1 Corinthians 3:1-4 (NIV)
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
Paul spent eighteen months in Corinth (Acts 18:11) and brought many people to faith in Jesus. But he was frustrated because he could not make much progress in helping the Christians there to grow. They remained infantile in their faith instead of growing and maturing to the point that they could stand alone and help others to grow.
The latest news that he had from Chloe’s household (1 Corinthians 1:11) did nothing to encourage his heart in this regard. She spoke of divisions, conflicts, and sectarianism that prevented real unity in the church, and thus short circuited any hope of effectiveness and growing at the kingdom of God in the city.
The divisions and sectarianism were not the cause of the lack of spiritual maturity and growth, but the symptom. The Christians in Corinth were carnal, immature, worldly, and conflict and sectarianism were the natural outgrowth of that carnality.
Paul’s charge against the Church was that the people in it, leaders as well as laypeople, were “mere human beings”. That is, there was no real difference between the people in the Church and the rest of the people in the city. They were motivated by the same things, and they acted in much the same way. And, far from excusing it away, it alarmed Paul.
The fact is, the people of the kingdom are not supposed to be “mere human beings”. They are supposed to be people who have been transformed, made into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), having been born again of the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 5-8). And that new birth, that transformation, that new creation must affect everything about a person’s life and actions.
The factions, divisions, and general worldliness of the Corinthian Church showed that something was wrong. The process of regeneration and transformation hadn’t happened in their hearts; it had been interrupted somehow. Paul’s plan was to get back to Corinth in just a short time when he came through to take up the collection for the church in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16:1-7) and spend some time with them to see if he could get them back on track. In the meantime, this letter is designed to help the Corinthians to recognize the problem, and to seek God for the solution, even before Paul himself arrived.
Father, it is very easy, even today, to see division, worldliness, and even outright sin in the church, and write it off as somehow being “normal”. So many churches today seemed to be that way, so it is accepted as the norm. I have even seen the Church of today approvingly described as “not a congregation of saints, but a hospital for sinners”. Paul seems to disagree. Even though sinners must be welcomed, they are not merely to be accepted, but led into the experience of salvation where they can experience a new birth and transformation into living saints of God. Lord, how far we have fallen in our perceptions as to what Your Church is meant to be, and what we ourselves are meant to be as Your people. Help us to recapture not only the clear vision that Paul was trying to share with the Corinthians, but Your grace and Your almighty power that can actually remake us into what You have called us to be. Amen.