commands success. (3) From that foundation by secret processes, there will be continually emanating over the whole man a hidden influence, strengthening, uniting, filling him, as for every duty here, so to be able to bear the weight of the glory in heaven.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 5th series, p. 83.

References: 1Co 3:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1494; B. J. Snell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 56; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 8th series, p. 116.

1Co 3:11-13

Life as a Structure.

I. There is a foundation laid. The idea couched in this figure is the radical idea, which runs through the whole of Scripture, that something must be done out of and apart from the man, to enable him even to begin his proper life before God. Jesus Christ is the foundation. We cannot take these words too literally. The foundation of all this world’s hopes, in the plan of God and of every man’s salvation, is Jesus Christ Himself, the personal historical Christ, who was born in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth and died on Calvary. This is the stone which was rejected of the builders, but which God has made the head of the corner. In contending for the literal meaning we do not exclude the doctrinal. All true doctrinal meanings are included. The deity, the humanity, the vicariousness, the righteousness, the love, the sorrow, tears and blood, and death and resurrection and victorious ascent "through all heavens to fill all things." All these things, with many besides, are included in the simple historical yet grand and joyful language, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

II. There is a building to be raised. A foundation without a building is a solecism, a name. One place of the world is just as much a foundation as another, unless you see a rising structure. The structure in this case is to be raised by the man. He may build a house; he ought to build a temple. The Apostle seems to refer to ordinary houses when he speaks of "wood, hay, stubble." These are the materials used for common houses. Each man’s life and soul ought to be a temple of God—nothing less. Surely a noble calling that each of us believing in Christ, is required and expected and will be helped of God in building up his whole existence into a living temple for the habitation of God through the Spirit!

III. There is a time given to finish the work. And when the limit of that time shall come, not one stone more can be laid by the builder, not one touch more given to the edifice in any of its parts before the trial. The Master will never tell us when our work is to end and its recompense is to come. But He tells us this, that we are building day by day. Let us see that we live for Christ, that we grow into His image, and that we work and work in the moral construction of our life which angels will crown and God will bless.

IV. "The fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is." Let us remember that nothing in us, pertaining to the heart or life or character, which is truly Christian, can fall in those flames at last. All Christian principles and all Christian works are indestructible. He whom you serve will gather up all the fragments, so that nothing shall be lost. He is gathering them day by day, and building them compactly together against the day of trial. And when that day shall come, when its fires shall be lighted, when what is inflammable in our lives shall catch and kindle at the first touch of the flame, we shall rejoice with an awful joy as we behold emerging from those fires that fair structure which will be incorruptible, undefiled, and which will never fade away.

A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting Places, p. 272.

References: 1Co 3:12.—Homilist, vol. ii., p. 355; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 80. 1Co 3:11-15.—R. Davey, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 262; vol. xxv., p. 84.

1Co 3:12-15

This is an awful passage; one whose import no man to whom has been committed the care of souls can realise without trembling. But it has a lesson for all—laity as well as clergy—on whom God has laid responsibility of any kind. St. Paul was much troubled by an account which had reached him of the state of things at Corinth. He had laid the foundation of a flourishing church there, and God had greatly prospered His work; but dissensions had arisen. The Apostle’s authority was decried. Rival teachers were set up; rival parties formed. There was already exhibited on a small scale the spirit of disunion and division by which the Church in these latter days has unhappily been distracted. St. Paul remonstrates with them on this state of things. It is an evidence, he tells them, of the imperfection of their Christian attainments.

I. We have here, first, the builders. These are primarily religious teachers, preachers of the Word, ministers. Such only seem to have been before the Apostle’s mind. But in a secondary sense the passage has a lesson for private Christians also; forasmuch as every Christian has a building to build for God in his own soul, on the foundation first laid at his baptism. It may be in the souls of others also; and woe worth him, if through his negligence, either building be consumed in the day of trial.

II. Next we have the foundation. This the Apostle describes in one word—Jesus Christ. On the cardinal truth of Christ’s crucifixion the hopes of the Church, the hopes of every individual Christian, rest. Let us look to ourselves that we do not lose hold of it.

