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For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:9-11 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, you aren’t ready even now, for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly? Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed, and each as the Lord gave to him? I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are the same, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble, each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire.
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it.
For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.
We are goddis labourers ye are goddis husbandrye ye are goddis byldynge.
Accordynge to the grace of god geven vnto me as a wyse bylder have I layde the foundacion And another bylt theron But let every man take hede how he bildeth apon.
For other foundacion can no man laye then that which is layde which is Iesus Christ.
For we together are Gods labourers: yee are Gods husbandrie, and Gods building.
According to the grace of God giuen to mee, as a skilfull master builder, I haue laide the foundation, and another buildeth thereon: but let euery man take heede how he buildeth vpon it.
For other foundation can no man laie, then that which is laied, which is Iesus Christ.
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
75 distinct cross-references across this passage (77 total citations).
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9. For we are fellow-laborers with God. Here is…
9. For we are fellow-laborers with God. Here is the best argument. It is the Lord’s work that we are employed in, and it is to him that we have devoted our labors: hence, as he is faithful and just, he will not disappoint us of our reward. That man, accordingly, is mistaken who looks to men, or depends merely on their remuneration. Here we have an admirable commendation of the ministry — that while God could accomplish the work entirely himself, he calls us, puny mortals, to be as it were his coadjutors, and makes use of us as instruments. As to the perversion of this statement by the Papists, for supporting their system of free-will, it is beyond measure silly, for Paul shows here, not what men can effect by their natural powers, but what the Lord accomplishes through means of them by his grace. As to the exposition given by some — that Paul, being God’s workman, was a fellow-workman with his colleagues, that is, with the other teachers — it appears to me harsh and forced, and there is nothing whatever in the case that shuts us up to have recourse to that refinement. For it corresponds admirably with the Apostle’s design to understand him to mean, that, while it is peculiarly the work of God to build his temple, or cultivate his vineyard, he calls forth ministers to be fellow-laborers, by means of whom He alone works; but, at the same time, in such a way, that they in their turn labor in common with him. As to the reward of works, consult my Institutes
God’s husbandry, God’s building. These expressions may be explained in two ways. They may be taken actively in this sense: “You have been planted in the Lord’s field by the labor of men in such a way, that our heavenly Father himself is the true Husbandman, and the Author of this plantation. You have been built up by men in such a way, that he himself is the true Master-builder. Or, it may be taken in a passive sense, thus: “In laboring to till you, and to sow the word of God among you and water it, we have not done this on our own account, or with a view to advantage to accrue to us, but have devoted our service to the Lord. In our endeavors to build you up, we have not been influenced by a view to our own advantage, but with a view to your being God’s planting and building. This latter interpretation I rather prefer, for I am of opinion, that Paul meant here to express the idea, that true ministers labor not for themselves, but for the Lord. Hence it follows, that the Corinthians were greatly to blame in devoting themselves to men, while of right they belonged exclusively to God. And, in the first place, he calls them his husbandry, following out the metaphor previously taken up, and then afterwards, with the view of introducing himself to a larger discussion, he makes use of another metaphor, derived from architecture.
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.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv9–11 Serving under him: Now they which serve under another,…
Serving under him: Now they which serve under another, do nothing by their own strength, but as it is given them by grace, which grace maketh them fit to that service. See 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 3:6, and all the increase that cometh by their labor, doth so proceed from God, that no part of the praise of it may be given to the under servant.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9 For we are labourers together with God: ye…
9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.
Ver. 9. For we are labourers, &c.] Let ministers hence learn their, 1. Dignity; 2. Duty. Fructus honos oneris, Fructus honoris onus. Who would not work hard with such sweet company?
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.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv9–11 Though compared with God we are nothing, yet our…
Though compared with God we are nothing, yet our station is no mean station; God works as the principal efficient Cause, we work with God as his instruments; God worketh one way, by his secret influence upon the heart, we another way, by publication of the gospel in people’s ears, but the scope and end of the work is the same. The Lord is said to work with his ministers, Mar 16:20, and they are here said to work with him. Hence he proveth what he had before said, that they should be rewarded; God will not suffer those who work with him to be without their reward: as also that they were one, for they are all labourers together with God. Yet do not think yourselves our husbandry, for you are
God’s husbandry: thus God’s people, Isa 61:3, are called the planting of the Lord.
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God’s building: thus the church is called the house of God, 1Ti 3:15. Still the apostle minds them, that they were God’s, not their minister’s; it was God to whom they were beholden for their conversion, for their edification, &c.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv9–11 Observe here, 1. The honourable title put upon the…
Observe here, 1. The honourable title put upon the ministers of God, they are labourers or workers together with God.
But in what sense are they so?
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Ans. Not so by any power or their own to produce any spiritual effect, as if they without God could work faith and repentance in the hearts of sinners; but they work only by an external application of the ministry of the work, and the means of grace to the souls of men. They are under-labourers to God, and God honours them by working by them, and working with them, for the conversion of men.
Observe, 2. The honourable relation in which the church stands to God: the church and people of God are his husbandry, and his building: Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.
Which phrase implies, 1. Power and goodness in making them so: a building is not of itself, nor is a field clothed with goodly corn of itself.
2. It implies dominion and absolute sovereignty: the master is the orderer of the house, and the husbandman the disposer of his ground.
3. It denotes propriety and interest, that we are not our own, but God’s. The house is the owner’s, not its own. God is theirs, and all that God has is theirs also.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v11 Here the apostle informs us what foundation he had…
Here the apostle informs us what foundation he had laid at the bottom of all his labours among them - even Jesus Christ, the chief corner-stone, Eph 2:20. Upon this foundation all the faithful ministers of Christ build. Upon this rock all the Christians found their hopes. Those that build their hopes of heaven on any other foundation build upon the sand. Other foundation can no man lay besides what is laid - even Jesus Christ. Note, The doctrine of our Saviour and his mediation is the principal doctrine of Christianity. It lies at the bottom, and is the foundation, of all the rest. Leave out this, and you lay waste all our comforts, and leave no foundation for our hopes as sinners. It is in Christ only that God is reconciling a sinful world to himself, Co2 5:19. But of those that hold the foundation, and embrace the general doctrine of Christ's being the mediator between God and man, there are two sorts: -
I. Some build upon this foundation gold, silver, and precious stones (Co1 3:12), namely, those who receive and propagate the pure truths of the gospel, who hold nothing but the truth as it is in Jesus, and preach nothing else. This is building well upon a good foundation, making all of apiece, when ministers not only depend upon Christ as the great prophet of the church, and take him for their guide and infallible teacher, but receive and spread the doctrines he taught, in their purity, without any corrupt mixtures, without adding or diminishing.
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II. Others build wood, hay, and stubble, on this foundation; that is, though they adhere to the foundation, they depart from the mind of Christ in many particulars, substitute their own fancies and inventions in the room of his doctrines and institutions, and build upon the good foundation what will not abide the test when the day of trial shall come, and the fire must make it manifest, as wood, hay, and stubble, will not bear the trial by fire, but must be consumed in it. There is a time coming when a discovery will be made of what men have built on this foundation: Every man's work shall be made manifest, shall be laid open to view, to his own view and that of others. Some may, in the simplicity of their hearts, build wood and stubble on the good foundation, and know not, all the while, what they have been doing; but in the day of the Lord their own conduct shall appear to them in its proper light. Every man's work shall be made manifest to himself, and made manifest to others, both those that have been misled by him and those that have escaped his errors. Now we may be mistaken in ourselves and others; but there is a day coming that will cure all our mistakes, and show us ourselves, and show us our actions in the true light, without covering or disguise: For the day shall declare it (that is, every man's work), because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is, Co1 3:13. The day shall declare and make it manifest, the last day, the great day of trial; see Co1 4:5. Though some understand it of the time when the Jewish nation was destroyed and their constitution thereby abolished, when the superstructure which judaizing teachers would have raised on the Christian foundation was manifested to be no better than hay and stubble, that would not bear the trial. The expression carries in it a plain allusion to the refiner's art, in which the fire separates and distinguishes the dross from the gold and silver; as it also will silver and gold and precious stones, that will endure the fire, from wood and hay and stubble, that will be consumed in it. Note, There is a day coming that will as nicely distinguish one man from another, and one man's work from another's, as the fire distinguishes gold from dross, or metal that will bear the fire from other materials that will be consumed in it. In that day, 1. Some men's works will abide the trial - will be found standard. It will appear that they not only held the foundation, but that they built regularly and well upon it - that they laid on proper materials, and in due form and order. The foundation and the superstructure were all of a piece. The foundation-truths, and those that had a manifest connection with them, were taught together. It may not be so easy to discern this connection now, nor know what works will abide the trial then; but that day will make a full discovery. And such a builder shall not, cannot fail of a reward. He will have praise and honour in that day, and eternal recompence after it. Note, Fidelity in the ministers of Christ will meet with a full and ample reward in a future life. Those who spread true and pure religion in all the branches of it, and whose work will abide in the great day, shall receive a reward. And, Lord, how great! how much exceeding their deserts! 2. There are others whose works shall be burnt (Co1 3:15), whose corrupt opinions and doctrines, or vain inventions and usages in the worship of God, shall be discovered, disowned, and rejected, in that day - shall be first manifested to be corrupt, and then disapproved of God and rejected. Note, The great day will pluck off all disguises, and make things appear as they are: He whose work shall be burnt will suffer loss. If he have built upon the right foundation wood and hay and stubble, he will suffer loss. His weakness and corruption will be the lessening of his glory, though he may in the general have been an honest and an upright Christian. This part of his work will be lost, turning no way to his advantage, though he himself may be saved. Observe, Those who hold the foundation of Christianity, though they build hay, wood, and stubble, upon it, may be saved. This may help to enlarge our charity. We should not reprobate men for their weakness: for nothing will damn men but wickedness. He shall be saved, yet so as by fire, saved out of the fire. He himself shall be snatched out of that flame which will consume his work. This intimates that it will be difficult for those that corrupt and deprave Christianity to be saved. God will have no mercy on their works, though he may pluck them as brands out of the burning. On this passage of scripture the papists found their doctrine of purgatory, which is certainly hay and stubble: a doctrine never originally fetched from scripture, but invented in barbarous ages, to feed the avarice and ambition of the clergy, at the cost of those who would rather part with their money than their lusts, for the salvation of their souls. It can have no countenance from this text, (1.) Because this is plainly meant of a figurative fire, not of a real one: for what real fire can consume religious rites or doctrines? (2.) Because this fire is to try men's works, of what sort they are; but purgatory-fire is not for trial, not to bring men's actions to the test, but to punish for them. They are supposed to be venial sins, not satisfied for in this life, for which satisfaction must be made by suffering the fire of purgatory. (3.) Because this fire is to try every man's works, those of Paul and Apollos, as well as those of others. Now, no papists will have the front to say apostles must have passed through purgatory fires.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv9–11 For we are labourers together with God,.... The ministers…
For we are labourers together with God,.... The ministers of the Gospel are labourers in the Lord's vineyard, and not loiterers; their work is a laborious work, both to body and mind; which lies in close study and meditation, in diligent reading and constant prayer, in frequent ministration of the word, and administration of ordinances; besides reproofs, admonitions, and exhortations, counsels, and instructions, which are often necessary: it is a work, which no man is sufficient for of himself; what requires diligence, industry, and faithfulness; is honourable, and, when rightly performed, deserves respect: nor do they labour alone, but with God; not as co-ordinate, but as subordinate workers; for though they labour in planting and watering, yet they bear no part with him in giving the increase; he is the husbandman, the chief master builder, they are labourers under him; however, he works with them; hence their labours are not in vain, and they have great encouragement to go on in their work; and they are God's labourers with one another, which is a sense of the phrase not to be overlooked. The apostle often, in his epistles, speaks of his fellow workmen, and fellow labourers, who wrought together with him under God:
ye are God's husbandry; or tillage; he is the proprietor of the field, the occupier of it, the husbandman who breaks up the fallow ground of the hearts of his people; he casts in the seed of grace, he makes the ground good, and causes it to bring forth fruit; the churches of Christ are his property, land of his fertilizing, and all the fruit belongs unto him; they are gardens of his planting, and vineyards of his watering, and which he keeps night and day, lest any hurt:
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ye are God's building; as the former metaphor is taken from agriculture, this is from architecture: believers in a church state are God's house, in which he dwells, and which he himself has built; he has laid the foundation, which is Jesus Christ; he makes his people lively stones, and lays them on it; he raises up the superstructure, and will complete the building, and ought to bear all the glory, and in all which he makes use of his ministers as instruments.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv9–11 For we are all fellowlabourers - God's labourers, and…
For we are all fellowlabourers - God's labourers, and fellowlabourers with each other. Ye are God's husbandry - This is the sum of what went before: it is a comprehensive word, taking in both a field, a garden, and a vineyard. Ye are God's building - This is the sum of what follows.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv9–11 Verse 9. For we are labourers together with God]…
Verse 9. For we are labourers together with God] We do nothing of ourselves, nor in reference to ourselves; we labour together in that work which God has given us to do, expect all our success from him, and refer the whole to his glory. It would perhaps be more correct to translate θεου γαρ εσμεν συνεργαι, we are fellow labourers of God; for, as the preposition συν may express the joint labour of the teachers one with another, and not with God, I had rather, with Bishop Pearce, translate as above: i.e. we labour together in the work of God. Far from being divided among ourselves, we jointly labour, as oxen in the same yoke, to promote the honour of our Master.
Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.] θεου γεωργιον θεου οικοδομη εστε. The word γεωργιον, which we translate husbandry, signifies properly an arable field; so Pr 24:30: I went by the FIELD, γεωργιον, of the slothful; and Pr 31:16: The wise woman considereth a FIELD, γεωργιον, and buyeth it. It would be more literal to translate it, Ye are God's farm: γεωργιον in Greek answers to שדה sadeh in Hebrew, which signifies properly a sown field.
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Ye are God's building.-Ye are not only the field which God cultivates, but ye are the house which God builds, and in which he intends to dwell. As no man in viewing a fine building extols the quarryman that dug up the stones, the hewer that cut and squared them, the mason that placed them in the wall, the woodman that hewed down the timber, the carpenter that squared and jointed it, c., but the architect who planned it, and under whose direction the whole work was accomplished so no man should consider Paul, or Apollos, or Kephas, any thing, but as persons employed by the great Architect to form a building which is to become a habitation of himself through the Spirit, and the design of which is entirely his own.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v10 1Co 3:10-11. According to the grace of God —…
1Co 3:10-11. According to the grace of God — This he premises, lest he should seem to ascribe any thing to himself; as a wise master-builder — A skilful architect, directed by divine wisdom; I have laid the foundation — Jesus Christ and him crucified, a foundation sufficient to support the whole fabric of Christianity, with all its blessed effects: and another buildeth thereon — Succeeding teachers bestow further labour for your instruction and edification. But let every man — Every minister; take heed how he buildeth thereon — That all the doctrines which he teaches may be consistent with the foundation. For other foundation — On which the whole church, with all its doctrines, privileges, and duties, may be built; can no man lay — How much soever he may endeavour to do it; than that which is laid — In the counsels of divine wisdom, in the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament, and in the preaching of Christ himself and his apostles, St. Paul in particular; which is Jesus Christ — Who in his person and offices, in his love and sufferings, his humiliation and exaltation, his atoning death, his victorious resurrection, his glorious ascension, and his prevalent intercession, is the firm, immoveable rock of ages; a foundation every way sufficient to bear all the weight that God himself, or the sinner, when he believes, can lay upon him, even to support his immortal hopes. Christ, in his prophetic office, as a teacher come from God, is the foundation of all the doctrines of Christianity, and as made of God unto us wisdom, the source of our knowledge of, and faith in those doctrines: in his priestly office, atoning and interceding for us, he is the foundation of all the privileges of Christianity; and, when made of God unto us righteousness, puts us in possession of those privileges; in his kingly office he is the foundation of all the duties of Christianity, and when made of God unto us sanctification, of our power to perform those duties; for when the tree is good, the fruit is good; when we are created anew in Christ Jesus, good works are the never-failing consequence, Eph 2:10. Add to this, that as the firstborn of them that sleep, and our forerunner into glory, he is the foundation of all our hopes; and when made of God unto us complete and eternal redemption, he brings us to the enjoyment of the blessings hoped for.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv9–11 For we are labourers together with God - Θεοῦ…
For we are labourers together with God - Θεοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν συνεργοί Theou gar esmen sunergoi. We are God’s co-workers. A similar expression occurs in 2Co 6:1, “We then as workers together with him,” etc. This passage is capable of two significations: first, as in our translation, that they were co-workers with God; engaged with him in his work, that he and they cooperated in the production of the effect; or that it was a joint-work; as we speak of a partnercy, or of joint-effort among people. So many interpreters have understood this. If this is the sense of the passage, then it means that as a farmer may be said to be a co-worker with God when he plants and tills his field, or does that without which God would not work in that case, or without which a harvest would not be produced, so the Christian minister cooperates with God in producing the same result. He is engaged in performing that which is indispensable to the end; and God also, by His Spirit, cooperates with the same design. If this is the idea, it gives a special sacredness to the work of the ministry, and indeed to the work of the farmer and the vinedresser. There is no higher honor than for a man to be engaged in doing the same things which God does, and participating with him in accomplishing his glorious plans. But doubts have been suggested in regard to this interpretation:
(1) The Greek does not of necessity imply this. It is literally, not we are his co-partners, but we are his fellow-laborers, that is, fellow-laborers in his employ, under his direction - as we say of servants of the same rank they are fellow-laborers of the same master, not meaning that the master was engaged in working with them, but that they were fellow-laborers one with another in his employment.
