Merely Servants-1 Cor 3:4-9

1 Corinthians, New Testament, Sermons

My way or the highway. My experience with leadership is not great. [Then again I’ve never been an easy person to lead!] My medical clinic director demanded that I come into work at 8 am sharp. But I intentionally came in at 8:01 am or 8:02 am every single morning. After 2 weeks of doing so he fired me. Some church leaders expect everything to go through them for their stamp of approval. Stated exaggeratedly, if they say “Jump,” then the only acceptible response is “How high?” What does Paul [and the Bible] teach about leadership?

Christian leaders are servants (3:5-9), NOT top dogs or top down authoritarian CEOs. They are like construction workers (3:10-15).

The emphasis on God in the Greek: “God’s we are, being fellow workers; God‘s field, God’s building, you are” (1 Cor 3:9).

Paul uses 2 different words that are translated in English as servant and a 3rd word translated slave/servant. Today, “servant of God” or “servant of Christ” has become an honorific title, which practically and functionally means that you’re THE leader in the church, the head honcho, the top dog. But the words Paul uses have no honor in it whatsover.

  1. diakonos (1 Cor 3:5).  Diakonos means “a waiter, one who serves food and drink.”
  2. hyperetes (1 Cor 4:1). Hyperetes means “an underrower, subordinate rower, an assistant, an attendant.”
  3. doulos (Rom 1:1; 2 Cor 4:5; Gal 1:10; Eph 6:6; Phil 1:1; Tit 1:1). Doulos means “slave, servant, attendant.”

Radically misguided perception of the church and it’s leadership, which Paul addresses with polemic and irony (3:1-4). Paul proceeds to address this issue using images from agriculture and architecture.

  • With the farming metaphor (3:5-9), he addresses how they are to regard their teachers, since their slogans are out (1 Cor 1:12). Apostles are servants, each with his own task and reward, but everything is God’s:
    1. farm
    2. workers
    3. growth of crops
  • Thus, boasting in “mere servants of the farm” is sheer folly.
  • Shifting to a building metaphor (3:10-15), he addresses teachers themselves, speaking to those currently responsible for the church. In the strongest terms he warns them to build the church with imperishable materials corresponding to the foundation—Christ crucified. Then he moves to…
  • …the nature of the building itself (3:16-17). The church is God’s temple in Corinth. Paul warns them against destroying it, which they’re doing with their fascination/obscession with wisdom and divisions.
  • Paul desires to raise them above their petty boastings. What fools these “mere humans” are by boasting in men.

Divisions that align themselves with leaders (3:3–4), Paul turns directly. [In 1 Cor 4, he’ll let loose, but not yet.] His main argument in chap. 3 no longer focuses on the cross, but on emphasizing that the church belongs to God: God brought it into being, and God will judge it. The human instruments God uses to raise up the church are merely servants of God’s larger purpose. Therefore, it’s foolish, dangerous and destructive to choose sides and pit one leader against another. If you build with arrogance, boasting and false wisdom you compromise God’s plan for bringing the gospel to the world, and court God’s wrath and judgment. Paul’s 3 metaphors for the church:

  1. the church as God’s field (5–9),
  2. the church as God’s building (10–15), and
  3. the church as God’s temple (16–17).

Paul moves from one metaphor to the next to make related but different points about the identity of the church and its leaders. The final part (3:18–23) recapitulates the earlier teaching about wisdom, folly, and boasting and then concludes with a powerful affirmation that not only the church and its leaders but everything in creation belongs to God. 2 fundamental points must be kept clearly in view.

  1. Paul thinks of the church not as an institution with a hierarchy and a certain formal structure but as a concrete community of people in a particular locality. (Paul does not actually use the word “church” in this chapter, which he does frequently elsewhere in the letter.) When he says, “you are God’s temple,” he is referring not to a building but to the gathered people of God.
  2. Paul’s metaphors all refer to the community viewed corporately: the building that is built by the apostles and tested by fire is not the spiritual life of the individual believer, but the church community as a whole. The latter point may be especially hard for some Protestant congregations to keep in focus, because the tradition of individualistic reading is so entrenched. But if this point is not grasped firmly, Paul’s whole meaning will be missed.