III. The superstructure which St. Paul supposes to be built on this foundation. This, speaking generally, is the complex result of each man’s ministry—of his doctrine and of his labour—its result, as manifested in the lives and conversations of the converts whom he has won, or of the people who have been committed to his charge. The Apostle sets before us two distinct superstructures, the foundation being the same in both. Some builders he represents as raising a solid and substantial fabric, gold, silver, costly stones. Their doctrine and the result of it were in keeping with the great truth which himself had laid as the foundation; the doctrine uncorrupt—the result, holiness of life and conversation on the part of those who received it, and what he may be thought to have had specially in view—a spirit of charity and brotherly love, as opposed to the spirit of contention and division, which was so unhappily prevalent at Corinth, and which no doubt was in part what he meant by that "wood, hay, stubble," which others were building. I say, in part, not the whole; for, as appears from the Epistle, there were other evils, both doctrinal and practical, of which he had to complain, or rather over which he had to mourn; some of them, indeed, as incongruous with the original foundation as a heathen temple or a Mahometan mosque built upon the site of a Christian Church.

IV. Notice next the day of which the Apostle speaks—the day which will declare, will make manifest, before men and angels, the character of each man’s work. In many cases, no doubt, that character is only too apparent on the instant. The unsoundness and worthlessness of the building are open beforehand, going before to judgment. But in others they follow. After a specious show, conformity with the popular taste and the like gain them a wide acceptance, while true and honest work is depreciated and condemned. The day in which the Lord will come will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.

V. What is meant by the fire, of which it is said, "The day shall be revealed, and by which every man’s work will be proved"? This some have understood of persecution, and no doubt persecution has many times served as a test, sifting the Church and separating the wheat from the chaff. But it is a test which has only partially been applied. Many workmen have never had their work subjected to it, and even where it has been applied, it has not always proved an infallible test; there have been confessors and martyrs to heresy as well as to the truth. But St. Paul is speaking of a trial to which every man’s work shall be subjected, and of a test whose searching scrutiny no unsoundness or dishonesty in the work will escape. The fire of which the Apostle speaks is doubtless that searching scrutiny, repeatedly referred to elsewhere in Scripture, to which at the great and dreadful day of judgment every man’s work will be subjected, when the great white throne shall be set, and the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, and the books shall be opened, and the dead shall be judged out of those things that are written in the books according to their works; and among these works, the work of each man’s ministry, in the case of God’s ministers, will hold, we may be sure, the very foremost place.

VI. The Apostle, when he speaks of the unskilful builder being saved, must of course be understood to do so on the presumption that the man himself has personally retained his hold on Christ, and that for Christ’s sake the failure of his work—whether owing to ignorance, infirmity, or any less pardonable cause—is mercifully forgiven. Such a one, the Apostle says, shall lose his reward. He will appear before the Lord empty-handed, with no offering to present of souls won from Satan’s kingdom or strengthened and confirmed in faith and holiness. He will be happy only in this, that while he takes with shame the lowest place and marvels, while he takes it, that such grace should be extended to him, that place is still within his Father’s house.

C. Heurtley, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, Nov. 4th, 1880.

1Co 3:14-15

Two Builders on One Foundation.

I. Consider, first, the two builders and their work. The original application of these words is distinctly to Christian teachers. The wood, hay, and stubble are clearly not heresies, for the builder who uses them is on the foundation; and if Paul had been thinking of actual heresies, he would have found sharper words of condemnation with which to stigmatise them than those which merely designate them as flimsy and unsubstantial. But what is meant is the unprofitable teaching which good men may present, when "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed"; while, on the other hand, the gold and silver and precious stones are the solid and permanent and soul-satisfying truths which are revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

II. Think of the twofold effects of the one work. The flame plays round both the buildings. What fire is it? The text answers the question for us—"the day shall declare it." The Apostle does not think that he needs to say what day. They know well enough what day he means. The day is the day when Christ shall come. And the fire is but the symbol that always attends the Divine appearance in the Old and in the New Testament. That fire reveals, and it tests. What abides the test is glorified thereby; what does not is burned up and annihilated. The builders have been working, if I may say so, as you see builders sometimes nowadays, under special circumstances and in great buildings—working night-work, with some more or less sufficient illumination. The day dawns, and the building at which they have been toiling in the dim light stands out disclosed in all its beauty or deformity. Its true proportions are manifest at last.