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(2) There is no expression that is parallel to this. There is none that speaks of God’s operating jointly with his creatures in producing the same result. They may be engaged in regard to the same end; but the sphere of God’s operations and of their operations is distinct. God does one thing; and they do another, though they may contribute to the same result. The sphere of God’s operations in the growth of a tree is totally distinct from that of the man who plants it. The man who planted it has no agency in causing the juices to circulate; in expanding the bud or the leaf; that is, in the proper work of God - In 3Jo 1:8, Christians are indeed said to he “fellow-helpers to the truth” συνεργοὶ τῆ ἀληθεία sunergoi tē alētheia; that is, they operate with the truth, and contribute by their labors and influence to that effect. In Mark also Mar 16:20, it is said that the apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them” (τοῦ κυρίου συνεργοῖντος tou kuriou sunergointos), where the phrase means that the Lord cooperated with them by miracles, etc. The Lord, by his own proper energy, and in his own sphere, contributed to the success of the work in which they were engaged.
(3) The main design and scope of this whole passage is to show that God is all - that the apostles are nothing; to represent the apostles not as joint-workers with God, but as working by themselves, and God as alone giving efficiency to all that was done. The idea is, that of depressing or humbling the apostles, and of exalting God; and this idea would not be consistent with the interpretation that they were joint-laborers with him. While, therefore, the Greek would hear the interpretation conveyed in our translation, the sense may perhaps be, that the apostles were joint-laborers with each other in God’s service; that they were united in their work, and that God was all in all; that they were like servants employed in the service of a master, without saying that the master participated with them in their work. This idea is conveyed in the translation of Doddridge, “we are the fellow-laborers of God.” So Rosenmuller, Calvin, however, Grotius, Whitby, and Bloomfield, coincide with our version in the interpretation. The Syriac renders it “We work with God.” The Vulgate, “We are the aids of God.”
Ye are God’s husbandry - (γεώργιον geōrgion); margin, “tillage.” This word occurs no where else in the New Testament. It properly denotes a “tilled” or “cultivated field;” and the idea is, that the church at Corinth was the field on which God had bestowed the labor of tillage, or culture, to produce fruit. The word is used by the Septuagint in Gen 26:14, as the translation of צבדה ‛abudaah; “For he had ‘possession’ of flocks,” etc.; in Jer 51:23, as the translation of צמד tsemed “a yoke;” and in Pro 24:30; Pro 31:16, as the translation of שׂדי saadeh, “a field;” “I went by the ‘field’ of the slothful,” etc. The sense here is, that all their culture was of God; that as a church they were under his care; and that all that had been produced in them was to be traced to his cultivation.
God’s building - This is another metaphor. The object of Paul was to show that all that had been done for them had been really accomplished by God. For this purpose he first says that they were God’s cultivated field; then he changes the figure; draws his illustration from architecture, and says, that they had been built by him as an architect rears a house. It does not rear itself; but it is reared by another. So he says of the Corinthians, “Ye are the building which God erects.” The same figure is used in 2Co 6:16, and Eph 2:21; see also Heb 3:6; 1Pe 2:5. The idea is, that God is the supreme agent in the founding and establishing of the church, in all its gifts and graces.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv9–10 We are God’s coadjutors, labouring in his service, as…
We are God’s coadjutors, labouring in his service, as he hath employed us. --- You are God’s husbandry, the soil, where virtues are to be planted. You are God’s building, the edifice, the house, or even the temple of God; we are employed as builders under God. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv9–11 Translate, as the Greek collocation of words, and the…
Translate, as the Greek collocation of words, and the emphasis on "God" thrice repeated, requires, "For (in proof that "each shall receive reward according to his own labor," namely, from God) it is of God that we are the fellow workers (laboring with, but under, and belonging to Him as His servants, Co2 5:20; Co2 6:1; compare Act 15:4; see on Th1 3:2) of God that ye are the field (or tillage), of God that ye are the building" [ALFORD]. "Building" is a new image introduced here, as suited better than that of husbandry, to set forth the different kinds of teaching and their results, which he is now about to discuss. "To edify" or "build up" the Church of Christ is similarly used (Eph 2:21-22; Eph 4:29).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9. Labourers… with God—Literally, For we are God’s fellow-labourers;…
9. Labourers… with God—Literally, For we are God’s fellow-labourers; God’s farm, God’s building are ye—The distinction already existing between ministers and people is very marked through this and the next chapter, as begun in this verse. It is by no means correct to say that in the Church of the New Testament this division had not commenced. The figure of a building here commenced is continued to 1Co_3:17.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9. For we are labourers together with God] The…
9. For we are labourers together with God] The Apostle now gives the argument another turn. From man’s point of view the preachers of the Gospel are mere instruments in God’s hands. Not so from God’s. He regards them as responsible beings, responsible to Him for the work they do. But the results are still God’s and God’s alone. The ministers of Christ may be fellow-labourers with God, but the husbandry, the building, are God’s, and not theirs.
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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv9–10 (9) Thrice in this verse the Apostle repeats the…
(9) Thrice in this verse the Apostle repeats the name of God with emphasis, to explain and to impress the assertion of the previous verse, that men are to recognise the unity, and God alone the diversity, in the ministerial work and office. “We are GOD’S fellow-labourers; you are GOD’S field—GOD’S house.” The image is thus suddenly altered from agriculture to architecture, as the latter can be more amplified, and will better illustrate the great variety of work of which the Apostle proceeds subsequently to speak. This sudden change of metaphor is a characteristic of St. Paul’s style; a similar instance is to be found in 2Co_10:4-8, where the illustration given from architecture is used instead of the military metaphor which is employed in the earlier verses of that passage. See also 1Co_9:7, and Eph_3:17, and Col_2:6-7, where there is the introduction of three distinct images in rapid succession in so many sentences. It has been suggested that possibly the use of the word “field,” in the Greek “Georgion,” was the cause of the Christian name “George” becoming so popular in the Church.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv9–11 God"s fellow workers. Throughout the Bible we are taught…
God"s fellow workers. Throughout the Bible we are taught that God requires the work of man, and that he will not help those who will do nothing for themselves or for him. The world was to be evangelized, not by sudden miracle, but by faithful human labour. (Mar_16:20) God"s husbandry; rather. God"s field, or tilled land. The thought which he desires again and again to enforce is that they belong to God, not to the parties of human teachers. The word" husbandry" may also mean vineyard, and the metaphor is the same as in Isa_5:1 Isa_27:2; Joh_15:1; Mat_13:3-30; Luk_13:6-9; Rom_11:16-24. God"s building. This is one of St. Paul"s favourite metaphors, as in vers. 16, 17; 2Co_6:16; Eph_2:20-22; Rom_15:20; 2Ti_2:19. (comp 1Pe_2:5; Rev_21:14)
God a Husbandman.
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are labourers together with God: ye are God"s husbandry," etc. The words lead us to look at God as the great Husbandman of human souls. As a husbandman
I HE IS THOROUGHLY ACQUAINTED WITH THE SOIL.
1. He knows its original state. The soil in its pristine state, with all its original powers, he knows.
2. He knows its present condition. Its present barren and wilderness state he understands. To him it seems like the "field of the slothful" mentioned by Solomon. It is stony, weedy, and thorny.
3. He knows its tillable capabilities. He knows what can be made of it, notwithstanding its present condition. He knows what every soul is capable of producing. He knows that some are far more capable than others. Some can become the majestic cedar, whilst others only the shrub.
II HE HAS ALL NECESSARY INSTRUMENTALITIES. This stony, weedy ground requires certain well contrived implements to work it into a fruitful condition.
1. He has them in the events of life. All the dark and painful circumstances in life are his implements to break up the fallow ground. All the pleasant and propitious are instruments for mellowing the soil.
2. He has them in the revelations of truth. There is Law and love, Sinai and Calvary. All are soul culturing implements.
III HE POSSESSES THE PROPER SEED. The seed he has to sow is good seed, and seed adapted to the soil. What is it? His Word. His Word is seed in many respects.
1. In vitality. Every seed has life in it. His Word is Spirit and life.
2. In completeness. The seed is complete in itself.
3. In prolificness. One seed in course of time may cover a continent. The Word of God is wonderfully fruitful.
IV HE COMMANDS THE CULTURING ELEMENTS. The best agriculturists, who understand the soil, possess the best implements and the best seed, are thwarted in their efforts, because the elements are not propitious. God has command over the elements. He is the great Husbandman of souls, and we his husbandry.
God"s fellow workers.
God is ever working. Let this thought shame those foolish, worthless persons who deem it derogatory to labour. Not only when he fashioned this world and made it fit for our dwelling place, not only when he created man, but always and everywhere is God working. The laws of nature are the operations of the Almighty, and he is working as well in the spiritual sphere as in the physical.
I TRUE CHRISTIANS ARE SPIRITUAL LABOURERS. Christian evangelism and pastors, teachers and bishops, are all working in prominent positions in the harvest field of spiritual toil. Bat spiritual labour is the natural outcome of the spiritual life. Every sincere follower of Christ is seeking an end outside of himself the promotion of the kingdom of righteousness and the glory of the Divine Master. Our hearts may rest in the Lord, but our hands work for him.
II CHRISTIANS ARE FELLOW LABOURERS ONE WITH ANOTHER.
1. There is difference in natural powers, in spiritual gifts, in ecclesiastical position, in length of service.
2. But there is unity in aim, in hope, in the relation all sustain to him by whose authority and for whose glory they toil.
3. And there is sympathy, mutual good will, and helpfulness. If there is defect here, it is a discredit to the common profession, a hindrance to the general usefulness, a grief to the one Lord.
III CHRISTIANS ARE FELLOW LABOURERS WITH GOD AS THEIR MASTER.
1. All are alike called by him who scuds forth labourers into his harvest. He is independent of us, and it is to his grace we owe it that we are permitted to labour for him.
2. All are alike directed to labour for the one great end the universal and immortal reign of truth and righteousness, holiness and love.
3. All are alike instructed by him as to the special means by which the one end is to be secured. He gives to every one the appropriate implement for his toil, the weapon adapted to his warfare.
4. All alike receive the needed strength and guidance from him, the spiritual impulse and power which gives efficacy to their service.
5. All rejoice that, whether they plant or water, the same Lord "gives the increase.
IV CHRISTIANS ARE LABOURERS WITH GOD AS THEIR FELLOW WORKER. This interpretation, whether justifiable or not grammatically, does not seem liable to a charge of irreverence.
1. In Christ Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme Exemplar of spiritual labour. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Jesus calls us to do what he himself is doing. What power there is in his appeal, "Work, not only for me, but with me!
2. The agency of the Divine Spirit is never withheld. The husbandman can only work effectually when God works with him by the agencies of nature; the mechanist, only when physical forces can be employed under his control, the physician, only when his treatment is in harmony with physiological laws. So the Christian labourer is successful, not through independence, but just because he avails himself of the co-operation of the Lord and Giver of life; because, in all devotion and diligence and humility, he endeavours to live and to toil as a fellow worker with God! T.
HOMILIES BY J. WAITE Ver. 9.
God"s husbandry.
The leading truth in the context would seem to be this that the most honoured and most successful worker in the kingdom of Christ is but as a helpless instrument through which the living power is pleased to operate, and that power is in God alone. The name of God, therefore, occupies the emphatic place in each clause of this verse. Of God ye are the husbandry." This is spoken of the Corinthians, not so much as individual believers, but as an organized Christian society. Observe the view it gives us of
I THE NATURE OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. It is God"s "tilled land." Not so much the process of husbandry, but the field in which the process is wrought out, is here intended. Every organized Christian society is the sphere of a spiritual culture analogous to that which goes on in the realm of nature, in the gardens, the vineyards, and the corn-fields. Two or three distinct elements of thought are suggested.
1. There is the idea of a germ of Divine life implanted is the hearts of men. The course of nature"s husbandry proceeds on the law that when the seed corn, in which the mysterious principle of vegetable life is hidden, is brought into contact with certain quickening and nourishing elements of the soil, it will germinate and be productive. The step of primary importance is the planting of the seed in the ground, because that establishes the necessary connection between the latent forces that combine to work out the desired result. So in the higher sphere of man"s moral life. The "truth as it is in Jesus" is the productive germ, in which, beneath the husk of the literal verbal form, is hidden the very spirit and life of God. And the condition of its unfolding is that it should be brought into real, direct, living contact with the soul (Mat_13:23; Jam_1:21 1Pe_1:23) There is no uncertainty in the result when the needful conditions are supplied. The Church is God"s "tilled land." "The field is the world;" but then the world has its "wayside" and its "stony and thorny
2. places;" the "good ground" is composed of those who, "in an honest and good heart," are prepared to receive the imperishable seed of the kingdom.
3. The development of this germ by external culture. The husbandry of the earth is man"s effort to supply the most favourable conditions for the working out of nature"s great productive law. Churches exist to promote, as far as possible, the operation of the spiritual law. Social life generally, with all its relations and activities, is no doubt intended by God to be helpful to this. We rise to the true, broad idea of religious culture only when we look On them all as auxiliaries to the great work of spiritual enlargement and enrichment. But the Church relationship, by all its conditions Of fellowship, worship, and work, is specially fitted to accomplish this end. Spiritual culture is the primary purpose of its existence. The ideal may not always be reached. As the earth has its frigid and temperate and torrid zones, so Christian societies differ as to the kindliness of their soil and atmosphere for the development of the germs of spiritual life. But this is their Divine intent that they should be nurseries of all truth and goodness, where everything that is best and noblest and loveliest in men may be fostered and brought to perfection.
1. The production of the appropriate fruits. All labour is for the sake of the "profit" that can be got out of it. Seed sowing, "planting and watering," point on to the harvest. One harvest lays the foundation for another and a greater. The "increase" is the end of all. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit". (Joh_15:8) "These things good works are good and profitable to men". (Tit_3:8) Churches exist for the production of the fruits of Divine goodness, with all the added force and fulness that social unity can give. They answer their end only so far as spiritual power goes forth from them, and they are felt to be centres and sources of blessing to the world, producing something that shall make it richer and happier than it would otherwise have been, something that shall never die.
II THE RELATION BETWEEN DIVINE AND HUMAN AGENCY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. "God"s husbandry." Divine proprietorship is an important truth involved here, but Divine activity is no doubt the more prominent. The field not only belongs to God, so that none dare claim any kind of "lordship" over it; but it is one in which God is the great Worker. The process wrought out in it is the result of his productive power, and, as far as the vital part of it is concerned, of his alone. Man is nothing; God is "all in all" (ver. 7). But the instrument has its needful and proper place. God works out his beneficent ends through the intervention of man"s own willing cooperation, and in this lies for man himself an infinite benediction. He might have made the earth to yield its fruits without any culture of ours; but would that have been a merciful arrangement? In those parts of the earth where there is the nearest approach to such a condition of things, human life is always found to be in a state the most degraded. Labour is the law of man"s being. And though that labour, through the curse of sin, presents too often the aspect of irksome toil, yet still it is a "sublime necessity," the indispensable condition of physical health and happiness. In the spiritual sphere, too, God would have us to be "fellow workers" with himself. He will not accomplish his beneficent purposes without us. He employs us as the channels and vehicles of his power. His working in us is the motive and the inspiration of our working for him. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for," etc.. (Php_2:12, 13) We can expect to see the blessed issue only when we place ourselves as ready and prepared instruments in his hands. But never may we forget that the power is his and not ours.
