1 Corinthians 3:5

“Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos?” Paul asks this of a church that was taking sides. Some said they were of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Cephas and some of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12). He had already pleaded with them to be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10), and just before this passage he calls them carnal and babes in Christ, behaving like mere men (1 Corinthians 3:1–4). Now he asks who these two men really are, and he gives the answer himself.

They are “ministers by whom ye believed.” The word is diákonos, an attendant or servant, used of one who waits at table or does other humble duties, and in the church of a Christian teacher and pastor, and of a deacon. Paul founded the church in Corinth and was an apostle, yet he chooses this lowly word for himself and for Apollos. It takes them down from the place the Corinthians had given them and puts them where they belong, as servants of God and of his church, whose whole work is to point people to the Lord.

“By whom ye believed” makes them the means, and the Lord the one in whom the Corinthians believed. The verb pisteúō can mean to believe that something is true or to credit what someone says, and it also means to trust in a person and entrust oneself to him, which is its sense here. Paul and Apollos brought the message, and through it the Corinthians came to trust in Christ.

Paul describes the work of the two men in a farmer’s words. Phyteúō means to set out in the earth or to implant, and it can be used of instilling teaching. Paul was the one who first preached the gospel in Corinth and brought the church into being. Potízō means to give drink or to irrigate. Apollos came to Corinth after Paul had left and went on teaching and strengthening the young believers, as a gardener waters what has just been planted. The two tasks differ, and the field needs both.

Then comes “but God gave the increase.” Theós is the common word for a god, and with the article it is the word for the one true God. Auxánō means to grow or to enlarge, and it is used of plants and of growth of every other kind. The increase here is the whole of what happened in Corinth: people turning to Christ, believers growing up in the faith, and the church spreading. Anyone who farmed in Paul’s day knew that a man plants and waters and then waits for rain and sun to make the seed grow, and people credited those to divine provision. Paul says that in the church the growth is plainly God’s.

Scripture says the same in many places. “Except the LORD build the house,” the psalmist writes, those who build it labour in vain (Psalm 127:1). It is God who works in his people (Philippians 2:13). Of the first preachers to the Greeks, Acts says that “the hand of the Lord was with them” (Acts 11:21). And Jesus tells his disciples that he is the true vine and they are the branches, who bear fruit by abiding in him (John 15:1–5).

Verse 7 draws the conclusion: “So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” Beside the God who gives life, the planter and the waterer have nothing of their own to boast of. Making a seed live or a heart believe lies in God’s power alone. The word “but”, allá, turns everything toward him. The verbs phyteúō and potízō come back from verse 6 as “he that planteth” and “he that watereth”, so that Paul and Apollos stand for every servant who has done this work.

A farmer can plant and water with great care, and then he waits on what only God can do. In the same way a minister preaches and teaches, and God brings people to faith and to maturity. This is the wisdom of God that Paul has set against the wisdom the world admires (1 Corinthians 1:18–25). The Corinthians gloried in gifted men, and the cross gives all the glory to God.

“Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one.” The word is heîs, here in its neuter form hen, “one”. The planter and the waterer serve the same God and work in the same field toward the same harvest, so they are partners in one work and have nothing to compete over. The church at Corinth had set Paul and Apollos against each other, and Paul says the two of them belong to a single task.

“And every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.” Alongside the unity of the workers stands each worker’s own account before God. Misthós means pay for service, wages or hire, and so reward. It is the word for a labourer’s wages, and Paul makes God the one who pays them. Kópos is toil, hard work that wears a person out, and it comes from a verb meaning to cut. The reward is measured by that labour. God alone gives the growth, so he rewards his servants for their faithful work, whatever results others see in it.

Paul goes on to say that each man’s work will be tested by fire to show what sort it is (1 Corinthians 3:12–15), and a little later that the Lord will judge even what is hidden (1 Corinthians 4:5). Human praise and visible success count for little in that day, and faithfulness counts for much.

“For we are labourers together with God.” Synergós joins syn, “with”, to the root of ergon, “work”, and means a fellow worker. Paul calls himself and Apollos synergoi Theou, God’s fellow workers. The “we” is Paul, Apollos and the others who serve the church, and it reaches to every believer who takes part in God’s work. The word was at home in the trades and partnerships of the day, so the Corinthians would hear in it a shared task under a master. That is why the workers are one: they share one master’s work.

“Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” Paul turns from the workers to the Corinthians themselves, and he begins both pictures with “God’s”. Geṓrgion, from the word for a farmer, means cultivated land or a farm. As a farmer owns and tends his field, God owns his people and tends them through his servants, and he looks for fruit. This picture gathers up the planting and watering of the verses before.

Oikodomḗ, from oikos, “house”, and the root of a word for building, means a structure or the act of building. With it Paul moves from the farm to the builder’s site, and the verses that follow speak of foundations and of the work built on them. The field speaks of life and growth, and the building of design, unity and stability, a work still under way with God as its builder. Both say that the church is God’s possession and his ongoing work, which leaves the Corinthians no ground to claim it for Paul or Apollos.

The rest of the New Testament fills out the building picture. Believers are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ the chief corner stone, growing together into a holy temple where God dwells by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22). Peter calls believers lively stones built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:4–5). Paul joins the two pictures when he tells the Colossians to walk in Christ, “rooted and built up in him” (Colossians 2:6–7).

Paul’s own question, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13), lies behind these verses. The church is built on Christ, the one foundation that any builder can lay (1 Corinthians 3:11). He is the head of the church, which is his body (Ephesians 1:22–23, Colossians 1:18), so the church belongs to him, and every servant in it points to him.

The increase God gives comes through Christ. New life is ours through his death and resurrection, because God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). Believers grow as branches abiding in the true vine, and that growth is growth into his likeness, worked by the Holy Spirit whom Christ sent (John 16:7–8), as the body grows up into him who is the head (Ephesians 4:15–16). Jesus told the parable of the sower, where the seed is the word and its fruit depends on the ground it falls on (Matthew 13:1–23). All the planting and watering done by human hands bears fruit as part of Christ’s own work of building his church.

These verses give the church a right view of those who serve it. Paul and Apollos were real workers who planted and watered with care, and they were servants of one Lord, sharing one task. The people they served, and the growth those people had, belonged to God. A church that knows this can honour its teachers and still give its loyalty and its praise to Christ alone.

They also give rest to everyone who works for God. We plant and water, and the growth is in God’s hands, so the weight of producing results is lifted from us. God sees the labour itself, including work that others never notice, and he has promised to reward it. And the whole passage shows who God is: the owner of the field and the builder of the house, the giver of faith and of every gift, who is pleased to work through his servants and to give them a share in his harvest.