III. Look at the twofold effect on the builders. The one gets a reward; the other suffers the loss of all his toil; gets no wages for work that did not last, is dragged through the fire and the smoke, and just saved from being burned up. He stands there, amazed and impoverished, amidst the ruins of his home. These two are like two vessels, one of which comes into harbour with a rich freight and flying colours, and is welcomed with tumult of acclaim; the other strikes on the bar. "Some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, all come safe to land"; but ship and cargo and profit of the venture are all lost. "He shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved."

A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 157.

Reference: 1Co 3:15.—T. Binney, Tower Church Sermons, p. 173.

1Co 3:16

Consider the Offices of the Holy Ghost.

I. It is the office of the Holy Ghost to effect such a change that the sinner may be described as born again and made a new man in Christ Jesus. The decayed frame of the soul is rebuilded, its lost powers restored, blind prejudice is removed from the understanding, and the bias of the will turned from the tendency to evil, and thus he who has been brought up a child of wrath with unruly passions and inclinations, and loving nothing but what God disapproves, is transformed into a child of God, with a capacity to apprehend spiritual things, a disposition to entertain them and strength to pursue them. And as it is through the work of the Holy Ghost that man is first created anew to God in righteousness and true holiness, so it is owing to this Divine Agent that he is afterward enabled to pursue steadfastly the Christian course. It were even nothing that Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, if there were no supernatural agency to apply to ourselves the expiatory virtue of Christ’s sacrifice. It is the office of the Spirit to translate us from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

II. Having wrought this wondrous change, the Holy Spirit does not leave its subject to himself, for he needs unremitting assistance, and never, while on earth, attains a point at which his own strength suffices for his safety. He must continually pray, and he knows not what to pray for as he ought; he must labour after holiness, and he finds another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; he must count all things but loss that he may win Christ, but the objects of sight have a vast advantage over the objects of faith, and it is intensely difficult to give to what is future the required predominance. But in all these duties and difficulties it is the office of the Spirit to communicate strength sufficient for the occasion, and the Spirit carries on to a gracious consummation the work which He has begun in the man’s heart. It rebuilds the fallen and desecrated fabric; it ministers continually at its altars, and makes its walls flash with the hope of immortality.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2067.

1Co 3:16

I. Every Christian is a dwelling-place of God. This is not a metaphor. It was the outward temple that was the metaphor. The reality is that which you and I, if we are God’s children in Jesus Christ, experience. That God should dwell in my heart is possible only from the fact that He dwelt in all His fulness in Christ, through whom I touch Him. That Temple consecrates all heart-shrines; and all worshippers that keep near to Him partake with Him of the Father that dwelt in Him.

II. As temples all Christians are to be manifesters of God. The meaning of the Temple of all temples is that there the indwelling Deity shall reveal Himself, and if it be true that we Christian men and women are, in deep and blessed reality, the abiding-places and habitations of God, then it follows that we shall stand in the world as the great means by which God is manifested and made known, and that in a twofold way—to ourselves and to other people.

III. As temples all Christian lives should be places of sacrifice. The difference between all other and lesser nobilities of life and the supreme beauty of a true Christian life is that the sacrifice of the Christian is properly a sacrifice—that is, an offering to God, done for the sake of the great Love wherewith He hath loved us. As Christ is the one true Temple and we become so by partaking of Him, so He is the one Sacrifice for sins for ever, and we become sacrificers only through Him.

IV. This great truth of the text enforces the solemn lesson of the necessary sanctity of the Christian life. The first plain idea of the temple is a place set apart and consecrated to God. Christianity is intolerant. There is to be one image in the shrine. One of the old Roman Stoic emperors had a pantheon in his palace, with Jesus Christ upon one pedestal and Plato on the one beside Him; and some of us are trying the same kind of thing—Christ there, and somebody else here. Remember, Christ must be everything or nothing. Stars may be sown by millions, but for the earth there is but one sun. And you and I are to shrine one dear Guest, and one only, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.

