Article from the East Main Messenger, dated 4/6/2025.
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 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? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
1 Corinthians 3:1-4
The first problem within the church of Corinth which Paul chose to address dealt with cliquish sectarianism (1 Cor. 1:10-13). This division was based partly on undue allegiance given by some of the Corinthians to the ones who had taught or baptized them (1 Cor. 1:14-17), especially if their instructors had been formally educated like Paul (1 Cor. 1:12a, 18-20, 26-29; cf. Acts 22:3) or had eloquent public speaking skills like Apollos (1 Cor. 1:12b, 17b; 2:1-5; cf. Acts18:24-26). Paul wanted the Corinthians to realize that their faith, hope, and loyalty must rest solely in Christ and his gospel, a message designed by God to be quite different from the world’s standards of greatness (1 Cor. 1:18-31; 2:1-5). This message from God would contain his wisdom and would be received by the mature among them (1 Cor. 2:6-8). It was given through the Holy Spirit of God inspiring the apostles and prophets who would then share God’s teachings with them (1 Cor. 2:9-13). The apostle calls such Spirit-inspired brethren as himself and his fellow teachers “spiritual” as opposed to those who are “natural” or uninspired, emphasizing again that such “spiritual” Christians as himself and his fellow apostles “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:14-16).
Keeping in our minds the above overview of what we have studied in 1 Corinthians thus far, let us now turn our attention to chapter 3. Paul starts off the chapter by continuing his rebuke of Corinth as he states that he “could not address you as spiritual people” (1 Cor. 3:1a). They might have had spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit (see chapters 12-14), but they weren’t meeting the standards God had for spiritual people, especially Holy Spirit-inspired brethren who would be expected to teach God’s Word to others (cf. Rom. 2:21-24; Gal. 6:1). This explains the chaos within their worship assemblies which Paul later addresses in chapter 14. Instead of acting in a Christ-like, godly way, their cliquish division exhibited by their misplaced allegiances to Paul or Apollos (1 Cor. 3:4a) showed that they were still “people of the flesh” (1 Cor. 3:1b), “still of the flesh” (1 Cor. 3:3a), “behaving only in a human way” (1 Cor. 3:3c), and “being merely human” (1 Cor. 3:4b). They weren’t exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit, the evidence that they were truly spiritually mature (Gal. 5:22-23). Rather, they were exhibiting works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21) such as “jealousy and strife” (1 Cor. 3:3b), thus proving that they were not being led by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16-26). No wonder their worship assemblies were filled with brethren interrupting each other (14:29-35) and speaking in other languages while not caring that no one could understand what they were saying (1 Cor. 14:6-28)! They cared only about themselves, not about others and certainly not about the will of God.
In these ways they were acting like babies, which is one reason why Paul called them “infants in Christ” and told them, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready” (1 Cor. 3:1c-2). From one perspective, all Christians start out as spiritual “infants,” having just been born again (John 3:3-5). All of us need to grow in our biblical knowledge and spiritual maturity (Eph. 4:15), especially at the beginning of our walk with Christ. However, the Corinthians were not growing as they should have been. In this way they were similar to the Christians who were rebuked by the Hebrew author (Heb. 5:11-14). They too were not ready for spiritual meat, for the deeper things of Christ, because they had not grown mature enough to receive such teachings properly. Both they and the Corinthians needed to “have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14). Only then would they be able “go on to maturity” (Heb. 6:1).
Take note: “trained by constant practice.” There’s a lesson for us. How often do we practice our Christianity?
–Jon
To read Jon’s series on 1 Corinthians from the beginning and many other articles, visit https://predenominationalchristianity.com.