I Corinthians 3:1

First Corinthians 3:1

In First Corinthians 3:1-4 the Bible says, "And I, brothers, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. For you are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are you not carnal, and walk as men? For while one says, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are you not carnal?"

At the end of First Corinthians chapter 2, Paul told us about the natural man and the spiritual man. Now he tells us about the carnal man. The natural man is the person who does not have the spirit of God because they have not yet been born again through faith in Christ. The spiritual man is the person who does have the Spirit of God because they have been baptized by the Spirit through faith in Jesus, which happens at the time of the new birth; and the spiritual man is living according to the principles of the Spirit: submission and love for Christ. The carnal man is the person who has come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, but something has happened to them so that they are no longer spiritual. Instead of being spiritual, they are carnal.

The word carnal refers to the flesh, and therefore refers to the human life without the influence of the spirit of God. When the spiritual man stops living according to the spirit and stops living according to spiritual principles, and starts living like the natural man, then he becomes the carnal man. He does not become the natural man again. That is impossible, because when God saves us, He saves us unto the end. But even though the spiritual person does not become the natural person again, if the spiritual person is not careful, he will become very similar to the natural man in the way he acts and thinks. The Biblical terminology for that is called being carnal or being a carnal Christian. Whenever you respond to a situation in life the way that an unsaved person would respond who has no faith and who has no Savior to guide him, then you are carnal. The answer to that problem is to confess you sins to Jesus, and thus start walking in the Spirit again.

Paul said that the reason for the problems that the believers in Corinth were having was the fact that they were carnal. Notice the very first evidence that Paul gave that they were carnal. Paul said to them in First Corinthians 3:1 that he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. When you are first saved, you are considered to be a babe in Christ. That is because your life has started over. You were given a new start by God, and what happened to you before you were saved was washed away and forgotten. Most people when they are first saved do not know much except that Jesus is their Savior and that they have been forgiven of their sins. It is a good thing to be a babe in Christ if you have recently been saved.

But the Christian life was meant to be a process of growth. You start with the foundation of Jesus as your Savior, but you are expected to build upon that foundation a life of faith. Getting saved is not just fire insurance: it is a new way of life. It is expected that you will grow in grace as time goes by and that you will learn about faith and hope and love, and that you will learn to be a spiritual person in the midst of a wicked world. It is also normal and expected that you will find out more and more about what gifts God has given you and that you will learn how to use those gifts in the service of God. If you have not had the appropriate amount of growth in your spiritual life, and if you are still like a babe in Christ when you no longer should be, the reason will be your own carnality. You were a carnal Christian too much of the time and therefore you did not grow spiritually.

Paul said in First Corinthians 3:3 that there were three things that demonstrated that the believers in Corinth were carnal. He said that there was among the Corinthians envying, and strife, and divisions. Envy is a great sin. Envy is actually a violation of one of the Ten Commandments that says: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s." When you envy someone, you will have broken this commandment. Envy is a feeling of resentment aroused by the contemplation of someone else’s desirable qualities or possessions. It is interesting to note that the same Greek word that is translated ‘‘envy” is elsewhere translated as “zeal”, such as having a zeal for God. Sometimes the word is used in a positive way and sometimes in a negative way, but it always refers to a very strong emotion. When believers are carnal, they will easily be envious of others. They will have strong negative emotions towards some of the other Christians around them. The reason that someone who is spiritual will not be envious of the gifts or possessions of others is because a spiritual person will have a generous spirit towards others and will rejoice in the good fortune of those around them. Also, a spiritual person will be living by faith in God, and such a person will know that what they have, whether in small or large portions, was given to them by God and they are at peace with what God has decided to do.

Paul also said in First Corinthians 3:3 that because the Christians were carnal, there was strife among them. Strife refers to discord and arguing. When someone is selfish and self-centered, they will demand that things be done their way; and they will be quick to argue and to have hard feelings against someone who has another way. They refuse to compromise or to give in at any point concerning their own preferences. Everyone has probably heard about a church that has split over the color of a new carpet or some other frivolous detail. That kind of thing can happen when Christians are carnal. The goal is always for the congregation to be like-minded: to come to a consensus after reasonable discussion and prayer. The spiritual person will not cause strife, because the spiritual person will always be ready to honestly say, "May the will of the Lord be done," and will never demand their own will.

A third negative result of the carnality of the believers in Corinth is given by Paul in First Corinthians 3:3 as divisions. There were divisions between the believers because of who they were following. Some of the carnal believers said, "We are of Paul," and some of the other carnal believers said, "We are of Apollos." Whenever Christians start praising other humans, it is a sure sign of carnality; and it is also a sure sign that there will be divisions caused by it. Many of the divisions between the Christian groups today and even between denominations were originally caused in days past when believers became followers of men instead of God. We are followers of Christ and we live to praise Christ for the wonderful things that He has done. Be careful about what kind of allegiance that you display to other humans. The wrong kind of allegiance to a human being is a sure sign of carnality, because we are followers of God and not of man.