A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, May 6th, 1886.

Christians the Temple of God.

I. A temple is a place in which Deity is supposed specially to dwell, and in which He may be approached in worship. It supposes the existence of God and His willingness to hold intercourse with His creatures, and these are truths which have been universally admitted. The true dwelling-place of spirit is spirit; the true temple of Jehovah is the human soul. Christ appears not to abolish sacredness, but to extend it; not to defile holy ground, but to make all the earth holy; not to demolish temples, but to multiply them by making human souls more truly God’s habitation than ever had been the sanctuary upon the sacred hill. And thus our Apostle—Jew though he was—drew attention from the outward and visible, saying, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"

II. Glance at the past history of this temple. It is in ruins. The lamps have gone out, and the altar is overturned. No incense rises from the censer, no anthem swells from the choir. Majestic, it is still lovely even in decay; but the wind is wailing amid the colonnades, the filth defacing the chiselled relics, the screech owl nestling in the ivy, and the viper hissing among the rank weeds that grow round a few shattered columns that are still erect. Ah! how eloquently these things declare, "Know ye not that man was once the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God did dwell in him? If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy."

III. Consider the reconstruction of the temple. This was Christ’s great work. He himself was a temple. This world has been consecrated by Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the universe. Not only so; He makes us individually temples. We were polluted—polluted by sin; but He cleanses the temple from its pollution. We are led under the influence of the Spirit of God to deplore the desolation, to long for the reconstruction of the temple, and when this change in our heart is produced the temple is rebuilt. Christ is the builder of it; He is the chief corner stone. Because sin polluted, God forsook it; but because Christ has purified it, God has returned to it, dwells in it, makes it glorious with His presence; but lest we should again pollute it, and a worse thing happen, the solemn voice comes forth to us from the most holy place, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy."

Newman Hall, Penny Pulpit, No. 3890.

References: 1Co 3:16.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 124; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 327; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 38; Hutchings, The Person and Work of the Holy Ghost, p. 118.

1Co 3:16-17

I. When the fall of man broke down the altar within him and scattered the fire, and his vision of God became dim, it did not follow that the Holy Spirit withdrew from the world because the aberration of man’s will was allowed to banish Him from the human heart. Whatever belonged to Him as the Giver of Life went on still. "The whole creation," says one father, "is surrounded by the Spirit of God." "The grain of wheat that falls into the ground," says another, "and comes to dissolution, springs up manifold through the Spirit of God that sustaineth all things." And whenever the veering compass of man’s will, utterly perturbed by sin, pointed again to the pole of heaven and guided him truly, though but here and there for a season, again was the light seen; the love warmed again, and it was felt that God was still near.

II. We are thus able to infer from the benefits conferred on all Christians by the Holy Ghost what was the blessedness of our original inheritance lost by the fall. He guides into all truth, teaches all things, and brings all things to remembrance, whatsoever Christ has said. Love and joy, peace and longsuffering, all holy and gentle thoughts, does He work in us. So, then, He pervades the intellect and the spirit of man; all that is distinctive of man as above the other creatures is under His control. Farther even than that does His sway reach; man’s higher powers are grafted upon the lower, the motions of his spirit blend with, whilst they rise above, the laws of his physical life. And He that governs the higher elements controls the lower also.

III. It is at the very root of all worship to believe not only that God is near us, but that He has made a temple within us. Every faculty we have is but the reflection of His light in us; our wisdom and our love, that seem so truly ours, are really His, as children believe that windows are in flame when their elders know that it is but the beam of the declining sun reflected back from them. All that is good in us—body or mind—is the present work of the Creator; nothing is ours but sin. What love must not this awaken in me towards Him who is my Father indeed! What an atmosphere of glory and sanctity invests every other soul that is or might be the possessor of the same excellent privilege!

Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, p. 278.

Reference: 1Co 3:16, 1Co 3:17.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 49.

