I Corinthians 3:1-9
“Co-Workers”
February 13, 2011 - Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

         “That was a cheap shot!” was the outcry which began an altercation that ended in a physical confrontation between two volunteer father middle school coaches at a Kidsports basketball came in Eugene this past week. Two grown men went at each other in front of the kids for whom they were supposed to be role models. It made the front page of Wednesday’s paper. It’s the sort of thing I imagine makes women wonder if boys ever grow up.

         Paul was wondering if the church at Corinth would ever grow up as he continues his letter to them in chapter 3. He goes for a little shame in verse 1 as he pictures them as “mere infants in Christ,” who are not even ready for solid food. Verse 2 has them sucking “milk” rather than chewing solid food. It’s not only at their early stage of spiritual development, when they first heard about Christ, when their church was first planted. No, their immaturity continues, “Indeed, you are still not ready,” for solid food.

         You often hear talk about being spiritually mature. That maturity is measured in various ways. To some it means deep knowledge of the Bible. To others, Christian maturity is a strong prayer life. For some it’s generous giving or active service. Those are good marks of a person growing up in Christ, but for Paul there is a single important gauge which determines the level of one’s spiritual development. It’s how you get along with other Christians in the Body of Christ.

         Some translations of this text are confusing because Paul starts out in verse 1 by contrasting being “spiritual” with being, literally, “fleshly.” So it sounds like the aim of Christian growth is to become less and less attached to the flesh, less attached to one’s body, and to become more focused on the spiritual and mental non-physical world of heaven. But that’s not at all what Paul means when he uses the world “flesh.”

         For Paul “the flesh” is his unique way of identifying everything a person born again into new life in Christ wants to leave behind. “The flesh” is not the body. It’s all the evil ways of life and the desires that mark people who haven’t yet experienced the grace of Jesus.

         So when the Corinthians were charged with being “fleshly,” the apostle was not so much concerned with sins like overeating or drunkenness or sexual immorality, although these were certainly present in Corinth. No, being fleshly instead of being spiritual didn’t really have to do so much with what we think of as “sins of the flesh.”

         There’s no gnosticism in Paul’s contrast between flesh and spirit. He’s not arguing for the priority of the non-physical over the physical, the soul over the body. He’s saying that life filled with the Holy Spirit of God given to us in Jesus Christ ought to look different from life lived without the Lord’s Spirit. We ought to be growing up into the Lord through the Spirit, becoming a different kind of and more mature people.

         That means the TNIV does a pretty good job translating the word “fleshly” as “worldly.” People who are spiritually immature behave like everyone else, like all the people in the world around them, and the primary sign of that spiritual immaturity is not sins of the flesh. It’s what we find in verse 3, “jealousy and quarreling among you.”

         Paul turns the conversation back to the first problem of chapter 1, the party spirit we looked at three weeks ago. The Corinthian problem is acting like mere human beings, he says, not like people filled with the Spirit of God. And that’s nowhere more visible than in the facts stated in verse 4. Some are saying “I follow Paul,” and some are saying, “I follow Apollos.” Their church is divided up around the figureheads of their leaders and failing to cooperate and work together in love.

         You and I know that we have similar problems in getting along with each other, even in the church. We may not divide up around two or three charismatic leaders, choosing sides, but we may still find ourselves conflicted and split up around styles and visions and personal needs that make it hard to work together.

         The fact is, blast it, that is just is hard to work or even to be together with some people. Sometimes the issue is not our own maturity, but the maturity of another person. We don’t want a fight. We want to cooperate and work together, but the other party keeps criticizing or picking at us or being stupid or performing incompetently. It’s not our fault when some relationships in the church go south. It’s the fault of people who are less spiritually mature than we are. Isn’t it?

         When Paul calls for the Corinthians to consider their spiritual immaturity, he’s not talking about just some of them. He’s leading up to a grand idea and a challenging phrase he uses a couple other times in his letters. In verse 9 he says, “For we are God’s co-workers.” In what precedes, he offers some sense of what it means to work together with God as our partner.

         Verses 5 to 8 put into perspective what it means for mere human beings, as Paul says, to serve as God’s co-workers. “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul?” he asks in verse 5. The implication is, “Not much.” The actual answer is, “Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.” Yes, the Corinthians came to faith through the work of Paul and Apollos, but they were each operating only as servants of a greater power.

         Verse 6 begins an agricultural metaphor, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” Yes, as we serve the Lord in the church, we each have a role and a task. We each have a ministry. But it is God who is really doing all that matters. We are God’s partners, but we are junior partners. It’s His ministry, His work that is ultimately being accomplished.

         That’s why verse 7 draws the conclusion that, “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” In partnership, in co-working with God, there’s a distinct and clear difference in importance and role. What you or I or any servant of the Lord does is much less significant than what the Lord does. And that’s exactly what we need to remember as we struggle to get along with each other in the work we are doing.

         Picture those times when you’ve willingly worked together with someone whose ability and contribution to the project was far less than your own. It might be baking a cake or making supper with the assistance of a small child. You know it would be far easier, far less stressful to just do it all yourself rather than deal with little hands that will spill the flour or crack the egg too hard dropping shell into the batter. You know you will have to give the bowl a few good stirs after she’s done to be sure it’s really mixed well. You know you will have to put the pot on the stove or the pan in the hot oven and be careful to keep the little guy out of harm’s way. You’d get it all done lots faster and likely lots better by yourself. That’s exactly how it is when we work with God.

