1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
— 1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians is not flattering to the first Corinthian Christians.  It reveals division in the church, and a church divided cannot stand.  It accuses them of not being very spiritual, and an unspiritual church cannot grow and glorify God.  

So the Apostle to the Gentiles and the founding Pastor of the church at Corinth speaks to the Corinthian Christians as if they were not Christians at all.  He is not saying they are not.  He is just speaking to them as people who do not know the basics of the Christian life.  

No matter where you are on the spectrum of spirituality, this lesson will do you good.  It will remind you of who your life belongs to, it belongs to God the Father.  It will motivate you to build a good and godly life on the foundation of God the Son.  And, it will divulge the secret to living a successful, spiritual life, with God the Holy Spirit as your guide.  

In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, here are the basics of a believer’s life.

Your Life Belongs to God the Father (vs. 1-9).

The Corinthian Christians were divided by misguided loyalties to human teachers.  It irony is, the gospel preachers and Bible teachers they were divided over were themselves united.  I do not believe their was a hair’s difference in the respective theologies of Paul, Apollos, or Simon Peter, all three of whom ministered in Corinth.  

So, why the divisions?  Human pride.  The pride of seniority latched some people to Paul.  The pride of eloquence made some people devoted to Apollos.  The pride of the distinctly human ability to put one’s foot in one’s mouth caused some to be hopelessly devoted to Simon Peter.  Pride makes Christians act like non-Christians.

The solution?  Humility.  The humble reality is if you are saved, if you are a Christian, it is not because of the preacher who taught you or the parents who raised your or the person you are.  It is because of the sovereign, almighty, gracious God who raised you from spiritual death and brought you to spiritual life by God-given grace through God-given faith in God’s gift of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ.  

You live because of God and your life belongs to God.  You are His, His “worker,” His “field,” His “building.”  God saved you to worship and work, as a member of His united church.  God saved you to grow, like cornstalks in a summer field, by basking in the sunshine of the gospel and drinking in the word of God. God saved you to be a beautiful house, furnished with love and truth, shining His glory with other Christians like a magnificent city on a hill.  

The church at Corinth was not there.  I would like to think we are getting there.  So, let us keep moving forward and be careful how we build.

Your Life is Built on God the Son (vs. 10-15).

The trinitarian lesson now turns to the Son.  We belong to God the Father.  But we build our lives upon God the Son.  Three things make Him our only sure foundation for spiritual, abundant, and eternal life.

Christ is our only Savior (ref. Acts 4:12).  Any life built upon any principle other than the gospel of grace alone though faith alone in Christ alone is a wasted life.  A billionaire’s life, a movie starlet’s life, a Super Bowl champion’s life, are all wasted lives apart from a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  Make sure real repentance and true faith are the first bricks laid in your foundation of life in Christ.  

Christ is our only Teacher, at least with a capital “T” (ref. Matthew 23:5-12).  Once you grab hold of the gospel you must start turning the pages of the word of God to grow, to build, to have a good and godly life.  It can be hard to interpret and understand in some places.  But if you know Jesus, then think of Jesus as your read every page.  

One of the dumbest things the Southern Baptist Convention ever did, and they have done many dumb things, is scrub out of its “Baptist Faith and Message” the following golden nugget: “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”  Why would they take that out?  

Jesus is the only way to make the Bible make sense.  Jesus explains the fierceness of God in protecting Israel in the Old Testament.  They had to give us the Messiah!  Jesus explains the sensational and supernatural chapters of the Gospels.  God had touched down on earth!  Jesus is the explanation of every Epistle, which essentially serve as commentaries of John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  

Christ is our only Judge (ref. Romans 14:10; 2 Corinthians 5:10).  As to what we have done with the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will be our only judge.  We will all stand before Him one day.  And for true believers, let me tell you this is good news.

The good and godly things you have done with good and godly motives will be like “gold, silver, precious stones,” in other words, they will grant you a great reward.  Your many sins and shortcomings, and we all have many, will be burnt away like “wood, hay, straw.”  They won’t exist, so they will not condemn you.  But build you life on the foundation of Christ in such a way as to have more of the former and little of the latter.  

To do this, of course, you need God, the Holy Spirit.

Your Life is Guided by God the Spirit (vs. 16-23).

All people live their lives in “this world,” the cosmos, which can mean one of two things.  It can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon the context.  That “God so loved the world” is good thing, indeed.  That Christians should heed the admonition “do not love the world” is a negative prohibition against professing faith in God but living by another standard.  Remember, we are just passing through.  To pass through well means taking seriously the fact we are “God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells” in we children of God.    

The Holy Spirit is not some second blessing, He is the primary cause of our salvation.  He regenerated us into born again Christians (ref. John 3:3; Titus 3:5).  The Holy Spirit does not just come to some Christians and not to others, for “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (ref. Romans 8:9).  So, every person who belongs to God the Father through God the Son is a veritable temple of God the Spirit.  

Therefore, know what He is there for.  The Holy Spirit is in us to guide us to know wisdom from folly, truth from error, right from wrong, good from evil.  In the world of Paul and the Corinthians, and in our contemporary world, this seems to be confusing.

The spirit of the age, then and now, is spirituality.  I agree with Augustine that “All truth is God’s truth.”  But I do not agree that all spirits are God’s Spirit.  Knowing the difference is the determining factor between living a life of destruction and a life of eternal glory with God. 

My late father was a lifelong Rotarian.  I picked up that mantle myself and served as a member, chaplain, and president of Rotary clubs.  The best thing to me about Rotary, even though it was not explicitly religious nor Christian, is the quasi-Christian world view expressed in their famous “four way test”:

Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Can a Christian use this test to have, build, and maintain a good and godly life?  Yes, by letting the Holy Spirit, who lives in you, answer these questions and more for you.  

What a mighty God we serve!  He is our Father who birthed us, bought us, and we belong to Him.  He is our Savior, who died for us, rose again for us, is coming back for us.  He is our Spirit, the only true Spirit guide for abundant and eternal life, living within us, speaking to us, if we will just take the time to listen.  These are the basics of a believer’s life, a good, a godly, and an everlasting life.