1Co 3:17

I. The human soul God’s truest temple. This truth expresses one of the great changes introduced by Christianity. The question to be answered, in order to illustrate its meaning, is this: Why has Christianity abolished the one local house, broken down the holy place, and consecrated man himself as the dwelling-place of the Most High? To show why this must be—why only man can be the true temple—we must trace it from two of the great principles of Christianity; for unless we see how this truth arises from the foundation facts of Christianity, we shall not see clearly into its meaning and power. (1) The first principle is—God equally present everywhere. I call that a great Christian fact: though recognised in Judaism and uttered by the prophets, it never broke forth into its wonderful glory until Christ appeared. And as you look at the whole tendency of Christ’s teaching and life, you will find that Christianity is emphatically the revelation of the near and all-surrounding God. Christ showed that nature was no dead machine, but the living work of an ever-present Father. (2) God is most clearly manifested in humanity. This is obviously embodied in the incarnation of Christ. There in Christ was the holy of holies. There was the altar which made every other altar fire grow pale and expire. The Man, the Divine Man, sorrowful and sacrificed, became the temple of Jehovah. Bring, now, these two principles together: God equally present everywhere—the old Temple vanished; God most highly manifested in humanity—the Christian soul the temple of God—therefore temples of God ye are!

II. The manner of realising it. Of course it can be attained only through the indwelling of the Divine Spirit in man. In man there is a trinity of power—thought, emotion, action. In order to become a temple, all these must be consecrated. (1) Intellect to realise God’s presence. (2) Emotion—the fire of impassioned devotion. (3) Action. Thought and feeling are both vain without this.

III. The results of the realisation. (1) God manifested to the world. (2) Elevation of life above the sinful, trifling, earthly. Realise the Divine within you, and you will not defile the temple of God. Let immortal hope glorify your work. His is no vain life who has, through the Spirit, become a temple of Jehovah.

E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 286.

References: 1Co 3:17.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 258; E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 246. 1Co 3:18.—H. Hird, Church of England Pulpit, vol. x., p. 426; A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 415.

1Co 3:18-19

The Self-wise Inquirer.

Let us inquire what is the vain wisdom of the world, and then we shall the better see how it leads men astray.

I. Now, when it is said that to trust our own notions is a wrong thing and a vain wisdom, of course this is not meant of all our notions whatever; for we must trust our own notions in one shape or other, and some notions which we form are right and true. The notions which we may trust without blame are such as come to us by way of our conscience, for such come from God. Such are the opinions and feelings of which a man is not proud. What are those of which he is likely to be proud? Those which he obtains, not by nature, but by his own industry, ability, and research; those which he possesses, and others not. Every one is in danger of valuing himself for what he does, and hence truths (or fancied truths) which a man has obtained for himself after much thought and labour, such he is apt to make much of and rely upon, and this is the source of that vain wisdom of which the Apostle speaks in the text.

II. How shall a sinner, who has formed his character upon unbelief, trusting sight and reason rather than conscience and Scripture, how shall he begin to repent? What must he do? Is it possible he can overcome himself, and new make his heart in the end of his days? It is possible—not with man, but with God, who gives grace to all who ask for it; but only in one way, in the way of His commandments, by a slow, tedious, toilsome self-discipline; slow, tedious, and toilsome, that is, to one who has been long hardening himself in a dislike of it, and indulging himself in the rapid flights and easy victories of his reason. There is but one way to heaven, the narrow way; and he who sets about to seek God, even in old age, must enter it at the same door as others. He must retrace his way and begin again with the very beginning as if he were a boy. And so proceeding-labouring, watching, and praying—he seems likely after all to make but little progress during the brief remnant of his life.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 215.

References: 1Co 3:21.—J. Pulsford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 312. 1Co 3:21, 1Co 3:22.—Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 422.

1Co 3:21-23

Consider:—

I. How Christ’s servants are men’s lords. "All things are yours: Paul, Apollos, Cephas." These three teachers were all lights kindled at the central light, and therefore shining. Each was but a part of the mighty whole, a little segment of the circle. In the measure in which men adhere to Christ, and have taken Him for theirs, in that measure they are delivered from all undue dependence on, still more, all slavish submission to, any single individual teacher or aspect of truth. The true democracy of Christianity, which abjures swearing by the words of any teacher, is simply the result of loyal adherence to the teaching of Jesus Christ.

