ONE: Be Who You Already Are 1 Corinthians 3

ONE: Be Who You Already Are 1 Corinthians 3 We are continuing our series in 1 Corinthians called One and I am continuing our examination of disunity within the local church at Corinth. Disunity isn t an isolated sin, but a sin that is touching all the other sins that are present within the church at Corinth. We are constrained by time each week to spend as much time as necessary on each chapter, but I hope to pull out some very important points for you as we work through chapter 3 together. So if you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Corinthians 3 with me. I am going to read through chapter 3, but I am going to start with the last couple of verses in chapter 2 and read through chapter 3 because Paul is continuing a thought from the Scripture pastor Shaun preached last week. 1 Corinthians 2:14-3:23 ESV 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. 3 But I, brothers,[j] 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[k] 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[l] 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. 1

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. [prayer] There is a disunity at Corinth because of a remaining love for worldly wisdom. Here we have this church settled in the pagan city of Corinth in southern Greece. Corinth was known for a couple of things primarily: being a major trade city; and being morally depraved/corrupt. The expression to act like a Corinthian was used to describe someone who was thoroughly pagan and sexually debased. And as we will see as we continue to move through this letter, this local church was reflecting more of the Corinthian culture than the image of Christ. They were mirroring the culture of Corinthians so much so that they were even tolerating habitual incest within their own congregation (5:1). So, this congregation is by no means a model congregation. As a local church, we don t want to imitate the church at Corinth. Now, I would be tempted if I were Paul to write this so-called church off completely. But notice what Paul does in the first few verses of chapter 3. He states, But I, brothers,[j] 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? I. Paul addresses the Church at Corinth as brothers. This is tremendous to me. Corinth was so grossly entangled in sexual sin. Corinth was influenced by pagan worshippers and the worship they were participating in in their local church was disorderly and man-centered. Corinth was divisive and yet Paul calls them brothers. Now if we were reading the NIV the text would state, brothers and sisters and of course that is absolutely right. Paul had to be extremely discouraged with this church. He has labored so hard so that they may be spiritually healthy, but they aren t. Now, how could Paul as discouraged as he may have been use this familial language with a church that is so dysfunctional? 2

At the end of chapter 2 that we read a moment ago, Paul says that the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him and to me this should sum up the church at Corinth. To be a natural person in this sense is to be without Christ. Natural people hate the ways of God. The ways of God to the natural person are foolish, restrictive and upside-down according to the wisdom of this world. Again, this to me seems to describe the church at Corinth. However, Paul does not call them natural. He calls them brothers. Paul calls them brothers positionally. Press into this with me. The church at Corinth is positionally in Christ. They are in right standing with the God of the cosmos and Paul encourages with that reality. Their right standing with God is not grounded in their good works therefore their wickedness has not separated them from God. Their right standing before God is grounded solely in Christ. Certainly, this has ramifications for us as believers. We are secure not because of anything we do this side of eternity. We are secure because we belong to Christ. We are his possession. Jesus says this in John 10:27-30, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father s hand. I and the Father are one. Paul s address to the church at Corinth is grounded in that proclamation by Christ. May we as a church never add to the requirements of salvation and may we never proclaim a salvation that we must work to keep. Salvation is a gift authored by God, concluded in Christ and persevered in us by the Holy Spirit. II. The Church at Corinth was stuck in spiritual adolescence. Paul could not address them as spiritual people. We see that he addressed them as brothers and sisters because of their positional standing before God, but practically speaking they are far from being a spiritual people. Listen to the language that the Apostle Paul uses. He calls them, people of flesh ; infants in Christ ; milk drinkers. Paul is saying you are not practically behaving as you are positionally in Christ. This is a depressing place to be as a believer. A. The Corinthians were so worldly minded that they did not want the meat of the gospel. [The Corinthians are Sarkikos-characterized by the flesh when they should be pneumatikoscharacterized by the Spirit] 3

That s what Paul means when he says; 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it [that was OK when they were believers at first, but Paul rebukes them when he says-]. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. Think about this in relation to your own life for a moment. In the course of a given day, I only have so much emotional, physical and mental energy. This is the way that God has designed my body. Every day I am faced with choices regarding how I will spend my energies. For most of us this is divided up with family, friends, jobs, hobbies and aspirations. Are we allotting ourselves time to feast on the meat of the gospel? For the Corinthians, immorality took up a lot of emotional energies so much so that they didn t even desire the meat of the gospel. Even the way they approached local church worship was divisive and selfish: 4 For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? They were consumers of ungodliness and that consumeristic mentality made its way to the corporate local church gathering. Make this applicable to you. Do you hunger and thirst for the gospel of God? Do you love and cherish His Word? Or do you find yourself bored with any spiritual exercise that isn t entertaining to you? Its not a matter of discipline. We are all disciplined in something. We are a culture that will binge watch entire seasons on Netflix (which does expend much emotional energy) and we have nothing left for godly exercises. That takes commitment. The question isn t whether or not we feast. We do feast, but we are starving ourselves because we do not want the meat of the gospel. We have no time or energy for it. We may be more like Corinth than we think. Continue to look with me: 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 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. III. We must consider our gospel witness. 4

