📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 3:4
What does 1 Corinthians 3:4 mean?
"For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?"
— 1 Corinthians 3:4 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed; and each as the Lord gave to him?
I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.
So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.
Explanation
In this verse, Paul is addressing a specific problem he had heard about in the Corinthian church: the believers there had split into rival factions, each claiming loyalty to a particular leader. Some said, "I follow Paul," others "I follow Apollos," and still others claimed allegiance to Cephas (Peter) or even to Christ himself, as Paul mentions earlier in chapter 1. In this verse, Paul zeroes in on this behavior and asks a pointed rhetorical question: doesn't this kind of tribalism prove that you are still acting according to the flesh rather than the Spirit?
To understand the context, it helps to know who Paul and Apollos were to the Corinthians. Paul had founded the church in Corinth, preaching the gospel there and establishing the community of believers. Apollos, an eloquent and learned teacher described in Acts 18, came later and continued teaching and strengthening the same church. Rather than seeing these two men as partners working toward the same goal, some Corinthians had turned them into symbols of competing camps, perhaps comparing their speaking styles, personalities, or teaching emphases, and using those preferences to elevate one figure over another and create division within the church.
Theologically, Paul's point is that this divisiveness reveals spiritual immaturity. Just before this verse, in verses 1-3, Paul tells the Corinthians that he could not speak to them as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ, because jealousy and strife still ruled among them. The word "fleshly" (sometim
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