II. Christ’s servants are the lords of the world. The phrase is used here, no doubt, as meaning the external material universe. These creatures around us, they belong to us, if we belong to Jesus Christ. That man owns the world who despises it. He owns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling-ground, on which, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which he may do service. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and the best use of the outward frame of things is that we shall take it as the field upon which we can serve God.

III. Christian men who belong to Jesus Christ are the lords and masters of "life and death." Both of these words are here used, as it seems to me, in their simple physical sense, natural life and natural death. (1) In a fashion we all possess life, seeing that we are all alive. But that mysterious gift of personality, that awful gift of conscious existence, only belongs, in the deepest sense, to the men who belong to Jesus Christ. The true ownership of life depends upon self-control, and self-control depends upon letting Jesus Christ govern us wholly. (2) Even death, in which we seem to be so abjectly passive, and in which so many of us are dragged away reluctantly from everything that we care to possess, may become a matter of consent, and therefore a moral act. If we feel our dependence on Christ, and yield up our wills to Him, then we may be quite sure that death, too, will be our servant, and that our wills will be concerned even in passing out of life.

IV. Christ’s servants are the lords of time and eternity, "things present or things to come." All things present, the light and the dark, the gains and the losses, all will be recognised if we have the wisdom that comes from submission to Jesus Christ’s will as being ours, and ministering to our highest blessing. And then "all things to come"; the dim vague future shall be for each of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shoreless to the horizon; every little ripple flashing with its own bright sunshine, and all bearing us onwards to the Throne that stands on the sea of glass mingled with fire.

A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, Dec. 2nd, 1886.

I. "Christ is God’s." This is the greatest outgoing of infinite love. Unspeakable, inconceivable is the satisfaction of the Father in Christ as the substitute and advocate of men. The Father’s delight in the Son incarnate is the uppermost link of the chain whereon all our hope for eternity hangs.

II. "Ye are Christ’s"—His property and possession. Think of this in two aspects. (1) How He obtains His property, and (2) how He will use it. He obtains it (a) by the sovereign gift of God, (b) by the price of His own blood, (c) by the renewing of the Holy Spirit. He will use His own (a) as objects to exercise kindness on, (a) as servants to do His work, (c) as living epistles in which the world may read the riches of His grace, (d) as company at His coming.

III. "All things are yours." Here is a right royal promise. The shout of a King is in the camp of Christians. All the fulness of the Godhead bodily has been treasured up in Christ, expressly that it may be within the reach of His people. (1) The ministry. Not the greatest of Christ’s gifts, in their own intrinsic value, but appearing the largest at the moment, as occupying the foreground of the view, foremost in the list of possessions belonging to the King’s children, come Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, ministers through whom they had believed. (2) "The world." The world is a birthplace for the new creature, and an exercise-ground for invigorating the spiritual life. (3) "Life." Life in the body possesses an unspeakable worth to the man who, being in Christ, lives anew and lives for ever. (4) "Death." When death is near the Christian meets it calmly, if not joyfully, as the dark, narrow door in the partition wall between time and eternity through which the children are led from the place of exile into the mansions of the Father’s house. (5) "Things present or things to come." All things are yours, Christians, whether they lie within the horizon of time or beyond it in the unseen eternity. Whatsoever the Father owns becomes the portion of His children.

W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 119.

The Christian’s Possession.

I. Look first at the main lesson of the text. It is one which the Churches of Christendom have not mastered yet. Must we not plead guilty to something which closely corresponds to the fierce and intolerant partisanship of the Corinthian Church? It is God’s will that the unity of every Church should be made up of diversity, but one aspect after another of Divine truth should be periodically accentuated by a master-mind, and commended afresh to the consciences of men. It is by His appointment that now a St. Paul stands forth as the champion of faith and now a St. James as the champion of works. But the disastrous mistake so often repeated is to regard the teachers of these different types as antagonistic instead of being what God intends them to be, supplementary to each other.

