Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 1 Corinthians 3-4
Key Verse
1 Corinthians 3:23 — “And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”
Devotional Thought
The church at Corinth was a congregation of remarkable gifts and equally remarkable troubles. Converts from a bustling port city — Greeks hungry for wisdom, Jews looking for signs, slaves and freedmen rubbing shoulders with the wealthy — had been gathered into one body by the preaching of Paul and the watering of Apollos. But the old instincts had crept back in. Factions formed: “I am of Paul,” some said, while others claimed Apollos, and still others reached for Cephas. They were envying, striving, dividing — and Paul tells them plainly that this is carnal behavior, the conduct of babes who can stomach only milk. The men they were fighting over were nothing more than laborers in a field that belonged to God.
Paul reaches for two pictures that would have been vivid to anyone in that world: a field and a building. One plants, another waters, but God alone gives the increase. One lays a foundation, another builds on it, but no foundation can be laid other than Jesus Christ. And then comes the searching word about what we build: gold, silver, precious stones — or wood, hay, stubble. The day will declare it. Fire will try every man’s work, and only what is true will survive.
Here in the deep of winter, when the garden is fallow and the trees stand bare, it is a good season to ask what we are actually building. The year’s resolutions may already be wobbling; the excitement of January has worn thin. Paul would say that is no tragedy. What matters is not the noise of our labor but its substance. Much of what we do for show — the jockeying for position, the comparing of ministries and men, the need to be on the right side of the right name — is stubble. It will burn. But the quiet work done for Christ, often unseen even by the one doing it, is gold that fire cannot touch.
And notice where all this building takes place: “Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” The Corinthians were squabbling over which teacher was greatest while the living God had taken up residence among them. Paul, their spiritual father, does not write to shame them but to warn them as beloved sons. He himself had hungered and thirsted, been reviled and defamed, and counted it nothing — because he knew the One who judges is the Lord. So let no man glory in men. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or life or death. And ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
Reflection
- If the fire of that Day tried your work — your service, your habits, your hidden ambitions — what in your life this week would prove to be gold, and what would prove to be stubble?
- Where have you been glorying in men — measuring yourself by a teacher, a leader, or a group — rather than resting in the fact that you are Christ’s?
Prayer
Lord, we confess that we have too often built with wood and hay — striving over names and opinions, envying one another, glorying in men as though we had not received everything from Your hand. Forgive us. You alone give the increase; You alone are the foundation. Search us, and show us what in our lives will not survive the fire. Make us faithful stewards of the mysteries of God, content to be fools for Christ’s sake if need be. Remind us that we are Your temple, indwelt by Your Spirit, and that we belong not to Paul or Apollos but to Christ, and Christ to God. Build in us what will abide. Amen.