1 Corinthians 3:3

“And I, brethren” ties this chapter to the one before it. In 1 Corinthians 2:6–16 Paul spoke of the wisdom of God, revealed to believers by his Spirit. He said there that the things of the Spirit are “spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14), and he described “he that is spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:15). Now he turns to the Corinthians themselves. The “I” is emphatic, egṓ, because Paul is speaking of his own ministry among them as the teacher who knew them best, and he still calls them brethren.

Two Greek words carry the verse. Pneumatikós, “spiritual”, describes what belongs to the Spirit, and here it means believers who are guided by the Spirit of God and show his wisdom and discernment in the way they live. Sarkikós, “carnal”, comes from sarx, “flesh”. It describes what belongs to the flesh, the body and this passing life, and by implication the unregenerate nature. Used of believers, it means people whose thinking and behaviour are still governed by the fallen nature and by the ways of the world around them. Paul sets the two side by side, and the Corinthians stood on the wrong side of the line.

The third word explains the second. Nḗpios, “babes”, is an infant or a minor, and figuratively a simple person or an immature Christian. Its root sense is “not speaking”, a child too young to talk. Babies need care and simple food, and that is the picture Paul uses for a church lacking the understanding, discernment and self-control expected of grown believers.

The reason Paul had to speak this way lay with the Corinthians. Since the things of God are spiritually discerned, their divisions, their jealousy and their love of human wisdom showed that they were living below that level of discernment. These were the same factions he had rebuked at the opening of the letter (1 Corinthians 1:10–17). To give the deepest teaching to people acting like the unconverted would have done them little good, so Paul dealt first with their character and conduct. What he goes on to teach shows what they were missing, as he explains the church as God’s field, God’s building and God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:5–17).

“I have fed you with milk” uses gála, milk, in a figurative sense. Milk stands for the first and simplest teachings of the faith, such as salvation, repentance and the person of Christ, the food new believers can take in. As the one who founded the church in Corinth, Paul gave them what they could receive. “Meat” in the KJV means food in general, and the Greek brōma is the ordinary word for food. Set against milk, it means solid food: deeper doctrine, wiser discernment between right and wrong, and the fuller working out of the gospel in daily life. Paul held this back on purpose, out of care for what they could bear. The Corinthians would have understood the picture at once, because nourishment was a common way of speaking about learning.

The reason follows. “For hitherto ye were not able to bear it” looks back to Paul’s first time among them, and “hitherto”, oúpō, means “not yet”. The verb dýnamai, “to be able”, then comes again in the hard words “neither yet now are ye able.” Time had passed since they first believed, and they were still where they began. The repeated “able” lays weight on how long the weakness had lasted, and Paul’s sorrow over it is plain. The words “to bear it” are in italics in the KJV because the translators supplied them to make the sense clear.

The letter to the Hebrews uses the same picture for the same trouble: “ye ... are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. ... But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:12–14). Peter shows the right place of milk: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2). Milk is good food for a baby, and it is given so that the baby grows. Paul’s hope for the church is that “we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine,” and that we “grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:13–15).

The verse also shows a teacher’s care. Paul fitted his teaching to what his hearers could take, and he still pressed them to grow, which is the pattern for all who feed God’s people.

Verse 3 gives the evidence. “For ye are yet carnal” opens with gar, which gives the reason for what came before, and “yet”, eti, means “still”. Paul had first pleaded with them over these quarrels at the start of the letter (1 Corinthians 1:10–13), and now he names what he saw among them.

• Zēlos, “envying”, is at root heat or zeal. In a good sense it is ardour, and in a bad sense, as here, it is jealousy and rivalry, a heated wish for what another has that breeds resentment.
• Éris, “strife”, is contention and discord.
• Dichostasía, “divisions”, is built from “twice” and “a standing”, and it means disunion or dissension, believers standing apart in rival groups.

“Among you” places all of this inside the church. Each of these belongs with the works of the flesh that Paul lists in Galatians 5:19–21, and each is the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23). James traces quarrels among believers to the same root: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (James 4:1–2). Within the church, then, envy, strife and division always mark a carnal mind, because they run against the unity, love and peace the Spirit produces.

Verse 4 puts a name to the divisions Paul has been answering since 1 Corinthians 1. Légō, “saith”, is the ordinary verb for speaking, and here it carries a declaration of loyalty, as members openly announced which leader they belonged to. “And another”, dé with héteros, brings in a second voice and a rival party. Earlier in the letter the list was longer: “every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12). Those who chose Paul may have admired his authority as an apostle, his work in founding the church, or his teaching. Apollos was “an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures” (Acts 18:24–28), and he drew a following of his own.

Corinth explains part of the pull. It was a busy, wealthy, cosmopolitan Roman port, full of trade and people from many places, and the host of the Isthmian Games. Greek philosophy and the art of public speaking shaped how people thought, and each school of philosophy had its admired teachers and loyal followers. The church, made up of Jews and Gentiles, likely carried those habits in with them, treating Christ’s servants like famous philosophers or orators whose disciples boasted of the connection. All through 1 Corinthians 1–2 Paul sets the wisdom of God against the wisdom of the world for this reason.

Every step from milk to meat is growth in knowing Christ. He is the first food of the newborn believer: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and the giver of living water (John 4:10–14). The solid food of mature faith is a deeper grasp of the same Christ: his person, his death and resurrection, his lordship, and the mystery of the church as his body, “the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23). He is “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), the one “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

Christ is also the pattern of the maturity Paul longs to see. He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7), the very opposite of envy and rivalry, and he lived wholly in his Father’s will, saying, “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10). Through his cross he broke down “the middle wall of partition” and made of his people “one new man” (Ephesians 2:14–16). He sent the Spirit (John 16:7), who enables believers to overcome the flesh and walk in newness of life. He prayed for all who would believe through the apostles’ word, “That they all may be one” (John 17:20–23).

So the answer to “I am of Paul” is the place where every believer already stands: “ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 5:23) and its chief corner stone, in whom the whole building “groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:20–22). He is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), and “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17), his church among them. Growing up in him means putting off the old ways and putting on the new man, “which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:5–10).

Paul’s words are a rebuke, and they come from a father in the faith who still calls the Corinthians brethren and still counts them in Christ. That is how God deals with his children. He feeds them with what they can bear, he names honestly what is holding them back, and he means every one of them to grow up into Christ, their head.

The passage also gives a church a plain measure of its own growth. Paul judged the Corinthians’ maturity by how they treated one another, and their envy and party spirit told him what he needed to know. Maturity shows in humility, love and unity, in a church whose members are glad of every faithful servant God sends and gather around Christ alone.

Above all, the passage points to Christ. The milk and the meat are both found in him, the increase comes from God (1 Corinthians 3:6), and the unity Paul longed for is the unity Christ prayed for and died to make.