1 Corinthians 3:1-9

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ² I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³ for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? ⁵ What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶ I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷ So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸ He who plants, and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. ⁹ For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

The Christians in Corinth thought like many Christians today, hearing “nothing,” as St. Paul says in chapter 2 verse 2 of this letter, “except Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” is just basic teaching for infants to learn.  They think it is time to move on to the grownup stuff.  However, in our text Paul crushes the pride of the Corinthians, by calling them “infants.”  Paul is saying that by overlooking the cross of Jesus, all sorts of errors pop up.  Things like contempt for others, along with the false gods of pride and selfish ambition.  When our egos get inflated, the Holy Spirit crushes us too, by holding the words of Saint James before our eyes, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22).  Being hearers and not doers of the word, we become like those of little faith, infants at best. 

But here is the Good News: after we have been crushed by the Law that says “You are poor miserable sinners,”  God is willing and ready to teach and reteach the glorious Gospel again to build us up.  Saint Peter writes God “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  Though “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” by the blood of God’s Son we “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (cf. Romans 3:23-24).  

That is the Gospel message of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”  The message of the cross is not just basic Christianity, nor is the cross advanced Christianity.  The cross reveals everything from the beginning to the end.  It is the epiphany that sheds light on all matters of faith, life, and death.  The cross of Christ teaches that Christ Jesus died for all people, and whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life (cf. John 3:16-18).   

May we by the power of “the Word of the cross” pray the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3:18-19, that we “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fulness of God.”

Grace Lutheran Church

• 825 North 1st Street West, Cheyenne Wells, CO, 80810

• Divine Service, Sunday at 9:00 a.m. 

• Wednesday Evening Lenten Service at 7:00 p.m.