Should e"er his wonder working grace Triumph through our weak arm, Let not our sinful fancy trace Aught human in the charm.
Vers. 9-12.
Foundations and buildings.
A curious and interesting blending of metaphors is found in ver. 9. "Ye are God"s husbandry, ye are God"s building." The sudden changing of metaphors is a characteristic of St. Paul"s style; for instances, see 1Co_9:7; 2Co_10:4-8; Eph_3:17; Col_2:6-7. The apostle now dwells fully on the architectural metaphor, and gives some thoughts of singular depth and importance on the true foundation for a noble life work, and the kind of buildings which may hopefully be reared upon it. The apostle speaks of himself as a foundation layer; reminds the Corinthians that it had been his work to commence or found Christian Churches; that this he had successfully done again and again during his missionary travels; and that the Corinthian Church had its first announcement of the gospel from him, and the first stones of its spiritual Church laid by him. He naturally felt jealous concerning the character of the members of that Church, and would have them such as would stand the testing of the great day.
I ST. PAUL AS A LAYER OF FOUNDATIONS. Only the layer, not the maker. The Foundation was provided (ver. 11); with it not even an apostle could interfere. St. Paul was fitted for the work of laying it, or of commencing a Christian Church in new districts,
(1) by his special gifts as a missionary;
(2) by his having received a personal revelation from Jesus Christ, which gave intensity to his convictions; and
(3) by his clear apprehension of the gospel message, and sympathetic power as a teacher.
His personal and persuasive influence on his fellow men needs to be taken into account. But St. Paul did not look upon the beginning of a Church or the conversion of a soul as any end of his work. Laying foundations involves a design for a building that is to be raised upon it, and the apostle kept up his relations with the Churches he was honoured to found, so that he might ensure that the building was being raised in a manner worthy of the Foundation, and in harmony with it. He had no greater joy than to know that "his children walked in the truth.
II OTHER TEACHERS AS BUILDERS ON THE FOUNDATION. St. Paul"s call to the missionary work involved the necessity of removing from place to place, and prevented his personally watching over the uprising or growth of any one Church. This disability he often seriously felt, and it made him very anxious concerning the wisdom, skill, and character of those teachers who continued his work. That anxiety comes out in our text, and it made him appeal even to the individual Church member, urging him to see that, whatever might be the character of his teachers, his own personal character was being nobly and safely reared. The following points may be dwelt on:
1. The builders of any one Church may be many. There may be a long succession of pastors and teachers, with very various gifts and endowments; but each may, in his time and way, add to the symmetrical and harmonious growth of the building. Each must have done so up to the measure of his loyalty to Christ and openness to his Divine lead. Still the same variety and succession are maintained, and under the many builders" hands the great Church of the redeemed advances to its perfection.
2. The materials used in the construction may differ. Even of right materials there is diversity, represented by "gold, silver, precious stones." Some teachers are strong in Biblical exposition, others in enforcement of practical duties, and others in appeal to pious feeling; but all bear upon the harmonious uprising of the building.
3. The architectural features may in parts differ. The general design cannot be altered, but multitudes of details are left open. A Christian character and a Christian Church can have but one general form; but there may be decoration and tracery according to men"s thought of the morally beautiful in the age in which they build, and the whole Church appears at last as a composite structure, combining all architectural thought and form. But man"s work, in character or Church, must be subject to a final and fierce testing, and only the really substantial and good may hope to bear that test. 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.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv9–11 For we are labourers together with God.
1Co_3:9
For we are labourers together with God.
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Labourers together with God
I. The immediate application of the text.
1. Believers though they were, Paul could not address the Corinthians as spiritual persons, for they moved in the lower, earthly region of mans nature, where strife and division have place, and into which it was impossible to introduce exalted subjects.
2. He then proceeds to show on what a mistake this party feeling proceeded. The different teachers were but humble instruments in the hand of one and the same God, who commissioned each with spiritual gifts, and who alone prospered their work. Paul might have taken a different course. He might have urged on his own party to more determined action. But, instead of that, he deprecated the existence of any parties, and bade all rise into that higher region in which they would discern that different spiritual teachers were working together with one God, and for the same spiritual results.
3. Oh, that these words had been heeded by the Church since! They would have rendered impossible most of the divisions which have been, and are still, its weakness and its curse. All of us labourers together with God! No thought could be more exalted. Well might anybody who felt it protest against what else might be deemed the honour of leading a party.
II. The wider application. For is it not profoundly true that, since we ale Divinely made, and since we live in a Divine world, all the work we any of us do here is for Divine purposes, and by Divine energy, and so is a labouring together with God?
1. It may be said: On this view all other things work for God. True; for fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, fulfil His Word. It would be a healthy Christian thing to see Gods ministers in all the forces of nature, whether silent, like those at work in an opening flower and decaying leaf, or imposing, like those revealed in earthquakes and volcanoes. It is a deeply Christian and a deeply scientific thought, too, to see God at work in these law-abiding and universal changes; and unchristian and unscientific is the too common thought that, in general, things go on of themselves, hut that sometimes, in answer to prayer, God steps in to interfere with them and work special providences. That idea sets God apart from His universe, supposes it can go on without Him, and sees His presence only in irregularities. The other belief supposes God at work always and everywhere, and recognises His intelligence as displayed in the glorious order of His works. The unconscious energies of nature, then, are working together with God. The universe is Gods husbandry and Gods building.
2. But, if so, the same may be said, with much higher emphasis, of men. On what a far higher level of being do they live and work, possessed of spiritual faculties resembling those of their Maker, and entrusted by Him with a certain independence in little spheres of activity! So that they can delightfully feel that they are co-operating with Him, or idly neglect to do so, or wilfully oppose His will. The region in which we can help or hinder Gods plans is a narrow one indeed; but, to have such a power at all, how wonderful and great! There is work for us to do--no grand, famous work, but sacred daily duty. (T. M. Herbert, M. A.)
Labourers together with God
I. In spiritual husbandry. Now it is the province of the husbandman to plant and to water, but neither dexterity in planting can ensure the striking of the root, nor diligence in watering command the ripening of the fruit. In the spiritual husbandry of the Church all is Gods; the field--the world; the plants--men; the instruments wherewith the clods are broken--the appointed ordinances Of grace; the plan for the direct combination of labour--His Word; the water--the purifying influence of His Spirit; the sunbeams--the quickening and cheering manifestations of His love. As in nature the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruits of the earth, and hath long patience, until he receive the early and latter rain, relying implicitly on the Divine pledge, so the faithful minister of Christ pursues his spiritual husbandry in patience and in faith.
II. In spiritual building. Here, too, the labour is of man, but the power of God. In the spiritual temple of the Church the foundation is of Gods laying, the material of Gods preparing, the plan of Gods contriving, the proportions of Gods adjusting; and if ministers of Christ may be said, in the gathering or the raising, in the cementing or compacting, in the edifying or carrying up, m the roofing or covering in, to build up lively stones into a spiritual temple, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, yet the quickening, pervading power of God is continually recognised throughout. For what could impart life to the stone except a miracle of grace? Conclusion: From this, then, it will follow that while, with St. Paul, we exalt the office of the Christian ministry, at the same time, with St. Paul, we abase the individuals who exercise it. Let them be, like Apollos, mighty in the Scriptures; let them be, like St. Paul, mightier still in signs and wonders, &c., yet, like Paul and Apollos, in themselves they are nothing. (T. Dale, M. A.)
Working together with God
We are delighted with the sweet invitation, Come unto Me, all ye that labour, &c. We sometimes forget that the same Saviour invites us also to labour. Go, work in My vineyard.
I. Work--
1. Strengthens faith (Joh_7:17). Christian experience fortifies against infidelity. The man of scientific ability cannot convince me, against my years of experience, that water is unwholesome, or that its Creator is a blunderer.
2. Strengthens spiritual life. The little child craves activity quite as much as food. Such a child may be never so well fed, and clothed, and sheltered, yet, if it have not opportunity to exercise, it will be a dwarf. So work is a means of spiritual development and growth to every child of God.
3. Purifies the life. Society is kept pure by activity, just as the ocean and atmosphere are kept pure by the winds and waves. The Church in which all minds and hands are busy planning and executing will not have time to criticise, complain, or gossip.
4. Employment and enjoyment go hand in hand. The working Church is the happy Church, and the happy Church helps to keep members from backsliding.
II. Together. We may say this is the difficult problem. There are so many wills and tastes--so great difference in culture and habit--that working together is almost impracticable.
1. And yet when we look at the Christian at the time of surrender, it will not seem so difficult. Every true convert begins the service of the Lord with the question, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? and this becomes the first, middle, and ending question of the converted mans life. He becomes a member of the body of which Jesus Christ is head. As the members of a human body are controlled by the will--the head--so must be also the members of Christs body. No jealousies between such members. No complaining one of another, but each bearing the burden assigned.
2. And then nothing will help to unite workers so much as a high appreciation of the work to be done. One soul is worth more than all the world beside, and millions perish daily for lack of the bread of life.
3. In view of the fact that Jesus prayed that His disciples might be one.
III. With God. No man has a right to engage in a work in which he cannot ask Gods presence and blessing. Much more must we realise Gods presence and blessing in the advancement of His kingdom. We may be sure that God will not allow the Sons mission to fail. Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. (R. Moffett.)
Gods co-labourers
I. The basis of this co-operation is the high and holy relation between the Christian heart and God. The Christian is united to Him as a child is to a parent, more by affection than by mere external ties. He is united to God, likewise, by a fervent sympathy with the Divine character. Gods holiness is exceedingly attractive to him. Besides, a Christian has truly and persistently submitted his will to Gods will, feeling that the Divine will includes all that is wisest, purest, noblest. A Christian, furthermore, holds his soul and his thoughts in daily communion with God, so that affections are interchanged with Him.
II. Its nature. The Christian accepts--
1. The Divine idea of his own development of character, and labours to produce in himself those things which God seeks.
2. The Divine order in this world, and endeavours to secure among men that intelligence and goodness for which God endlessly works, and causes nature to work.
3. All his powers and affections in stewardship, and undertakes to use himself for Gods work, His personal influence, his property, his children, his friends--all these he throws in, as it were, to the common stock, and administers them for God, and not for himself.
4. The duty to love all that which God loves, to promote all that God is seeking to promote, to hate what God hates, and to destroy it if he can.
III. Practical lessons.
1. This view consoles in our conscious weakness. There is no man that, when he looks upon the courses of God in the world; the results that he is to achieve in himself; to seek among his fellows, that does not often come to a consciousness that he is weakness itself. Sometimes it makes one feel utterly worthless, discourages endeavour, and leads one to desire to fly away and be at rest, because they think it will make no difference whether they live or die. What is a drop of water of itself? What is weaker? But when God has marshalled the sum of the weakness of myriad drops together, they lift the mightiest ship as if it were but a feather, and play with the winds as if they were mere instruments of sport. And yet that very drop is there, and has its part and lot in the might of the whole vast; unbounded sea.
2. He who unites himself to any great truth which God has established may be sure that he will go forth from conquering to conquer; not by reason of any might or skill in himself, but because he is a labourer together with God. The man that adopts any Divinely appointed truth, no matter what the world thinks of it, rides in Gods chariot, and has God for his charioteer. He always wins who sides with God. On the other hand, no man in this world is safe or victorious unless he feels that he is going with, and not against God.
3. No life can be barren or insignificant that is a part of Gods life. A woman that seemed to be endowed with everything calculated to fit one for the most eminent service, was called, in Gods providence, to marry a man that was not her equal. She was placed in an obscure position. While she might have been listening to the chime of the spheres she was occupied with rocking the cradle, darning, sewing, washing, and cooking. And sometimes, perhaps, she thought to herself, Woe is me! To what end am I living? Her child developed under her care, and learned to call her mother; and then she thought God spoke, so sweet was its voice to her, and in that child she expected to reap her reward for all that she had done and suffered. But just as he was touching manhood, in a moment the wave closed over him, the labour of her life was ended, and, stranded on the shores of despair, she cried out, Why was I born? and to what end have I lived? A hundred had marked her fidelity, and she had been schoolmaster to every one of them. A hundred had witnessed her patience, and all the sermons they had ever heard had not preached such a lesson to them as her silent example. Multitudes that had learned of her, in turn became teachers of others. Her influence spread wider than what she dreamed. It was not until she had gone up to the end of life in obscurity, and God had caused the light of eternity to shine on her work, that she understood how glorious little things might be. The good deeds of this life are dewdrops, innumerable, lying unseen among men; but when God shall pour the revealing light of the other world upon them, how it will kindle them and make them sparkle! Imagine how Solomons temple was built. In the forest of old Lebanon many and many a day-labourer worked in obscurity, and wondering of what consequence all his work could be. In another place were workers in metal. Some did one thing and some another, but none knew the plan of the temple, none knew what they wrought till on a certain day, when they all trooped to Jerusalem. Then they stood entranced, and wondered that out of things so insignificant in the mountains there should come such glory in Jerusalem. God had sent some to the cedar forest, some to the stone quarry, some to the dark and dank places of this world; but He is collecting materials which will glow with untold splendour in the temple that He is building for the New Jerusalem. (H. W. Beecher.)
Man a worker with God
God a labourer, a labourer with men, God a labourer with men for men, are the facts stated in this passage.
I. God works alone. We are not wont to consider God in His wonderful activities, but more accustomed to think of Him as having created the universe, and complacently beholding its wondrous workings and results. Nevertheless, the God referred to in this passage is not only glorious in holiness, but also a God doing wonders. This activity of the Infinite One is involved in--
1. The doctrine of providence. The preservation of the action, harmony, and stability of nature requires His constant oversight and direction and application of nature and of its laws. This is also true of all the beings which God had created. Every one of them lives in Him. The seraph before His throne, and the men upon His footstool, are each of them the objects of His ceaseless care. So is every sun and star as well as every plant and flower. How wondrous, how inconceivably glorious must be the activity of the Divine mind!
2. The doctrine of the final judgment. We shall be summoned to the Divine presence, the Omnipotent Judge, who has known our motives and all the circumstances under which we have acted, and we shall receive from Him, from His personal knowledge, the decisions of that day. How wonderful must be the presence, and perception, and memory of this Infinite God, who is thus our judge!
3. The reception of worship. How necessary, in order that God may properly regard our approaches to Him and our devotion, that He should understand everything that affects thought or feeling at the time that those services are rendered! And when we consider how great is the number of His worshippers, how wonderful must be the exercise of His intelligence and of His love! There are two things which render it difficult for us to rightly appreciate these activities.
(1) The one is that God is invisible.
(2) The other is that in most of His works God operates independently of rational agencies.
(a) In making the universe He employed no agents. On the contrary, He spake and it was done.
(b) In the conservation of the universe none of the beings that occupy it have an agency in holding it in its orbit.
(c) In legislating for mankind He has no legislative assembly. The laws by which we are governed emanate from His mind, are promulgated by His authority, and He will execute His own sentence.
II. Nevertheless, there is one of the Divine enterprises in which God is pleased to associate men, and that is the work of human salvation.
1. But there are several departments of it in which God acts alone.
(1) This was true in devising this scheme of mercy; there were no consultations.
(2) And in making the atonement that was necessary to accomplish this purpose God acted by Himself. He so loved the world, &c. Jesus Christ alone is the Redeemer and Saviour of the children of men.
(3) It is equally true that in the transformation of the human soul it is a Divine work; it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
2. Still there are departments in this enterprise in which God has been pleased to employ men.
(1) He did this in inaugurating Christianity in the earth. By prophets and priests He prepared the world for the reception of the coming Messiah.