II. Look at the items of the boundless wealth of which the Apostle has taken inventory: (1) The world, he says, is yours. There is, then, a sense in which we may gain the whole world and not lose our souls. Nay, St. Paul would say it is only through care of the soul that the world, in any true sense, can be gained at all. But observe, he is here speaking of the whole framework of creation, the whole handiwork of God, and he declares that this belongs to the Christian. Not only are the invisible forces and its mystic order overruled for us, but all its appliances, all its resources, are ours if we are Christ’s. Centre your affections on these things, work for them, live in them apart from Christ, and they truly cease to be yours; they do not belong to you, but you to them. It is only a surrender to Christ that can teach any man the lofty use of this world. (2) "Life is yours." All it means, all it involves, all the stores of joy which it is treasuring daily, all that must grow out of it throughout eternity—all is yours. And why? Because every burden, every difficulty has been borne, every danger faced, the whole pressure of life’s strain measured, by One who loved you with an infinite tenderness. (3) Death is yours—death, the last enemy that shall be destroyed, the most merciless and arbitrary of tyrants, whose awful sway it is so vain to dispute. Death is yours, despoiled of his terrors, handed over to you, your slave and not your master; for you belong to Him who has the keys of death and hell, and you share the fruits of His victory over the grave. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s."

R. Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 145.

References: 1Co 3:21-23.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 408; J. Caird, Sermons, p. 247; J. Duncan, Pulpit and Communion Table, p. 221; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 49. 1Co 3:22.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., Nos. 870, 875. 1Co 3:22-23.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 291. 1Co 3:23.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 12. 1Co 3:23.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 189.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

As if the apostle had said, "My brethren, although I speak the highest wisdom amongst them that are perfect, yet could not I speak the unto you as unto spiritual persons, but as unto carnal: because the works of the flesh are found with you, and at the best you are but babes in Christ."

Learn hence, That even amongst those who are the true and real members of the visible church, some are spiritual, some are carnal: some are men, some are babes. The apostle doth not call them absolutely carnal, as if they were wholly given up to the works of the flesh; but comparatively so, having too much carnality and corruption in them, and savouring too much of the flesh, though for the main truly pious: and therefore he uses the word as for mitigation sake; I could not speak unto you, but as unto carnal.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

SPIRITUAL BABYHOOD

1. “And, brethren, I was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even babes in Christ.” The class of the Corinthian church here addressed are most assuredly regenerated people, because they are here recognized as the children of God, i. e., “babes in Christ”; yet they did not rank as spiritual, but were yet carnal.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ . [The simplicity of Paul's instruction had given occasion to the false apostles ( 2Co_11:12-15 ) to criticize him as a shallow teacher ( 2Co_10:10 ), rather than as one who had "the mind of Christ." To this the apostle replies that their own immature condition up to the time when he left them, rendered them incapable of any fuller instruction; for, far from being mature disciples ( 1Co_2:8 ; Eph_4:13 ), they were still swayed by the prejudices and passions of the unregenerate life out of which they had been but lately born, and to which they were not wholly dead.]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1 Corinthians Chapter 3

They were not natural men; but they were carnal (not spiritual) men, so that the apostle had to feed them with milk and not with meat which was only fit for those that were of full age. That with which they nourished their pride was a proof of this-their divisions into schools of doctrine. Paul, no doubt, had planted; Apollos watered. It was well. But it was God alone who gave the increase. Moreover the apostle had laid the foundation of this building of God, the assembly at Corinth; others had built since-had carried on the work of the edification of souls. Let every one take heed. There was but one foundation; it was laid. But in connection with it, they might teach things solid or worthless and form souls by one or the other-perhaps even introduce souls won by such vain doctrines among the saints. The work would be proved, sooner or later, by some day of trial. If they had wrought in the work of God, with solid materials, the work would stand; if not, it would come to nothing. The effect, the fruit of labour, would be destroyed-the man who had wrought be saved, because he had built on the foundation-had true faith in Christ. Yet the shaking, caused by the failure of all that he had thought genuine, [5] would be apt, for himself, to shake the consciousness of his connection with, and confidence in, the foundation. He should be saved as through the fire. He who had wrought according to God should receive the fruit of his labour. If any one corrupted the temple of God-introduced that which destroyed fundamental truths, he should be destroyed himself.

