1 Corinthians 3:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul has been distinguishing between God's wisdom in the gospel and man's wisdom, and now he distinguishes between spiritual building and fleshly building. The early church suffered from wrongly motivated preachers: a number of them evidently. They were saved, not like the Judaizers. Paul is referring largely here to preachers in Corinth, and some of them, yes, they were saved but they strayed from the pathway in how they built the church. Of course, there were many who are not saved who were preachers, as in the world today: phonies who are preaching either for money or for recognition. But chiefly in mind here are some who are saved, as we will see as the passage goes on, and yet they have taken a wrong pathway. First, he warns about the recapture of the heart by the flesh. It is possible for the heart of the born-again believer to be not only infiltrated by the flesh, but governed by it once again. ‘And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual,’ as unto people who trust the power of the Spirit and trust the Lord, ‘but as unto carnal’, fleshly people, people who are inclined to trust worldly things and worldly methods, to trust human effort, skill, and devices. ‘I could not speak unto you as spiritual,’ – they had drifted; the flesh had taken over the heart once again – ‘but as unto carnal even as unto babes in Christ.’ Babes in Christ! Well they are babes; they have life; they are truly saved, but they have not made much progress. They are not unsaved. They are not phonies, these Corinthians, for all the mistakes that have come into the church. They are babes in Christ. There is sincerity; there has been a new birth; there is new life in them, and they have yet fleshly thinking; worldly thinking has come to dominate their outlook. That is why they trust in preachers who resemble more Greek orators. ‘Oh, that will impress the people. Here’s a man who has something with which to impress people, some degree of secular learning and Greek philosophy, and he will impress our community; that is what we will trust in.’ ‘No,’ says the apostle, ‘all trust must be in the power of the Spirit, and the inherent power of the gospel when the Spirit moves. Let no human devices to dress it up, improve upon it, take its place.’ But for the moment, the apostle is going to address this possibility of recapture of the heart by the flesh. Their spiritual developments had been stalled. They had not grown spiritually, as they might have done, as they should have done.