(2) And then when the fulness of time was come the shepherds of Bethlehem listened to the announcement of the fact from the heavenly host; wise men from the East came to witness His incarnation.
(3) Disciples were with Him during His ministry, and just before His ascension they received from Him His great commission. And on the day of Pentecost they received the power to go forth and preach the gospel which had been committed to them. You will see in every step of its introduction and inauguration it became needful that human instrumentality should be employed.
(4) And now that it is inaugurated God requires His people to promulgate it. He has made it the business of the Church to give these Holy Scriptures to all men, and in this there is a very large service to be rendered. When in every community upon the earth there shall be a Christian, a Christian pastor, and Christian disciples, it will be their duty to employ every possible influence and agency to prevail upon men to heed the call of Divine mercy. By our Christian character, our constant watchfulness, and every influence that God gives us, we are to beseech men to be reconciled to God.
III. Practical lessons. If our views of this subject are correct, we may infer--
1. The greatness of the work of human salvation. It is the only enterprise in which God is engaged in which He has taken into the fellowship of labour with Him either angels or men.
2. The dignity of activity in the cause and for the sake of Christ. We are not acting upon physical, material things; we are not seeking to promote mainly temporal interests or present happiness merely. We are seeking to recover lost spirits, redeemed by Christ, for whose restoration there is provision made by the power of the Spirit.
3. The certainty of success in these spiritual enterprises. If we were to do this work in our own wisdom and strength we might well hesitate and fear as to the result, but if we are labouring with God who can doubt the success? (Bishop Janes.)
The work of man and the work of God
I. We are Gods fellow-labourers.
1. Men rush into the ministry or into similar positions without a doubt about their ability. But if they pondered the words, We are Gods fellow-workmen, they might see some reason to question their fitness. Every workman has two things which must not be wanting in Gods fellow-workman.
(1) An object. This in our case is the final happiness and perfection of each in heaven, and the attraction of each toward that Person who can bring him there. How ought we to ask ourselves whether this is substantially our object!
(2) A method. Every artisan not only knows what the particular result he designs is, but he knows also the process by which he must arrive at it. Now we who undertake to teach others ought to be quite sure that the gospel is true in its two great parts, the offer of forgiveness of sins through Christ, and the offer of the Holy Spirits presence to transform, direct, and sustain: these things we ought to have experience of in ourselves, and so be able to declare, as of our own knowledge, that those who listen to us may attain the great object if they will only use the proper means.
2. It is in carrying on this work in this way that we are Gods fellow-workmen. God has the same object that we have, and God is co-operating with us in our endeavours after it.
II. Ye are Gods husbandry, with regard to the state of your hearts and characters at any particular time.
1. By nature the soil is cold and hard, shallow and barren. It bears some things which look good and beautiful, waiting, as it were, for the Holy Spirit to turn them from natural gifts into spiritual graces; but not yet receiving, because we prefer having them as they are, and shrink back from prayer, which is the connecting link between the soul and God. Now, when we see how slow we all are to take this little step in earnest, we feel that nothing can give us any hope at all but the assurance that God is here engaged, and that He can work with us, preparing the stony ground to receive the good seed of His Word, that it may take deep root and spring up into an abundant harvest.
2. And as it is with the ground, so it is with respect to the weeds which grow so rankly. Long experience teaches us to expect them. We say to ourselves, It must go on so to the end; no care or pains of ours will ever root them up. Perhaps not: and yet it may be not only our duty to labour on as if we might succeed; but more than this; the fault may be in great part ours for not having remembered that we are Gods husbandry, and for not having prayed to God more earnestly to do for us that which for ourselves we could not do.
III. Ye are gods building.
1. This is especially true of young people. Your characters are forming now; soon they will be (what we call) formed: then habits of good or evil will have become a second nature, and change, if it come at all, will be a difficulty beyond anything that you have yet known of. Every day is adding something to the building: something of good, or something of evil, some accession of knowledge, of self-control, of practice of good and conquest of evil, or else of carelessness and indifference, of self-indulgence or vanity or forgetfulness of God.
2. Yet, blessed be God, He has not left us (strictly speaking) to build. Ye are Gods building. O how gracious an assurance; that, while that formation of character is going on, to all appearance, so easily and almost casually. Still all the time God is working, God is building; if we will only seek Him and trust Him and not thwart or counteract His work, He is carrying on, in the secret of the soul, a process of formation, and the finished thing will be His own temple, in which He will abide for ever and be satisfied with His travail! But, indeed, we must seek Him. (Dean Vaughan.)
The union of Divine and human agency in the kingdom of Christ
I. What the work includes in which God and His people are labourers together.
1. The spread of the gospel through the world.
2. The conversion of sinners.
3. The increase and prosperity of the Christian Church.
II. The spirit in which the work under consideration should be prosecuted. In the spirit of--
1. Humility.
2. Love to God.
3. Love to men.
4. Holy zeal.
5. Prayer and of faith. (S. Brawn.)
Self-creation
The Creator does a part, and the chief part, but He kindly gives us a part, as considerate parents let their children join them in their works, though they could often do it better themselves. Creation is not finished, nor ever will be, but is always proceeding. In this progressive system man can put in his hand and make or mar.
I. Look at the material creation.
1. The elements are in a rude state. The rivers run waste to the sea; the ocean rolls a vast desert of waters round the world; the forests grow and decay, and furnish nourishment for new generations of the same species; the fire is a hidden force, and the lightning plays apparently at haphazard among the clouds. But God has delegated to man, as His vicegerent on the earth, the power and skill, within certain limits, of using these unwieldly and fearful agencies, and, carrying out the plan of their creation.
2. So with the animals. They are created in kind, but the type may be improved. Man can cross and perfect their breeds. He can tame the wild, multiply their number, and, by better shelter, food, &c., develop new excellences.
3. So flowers, fruits, and vegetables all require to be improved by human skill and ingenuity. Compare the dinner of a savage under his native palm with a horticultural exhibition, and we see the endless room for man to work in, and the effects of his science and experiments.
4. The forests were given to his hands uncut, the ores buried in the earth undug and unworked, the pearls in the sea, the fire in the flint, the steam in the water, the temple and the palace in the quarry. The arts, useful and beautiful, are thus a species of creation. Man was sent, not to destroy, but to fulfil.
II. It is a great thing to learn distinctly and impressively this duty of a man to be a co-worker with God. Some nations have not learned it yet. The savage tribes still linger on the animal plane. But even the civilised nations do not yet fully comprehend that a new moral and spiritual, as well as material creation, is to be called forth by man. The conquest of matter is not enough, Christianity is to be superadded. Man has not done his work when he has built a house and woven a suit of garments. He can co-work with God in the building of his body and his mind--a Divine carpentry.
1. Physical education is a part of this sub-creation. The body is to be unfolded, invigorated, and kept as a pure temple for the soul, with nothing to do it sacrilege.
2. Guided by the rules, and animated by the spirit of Christianity, man is to be a co-worker with God in the building of his character. The Creator necessitates no holiness. Even Jesus learned obedience. The materials of this higher architecture are given in abundance. There is reason for the truth, understanding for practical affairs, conscience for the right, love for the good, hope for progress, so that our own nature is a forest, quarry, and mine, containing all the needful means for our great work. But beside these native faculties society and Christianity give us the tools to work with, the motives, books, teachers, to aid us in the sub-creation. We are called to be labourers with God, in no meagre plan and for no trivial results. The plan is Divine and the results are eternal. The problem runs somewhat in this wise: Given, passion, energy; required, a spirited character and an active life. Given, a soft infant; required, a sturdy, well-formed, intelligent, and virtuous man. Given, conscience; required, righteousness. Given, affections: required, love to all in heaven and earth. Given, instinct, reason, the gospel of Jesus; required, a new human race, a new moral and spiritual creation. The end and emphasis of all things is formation of ourselves on Gods idea of a human being. The gospel of Jesus is yet but in its infancy in this respect. It has done little compared with what it is to do. It has only begun its work in the soul and among the nations. It is slowly becoming a power in the earth. Conclusion: Let us not forget the lesson and application. This creation is a self-creation, this formation is a self-formation. God gives us means, materials, motives, guidance, and, to let nothing escape us that would be of help, He has presented the exquisite figure and spirit of a Divine Man. The danger is in turning off on some by-path of your own, instead of following the way God has marked out, in fulfilling some little, worthless, and short-lived plan of your passions or pleasures. (A. A. Livermore, D. D.)
Co-operation with God
One is something overwhelmed by the thought of the manner in which good old honest words occasionally lose their primitive meaning and become attached to some separate part of daily life, and in such a manner as to become terms rather of reproach than anything else. You talk of a labourer in ordinary conversation as a man who is doing day by day unintelligent, mechanical toil; but, after all, labour such as that is the very basis upon which the happiness of the world is built. All labour is Godlike; and the single test which you may apply to see whether labour is successful or not is the test which St. Paul applied in these words when he said, For we are labourers together with God. I want, then, to look upon the harvest as the fruition of successful labour with God. The fact that harvest comes year by year to a successful result is simply an evidence of the truthfulness of the test which St. Paul applies. Man does his work, then there comes side by side with his work the work of God. His work would altogether fail if it were not labour with God. Now let us suppose for a moment that the husbandman were to labour upon the assumption that he would work by himself and not labour with God. Suppose he said: I dont believe that the seasons will come round in their accustomed succession, and I will labour as for seasons of my own. Every intelligent man knows the result of labour such as that would be complete disaster so far as the harvest is concerned. For the only way in which the wondrous things in the world of nature are brought to their perfect beauty and fruition is because you have on the one hand the hard toil of the man, and on the other hand the hard, unceasing, unremitting toil of God. Now what is true of the harvest of the earths fruits is certainly true of every work which man undertakes in daily life. The rule of success is labour with, not labour against, God. The man who has to work can only labour successfully by working with God; and by working with God I mean working just as the husbandman works, in conscious subordination to the law of God. If a man will not obey the law of God his physical work cannot be successful as it might be successful if he worked in subordination to the will of God. If a man breaks down his physical frame by indulging in sin, that man, by disobeying the will of God, is rendering the harvest of his daily work uncertain. It is precisely similar with a man engaged in business. He who will labour with God must labour according to Gods law, and where there is that obedience to the will of God there will be ultimate success. The harvest may not come as the harvest of some of the transitory things in nature comes, very quickly, and remain only a short time, but it will be substantial and solid, and will give perfect happiness and perfect peace, because it will be success which has been honestly won, and prosperity which has been rightly gained. Such a labourer can see, even in the success of his business, his own handiwork co-operating with the handiwork of God, and in all the good fortune which has befallen him he can recognise the directing providence of his Heavenly Father. Labouring together with God, that is the grand secret of successful work. There is one other thought that I would like to leave with you from the consideration of this truth, and that is this: that just as there is labour with God, and just as the conditions of successful labour are to be with God, so after labour there comes rest, and the conditions of successful rest are also to be found in the rest with God. (J. R. Diggle, M. A.)
Workers together with God
This ninth verse is a further amplification of Pauls intent, which is to press unity against factions and divisions; and it is a declaration of his argument before, which was The planters and waterers are one, but God gives the increase. This he further illustrates in the beginning of this verse--For we are workers together with God. We are all in Gods vineyard, and labour unto Him. In what sense they are workers with God; not by immediate producing of any spiritual effects, but by the external application of the ministry to the people. As Gehazi carried his masters staff and touched the child with it, but that did no good till Elijah came himself. In the first place, consider what reasons may be for this, why God will use such workers with Him, He needeth not the parts or gifts of any. First, this is a fit and an accommodated way to our natures. When God sends men of the same mould and subject to the same affections, this may the more easily draw us. When God delivered the law Himself, it was with such terror and majesty, that they desired that God would not Himself speak any more to them, so that mere men would not be able to bear the immediate approaches of the Divine majesty to them. As the fowler catcheth many birds by one decoy a bird of the same feather, thus it becometh us to have such to bring us home unto God, that are affected with our estates, that have the same temptations in them as other men. Hence the more experience Gods ministers have of the work of grace, the temptations of Satan, the deceitfulness of sin, the more fit they are to comfort others, or to deliver them out of snares. Secondly, He may do it to oblige us and tie us to His instituted means. It is a great caveat in the Scripture, and frequently urged: No man must follow the imagination of his own heart. Now God would prevent such loose principles, and bind us up to His instituted way; He will bind us, though He is not bound. Thirdly, hereby God would exercise the humility, meekness, and obedience of men. Oh, it is a great matter for men to submit to Gods institution! Fourthly, that men might be the more inexcusable. For if thou art not now turned from thy sin, who shall plead for thee? Fifthly, God will hereby declare His power so much the more. Now to this there needs one caution to be added, viz., that this connection between the labour of the minister and Gods working is not natural, necessary, and perpetual. We may work, and yet neither the presence or power of God be therein. It is not here as in the works of nature; there God hath made a perpetual and unalterable decree. Now if you ask when may it fall out that though the ministry laboureth, yet God doth not work with it, reasons may be on Gods part, the ministers, and the peoples. First, work with God in prayer, that He would work with the ministry. Secondly, take heed of such sins as may provoke God not to he with the ministry. (A. Burgess.)
Ye are Gods husbandry, ye are Gods building.--
Gods husbandry and building
The metaphor of the field describes the raw material on which God works; that of the house describes the result of the work. The field represents the individual Christian in his secret power of life and endless growth; the house represents the Church in the unity of plan, in the beauty and strength of its structure. The metaphor of the building lends itself more easily than that of the farm to the apostles purpose in the subsequent verses, and leads naturally to the highest conception, that of Gods temple in 1Co_3:16. (Principal Edwards.)
Gods husbandry
I. The first condition of the soil--its wilderness condition--is not without growths. It is overgrown with forests, choked with underbush, and cumbered with falling and decaying materials. The sun is always hidden from its interior. It is apt to be a lair of beasts. This is certainly the state of the human soil before religious culture is applied to it. Men are in a state of wilderness in the beginning.
II. The first step of husbandry is to relieve the soil of these wild growths, and prepare it for tillage. The trees are felled and burned, so that the ground may be disencumbered and laid open to the sun. But some, for expedition, are only girdled. All connection between the sap at the roots and the top is severed by a line of sharp cuts around the trees; and so girdled, they will stand for a while, but they will never leaf again; so that, little by little, more and more ground is susceptible to the plough. The first work of religion is analogous to this. Many of the things which men practise in an unregenerate state are, by the power of Gods grace at their conversion, cut down peremptorily and taken out of the way. But there are a great many things which are only girdled, and only little by little brought to the ground.
III. When this preliminary process is complete, the pioneer farmer is ready for the next stage, which is that of seed-planting. It is not smooth sward that the plough is now to turn; but rough soil, full of the green stumps of trees but just disappeared. And, worse than this, roots are matted all over the ground; but the ground is, at any rate, open to the sun, and every year and every ploughing will rip up and throw out some of these roots. And so it is with men. Their first efforts at goodness are very crooked and shallow. When men first begin to let go the lower forms of wickedness, and to sow the higher seeds of virtue, it is often like the sudden taking away of the forest, and the laying open of the soil to the sun. The first crops are very unsatisfactory; yet these incipient mistakes must be taken, if you are going to have a good farm by and by.
IV. Having got thus far the home-lot is cleared. The stones are cleared away, the stumps rooted out, and the ground fenced round where his house is to be. Then he gives the ground a more thorough farming, and so the house-lot is got into a better condition. So men usually begin to smooth down those traits of their character which lie next to themselves, as it were, and which are in the family. Then one and another habit is attacked, and trait after trait is added. And so they enlarge, more and more, every year, their husbandry.
V. Hitherto the farmer has only sown the grains and roots absolutely needed for sustenance; but now a garden and orchard are planted. And so in spiritual life. At first it is a tough, hard fight for life. By and by times of richer gladness come--more liberty, more hope. Prayer grows out of duty into pleasure. Gods Word opens, and Christians walk amid beds of flowers. Clusters of fruit are gathered--richer experiences--the fruits of the Spirit.
VI. Eventually it is resolved upon to bring in every acre. All outlying lots are to be cleared. So, eminently, is it with advancing Christians. After a time many men experience a second conversion, as it seems to them. They are aroused to a sense of the largeness and symmetry of Christian character. And their purpose is to subdue every thought and every feeling to the will of God.