Paul is reminding the church of Corinth that they are all on the same team doing gospel work. Now Paul is bringing this point up here because he is trying to settle divisions regarding who s the best communicator. Remember, the church at Corinth was an entertainment-driven church and they believed Apollos was the dynamic speaker of the day. I want us to come at an angle here that causes us to consider our gospel witness both inside and outside the local church. Apollos and Paul were servants to the Lord and so are we. And we play a part in building the Kingdom of God. In the diversity of our labors (each of us having different gifts as we will see later this summer), God is the one who gives the increase. He blesses our Kingdom work. This is the sure work of the gospel. Where the gospel is proclaimed, it will either harden hearts as it certainly did with King Pharaoh or it will soften hearts. Last week Pastor Shaun spoke of the sovereignty of the Spirit s work. When I teach about God s sovereignty in a smaller setting I will often ask if someone has ever been in a worship service where either the music, the prayer or the preaching of the Word ministered to them so much that they knew if they looked to the right or the left, everyone else would be experiencing that too! They look over to the left and they see someone who is disengaged or sleeping or on their phone, bored with the living word of God! Why is that? It is because giving the growth to your soul in that divine appointment and the Spirit is hardening the heart of the disengaged person sitting next to you. God blesses Kingdom work. Now the church at Corinth wasn t following the footsteps of Paul or Apollos. They were forgetting their gospel witness inside the church by failing to live as they were- adopted sons and daughters. And they were failing in their gospel witness outside of the church by adopting the practices and immoral customs of the broader culture. Now how do we do this today? I forget my gospel witness when I cling to my rights and liberties over and above my call to be a herald of the gospel. I forget my gospel witness when I believe the ends justify the means even if those means are immoral and evil. I forget my gospel witness when I put my trust in a government figure for deliverance. Social Issues are always present when we chat with our friends, check the news and social media. Racism, immigration, abortion, sex trafficking, etc. These are all extremely important issues and I believe the Bible should have an impact on how we think through these issues, but I forget my gospel witness when I take social issues and make them of central importance instead of seeing them as secondary importance to the gospel I claim to cherish. When we make social issues the core of who we are, we will always compromise our gospel witness in an effort to help promote our social issue of interest. That s probably the most common one I see in our culture currently. 5

The bottom line is that we are to be laborers in the gospel that God promises to grow. The Corinthians lost sight of that and so have many of us. SO, What s Paul s encouragement in this chapter for the Corinthians? How can they find their footing? What s the Remedy for Disunity? IV. Press into your Foundation. Listen to Paul; 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled[k] 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. A. The foundation of our work is already complete. God solidified the message before the foundation of the world and he revealed the mystery of that message in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no foundation work left to be completed. It is already there, clear and revealed to God s redeemed church. This foundation was laid by the apostles and prophets. Ephesians 2:19-21 ESV 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,[a] but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. No one can add to that foundation. Paul goes as far as to say in Galatians 1:8, 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. That foundation is that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the prophets in the Old Testament prophesied about. Jesus Himself attested to this and the apostles reiterate the message that Jesus is God, the long awaited Messiah that came and redeemed His church by taking the punishment for our sins, and bodily and eternally rising from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit consequently giving us peace with the God who loves us and sent Christ to us. This is the kindness of God. 6

Romans 5:8 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God doesn t love us and isn t kind to us because we deserve it. The Corinthians sure didn t deserve it and neither do we. He loves us and is kind to us because of His own good character and because of that we know B. We are laboring on a sure foundation Because of the gospel and God s extension of it is based on His good and unchanging character, we can have confidence this is a sure foundation. This is the only foundation that will last. Hebrews 12:28-29 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire. The Hebraic author here isn t saying, bring acceptable worship to God with reverence and awe and then you will receive the unshakeable kingdom. The author is saying, in Christ, you have an unshakeable kingdom- therefore enjoy worshipping Him out of the reverent heart that His Holy Spirit is producing in You! Look at this final part of the chapter with me here: 16 Do you not know that you[l] 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. V. We are in Christ. There aren t enough sermons preached on what it means to be in Christ. We refer to ourselves as Christians and certainly that is good, but that really wasn t the way the early church described themselves. If we want to be more crisp and more biblical, it would be beneficial to describe ourselves as being in Christ. The expressions in Christ in the Lord and in Him occur 164 times in Paul s letters alone. John Stott tells us To be in Christ does not mean to be inside Christ, as tools are in a box or our clothes in a closet, but to be organically united to Christ, as a limb is in the body or a branch is in the tree. It is this personal relationship with Christ that is the distinctive mark of his authentic followers. Think of how closely identified a believers life is with that of Christ s. The wickedness of Corinth: sexual immorality that includes incest; homosexuality; adultery; prostitution; orgies 7

along with every other sin imaginable- drunkenness; greed; lying; gossiping; thievery; revilers; swindlers; idolaters. You name it, its present. That very specific wickedness was placed onto Jesus and God the Father poured out every ounce of his wrath for those specific sins onto Jesus. Jesus died for the specific wicked sins of Corinth. Jesus died for your specific wicked sins and my specific wicked sins. Christ died. Then he bodily and eternally rose certifying that the payment for sins is paid in full and over. So because our life is so closely identified with the life of Christ, he gets our sins. What do we get? We get his righteousness. 19For as by the one man s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19) What does our text say? If we are In Christ A. The Spirit dwells in Us. 16 Do you not know that you[l] are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? B. God s Temple is Holy. 17bFor God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. So what do what does Paul charge the Corinthians to do in response to the truth that they are In Christ? C. Boast in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 1:31- let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Because we are In Christ our only response should be to boast in the Lord. God is using all of these things to bring Himself glory and to mold us into the image of Christ. And the Lord that is using all things for the church s benefit reminds us that we belong to Christ. We don t belong to Paul, Apollos or any teacher. We belong to Christ. We are not enslaved to our former sinful passions, we belong to Christ. We are not disunified, we are unified because the church has One head, one master, one Lord and that is Jesus Christ. 8