Notice in First Corinthians 3:3 that Paul said that because they were carnal they walked as men. In other words they were acting the way that human beings normally act. Most human beings do not have the Spirit of God in them, and they have a certain way of acting. There are certain common characteristics for the average human. One of the things that has always been a part of human nature is divisiveness. Humans tend to oppose one another, to compete with one other, and then to divide. Humans always find reasons to divide. On a personal standpoint that is the basic reason for many divorces and for many ruined friendships. On a national level it is the basic reason for war, and Jesus said that one of the characteristics of our day would be wars and rumors of war. Because of the natural divisiveness that springs up from human nature, one of the hardest things for any group of humans to do is to remain united. And you will not be able to stay united as Christians, if you are carnal.

If you are a believer, you are carnal when you act the way that humans act who do not know God. That is one of the problems with too long or too close of an association with those of the world. If you are not careful, you will respond in the selfish ways that they respond. It is only through the proper amount of prayer and thinking about God’s Word that you will be able to respond with faith instead of with selfishness. The spiritual person will not cause divisions because the spiritual person will not follow man or the doctrines of man.

In First Corinthians 3:5-8 Paul tells the Corinthians why they should not be followers of Apollos or Paul in a way that causes divisions, and why they should not be overzealous in praising Apollos or Paul or any other human. The Bible says in First Corinthians 3:5-8, "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that plants anything, neither he that waters; but God that gives the increase. Now he that plants and he that waters are one; and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor."

In these few verses there are several reasons given why Christians should not be followers of men, even if the men have been sent by God and used by God. Paul and Apollos were ministers of God. The word "minister" in this passage comes from the same word that is translated "deacon" elsewhere, and it means “servant”. Paul and Apollos were servants of God. They were the messengers, but God gave them the message. They were gifted by God and sent by God, but it is God who should get the glory for it all, because the ministers were just doing God’s bidding. The ministers would not have come, and they would not have anything of value to say, if it were not for God.

If anyone believes, it is not because of a man that they believe. It is because of God. Faith is a gift from God. If you have true, saving faith; then it is the work of God that put it there. God gives the increase, not man. Therefore, you should be a follower of God and never a follower of man. Be careful of giving too much admiration and too much praise to some human who is a servant of God. You might ask, Don’t they deserve recognition because of their gifts and their accomplishments? But you should realize that you need to spend your efforts finding reasons to praise God, and let God give His servants any recognition that He wants to give them when the time comes.

There will come a time for the rewarding of the believers who have served God. Nothing goes unnoticed by the Creator of the Universe. Jesus said that you will even be rewarded for giving out a cup of cold water in His name. It says in First Corinthians 3:8 that "every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor." You do not have to bestow admiration upon the servants of God to the point of following them instead of following God. God will reward them for their labors when the time comes.

In First Corinthians 3:9-11 the Bible says, "For we are laborers together with God: you are God’s husbandry, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given to me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon. But let every man take heed how he builds thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Paul said, "We are laborers together with God." It was not just Paul and Apollos who were laborers with God, but every believer is a laborer with God. The way that God has established this age is that He does His work through His people. Because God is God, He can do anything that He chooses to do, and what He has chosen is that He will do His work through His children. If you are a believer, then you have the Spirit of God within you, and you have one or more gifts that God has given to you so that He can use you in His service. When God saved you from your sins, He left you on the earth because He has something for you to do.

One of the things that God wants every believer to do is to build up his own Christian character. That is what is meant in the last phrase of First Corinthians 3:9 where it says, "you are God’s building." It is not what you possess that really counts, but what you are. God wants to make you into a better person. He wants to make you into more of what a human being ought to be. In this passage of scripture your life is compared to a building. Every building has a foundation. Of course the foundation is always laid first, and then and only then can more construction take place upon the building. If you do not have the foundation then you cannot even begin with the rest of the building.

One of the problems with the world, is the fact that not enough people have the right foundation in their life. Jesus once taught about two people who each built a house, one with a foundation on rock and the other without any foundation. The house that was built upon a rock withstood the storm, but the house that was built upon the earth, as soon as the stream did beat against it vehemently, immediately it fell, and great was the fall of it. Jesus said that he who heard His sayings and did them not, was just like the man who built his house without a foundation. Jesus is the Rock.

Paul told the Corinthians that when he came to them, he gave them the right foundation because he gave them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only foundation that will allow the building of your life to withstand the storms of sin and judgment that will eventually come your way. If you do not have Jesus as the foundation for your life, then you can come to Him and pray to Him and find forgiveness of sins, and a new life that will give you the capacity to become a better person and to build your life the way that it ought to be built.

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