VII. The farmer, as his last step, applies to his soil, thus brought forward, the most scientific methods of ascertained husbandry. He underdrains deep the whole estate; and when all those stagnant pools and chilling springs that deluge the roots of tender-growing plants are carried away, then he subsoils. He puts down the plough as far as iron can go, and mellows the soil and the subsoil down deep in the earth. Then he begins to select better herbs than before. And just so it is with Christians. As they grow in grace, and as God, the great Husbandman, perfects the work of clearing up and bringing into a condition of complete tillage the human heart, the religious feelings grow deeper. Many of those causes which obstructed their growth are now drained and carried off from the soul. Men give themselves more thorough religious cultivation. And the later periods of Christian experience are by far the most assiduous and the most faithful Conclusions: Note--
1. Some practical lessons we may perceive from what has been said.
(1) The difference between instantaneous beginnings and gradual developments. No man ever suddenly cleared up forty acres of land. A man may and does begin suddenly, but the doing requires a long period. And so no man ever began to be a Christian without an instantaneous volition; but the mere volition is only a beginning. The evolution of Christian character is gradual.
(2) The meaning of succession in Christian experience. We know that in husbandry, until some things are done, other things cannot be reached. And so there must be an order of development in Christian life. We cannot anticipate those graces which come only after the ripening of preceding graces. Graces grow just as grains do; first the sprouting under the ground, &c.
(3) That the hardest part in both kinds of husbandry is apt to come at the beginning; but that, if well met then, it grows easier and easier every successive year. How hard was it at first to bring the soil to such a state that you dared to think plough! and how hard is it for a man at first to bring himself into such a state that he dares to think prayer! How many men who would like to be able to get their graces just as they can get an old, well-cultivated farm; but, though you can do that in natural husbandry, you cannot do it in spiritual husbandry.
2. The various kinds of spiritual husbandmen and husbandry.
(1) There are shiftless and lazy farmers who raise just enough grain to keep them through the year. That is all they ask, and therefore they have no ambition to seek for more. And how many men there are who, after having been in the Church ten or twenty years, are just about where they were when they first entered it!
(2) Scheming, changeable farmers who, instead of laying out their strength upon well-ascertained processes, are bewitched with new schemes and experiments. And there are just such spiritual farmers. One is running after new promises, another after a new faith, and another after new solutions of miracles. One has got a new doctrine, another some new idea of Church organisation, and another some new way of putting this or that religious truth. They see their old farms left untilled.
(3) Pedigree farmers, whose fruit bears the highest-sounding names, but is the poorest in the neighbourhood. Their oxen are lean, their cows are milkless, but what a line of blood they sprung from! Did you never see just such husbandmen in the Church?--men who had no greater morality, or piety, or spiritual experience, but who went back through a long pedigree.
(4) Chaff farmers. Suppose you should find a farmer who said that he was satisfied that farmers had been doing injustice to many kinds of seeds; and that he felt assured that if a man would sow cockle-seeds; and do it sincerely, God would give the increase: so He would--of cockles. Suppose a man should sow that detestable Canada thistle, and say that it was wheat. Would any amount of botanical sincerity on the part of this fool secure to him a harvest of anything better than the seed sown? Now a great many persons say, Why do you teach us such doctrines? What matter is it whether we believe in the Bible or not, so that we live about right, or that we are sincere? Is not that enough? No, it is not enough. There is the same connection between spiritual seed and the result. Sincerity is a very good thing, but it cannot make grain out of chaff; neither can it make Christian graces out of worldly affections and worldly estates.
(5) Fence farmers. What would you think of a husbandman who neglected everything because he was giving his whole time to the building of his fences? And, oh, such fences! The best and highest that could be built. Oftentimes, when he has got them all built up, he goes to work and pulls them down again. And what for? Why, just so that he can build them up again! And did you never hear of spiritual husbandmen that were for ever defining the great points of doctrine; for ever running boundaries round the kingdom of God; rebuilding the middle walls of partition, but never sowing and never reaping? There never was a fence that would keep vermin out of a mans farm, nor a fence that would keep hawks off from it. The best thing a farmer can do is to take such care of his soil as to have a harvest so rich that he will be able to spare a little to vermin and birds. The only safe way is to have so much spiritual culture in the Church that such minor troubles make little difference with its prosperity.
(6) Nimrod farmers--hunting farmers. There are in the Church heresy-hunters. They are searching for foxes, and wolves, and bears, that they suppose are lying waste Gods husbandry! They never do anything except fire at other folks. I have no doubt that Nimrod was a very good fellow in his own poor, miserable way; but a Nimrod minister is the meanest of all sorts of hunters! (H. W. Beecher.)
Gods husbandry
The harvest is passed; the corn is housed. Is the farmers labour done? No, the plough is even now at work again; the seed must soon be sown for next years crop. So continual is the round. But, as the work of husbandry goes on, is there no lesson to us in these things? Yea, all nature speaks to us if we would hear, and the words of the text call us to listen to its voice. Let these words teach you--
I. The care which God has had for you.
1. In choosing you to be part of His own field--the Church of Christ. You are plants set in the Lords garden, branches grafted into the living Vine; your heart is the soil on which God deigns to bestow culture, and from which His grace is able to bring forth fruits, meet for the paradise of God.
2. In the price He gave for this field. Ye are not your own, &c.
3. In enclosing you with the design of making you holy to Himself. Have you ever seen a piece of ground taken in from a common? While all around it is still barren and wild, is not that one spot fair and goodly to the eye? This is what God would have you be in the midst of a world that lieth in wickedness.
4. In that He is ever seeking to improve the ground of your hearts. But, as the farmer does not use the same management to all kinds of soil--the stiff, stubborn clay must not be treated like the light, dry sand-so God now tries to win us by mercies; now to frighten us by judgments. Perhaps your heart clings to the love of this world; then He shakes it loose by storms of trouble. Perhaps He sees you indulging in sinful pleasures; then He makes you taste their bitterness and gall.
5. By employing labourers in His field, for your sakes. He sends His ministers to labour among you, if, by any means, they may save your souls alive.
II. The return you ought to make to him. What is this? Surely, to take care that you do not receive the grace of God in vain. When a farmer has bestowed much care and management upon a field, does he not expect some increase? How few soils are hopelessly bad, as not to be made better by good management! The earth is no insolvent debtor; you do not put into its bank to receive nought again. Shall the very ground we tread on put us to shame? Ask, then, yourselves, are you bearing fruit to God? (E. Blencowe, M. A.)
God, a husbandman
As such--
I. He is thoroughly acquainted with the soil. He knows--
1. Its original state; the soul with all its pristine powers.
2. Its present condition; its barren and wilderness state--stony, weedy, and thorny.
3. Its tillable capabilities--what can be made of it. Some can become the majestic cedar, whilst others only the shrub.
II. He has all necessary instrumentalities. This stony, weedy ground requires certain well-contrived implements to work it into a fruitful condition. There must be the ploughshare, the pruning-hook, &c. He has them.
1. In the events of life. All the dark and painful circumstances in life are His implements to break up the fallow ground. All the pleasant and propitious are instruments for mellowing the soil.
2. In the revelations of truth. There is law and love, Sinai and Calvary.
III. He possesses the proper seed. His Word is seed in many respects.
1. Vitality. Every seed has life in it. His Word is spirit and life.
2. Completeness. The seed is complete in itself. Nothing can be taken from it, nothing can be added to it, any alteration injures it.
3. Prolificness. One seed in course of time may cover a continent and feed nations. The word of God is wonderfully fruitful.
IV. He commands the culturing elements. The best agriculturists who understand the soil possess the best implements and the best seed, are thwarted in their efforts, because the elements are not propitious. God has command over the elements. The heat, the cold, the dew, the shower, the sunshine, and the air, are all at His disposal. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Gods husbandry
The Scripture doth delight to compare the Church to many similitudes, all which show the tender respects it stands in towards God. Sometimes to a wife, sometimes to a body, sometimes to the branches of a vine; at other times to a garden, to a vineyard, and here to a field, and a house. We will first handle these two similitudes jointly, and then severally. Jointly, in that they are Gods husbandry and house. It implieth these things--First, the power and goodness of God in making them so. A building is not of itself; everybody that seeth a house, presently concludes the house did not make itself; so if you see a field well husbanded, we all know of itself the earth would not do, but rather its curse is to bring forth briers and thorns. So when you see a people leaving their sins, walking according to the rules revealed in Scripture, you must necessarily conclude, this men have not of themselves, they cannot have this by flesh and blood. Hence, God, speaking of the Church of Israel, said: He planted a vine (Jer_2:21). Secondly, it doth imply dominion and absolute sovereignty over us. Even as the master that buildeth the house appointeth what customs and orders shall be in the house, the husbandman appointeth what seed he pleaseth for the ground. This point is of great consideration, for how durst men in all ages have brought in such superstition, such heresy, such tyranny in the Church of God, if they had remembered there is but one master in the house of God--one lawgiver. All officers are but servants, and not masters. Thirdly, it denoteth propriety and interest that God hath a right to us, that we are His, and not our own. The house is the owners, he hath the propriety of it; so that by this means they who are, indeed, of this building, of this field, they are more happy than all others in the world, for God is in covenant with them. To them only God is their God, and they His people. Fourthly, it supposeth care, love, and protection. Propriety causeth care and love among men. What cares a man for another mans field, another mans corn, but he looketh to his own? He weedeth that, he fenceth that, he keepeth that from all violence. It makes for Gods praise, that thy heart be a room swept and kept clear for Him to lodge in. Oh, urge this in prayer! O Lord, am I not Thy husbandry? Is not my soul Thy building? Why, then, lieth it thus ruinous? Why is it neglected by Thee? It is not only my comfort, my happiness, but Thy glory and honour is interested in this. Come we in the next place to consider the several similitudes, and--First, ye are Gods husbandry. Take notice that He doth not here speak of the invisible and mystical Church of Christ, but as they were a visible Church at Corinth. This relation of being Gods husbandry implieth something on His part, and many things on ours. On His part: First, that He finds all people of themselves like a barren wilderness and fruitless desert. The curse upon the ground is fulfilled in them--to bring forth nothing but briers and thorns. All the things of grace and godliness are not only above our natures, but contrary to them. Secondly, it supposeth that grace and godliness is wholly planted by God in their souls, for this floweth from the other. Seeing we are such a barren wilderness, what fruit can ever be expected from us? Thirdly, this supposeth that God likewise giveth all the seasons and opportunities of growth and fruitfulness. As the gardener, He looketh to His times when He must water the plants, lest they die. The season of the year helpeth to grow, as well as the nature of the soil. Oh, then, know that as the natural seasons and times are of His appointment, so much more the gracious ones. On our parts, who are the field to be tilled, there are these things: First, a willingness to have the Word of God prepare and wound our souls; even tearing our hearts to pieces, that so the Word as seed may fructify. This is what the Scripture calls, Ploughing up the fallow ground (Jer_4:3). Oh, expect not healing and peace and comfort, till you have been thus disquieted! Do not then quarrel at the Word of God, but rather bless Him for the power of it, when it changeth the whole face of a congregation. Secondly, this implieth that you should answer the satisfaction of that husbandman whose husbandry you are. Who will bear that ground which, after much labour and cost, brings forth no fruit at all? Thirdly, it supposeth a careful improvement of all those means which God useth for our spiritual good. If we be Gods husbandry, we are patiently to receive and fruitfully to improve whatsoever may make for our fruitfulness. Now the means are of two sorts, either essential, and entire and perfect, such as the hearing of the Word, praying, godly communion; or, accidental and occasional, such as afflictions, troubles, and persecutions. They need a winter as well as a summer. Lastly, consider how near such a people are to utter ruin; while you are but near it, there is some hope of escaping, if you seek out; who after all Gods husbandry, are the same ignorant and profane people still. Thy soul is Gods field. Oh, what fruit, what reformation shouldst thou show forth? Thus, not only the Sabbath day, but every day may be a Sabbath day; every field thou goest into; every goodly crop thou seest on the ground, it may teach and preach unto thee. (A. Burgess.)
Gods building
is Divine--
I. In its plan.
II. In its structure.
1. Christ, the foundation.
2. Living stones, the superstructure.
III. In its workmanship. Each stone by God is--
1. Polished.
2. Adjusted.
3. Cemented.
IV. In its purpose.
1. For His glory.
2. For the inhabitation of His Spirit. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Gods building
There have been many splendid structures which, in their day, have been the wonder and admiration of the world, but this infinitely transcends them all. The colossal palaces and hanging gardens reared by Nebuchadnezzar must have presented a gorgeous spectacle; while the fame of Solomons temple has filled the earth in every age. But what is all this material splendour, which has long since passed away, to this temple whose stones are immortal spirits--whose foundation is the rock of ages-whose walls no revolutions can ever shake--whose fair proportions shall be fully developed, amid the ruin of all the mightiest and loveliest works of human ingenuity and power--whose top-stone shall be brought forth with shoutings when the heavens shall have passed away. In surveying this building, note--
I. The foundation. This is the most important part; if this be defective, all the cost and labour of the superstructure will be in vain. But the foundation upon which this edifice is built is such as an Omnipotent hand alone could lay, and for which no other can be substituted. Christ is the foundation of the Christian Church, as He is--
1. The source of her being. The Church could have no existence but for Him. The spiritual stones that constitute the edifice are sinners ransomed by His blood, and renewed by His Spirit. Were it possible for the connection between the stones and the foundation to be dissolved, the whole edifice would become a heap of ruins.
2. The author of her creed. In regard to her doctrines she rests on no human authority, but takes them as they flow pure from Christ and His inspired apostles.
3. The founder of her discipline. His laws are few, and the principles on which they rest are equity and love. One is your Master, &c. A new commandment give I unto you, &c.
4. The guarantee of her stability and perpetuity. Upon this rock will I build My Church, &c. These were His words--this was His pledge; and all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth, in this capacity, and for this very purpose.
II. The materials.
1. Immortal spirits, redeemed and regenerated men, lively stones, or what Paul denominates gold, silver, precious stones; the accredited and the durable materials which ministers are the instruments of placing in the Church. But in the visible Church there are materials of another kind--mere professors, hypocrites, formalists, the wood, hay, stubble; but they form no part of the true Church, but shall ultimately be removed from the edifice.
2. Whence are the materials taken? See these living stones, as in successive courses they rise to constitute and adorn the edifice. They are of various colours--from the white of Europe to the jet of Africa; every rank--from the monarch to the labourer. They shall come from the east and from the west, &c. They shall come from the eastern Brahmins--from the western savages--from the Southern Isles--from the northern Esquimaux; they shall come from the patriarchal and the prophetic ages--from the Jewish and the Christian dispensations. David, with the harp, shall be there; and Isaiah, with his evangelic songs; and Ezekiel, with his prophetic visions; mingling with the malefactor from the cross, and the poor beggar from the rich mans gate. They shall come from every denomination: the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, &c,; all forgetting, or lamenting, that they should ever have been otherwise than one.
III. The instrumentality and agency. The instrumentality is human; the agency Divine. Yet the instrumentality is of Divine appointment; and, for the most part, inseparably connected with the agency. Though it is God who giveth the increase, yet Paul musk plant and Apollos water. Ministers are not architects, but simply workmen, employed under the guidance of the Divine architect. Nor can any one stone boast against another in respect of the rock whence it was hewn, the hole of the pit whence it was digged, for all alike are hewn out of the quarry of a common depravity. However much as they may vary in other respects, all are on a level here--alike dead in trespasses and sins; whilst it is God who has quickened them together with Christ, &c. I know that it is not with us to limit the Holy One of Israel, nor to say by what avenues He shall or shall not obtain access to the human heart. It may be affliction, &c.; but the ministry of the gospel is the main and ordinary instrumentality. Was it not by this that Peter pricked to the heart three thousand; that Luther shook the throne of papal tyranny; that Whitefield and Wesley aroused the slumbering Churches of Great Britain and America. What is it that has caused the Rose of Sharon to bloom amid the snows of Greenland? What is it that has gathered the savages of Kaffraria and New Zealand around the Cross? It is the preaching of the gospel in its simplicity and purity--and nothing less--that God will own and honour for this great and glorious purpose; Christ, in the sufficiency of His atonement; in the prevalence of His intercession, &c. (T. Raffles, D. D.)
