Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Scientist Carl Hodges believes that a plant called salicornia, or sea asparagus, can help solve the world’s food and energy problems. Salicornia is nourished by seawater and can grow in places with little soil or fresh water. It can also be converted into biofuel (like ethanol). Hodges has already developed successful “seawater farms” in Eritrea and northern Mexico.

Hodges’s goal is a healthy crop to benefit the world. When Paul compared the church to a farmer’s field in today’s reading, he similarly meant that the church’s purposes should be maturity and fruitfulness. Being divided over leaders showed the shallowness of their faith, but a deeper understanding of the gospel, the Cross, and the Spirit would move them in the right direction.

The Corinthians’ disunity was caused by their spiritual immaturity (vv. 1–4). Their jealous behavior and fighting confirmed that they weren’t living by the Spirit or with the mind of Christ. By now they should have progressed from milk to solid food, in terms of their ability to understand and apply spiritual truth (see Heb. 5:12–14). The fact they hadn’t indicated was that they were “acting like mere humans” (v. 3), that is, living as worldly or unregenerate people.

The church’s disunity demonstrated a lamentable lack of understanding of how God works (vv. 5–9). Church leaders such as Paul and Apollos are God’s servants, not the heads of competing factions. If the church is a farmer’s field, then each leader carries out their assigned task, be that planting, watering, or reaping (vv. 6–7). In nonmetaphorical terms, these tasks might include evangelism, discipleship, teaching, and the work of prayer. God uses the farmer, but ultimately He is the One who brings about growth and fruitfulness.

APPLY THE WORD

Jesus used an agricultural metaphor in His well- known Parable of the Sower (Matt. 13:1–23). If you have time, read this parable in conjunction with today’s passage from 1 Corinthians, reflecting on its lessons regarding fruitfulness and spiritual responsiveness. You could also begin a topical Bible study on planting seeds or bearing fruit.

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