The subject then is ministerial labour, carried on by means of certain doctrines, either good, worthless, or subversive of the truth; and the fruits which this labour would produce. And there are three cases; the work good as well as the workman; the work vain, but the workman saved; the corrupter of God’s temple-here the workman would be destroyed.

Finally, if any one desired to be wise in this world, let him become unintelligent in order to be wise. God counted the wisdom of the wise as foolishness, and would take them in their own craftiness. But in this the saints were below their privileges. All things were theirs, since they were the children of God. “All things are yours”-Paul, Apollos, all things-you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Footnotes for 1 Corinthians Chapter 3

5: Remark here, the very important instruction as to the assembly viewed as God’s building. In Mat 16:1-28 we have Christ’s building, and Satan’s power cannot prevail against it. This building will go on till complete at the end. Hence in 1Pe 2:1-25 and Eph 2:1-22 we have no workman, and the stones come, and the building grows. It is Christ’s own work: He builds, and the building is not yet complete. Here it is God’s building; but there is a builder, and man’s responsibility comes in. There is a wise master-builder, or it may be those who build with wood, hay, and stubble-yea, even those who corrupt. In Eph 2:1-22 there is also a present building, but it is the fact viewed abstractedly. Here the responsibility is formally stated. The confusion of Christ’s building (not yet finished) and man’s building, the applying the promise made to one to the other which rests on man’s responsibility and is a present building on earth, is one grand source of Popish and Puseyite errors. Against Christ’s work nothing can prevail. Man may build with wood and hay and stubble, and his work be destroyed, as it will.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–4. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual. See verse 6 of the preceding chapter; also verse 14. The brethren at Corinth had not reached the state of “spiritual men.” They were carnal, undeveloped like babes.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Paul now reminds the Corinthian believers of how they are actually living instead of behaving as their position before God is. He then reminds them that the person who teaches them is not as important as God who gives their growth.

brothers

Here this means fellow Christians, including both men and women.

spiritual people

people who obey the Spirit

fleshly people

people who follow their own desires

as to little children in Christ

The Corinthians are compared to children very young in age and understanding. AT: "as to very young believers in Christ" (See: Metaphor)

I fed you milk, not solid food

The Corinthians can understand only easy truths like babies who can drink only milk. They are not mature enough to understand greater truths like older children who now can eat solid food. (See: Metaphor)

you are not yet ready

It is implied that they are not ready to understand more difficult teachings. AT: "you still are not ready to understand the harder teachings about following Christ" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

spirit

flesh

Christ

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

1–4. THE PARTIZANSHIP OF THE CORINTHIANS A HINDRANCE TO SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

κἀγώ, ἀδελφοί, οὐκ ἠδυνήθην λαλῆσαι ὑμῖν. The Apostle has said much of the superiority of the wisdom which is the result of spiritual illumination. He now warns the Corinthians that the majority of them do not possess it, or at best but in the scantiest measure, and thus remain on the threshold of the Christian life.

πνευματικοῖς. Cf. δυνατοί Rom 15:1, and τέλειοι ch. 1Co 2:6. Cf. also Gal 6:1.

σαρκίνοις. The difference between this word and σαρκικός is that the termination -νος signifies the material of which a thing is composed (cf. λίθινος, ξύλινος, &c), while -κος denotes character or tendency. Thus σάρκινος signifies composed of flesh, σαρκικός, ruled by flesh.

νηπίοις ἐν Χριστῷ. It may not be amiss to remark that a man may be a ‘babe,’ even though he be ‘in Christ.’

1. σαρκίνοις. So אABCD. The internal evidence is about equally divided. For we may fairly set the probability that a writer seeing πνευματικοῖς before him would alter σαρκίνοις into σαρκικοῖς, against the probability that σάρκινος, being the word in ordinary use, would be substituted for σαρκικός, which appears first in the N. T. There is however, for the text, the fact that the very MSS. which have σάρκινος here, have σαρκικός in 1Co 3:3.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Carnal [σαρκινοις] . Made of flesh. See on Rom 7:14, and on flesh, Rom 7:5.

Babes [νηπιοις] . From nh not, and epov a word. Strictly, non - speakers. Compare the Latin infans. Strongly contrasted with perfect; see on ch. 1Co 2:6.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.