Gods building
I. God is our builder. If we climb some high hill near the sea on a fine day, we behold on one side hills and valleys; and on the other the tremendous ocean stretching to the horizon. Then we feel that our Father is a grand God to make such things. There are great buildings which men have erected, but there is no building which is so great as the splendid planet on which we live. But far more wonderful than the world is the body of man; but a grinder thing still is the soul, which God created to dwell in. It appears as if He had given to the soul of man a portion of His own almighty power. Does not the Scripture say, Ye fight against God? We have power to say No to the Almighty! But there is something far grinder and more precious still--it is the new spirit which is breathed in every man who believes in Christ. This is Godlike.
II. God has furnished a plan for the building--the life of Christ. It is the best life and nobody can improve on it. The Lord does not mean us to copy His style of garment, or to eat the same sort of food, or to be put to death on a cross. We are to copy His character.
III. God has also given a foundation for the building. Christ Jesus. Then, we are to believe His words and to build our actions thereon. Jesus is our foundation for the knowledge--
1. That God loves us as our Father. We are to live from day to day feeling certain of that.
2. That Christ lays down His life for us. So we are to rest upon Him for forgiveness.
3. That in Him are all things necessary for our peace. Build on Him, then, for all circumstances of trouble. (W. Birch.)
The Church Gods building
I. The apostles description of the church. Ye are Gods building. This building--
1. Has a proprietor. God is the proprietor of the site (the world), of the foundation (Christ), of the materials (sinners), of the builders (ministers), of its privileges here, and its ultimate glory in heaven.
2. Has an architect. Infinite wisdom and power. Before this building was commenced there was intention; it is the result of design.
3. Has a good foundation. Christ, called a stone, to convey the idea of stability and durability; and a tried stone, to indicate that it is completely adapted to answer the purpose for which it is laid; a sure foundation, because no attacks of its enemies, no revolutions of time, no concussions of earth will ever shake or destroy it.
4. Has a grand superstructure. It is composed of materials properly fitted, to occupy a place in the building (1Pe_2:5). The stones once had no connection with the building, deeply imbedded in natures quarry of guilt; but by the hammer of Gods Word and the energy of the Spirit, they have been detached from the rock, brought from darkness to light, &c. By regeneration, by sanctification, they are fitted for a position in the temple.
5. Has workmen--ministers, all Christian workers, missionaries.
6. Has perfect beauty (Psa_48:1-14.; Son_6:4). See the polished stones, bearing the inscription of Holiness to the Lord. See their love, union, benevolence. They are adorned with the righteousness of Christ, and bear the image of God.
II. The special design of the erection.
1. Magnificent. It is a habitation for God. What a glorious inhabitant! God is known in her palaces for a refuge. Behold the heaven of heavens, &c.
2. Gracious (Isa_66:1). The Lord loveth the gates of Zion.
III. The blessedness of being a part of his building.
1. It is honourable. It is the most glorious building that ever was erected. It is to be allied to the glorious Proprietor Himself.
2. It is advantageous. The state of a person is decided; he has realised the Divine power by which he has been fitted into the temple of God. This produces peace, contentment, joy, hope. He has an interest in all the promises and privileges of this house, and is a participant of all its provisions.
3. It is a state of safety. The Proprietor will never suffer this building to be destroyed. He ever watches over and defends it; He is a wall of fire round about it, angels minister to it, all the attributes of God are pledged for its security. (Homilist.)
The Church Gods building
The metaphor describes the work of God as being not the gathering together of certain devout souls wishing to abstract themselves from the corruptions of the heathen around them, and to shape their own lives after a nobler mode. Such persons might have dwelt in Corinth, exciting no remark, creating no enmity; the worst that could have befallen them would have been an idle scoff as enthusiastic strivers after an ideal of unattainable perfection. But by representing the Christian body as a Divinely erected building, he paints at one stroke a picture of tangible social system rising in the midst of the old heathen world like a new sanctuary in the centre of one of its temple-crowned cities, with the Christian community growing up in Corinth, with its groups of little children and its elder men, its ministry and ordinances of worship, its examples of whole households like that of St. Stephanas, enrolled by baptism among its members. This was not a philosophical school created by Pauline teaching, but an all-comprehensive, all-embracing structure, reared by a Divine hand, the abode of supernatural powers and operations, a structure which invited into it through its ever open gates all of every race, and age, and class, the Jew and the Greek, the vast slave population of the old world, as well as its most privileged citizens; and this in order, having gathered them within its walls, to weld them together into a new social system by bonds and principles which soon would supersede existing ties. Nor is this all. A building implies not a sudden emanation of opinion, but a construction of progressive stages, each based upon that which lies below; from the foundation which the earth hides, to the pinnacle which loses itself in the blue air. And so St. Paul speaks of their being being built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, coupling together the living and the dead as a substructure of the Church of his day. Yes, even that Church of the first-born, in all the fresh light of its new faith, was to regard itself not as a creature of its own age, although Christ had Himself walked the earth in that age; but it was to know that its foundations went back into the depths of eternity, that its creed, short as it was, Christ, and Him crucified, gathered up into itself all the past revealings of God. Their legend, St. Paul would tell them, was no system of faith and morals lying on the surface of a single generation; it penetrated into the very secret of them all. The facts were the outcome of Gods determinate counsel working gradually century after century up to its accomplishment from the birth of time. Its precepts of love and holiness were not arbitrary precepts, but derived from the very being of God; thus the corner-stone of the building had been laid before the elder angels began to be. And as God does not create each human being separately, but carries forward His original work continuously, making of one blood all nations of men, so with the work of salvation, the Lord does not simply join to Himself those that are being saved, but He adds them to the Church, and that by the instrumentality of those who were Christians before them. Thus, you see, every generation of the baptized is bound together by a spiritual consanguinity with the generations which precede it. The creeds which we inherit from ages, the prayers whose solemn tones are prolonged among us from the remotest times, like the long-drawn note of solemn music through a cathedral; the influence of saints and doctors and confessors, indestructible as that influence is, whether men like it or not; all this is but the outward expression of that essential continuity which, through the one baptism and the one Bread of Life, Jesus Christ, has secured to the fellowship of His disciples. (Bp. Woodford.)
The spiritual temple
I. Its foundation. A wise builder is always most attentive to this, because the stability of the structure can only be secured by that of the foundation (Mat_7:24). We are thus prepared to find the Church of Christ represented as built upon a rock, i.e., Christ. In His complex nature He becomes, by His obedience and death, the ground on which guilty men are brought to stand and live again in the favour of the Almighty (Act_4:11-12).
II. The edifice.
1. The Church of Christ is an edifice composed of rational and immortal beings, brought out of a fallen state, to stand in an intimate relation to Him, and to God through Him. They are all united to Him in their hearts by faith, and meet together in that union. This Church hath both an outward form, and an inward grace. The visible Church is composed of all in every place, who make an open profession of faith in Christ. But many of these make this profession in the absence of any Divine principle of faith in their hearts. These are only nominally of the temple of God. They live upon a name. Thou hast a name, that thou livest, but art dead. The profession of the rest, however, is that which results from the principle within: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, &c. These are the true and real temple, builded together for a habitation of God, through the Spirit. As the practised eye of the jeweller discerns the real gem from the artificial resemblance, and uses means to make the difference manifest, that the precious may be separated from the vile, so does Christ distinguish those in His Church who are really partakers of like precious faith, from those who have the appearance of it only.
2. Such is the analogy to be traced between the spiritual temple of God upon earth, and a material sacred edifice. As far, however, as heavenly things exceed earthly ones, they are incapable of being fully represented by such, e.g.
(1) No stone moves itself to the foundation. It is taken from the quarry and carried to it to be placed upon it, without the possibility of its own concurrence. But here there is a principle of spiritual life, in consequence of which the individual goes to Christ to be redeemed unto God by Him and made to live in His sight. Unto you that believe, Christ is precious; to whom, coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, &c.
(2) Every stone in this Divine fabric is immediately united to the Foundation, and all of them that are equally near to it. This cannot be the case with a material building. But the souls of all believers in Christ are equally intimately united to Him by their own personal faith.
(a) The faith of the parent cannot save the child, nor that of the husband the wife.
(b) Neither have we any saving connection with Christ by an outward union to His Church and participation of its ordinances. Being in the Lord is a constant phrase of the New Testament in describing a state of salvation.
(3) Every portion of spiritual building makes increase of itself and the whole by the addition of other parts. This is out of question with respect to any erection of man. (J. Leifchild, D. D.)
Character built bit by bit
Remember that the building of a noble and Godlike and God-pleasing character can be erected on the foundation of faith only by constant effort. Growth is not the whole explanation of the process by which a man becomes what God would have him to be. Struggle has to be included as well as growth, and neither growth nor struggle exhaust the New Testament metaphors for progress. This other one of my text is of constant recurrence. It takes the metaphor of a building to suggest the slow, continuous, bit-by-bit effort. You do not rear the fabric of a noble character all at a moment. No man reaches the extremity, either of goodness or baseness, by a leap; you must be content with bit-by-bit work. The Christian character is like a mosaic formed of tiny squares in all but infinite numbers, each one of them separately set and bedded in its place. You have to build by a plan; you have to see to it that each day has its task, each day its growth. You have to be content with one brick at a time. It is a lifelong task, till the whole be finished. And not until we pass from earth to heaven does our building work cease. Continuous effort is the condition of progress. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Soul masonry
I. A good plan.
1. What is a good plan?
(1) A plan adapted to its purpose. If the edifice is intended for study, worship, business, recreation, or residence, the plan, to be good, must be fitted for its purpose.
(2) A plan aesthetically pleasing. Nature provides for the aesthetic instinct in boundless varieties of forms and hues. A plan that does not embrace all those lines, and curves, and proportions, and blended shades, that charm the aesthetic instinct, cannot be considered truly good.
2. What is the plan on which moral masonry should proceed? The character of Christ. This ideal has the two grand attributes of architectural excellence, fitness, and beauty. All history shows that such an ideal is to be found nowhere else. Men, alas, are everywhere building character on other plans: some by the plan of sensual pleasure, others by the plan of commercial greed, others by the plan of worldly vanity and ambition. But they are all unsuitable and unlovely. In them the soul is neither happy nor beautiful.
II. Good materials. However fitted and beautiful the plan, if the materials are poor, the stones crumbling, the tiles leaking, the timber rotten, the edifice will be anything but perfect. What are the materials with which we are to build up a good character? They are actions. If these are corrupt, the materials are bad; but if good, then the character is all right. Good actions are actions that spring from a supreme sympathy with the supremely good. Such actions are the gold and the silver and the precious stones that will bear the fires at the last day.
III. A good foundation. What is the good foundation of a character? Not conventional mortality, not religious observances, not orthodox creeds; but Christ and Him only. See in Mat_7:1-29., the destinies of the wise man who built his house on a rock, and the foolish man who built on the sand. The one endured through the storm, but the other was swept away in utter ruin. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Gods building
Now this comparison of building supposeth these things--First, that a people of themselves are nothing but so much rubbish, and that it is God who makes them this glorious building. That as you see the temple was built by excellent art. The trees in the forest and the stones in the quarry could never have prepared themselves, nor put themselves into so goodly a structure. So it is here. Men by their own power, their own ability and strength, could never become a fit habitation for the Lord to rest in. Secondly, it implieth that the matter of this building should be sound, precious, and substantial. Oh that you would think of this, what ye ought to be! Holiness to the Lord should be writ on your hands, foreheads, and whole conversation. Thirdly, it implies the gracious presence and power of God among His people. A house is the place where a man continually resides; and this is one great reason why God useth this metaphor to show with what rest and delight He will take up His habitation in His Church. Fourthly, this house or building doth imply God to be the Master therein, that He only may prescribe the laws and orders, what shall be done, and what not; He appoints every one his work and his labour. Fifthly, here is this further in this building. It is not an ordinary building, but a sacred and holy one. Therefore they are called the temple of the living God. Now then, what an astonishing consideration is this? Sixthly, it being a house, all within are servants, and so they are to do their Masters work, to live to Him. Whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God (1Co_10:31). Thus this health, this wealth, these parts, this time is none of mine; I must improve it for my Master. Seventhly, it supposeth order and government. The Church of God is a house; now that hath domestical laws. Paul did rejoice to see the Churchs order, and her faith (Col_2:5). Eighthly, unity, love, and concord among those that are in the same house. Oh, let this shame all animosities and quarrellings! Are we not of the same house? (A. Burgess.)
The church a building
1. It is a spiritual building. What our Lord Jesus say of His kingdom is true of His building, that it is not of this world--in it, but not of it (Joh_15:19). It is a building of souls.
2. It is a spacious building of vast extent. I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, &c. (Rev_7:9).
3. It is a high building. Though part of it be here below, yet the top of it is as high as heaven. There it is that the glorious angels are, and the spirits of just men made perfect; all of this building.
4. It is a holy building (Eph_2:21). Holiness to the Lord is written upon the front of this building.
5. It is a living building. No other is so. The same who are quickened are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph_2:1; Eph_2:20).
6. It is a light building. This is one thing that makes a building pleasant, and comfortable--many and large windows. All the world besides is in darkness; it is the Church only that hath the true light.
7. It is a secure, a safe, building. The Church of God is such a building as the ark was (1Pe_3:20-21).
8. It is a spreading, growing building. (Philip Henry.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9. For we are laborers together with God. The…
9. For we are laborers together with God. The Revision gives the true meaning: “For we are God's fellow-workers.” They, he and Apollos, were fellow-laborers belonging to God (of God, not with God). They were fellow-laborers with each other, of God. The Corinthian church was God's field in which they labored. The Greek word means “tilled land.” Husbandry is obscure. Ye are God's building. The figure is now changed. Paul and Apollos are God's builders, and the church is the building they build. The leading idea is that they are only God's employees. How can Paul have a party, then, and Apollos another, when they are only employees of God?
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.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v10 1Co_3:10.—Was given … I laid, q.d. “when I was…
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co_3:10.—Was given … I laid, q.d. “when I was at Corinth.” “A foundation,” “which I subjectively laid in my teaching at Corinth, because God had already laid the same objectively in heaven” (Evans). “Laid objectively for the whole Church in the Great Facts [by God], … laid subjectively in the hearts of the Christians at Corinth as the firm ground of their personal hopes by Paul” (Beet).
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1Co_3:11-15.—See Homiletic Analysis; also Appended Note. No valid analogy to warrant the application of this to the doctrine of Purgatory. This rests upon (a) the distinction drawn between venial and mortal sins with temporal and eternal penalties attached, and (b) the doctrine of merit. The temporal penalty of sins not “paid off” at the date of death must be “paid up” in Purgatory fire. The accumulated stock of merit, of Christ and the saints—a surplus beyond their own requirements—may be drawn upon by an indulgence, and the amount be applied to reducing the purgatorial term.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_3:10-15
Work tried by Fire.
I. The imagery employed.—Ancient cities, and some modern ones (e.g. St. Petersburg), not so sharply divided into rich quarters and poor quarters as often the case with us. Houses of highest and humblest much more closely associated and intermingled. Palace and hovel might literally jostle. Buildings adorned with costly marbles [=“precious stones”], perhaps made priceless by the lavished art of the sculptor, stood surrounded with (sometimes literal “lean-to”) houses of stucco, of wood, or even of clay, thatched with hay and stubble, the houses of the artisan, the poor, the slave. St. Paul sees the work of a great fire, such as that which under Nero was made the occasion of a great persecution of the Christians, or that which a century before, on the capture of Corinth itself by Memmius, had laid the city in ruin. [Not to be made too precise, but may be conceived of thus:] The fire breaks out (say) at midnight, in some obscure dwelling, and quickly reduces to a heap of ashes the frail tenement of “wood, hay, stubble.” It catches adjoining houses; the winds fan and spread the flames, till a whole quarter of the city is wrapped in a conflagration which seems to Paul a fit emblem of the fires of “The Day” of all days, God’s Day of testing and doom. In the morning little knots of curious spectators and of sufferers wander about the ruins, discussing the work of the night. The slave is looking for his house of wood, hay, stubble. It stood there where that heap of ashes lies. He stirs them with his foot, and lays bare the stone foundations still unconsumed. The fire could not touch those. And, like many more, the homeless man recounts to any sympathetic listeners how his own life and that of his family are all they could save out of the wreck and loss of all. They were awakened, perhaps, and saved at the very last moment, “saved through the fire.” Another little group gathers round the stronger-built and still-standing stone walls of a better class of house. Stucco, woodwork, ornament have perished; but the man who built it “has his reward” for the money and pains spent over his substantial walls. There is something, more or less, to begin with, in restoring his ruined house. Close by stands a temple or a palace, as if almost contemptuous of its ruined neighbours, as it stands in the isolation of its survival. It has passed through the ordeal almost unscathed. Contents uninjured; cunning works of the goldsmith; spoils of conquered nations,—all untouched by the fire. Its costly marbles and statues within have not felt it. Its strong walls, besmirched with smoke indeed, have defied the flames. That builder, too, has his reward. He built with good material; it stands the fire.