         God knows He could accomplish what He’s doing in this world and in people’s lives easier and better without our immature and fumbling attempts to help. In the end, what Paul says is true, our parts don’t amount to much of anything. It’s only what God does that is ultimately significant. Yet God keeps using human co-workers.

         You keep letting that little person help in the kitchen, despite all the mess and aggravation he or she produces. You do it because you hope and trust that your child will learn and grow in the process of working with you. That’s what God wants when He draws us alongside as His partners. He is expecting us to learn and grow spiritually as we work with Him.

         And the biggest lesson God wants us to learn is not how to bake the spiritual cake or how to plant the seed of Christ in someone’s life or how to water it with Scripture. What God wants us to learn in working with Him is how to work with each other in the way He works with us. He wants to form in us the same kind of forgiveness and love with which He patiently partners in all our immature and lame attempts to do His work.

         God is actually the great Co-worker with the universe. As I thought and wrote about in my Ph.D. dissertation years ago, God is the partner of everything that happens. When the rain falls or the fire burns, God is alongside, cooperating, making sure that the natural powers of the clouds and the water and the wood and the air find their fulfillment and do what they were created to do. In an even more wonderful way, God is working alongside and with each of us in whatever actions we take, for good or for ill.

         Unlike the natural world, you and I as human beings have the distinction of being the only co-workers of God who may choose whether or not to cooperate. He’s so patient that he will let us make an unholy mess of the cake of life, throw the whole shell in the batter, and dump the bowl on the floor. He’s giving us the incredible opportunity to be true partners, to become His willing and real co-workers, learning to live in a way that actually does what He wants to do in our lives, in our world.

         The most important part of learning to work together with God is learning a love and patience like His with those with whom we find it hard to work. As our Lord patiently deals with the lumpy batter and fallen cakes of our lives, we see how we are to deal with each other as the heat rises in the kitchen.

         It’s not easy. As we mix together in the church, in marriage, in our workplaces, and in the world, we’ll often find it much simpler just to take care of our own selves. Forget about trying to live and work together with someone who is immature or incompetent or even just plain mean. Sometimes we can’t find any way around splitting up those partnerships and no longer being co-workers together in this life.

         Yet God keeps reminding us, as He does through Paul here this morning, as He does through the words of Jesus we heard calling us to beware of anger and to be reconciled with our brothers and sisters. God keeps reminding us of His own patient, gentle, forgiving, co-working love. As He works with us, so we want to learn to work with each other. And Paul says in verse 8 that when we work together in that Spirit, in the Spirit of God, with His one purpose in mind, “they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.”

         There are great rewards when we set aside jealousy and quarreling and learn to live and work with each other in the loving way God works with each of us. For all his chiding and admonition to the church in Corinth, Paul sees them as the reward of his own labor and of the labors of Apollos and all the others who worked with him there.

         We get to see those rewards every now and then in our own work together here at Valley Covenant Church. In some ways the story of our ministry here has been like Paul pictured it. We’ve planted and someone else has watered and God has been making the plants of people’s lives grow up in Christ.

         Our church exists in a transient community. Though a few of us have been here for years, others come and go. They move here for school or a temporary job or for some other short-term purpose, then go on to live somewhere else, to be part of some other church. A number of us have seen our own children grow up here and now move on to other places, other congregations.

         When I returned and went through my church mail this past week I found a note from a young woman who had been part of Valley Covenant when I first came here nearly 18 years ago. Carmen was here for school and when she earned her degree she moved away. She wrote to say how thankful she was for the grounding in Christian faith and life that she received in this church. She felt that it prepared her really well for the next stage in her Christian life and for the church in which she now worships and serves. We planted some seeds. Someone else watered them. Now Carmen is still growing in Christ because of God’s work in her through everyone involved.

         Many of us have followed the media’s reporting all week of the tragedy that happened at the coast last Saturday. A young man who grew up in our congregation, Aaron Honn, was there when his friends were drowned. So Aaron has drawn the attention and questions of reporters. I’ve been impressed and even amazed with the confidence and maturity and faith with which Aaron has responded.

         Some of you know Aaron grew up in Valley Covenant. You may have been his Sunday School teacher or one of his adult brothers and sisters in Christ here. Together with his parents, we planted the seeds of his faith.

         You may also know that in the last few years, as our youth group has shrunk, Aaron has been attending another church, has been helping lead younger youth there. Someone else in another congregation has been watering the seeds we planted. But there is absolutely no need to be jealous or upset about that. Each part in the work of Aaron’s life has its reward from God and we are all privileged to be the Lord’s co-workers in his Christian life. To see the faith and maturity he exhibits now in the face of tragedy is a blessed reward for everyone who has contributed to his spiritual growth.

         “We are God’s co-workers;” says Paul, “you are God’s field…” Together in Christ we, at one and the same time, are God’s co-workers and God’s field in which that work is taking place. By working with God and learning from Him how to work with each other, we are growing into that spiritual maturity we so desperately need and which God so much wants us to have.

         Praise God for the way He so patiently and lovingly works with each of us. And praise Him for all the ways He helps us become not only His co-workers but co-workers with each other. It’s a great harvest that He is growing. Let us work together well, let us be a fruitful field for our Lord.

         Paul mixes metaphors at end to say that “you are… God’s building.” God is building something great in us. We are laborers in the field and we are construction workers together. Next week we will consider the materials we bring to God’s great project.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj