1 Corinthians 3: 1-10
“Planting and Watering”
Sermon by
Mark A. Horne
Gardening, whether you are a flower gardener or a vegetable gardener, or maybe even a tree gardener, whatever has one thing in common to be good at it you can never think you are in charge. E.B. White gives some expert gardening advice: “to plant asparagus, dig a ditch three years ago.” Yes, to be good at gardening means never to think you are in charge.
In our passage this morning, Paul speaks about gardening. But he speaks about gardening in a spiritual sense. He speaks about gardening in the sense of growth and maturity. He speaks of gardening in a sense of unity. What are the essentials to making a healthy plant grow? Good soil, water, and light. This morning I want to offer three suggestions that Paul is referring about gardening. 1) We need to plant ourselves in the soil of spiritual sense (not sense as a meditative kind of aura, but a sense as common sense or intelligence). 2) We need the water of sound biblical preaching and teaching. 3) We need the light of God for life and to bring forth fruit.
Let’s remind ourselves of the situation of Paul. There seems to have been developing divisions in the Corinthian congregation that 1:10 clearly portrays. Church members are pledging allegiance to Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Christ. These cliques or groups are competing with one another on behalf of their “pet preacher’s” personality. This competition has led the church to a threat of fragmentation or eventual disintegration. Remember from 1:10-17 the Corinthian groups had become puffed up behind their favorite preacher and this threatened to empty the gospel of its power. Then in 1:18-25 Paul tells them that worldly wisdom seekers think the gospel is foolish, but in actuality it is the “called” that receives the power and wisdom from God. Then in 1:26-31 Paul tells them that it is only Christ that is the source of their new life. Then in 2:1-5 he teaches that their faith rests only on the power of God not on human wisdom. Finally, in 2:6-16 Paul tells them that only those that have received the Holy Spirit have access to this wisdom. It is the Holy Spirit that teaches the Spirit of God and interprets the spiritual truths to spiritual people.
You may already see the reason why I believe Paul places 2:6-16 where he does. From the beginning of the letter Paul has been dealing with the situation of divisions within the church and it continues until 4:21. Paul builds a bridge between what he teaches before 2:6 and where our passage begins today in 3:1. In 2:6-16 he sets up the criteria for authenticating spiritual people. Anyone who receives his gospel of the Crucified is spiritual. Where do the Corinthians stand? You may want to ask yourself the same question, where do you stand? On one hand the apostle allows they are spiritual, not lacking any spiritual gift (1:4-7). Yet on the other he airs grave doubts about them. And our text begins with biting irony (3:1 read).
Here we see the application of planting ourselves in the soil of Spiritual sense. For Paul, the gospel centered on the Cross provides the means of making a contrast at the fundamental level between God’s wisdom and the foolishness of the Corinthians. In so far as the Corinthians were setting up their own wisdom they were setting up their own standard of salvation and thus displacing the wisdom of God. Paul here is requiring the Corinthians to press on from an initial elementary grasp of the faith to a more mature knowledge of the deeper things of the gospel. They already know the basics! Paul taught them the basics when he formed the church, chiefly the Word of the Cross. Yet they had too much arrogance and confidence still lingering and now they must advance to the mature wisdom that Paul himself knows and from which he can only impart to the mature.
Notice that when Paul refers to them as infants he is not criticizing them because they are new Christians. Paul most definitely understood that a new Christian is in the infancy of being “born again.” What Paul refers to here is that they have not grown out of that infancy. And this is not an idea foreign to them. Remember one of the Corinthian ways of life was to go to the center market and listen to the stoics philosophizes about life and law. Some of the great stoic teachers talked about not growing mature. Pythagoras is said to have divided his pupils into two groups, babes and mature; Epictetus asks “are you like children still unwilling to be weaned from mother’s milk and to reach out for stronger food?” (Discourses ii.16.39); and Philo remarks that “milk is food for babes but wheaten cakes are for the mature” (De Agric.9).