II. Paul’s use of the imagery.—
1. In the course of a somewhat lengthy stay in the city, Paul had founded the Church of Corinth. No man could pretend to dispute or share with him the honour of being the “master-builder,” the first to preach Christ in the city. Some little time after his departure, he sent over from Ephesus his friend Apollos to carry on the work. Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, worked in perfect harmony of heart and aim after Paul; but perhaps felt himself more free than Paul had done to use the Alexandrian rhetoric and human learning in setting forth the Gospel. Every Greek was a born “politician,” or at least a born party man; the Corinthian Church early showed the effects of this partisan spirit within its membership. Parties sprang up with men’s names for their badges. [Little “schisms” Paul calls them, dissidences within the body, not yet grown to separations from it.] Whether we have the exact names 1Co_4:6 perhaps makes a little doubtful, nor is it clear that Paul’s list is exhaustive. Yet the characteristics and tendencies of the parties may be easily gathered.
2. There was an “Apollos” party. They liked such rhetoric as Apollos gave them, and chose to think their intelligence flattered by what of philosophy he may have employed in the shaping of the truth. Their danger was perhaps (e.g. in 1 Corinthians 15) to exalt reason at the expense of faith; we may not unreasonably think that in trying to be philosophical Christians they were denying or refining away the facts and doctrines of the Gospel, frittering away their power, or rejecting them as contrary to reason. It might not to be an unwarrantable borrowing of a modern name to call them the “rationalising” party at Corinth.
3. There was a “Cephas” party, belonging to that “wing” of the Christian Church who had been Jews, and whom at this period of Paul’s life we everywhere find dogging his footsteps, denying his Apostolic standing, often defaming his character. These at Corinth glorified Peter,—no, “Cephas.” “Call him by his honest Hebrew name!” Old school men, who could not so rapidly or readily unlearn as Paul had done the habits and training and teaching of years; who mistrusted him as “sadly radical”; who, though Christians, sought to enforce upon the Gentiles the worn-out ritual of Moses’ law and the now meaningless circumcision. Old style, conservative men, with a leaning to ceremonialism. The “ritual” party.
4. “No,” said another party. “We stand by Paul. He will have none of your Law for Christians. We will have none of it. He is a ‘liberty’ man. We are ‘liberty’ men too.” Only, where he meant the formal law of Moses, they meant the very principle of law itself. When he taught “liberty,” they interpreted “licence,” and some lived “licentiousness.” The Christian Church from the beginning has always had some too “liberal” in thought and in practice.
5. Yet one party more. They owned no human teacher, indeed. They had climbed to a sublime, serene height far above where their poor, misguided brethren were rallying round, and fighting over, this man or that, Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. Possibly hyper-conservatives, fresh from the Lord’s brother, James, in Jerusalem; at all events, they said, “We are of Christ!” A beautiful party-cry; very attractive to the unwary and simple-hearted. But when it means “Christ as we understand Him” it is not quite so beautiful.
6. So, then, to the Church at Corinth had happened on a small scale what has been happening in the Church of Christ ever since. These were all Christians as yet. The differences between them and their heathen or Jewish neighbours were far greater than those which distinguished them from each other. All acknowledged one Divine Head, and had some great doctrines connected with Him as a bond of union. But some of them were building up the Church [and Christian lives] with doctrine and practice which Paul regarded as “wood, hay, stubble”; useless at best, and sure to perish in “The Day,” when God’s judgment should “try every man’s work, of what sort it is.” Some there were, he knew, who happily were building after his own heart and judgment, “gold, silver, precious stone.” Great should be their reward! Some also there were whose work gave him only mingled satisfaction. “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour,” partly according to how much he has done, but still more according to what kind of work he has done. Of those for whom he feared that they should find the labour of their life wasted, yet he hoped they should at least “save themselves,” if even like men snatched out of the flames which left them nothing but “their foundation” and “their lives.” [The opening words of the paragraph suggest:] “Woe to any builders whose work should really be a disturbing of the very Foundation itself, other than which none may lay a basis for faith, or life, or hope.”
7. These Church parties at Corinth were our modern “Churches” and “sects” in miniature. The causes at work at Corinth have never ceased to work wherever we have Christian men, until we have a Christianity not even outwardly at one. Yet we need to give Paul’s recognition that they are nearer to each other than to the world outside. Their unity is a more striking and deep thing than their diversities. They are one Church still. The broadest and deepest diversities at Corinth were still within the Church, insomuch as they were only surface cleavages; they did not run down into the foundation. That was one. Men weep because there is not external unity of all the Churches in one communion. As well weep that the sapling, which a thousand years ago was one simple undivided stem, has branched out into the oak with its hundred arms, many of them really big trees themselves. The branching is an inevitable consequence of life. And the tree is one at stock and root. Minds will always differ in cast and capacity. Training is of endless diversity. Race will make a difference. No one man ever sees the whole round of a truth; hardly any one Church or age does; no two ever see the same phase of presentation of it. There will always be men liable to pay too great honour to Reason; always some too ready to insist upon and overvalue Ceremonial. Reasons convincing to one do not appeal to another. An order of service not to the taste of one suits another and helps him. And so on, in endless diversity. What then? Recognise the fact that the diversity is a necessity. It has often become an evil; it need not be, and will not be, when men become broad as Paul, and recognise other patterns of doctrine and life and church order as all fairly to be included in the One Church. 8. It were a good thing for some to be as narrow as Paul about the “One Foundation.” It is unreal “liberality” to attempt to include within the “Christian” Church both those whose Christ is God-man, the Father’s equal and man’s fellow, Messiah of the Jews, Mediator for the Race, and, on the other side, those whose Jesus is at the highest a creature whom His Creator could annihilate, and who was perhaps a mere man, who might or even did make mistakes, a man not superior to Paul, and to whom Christianity owes not more than it does to Paul. Their status and acceptance before God depend on other considerations, but they are not on the Foundation in Paul’s sense. The lesson of the paragraph is not indifference to what a man believes, or what his neighbour believes, or how he works or worships. Each should be honest and earnest in accepting and living and defending that special aspect or portion of The Truth, which he or his Church sees. Experience shows that, as a rule, they do most for the broad work of Christ who work with a fixed creed and with a definite Church attachment. Each should give and claim equal recognition. The paragraph teaches charity, since experience also teaches that perfectly honest church-and creed-builders have built in what others saw clearly was “wood, hay, stubble,” and have rejected what some saw was “precious stone,” if not “gold” or “silver,” of system and doctrine. Probably no uninspired teacher ever built upon the One Foundation nothing but what would endure the fire.
III. A personal application of the words lies not far from this.—
1. If a man is to be saved in “The Day” of God’s judgment, Christ must be the foundation of his life. “Saved” and “perishing” (2Co_2:15) mingle together it the closest intercourse of life, with closest similarity of outward course and bearing. Indeed, sometimes the balance of amiability or of strict probity seems to be on the side of the “perishing.” What is there to make Paul’s classification so sharply definite?
2. Dig down to the foundations of the two lives.—In the man really “being saved” this is the starting-point: Time was when he felt himself a sinner, guilty before God, and his heart full of sin. He cast himself on God’s mercy in Christ; he was forgiven; ever since, the Spirit has dwelt in him, doing something towards cleansing the heart, and putting there a new motive for all he does and feels—love to God who gave him Christ. If not, he is not a Christian. Others are “perishing,” because, go back far as we will, dig down deeply as we may, we cannot find that. There never was the fundamental experience of “sin” and of “faith in Christ” as the “spiritual man” understands them. Reform may only be throwing the arch of a culvert over the sin of the past and the sin of the heart; the man covered up his past and began to build the new life over it. But there, lowest of all, are the past and the sin, not Christ and His atonement. The other foundation and beginning of all life-building is Rock! [Turning over a new leaf is a good thing if it do not mean simply fastening down the old, without having first the record “blotted out.”] The superstructure of Eddystone Lighthouse was good enough when it was removed a few years ago; but the sea was undermining the foundation. A good superstructure upon a good foundation: lesson the first.
3. Then build something upon the foundation.—See in the suburbs of growing towns unfinished property. Walls of a certain height, but left unfinished; perhaps hardly more than the foundations got in when the money failed. Ground lies waste; weeds grow, rubbish accumulates, till it becomes difficult to see without some search whether there are any foundations at all. Like some lives. The true foundation was made right some years ago, but scarcely anything has been put upon it since. The accumulations of a worldly life have gathered, until an observer—and perhaps the man himself—hardly knows whether the foundations are still there. Rear a Christian character; build a superstructure of work for Christ. No better evidence that the foundation is there, and is sound, than the growing, fair superstructure. Build something. Some builders never get very far. What they build is good—stone, if not gold or silver, but it never amounts to much. A day’s unfaithfulness pulls down a week’s building. “Sinning and repenting.” “Ever learning, never coming to the knowledge of the truth.”
4. Build something every day.—“How did Michael Angelo accomplish so much?” “Nulla dies sine linea!” he replied. No day without something which will endure the testing fire: this will be the secret of some very unobtrusive, little-noticed lives which by-and-by are crowned with large reward when the reward is according to the work—in amount as well as quality (cf. supra).
5. Test all employments by this.—“Will they stand ‘the fire’? Do they now help towards an abiding, thorough Christian character? Or are the things I have done to-day mere ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ sure to perish?”
6. Build something to-day; at least, find the foundation to-day.—If to lay the one and only foundation [so far as we can be said to lay it at all] were the last act of a wasted life, the builder should escape “saved as by fire.” But it would be a very unworthy use to make of Christ and His salvation. “To-day.”
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.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv9–11 9. “For we are God’s fellow laborers.” Oh! what…
9. “For we are God’s fellow laborers.” Oh! what a privilege to be participants with God in the glorious work of saving the world. “Ye are God’s farm.” Do not forget this. Nineteen years after I was converted to God I was all the time under the misapprehension that I was the farmer. Hence I toiled hard and incessantly, wielding the ax, mattock, spade, shovel, rake, pitchfork and plow, toiling and sweating. Terrible was my conflict with the briars, brambles, black-jack, dwarfed pine, sedge grass, dogfennel, pennyroyal, cockle-burs, Spanish needles and Canada thistles. Anon I congratulated myself upon victory, and again to my sorrow I found they had the run on me worse than ever. Nineteen years had rolled away. My eye caught this wonderful statement in the Greek Testament, “Ye are God’s farm.” I soliloquized, “Why! I thought I was the farmer. Oh! how I have been mistaken! If I am the farm, then God is the farmer. Is He not a model in agriculture? Does He want any filth in His farm? Nay, verily, is He not omnipotent? Has He not all power in Heaven and in earth? Does He not speak of the raging sea and rolling worlds? Do not planets, comets, suns, systems, oceans and storms fear and obey His sovereign mandate? What a little thing for Him to breathe on all this crop of filth that gives me toil, sorrow, aches and pains, and bid it evanesce forever!” About that time I tossed my mattock one way, my spade another, my pitchfork another, and began to leap and shout; my eyes turned heavenward, while a Niagara from the upper ocean inundated my soul, oblivion possessing me as to the enemies which all these years had infested my farm. Ere long I dropped my vision earthward. Behold I the briars, brambles, cockle-burs, Spanish needles and Canada thistles are all withered and dead, black-jack, hazel bushes and dwarfed pines, salt briars all out by the roots and sinking down in a grand bonfire. Behold! my farm was clean. Thirty years have rolled away. The devil has not failed to come back ever and anon with his bag of cockle-burs, Spanish needles and thistle seed swinging round his neck, while he goes on sowing the obnoxious filth broadcast, but the fires of the Holy Ghost, kindled when Jesus baptized my soul with the Holy Ghost and fire, still continue rolling their billows of heavenly flame on all sides. They consume all the obnoxious seeds of inbred sin the devil can possibly sow, transforming them into ashes, which fall upon my soil, adding valuable fertilization; so the devil is in fact running a manure cart much conducively to the enrichment of my soil. Is not this in harmony with God’s Word?
“All things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28).
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Could you have all things and leave the devil out? I know not, for the devil is not only a “thing,” but quite a big “thing.” Do you not know that these terrible conflicts which we have with the strong intellect of Satan rank among the greatest means of grace this side of Heaven? Such is the wonderful redemption of Christ that everything becomes a blessing to God’s true people. “Ye are God’s building.” The foundation is by far the most important part of the house; yet it is not the house. You receive the foundation when you are born from above, but the superstructure of a holy experience was built on it when you were sanctified. I was converted forty- nine years ago. Then I received the foundation of the glorious Christian experience I enjoy today. Though I never actually lost my foundation, yet ever and anon it suffered great damage from pelting rains and winter freezes; meanwhile during the summer it became the rendezvous of doleful creatures. Why did I not build the house at once? My money gave out (faith failed) and the mechanics went away. During my boyhood it was a death struggle for me to hold my religion until our campmeeting came on, when I was satisfied I would get a new supply. So I made a raise of money, resumed the work, the foundation being so dilapidated that it had to be taken up and laid over. We get the walls up, it is now weather-boarded; money fails, the mechanics leave, dilapidations ensue, rain pours in, the snow accumulates. After decay has wrought sad havoc, I get into another revival, get some more money, the mechanics come back, the work is resumed, every passer-by waves his hat and say’ Hurrah! we will soon have a house built.” Money again fails and the work is abandoned, and dilapidation ensues. As in former years passers-by groan and say, “What a pity; this house is never going to be finished! It is all a failure, labor lost.” Ere long I strike a bonanza, get plenty of money, rally all the mechanics; much of the work is so dilapidated that it has to be renewed. This is done, and the whole job in every ramification with life and energy is pushed right on to completion amid the joyous congratulations of the whole town shouting on all sides, “Why! don’t you see that house which has been on hand nineteen years is at last finished in elegant and beautiful style?” You know people don’t live in unfinished houses, incompetent to protect them from the storms of winter and the heat of summer. Now that the house is finished, of course it is to be inhabited. King Jesus is the Proprietor. Now He beautifies it and furnishes it ad libitum and moves in, accompanied by a joyous group of angels. Glory to God! He has come to stay! All was cheer in former years during those periods when the work was going on, i. e., those revivals when the Holy Ghost came back and resumed His work. What a pity I ever let the mechanics abandon the work and go away after they first laid the foundation! If I had furnished the money, i. e., had the faith, they would have pushed it right through to completion soon after the foundation was laid. Then King Jesus would have moved in at once and have given me a Heaven in my soul from that early day. But He will not settle down and abide in an unfinished house. He will stay so long as you use Him as a builder, pushing the work right along to completion. Are you a finished house? If so, Jesus abides in your heart and fills every chamber of your soul. If you have not the clear witness of the Spirit that Jesus is abiding within, rest assured the house is not finished. So turn it over to the Holy Ghost; let Him have the job to execute the work in His own way. Do not meddle with Him. See that your faith does not fail. He is certain to do the work according to your faith. So have faith in Him this moment and incessantly to finish the house and turn the key over to King Jesus, that He may come in and abide forever.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v9 1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians
GOD’S FELLOW-WORKERS
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1Co 3:9.
The characteristic Greek tendency to factions was threatening to rend the Corinthian Church, and each faction was swearing by a favourite teacher. Paul and his companion, Apollos, had been taken as the figureheads of two of these parties, and so he sets himself in the context, first of all to show that neither of the two was of any real importance in regard to the Church’s life. They were like a couple of gardeners, one of whom did the planting, and the other the watering; but neither the man that put the little plant into the ground, nor the man that came after him with a watering-pot, had anything to do with originating the mystery of the life by which the plant grew. That was God’s work, and the pair that had planted and watered were nothing. So what was the use of fighting which of two nothings was the greater?
