The Foundation

1 Corinthians 3: 10-11, 16-23 (February 20, 2011)

1) The Text

10According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

16Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

18Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

21So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, 23and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

2) The Context

The issue Paul is addressing in this passage is one Jesus addressed elsewhere. Churches that are built only on ideas or actions or style are doomed to die. Paul says the foundation is Jesus Christ. You build on Jesus Christ. And if you build with gold and silver or straw, it will fade. You must build on Jesus Christ. Jesus earlier said in Matthew 16, "On this rock (the confession of Peter) I will build my church." During his last week, he said to his disciples, "I am the vine. Ye are the branches." In other words, stay connected to me, and you will bear fruit. If you get severed from me, you won't bear fruit.

3) Interpretation

Paul asserts his foundational role in the Corinthians community. Nothing indicates that Apollos is in conflict with him, but certainly those who have become engrossed in loyalty to leaders are playing off Apollos against Paul. Unity and coherence with the Christian community is of paramount importance not so much because otherwise the church gets a bad reputation or becomes dysfunctional, but because it thereby ceases to be what is meant to be: a place where God's grace moves, bringing reconciliation and truth. They have become distracted from what they were created to be and from the one who makes it possible. Where anger and hate take over, there is little room for love and generosity. There are winners and losers.

There is a clash of values and perhaps it is inspired by appreciation of the impressiveness of Apollos' ministry compared with Paul's. In the background, claims to wisdom play a role and seem to be being measured by the secular standards of the day. Apollos seems to have made a more powerful impression than Paul. In these chapters we hear a lot about impressive speech. Speech was one of the main arenas where men were supposed to show their worth. Rhetoric, learning how to impress with speech, was fundamental to male identity. Today this translates into multimedia impressiveness. Along with the skills now available to us through our much greater range of impressive and impressing tools are numerous strategies to convince and seduce. It is an industry which bombards us with advertising and myriad claims to truth.

Paul was adept at employing the skills of his day and there is no reason why we should not use the skills of ours. But Paul identifies flaws in the system where the medium becomes so much the message that the promoters end up promoting themselves and substance no longer matters. The rewards of gaining a following, of being a persuader and experiencing the power of persuasion are enormous. Such dynamism can drive ministry and energize congregations. The buzz of self-promotion and the satisfaction at increased recruitment, even in the name of Jesus, can so easily go awry. Jesus becomes the best promoter, whose sole aim was self-promotion of his self-promoting God. The promoters almost cannot help but join the game and become, themselves, self-promoters. It all coheres because the movement has its own self-promotion as the agenda. Marketing strategies become key tools of ministry. It is easy to turn it all into a form of self-indulgence from the top down, a whole hierarchy of beings wanting adulation.

Paul had already sought to torpedo this construction in 1:18-25. His words there are echoed in 3:19 where he subverts the model and suggests that not the take of adulation but the giving of compassion lies at the heart of God. That is a very different model of fulfillment and of God and of church than the grabbing self-indulgence which turns the cross into a promotional logo.

Paul might have driven his hearers to humiliation, but, characteristically, he does not want that kind of win. Instead, he declares the opposite. He does not say: you have nothing. He says in 3:21: you have everything! His list begins with those whom the promoters played off against each other: Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter). They are all yours, he declares: embrace them. His list continues in a way that recalls what he would write in Rom 8:38-39. In this nice little piece of balanced rhetorical phrasing he is really telling them: stop grabbing! It is all there. You can relax. There is no end to grace. You don't have to establish your worth. You don't have to play the game of self-promotion. Because in the end that is also neither Christ's nor God's agenda. Embrace a different kind of wisdom and leave the fear- and inadequacy-induced strategies to win worth for yourselves, your church, your leaders, your Christ and your God behind.

One can almost hear the rest of Rom 8:38-39 echoing across the text, perhaps already in Paul's mind. For there he writes: nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So you can let your anxiety and its busy self-preoccupation go and be free to join that love in the world.

4) Thought Exercise

How can we stay better connected to Jesus?

How can we use modern tools of communication to build on the foundation of Jesus Christ?