Paul and Apollos as God’s Field Hands (3:5–9). Paul demonstrates the futility of rallying around different leaders by using himself and Apollos as illustrations with rhetorical questions, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul?” (1 Cor 3:5). Answer: They are servants (diakonoi) who have been assigned various chores by God. As Paul develops the image, they are field hands given the task of planting and cultivating a crop. Diakonos–a simple metaphor–was not yet for Paul a technical term for a particular office in the church (“deacon”). Their designated chores were slightly different is of no consequence. Paul, who arrived first, planted the church in Corinth, and Apollos, who came later, watered the crop, but each of them was simply doing the task assigned by God. Thus neither of them amounts to anything in his own right (1 Cor3:7a), because their efforts would be of no avail apart from the direction and empowerment of God. Field hands only do what they‘re told to do. They’re utterly powerless to make the seed come to life: that’s God’s mysterious power. Paul highlights this point by stating it twice (vv. 6, 7). It is God who makes the word of gospel take root and spring up into a living community of faith. (Paul’s shift to the “building” metaphor–Ps 127: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”)

The efforts of the different servants are collaborative (1 Cor 3:8a) is Paul’s reason for this line of reasoning: “The one who plants and the one who waters are one” [Greek]. This means that they’re not the same person but that their efforts are complementary parts of a single agricultural project. So, to play one off against the other is ridiculous. Both are necessary: without the waterer, the crop would die; without the planter, there would be no crop to water.

Paul is reminding the Corinthians that his preaching first founded the community; they first “came to believe” through him. Paul does not want them to lose sight of that fact (1 Cor 4:15). Here he’s stresses the synergistic relation of the different apostolic workers; he calls himself and Apollos God’s synergoi, “coworkers” (1 Cor 3:9). This does not mean here (in contrast to 2 Cor. 6:1) that he and Apollos are coworkers with God; rather, as the whole passage suggests, they are fellow workers together under the authority of God, belonging to God. And the church is God’s field. (Israel is God’s vineyard in Isa 5:1–7). What matters is the fruitful cultivation of the harvest.

Easy to give lip service, but hard to live out its practical implications in the church. Clergy/church workers/”different” fellowships, rather than working cooperatively to cultivate God’s field, become embroiled in turf battles. We all want to make sure that no one else interferes with our little patch of the field, that things are done just precisely our way. So the field becomes endlessly subdivided into unproductive subsistence plots. [The foolish and tragic failure of cooperation in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is today divided up into different sections under different Christian groups that want to claim a piece of the “holy place”: Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox, and so forth.]Paul is saying to his readers, then and now, “No, don’t you understand that the whole field belongs to God and that we are called to work together to bring in the eschatological harvest? Individual leaders are insignificant; they’re just field hands.”

Reference:

  1. Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.
  2. Gordon D. Fee. First Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the NT. 1987.

Sermon Divisions:

  1. 7/12/20: Always Thank God (1:1-9) [1 Cor 1:4].  Cosmic Epic Calling [1 Cor 1:2].
  2. 7/19/20: The Devil Divides, God Unites (1:10-17) [1 Cor 1:10]. All Agree. No Divisions. Perfect Unity.
  3. 7/26/20: The Cross—God‘s Way—is Dumb (1:18-25) [1 Cor 1:18]. The Cross Stumbles. The Cross is like a Cop Out. Foolish Cross.
  4. 8/2/20: What You Were, Who Christ Is (1:26-31) [1 Cor 1:26, 30]. The Necessity of Lack. No Boasting  [1 Cor 1:31].
  5. 8/9/20: Nothing but Jesus (2:1-5) [1 Cor 2:2].
  6. 8/16/20: Wise vs. Stupid (2:6-16) [1 Cor 2:6]. True Wisdom is Only for the Mature. The Mind of Christ [1 Cor 2:16].
  7. 8/23/20: Spiritual, Yet Not Spiritual (3:1-4) [1 Cor 3:1].
  8. 8/30/20: Merely Servants (5-9) [1 Cor 3:5]. Field Laborers.
  9. 9/6/20: Build with Care or be Destroyed (3:10-15, 16-17) [1 Cor 3:10-11].
  10. 9/13/20: Wisdom Does Not Boast (3:18-22) [1 Cor 3:16]. God’s Temple.
  11. 9/20/20: Judging Others Blinds You (4:1-5) [1 Cor 4:4]. True Self
  12. Become Scum (4:6-13) [1 Cor 4:13].
  13. Final Warning (4:14-21) [1 Cor 4:19].

 

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