But then he bethinks himself that that is not quite all. The man that plants and the man that waters are something after all. They do not communicate life, but they do provide for its nourishment. And more than that, the two operations-that of the man with the dibble and that of the man with the watering-pot-are one in issue; and so they are partners, and in some respects may be regarded as one. Then what is the sense of pitting them against each other?
But even that is not quite all; though united in operation, they are separate in responsibility and activity, and will be separate in reward. And even that is not all; for, being nothing and yet something, being united and yet separate, they are taken into participation and co-operation with God; and as my text puts it, in what is almost a presumptuous phrase, they are ‘labourers together with Him.’ That partnership of co-operation is not merely a partnership of the two, but it is a partnership of the three-God and the two who, in some senses, are one.
Now whilst this text is primarily spoken in regard to the apostolic and evangelistic work of these early teachers, the principle which it embodies is a very wide one, and it applies in all regions of life and activity, intellectual, scholastic, philanthropic, social. Where-ever men are thinking God’s thoughts and trying to carry into effect any phase or side of God’s manifold purposes of good and blessing to the world, there it is true. We claim no special or exclusive prerogative for the Christian teacher. Every man that is trying to make men understand God’s thought, whether it is expressed in creation, or whether it is written in history, or whether it is carven in half-obliterated letters on the constitution of human nature, every man who, in any region of society or life, is seeking to effect the great designs of the universal loving Father-can take to himself, in the measure and according to the manner of his special activity, the great encouragement of my text, and feel that he, too, in his little way, is a fellow-helper to the truth and a fellow-worker with God. But then, of course, according to New Testament teaching, and according to the realities of the case, the highest form in which men thus can co-operate with God, and carry into effect His purposes is that in which men devote themselves, either directly or indirectly, to spreading throughout the whole world the name and the power of the Saviour Jesus Christ, in whom all God’s will is gathered, and through whom all God’s blessings are communicated to mankind. So the thought of my text comes appropriately when I have to bring before you the claims of our missionary operations.
Now, the first way in which I desire to look at this great idea expressed in these words, is that we find in it
I. A solemn thought.
‘Labourers together with God.’ Cannot He do it all Himself? No. God needs men to carry out His purposes. True, on the Cross, Jesus spoke the triumphant word, ‘It is finished!’ He did not thereby simply mean that He had completed all His suffering; but He meant that He had then done all which the world needed to have done in order that it should be a redeemed world. But for the distribution and application of that finished work God depends on men. You all know, in your own daily businesses, how there must be a middleman between the mill and the consumer. The question of organising a distributing agency is quite as important as any other part of the manufacturer’s business. The great reservoir is full, but there has to be a system of irrigating-channels by which the water is carried into every corner of the field that is to be watered. Christian men individually, and the Church collectively, supply-may I call it the missing link?-between a redeeming Saviour and the world which He has redeemed in act, but which is not actually redeemed, until it has received the message of the great Redemption that is wrought. The supernatural is implanted in the very heart of the mass of leaven by the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ; but the spreading of that supernatural revelation is left in the hands of men who work through natural processes, and who thus become labourers together with God, and enable Christ to be to single souls, in blessed reality, what He is potentially to the world, and has been ever since. He died upon the Cross. ‘It is finished.’ Yes-because it is finished, our work begins.
Let me remind you of the profound symbolism in that incident where our Lord for once appeared conspicuously, and almost ostentatiously, before Israel as its true King. He had need-as He Himself said-of the meek beast on which He rode. He cannot pass, in His coronation procession, through the world unless He has us, by whom He may be carried into every corner of the earth. So ‘the Lord has need’ of us, and we are ‘fellow-labourers with Him.’
But this same thought suggests another point. We have here a solemn call addressed to every Christian man and woman.
Do not let us run away with the idea that, because here the Apostle is speaking in regard to himself and Apollos, he is enunciating a truth which applies only to Apostles and evangelists. It is true of all Christians. My knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ as my own personal Saviour impose upon me the obligation, in so far as my opportunities and capacities extend, thus to co-operate with Him in spreading His great Name. Every Christian man, just because he is a Christian, is invested with the power-and power to its last particle is duty-and is, therefore, burdened with the honourable obligation to work for God. There is such a thing as ‘coming to the help of the Lord,’ though that phrase seems to reverse altogether the true relation. It is the duty of every Christian, partly because of loyalty to Jesus, and partly because of the responsibility which the very constitution of society lays upon every one of us, to diffuse what he possesses, and to be a distributing agent for the life that he himself enjoys. Brethren! there is no possibility of Christian men or women being fully faithful to the Saviour, unless they recognise that the duty of being a fellow-labourer with God inevitably follows on being a possessor of Christ’s salvation; and that no Apostle, no official, no minister, no missionary, has any more necessity laid upon him to preach the Gospel, nor pulls down any heavier woe on himself if he is unfaithful, than has and does each one of Christ’s servants.
So ‘we are fellow-labourers with God.’ Alas! alas! how poorly the average Christian realises-I do not say discharges, but realises-that obligation! Brethren, I do not wish to find fault, but I do beseech you to ask yourselves whether, if you are Christians, you are doing anything the least like what my text contemplates as the duty of all Christians.
May I say a word or two with regard to another aspect of this solemn call? Does not the thought of working along with God prescribe for us the sort of work that we ought to do? We ought to work in God’s fashion, and if we wish to know what God’s fashion is, we have but to look at Jesus Christ. We ought to work in Jesus Christ’s fashion. We all know what that involved of self-sacrifice, of pain, of weariness, of utter self-oblivious devotion, of gentleness, of tenderness, of infinite pity, of love running over. ‘The master’s eye makes a good servant.’ The Master’s hand working along with the servant ought to make the servant work after the Master’s fashion. ‘As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you.’ If we felt that side by side with us, like two sailors hauling on one rope, ‘the Servant of the Lord’ was toiling, do you not think it would burn up all our selfishness, and light up all our indifference, and make us spend ourselves in His service? A fellow-labourer with God will surely never be lazy and selfish. Thus my text has in it, to begin with, a solemn call.
It suggests
II. A signal honour.
Suppose a great painter, a Raphael or a Turner, taking a little boy that cleaned his brushes, and saying to him, ‘Come into my studio, and I will let you do a bit of work upon my picture.’ Suppose an aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, honoured by being permitted to work along with some one who was recognised all over the world as being at the very top of that special profession. Would it not be a feather in the boy’s cap all his life? And would he not think it the greatest honour that ever had been done him that he was allowed to co-operate, in however inferior a fashion, with such an one? Jesus Christ says to us, ‘Come and work here side by side with Me,’ But Christian men, plenty of them, answer, ‘It is a perpetual nuisance, this continual application for money! money! money! work! work! work! It is never-ending, and it is a burden!’ Yes, it is a burden, just because it is an honour. Do you know that the Hebrew word which means ‘glory’ literally means ‘weight’ ? There is a great truth in that. You cannot get true honours unless you are prepared to carry them as burdens. And the highest honour that Jesus Christ gives to men when He says to them, not only ‘Go work to-day in My vineyard,’ but ‘Come, work here side by side with Me,’ is a heavy weight which can only be lightened by a cheerful heart.
Is it not the right way to look at all the various forms of Christian activity which are made imperative upon Christian people, by their possession of Christianity as being tokens of Christ’s love to us? Do you remember that this same Apostle said, ‘Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ?’ He could speak about burdens and heavy tasks, and being ‘persecuted but not forsaken,’ almost crushed down and yet not in despair, and about the weights that came upon him daily, ‘the care of all the churches,’ but far beneath all the sense of his heavy load lay the thrill of thankful wonder that to him, of all men in the world, knowing as he did better than anybody else could do his own imperfection and insufficiency, this distinguishing honour had been bestowed, that he was made the Apostle to the Gentiles. That is the way in which the true man will always look at what the selfish man, and the half-and-half Christian, look at as being a weight and a weariness, or a disagreeable duty, which is to be done as perfunctorily as possible. One question that a great many who call themselves Christians ask is, ‘With how little service can I pass muster?’ Ah, it is because we have so little of the Spirit of Christ in us that we feel burdened by His command, ‘Go ye into all the world,’ as being so heavy; and that so many of us-I leave you to judge if you are in the class-so many of us make it criminally light if we do not ignore it altogether. I believe that, if it were possible to conceive of the duty and privilege of spreading Christ’s name in the world being withdrawn from the Church, all His real servants would soon be yearning to have it back again. It is a token of His love; it is a source of infinite blessings to ourselves; ‘if the house be not worthy, your peace shall return to you again.’
And now, lastly, we have suggested by this text
III. A strong encouragement.
‘Fellow-labourers with God’-then, God is a Fellow-labourer with us. The co-operation works both ways, and no man who is seeking to spread that great salvation, to distribute that great wealth, to irrigate some little corner of the field by some little channel that he has dug, needs to feel that he is labouring alone. If I am working with God, God is working with me. Do you remember that most striking picture which is drawn in the verses appended to Mark’s Gospel, which tells how the universe seemed parted into two halves, and up above in the serene the Lord ‘sat on the right hand of God,’ while below, in the murky and obscure, ‘they went everywhere preaching the Word.’ The separation seems complete, but the two halves are brought together by the next word-’The Lord also,’ sitting up yonder, ‘working with them’ the wandering preachers down here, ‘confirming the words with signs following.’ Ascended on high, entered into His rest, having finished His work, He yet is working with us, if we are labourers together with God. If we turn to the last book of Scripture, which draws back the curtain from the invisible world which is all filled with the glorified Christ, and shows its relations to the earthly militant church, we read no longer of a Christ enthroned in apparent ease, but of a Christ walking amidst the candlesticks, and of a Lamb standing in the midst of the Throne, and opening the seals, launching forth into the world the sequences of the world’s history, and of the Word of God charging His enemies on His white horse, and behind Him the armies of God following. The workers who labour with God have the ascended Christ labouring with them.
But if God works with us, success is sure. Then comes the old question that Gideon asked with bitterness of heart, when he was threshing out his handful of wheat in a corner to avoid the oppressors, ‘If the Lord be with us, wherefore is all this come upon us? Will any one say that the progress of the Gospel in the world has been at the rate which its early believers expected, or at the rate which its own powers warranted them to expect? Certainly not. And so it comes to this, that whilst every true labourer has God working with him, and therefore success is certain, the planter and the waterer can delay the growth of the plant by their unfaithfulness, by not expecting success, by not so working as to make it likely, or by neutralising their evangelistic efforts by their worldly lives. When Jesus Christ was on earth, it is recorded, ‘He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief, save that He laid His hands on a few sick folk and healed them.’ A faithless Church, a worldly Church, a lazy Church, an unspiritual Church, an un-Christlike Church-which, to a large extent, is the designation of the so-called Church of to day-can clog His chariot-wheels, can thwart the work, can hamper the Divine Worker. If the Christians of Manchester were revived, they could win Manchester for Jesus. If the Christians of England lived their Christianity, they could make England what it never has been but in name-a Christian country. If the Church universal were revived, it could win the world. If the single labourer, or the community of such, is labouring ‘in the Lord,’ their labour will not be in vain; and if they thus plant and water, God will give the increase.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv9–11 For we are God's fellow-workers: ye are God's husbandry,…
For we are God's fellow-workers: ye are God's husbandry, God's building [The supreme ownership of God is here emphasized, as is shown by the three possessives. Paul and Apollos were not fellow-workers with God, but fellow-workers with each other under God. The Corinthians were God's field in which they labored, or his building which they reared; but workers, field and building all belonged to God.]
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.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v10 Grace (imparted). 1Co 15:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18
grace
Grace (imparted). 1Co 15:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v9 The laborers and the foundation:
The laborers and the foundation:
v. 9. For we are laborers together with God; ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.
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v. 10. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon. But let every man take heed how he builds thereupon.
v. 11. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
The apostle now employs a different figure in order to bring out another thought closely connected with his present discourse. The members of the congregation sin against their teachers as well as against God if they make their estimate of them according to the show of outward talent and ability. For the teachers are God’s fellow-workmen; they are employed in the task given them by the Lord to build His spiritual temple; and they are fellows in this work, not rivals; they are pulling together for the same end. Note that the service of the ministry is called work, that it requires labor, if it is to be performed correctly. On the other hand, the hearers, the members of the congregation, are God’s field of tillage, a field sown with the seed of the Word of God through the labor of these ministers. And in order to stress the idea of the spiritual communion which obtains among the believers, and of the mutual adaptation of all the parts, Paul calls them God’s building, a temple of the Lord, in which the Triune Godhead intends to dwell.
The apostle now brings out the individual responsibility: According to the grace of God which is given me, as a wise master builder, as a chief engineer that knows his business, I have laid a foundation, but another builds on it. Note that the grace of God is placed into the foreground; Paul intimates that without it the work could neither have been attempted nor carried to the present state. The grace of God is the real motive force in the work of the Church at all times. And Paul knows that by this grace his work was done wisely; he had laid a foundation. Paul was not the possessor of only a single gift of grace, by which he would have been able to serve in only one single capacity in the Church, as exhorter or as pastor only, but he had been endowed with such talents as to make him a directive agent: he had great executive ability, he was a forceful preacher, he possessed great tact in approaching difficult cases, he could adapt himself to a great variety of conditions with great readiness. That was the reason why the grace of the Lord had selected him to found so many of the first congregations, as that of Corinth. On his foundation, the basis which he had laid, another would erect the building. That was the inevitable result in Corinth and elsewhere. Until the end of time the Christian ministers, by the preaching of the Gospel, are building up the temple of God on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. And the warning of Paul is always timely: But let each one take heed how he builds upon it, how he attempts to construct the temple of the Lord. A mere zeal for the Lord, a mere avidity for work, is not sufficient to determine the method of the ministry of Christ. The minor workman must follow the directions of the master builder, the lines plainly laid down, and he must use fit material. If the teaching of any Christian preacher does not agree with the doctrine of Jesus Christ and the apostles, especially if it leads to justification by works and thus, under the name of faith, makes false Christians and work-saints, as Luther writes, then the methods must be condemned absolutely. For, as the apostle solemnly declares: Other foundation can no man lay except that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, v. 11. If men, teachers, arise inside or outside of the Church, claiming that they have a new way of salvation, a different way to heaven than Christ, who alone is the Way, then they are base deceivers, attempting to lay another foundation in opposition to the one and only existing one, which is Jesus Christ. This foundation was laid by God from eternity, when He destined His Son to be the corner-stone and foundation of the great Church, the spiritual temple dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and this foundation will remain as the only foundation, in spite of all the efforts of the enemies to overthrow it. As Luther says: "I have experienced and noted in all histories of all Christendom that all those that correctly had and held the chief article of Jesus Christ, remained well and secure in the true Christian faith. And though they may have erred and sinned otherwise, yet they were finally preserved. For he who herein stands correct and firm that Jesus Christ is true God and man, who died for us and rose again, for him all the other articles will fall in line and stand firmly by his side, so altogether sure it is what St. Paul says, Christ is the chief good, basis, foundation, and all in one."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v10 According to the grace of God that was given…
According to the grace of God that was given to me
This can be stated in active form. AT: "According to the task that God freely gave me to do" (See: Active or Passive)
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I laid a foundation
Paul equates his teaching of faith and salvation in Jesus Christ to laying a foundation for a building. (See: Metaphor)
another is building on it
Paul is referring to the person or people who are teaching the Corinthians at that time as if they are carpenters who are constructing the building above the foundation. (See: Metaphor)
let each man
This refers to God's workers in general. AT: "let each person who serves God"
no one can lay a foundation other than the one that has been laid
This can be stated as active. AT: "no one can lay a foundation other than the foundation that I, Paul, have laid" or "I have already laid the only foundation that anyone can lay" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
grace
found
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv10–11 3:10-17 All people are accountable to God for the…
3:10-17 All people are accountable to God for the way they serve Christ.
3:10 Paul laid the foundation when he first began the church in Corinth. Now others were building on it by what they were teaching the young Christians.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.