They knew what Paul was referring to when he called them infants. They still had too much worldly sense. They still had too much carnal thinking. They let the flesh prevail over the Spirit because they were in fact being childish. Paul shows them that they are not the image of a child that is at an early stage of life, but they were children in a state of immaturity incompatible with spiritual understanding. So as Christians when we plant ourselves in the soil of Spiritual sense we are not pressing ourselves to a understanding reserved only for the mature; but also in understanding that we are recipients of the Spirit, we need to realize the fullness of what we have and learn to live more mature spiritual lives. Ephesians 4:14 read.
As seeds planted in this rich soil, what else do we need? We need water. We need the water of biblically sound preaching and teaching. Paul continues his discussion of their worldly wisdom based on whom they seem to hide themselves behind. And in this passage Paul recognizes Apollos for his work in the Corinthian Church. A little trivia for you: Apollos’ name, name occurs seven times in Corinthians, once in Titus and three times in the Book of Acts. From Acts we learn that he is an Alexandrian and places his background much different than Paul’s. He seems to be well educated and eloquent in speech. Yet we do not have much more information than that. Nevertheless, two things are clear. 1) Apollos had sufficient stature as a leader in the Corinthian community for some to consider him superior to Peter or Paul. 2) Paul still was communicating with him (16:12).
To understand what Paul was addressing when he speaks of their lack of spirituality lying within the worldly choices they have made, such as the preachers they choose, we have to understand the culture of rhetoric. Rhetoric was what the Corinthian would hear when they went to the market place and listened to a stoic. It was a type of tradition for the first century Greco-Roman world. The function of rhetoric was persuasion with the aim of enhancing the reputation of the speaker. It was a showcase, a decorative form of talking. The important feature was the power of the audience to determine the value of the wisdom that they heard and the fate of the orator as a result. Naturally, the orator was more concerned about his personal approval rating by his listeners than the value of the message. Does it sound familiar? Is this not American television at its best? Could it even be the television evangelist that comes on? And then as listeners, are we not guilty about lifting up the well-known speakers and teachers above others? RC Sproul said …D.James Kennedy said…
Paul points out that he and Apollos are not masters but servants. They follow the crucified Christ who did not come to be served but to serve. As a church and as individuals to grow is not to place oneself behind any one preacher or teacher, but to make sure what is being preached and taught is sound. In the ancient world, plant germination was considered a divine miracle. Preachers and teachers are only agents through whom God calls us to faith. There is no glory in that. To extol one is to strip them of true dignity. Paul says each has his task. He planted, Apollos watered but the aim was the spiritual growth of the church. Preachers and teachers are only farm hands. Before God they stand at the same level as every other Christian: they are nothing. So to grow is not to whom you listen, but it is to what you listen. Make sure you are being watered with sound biblical preaching and teaching.
Finally, to grow into mature Christians we need the light of God for life and to bring forth fruit. We must remember it is God who owns everything – the world, the church, the preacher. The growth of the church or the individual is not dependent upon the church or the preacher; it is dependent only upon God. God hired them. God set the order in place that the nature of the word and the use of preaching are most appropriately depicted. The gospel is used to cultivate God’s field. Yet it is only the blessing of God that the church is made to prosper. It is God’s grace. What is more wonderful than the seed after it is rotted, springs up again? Calvin says, “the word of the Lord is seed that is in its own nature fruitful: ministers are as it were, farm hands, that plough and sow…but as for making their labor actually productive, that is the act of divine grace.”
The seed is indeed brought forward from time to time by new helps. Hence, our heavenly Father does not reject the labor when cultivating his field or flowerbed called the church, and he does not allow it to be unproductive, yet he will allow its success to depend exclusively upon his blessing, that He may have entire praise. Therefore we need to depend exclusively upon the light of God for life and to bring forth fruit.
Let us pray: “Our Heavenly Father, how great is your reward to servants who devote themselves to you, and set before their eyes on Christ’s heavenly kingdom. Help us Lord to plant ourselves in the soil of spiritual sense, to water ourselves with sound biblical preaching and teaching of your Word, and to live in the light of your glory that we may have life and bear fruit. In your name, Amen.”