📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 3:9
What does 1 Corinthians 3:9 mean?
"For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building."
— 1 Corinthians 3:9 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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.
Now he who plants and he who waters are the same, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it.
For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.
But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble;
Explanation
Paul's words here come at the close of a discussion about divisions in the Corinthian church, where believers had begun aligning themselves with different leaders—some saying "I follow Paul," others "I follow Apollos"—as if these men were rival figures competing for loyalty. In plain language, the verse says that Paul and Apollos are not competitors but co-laborers working together under God's direction, and that the Corinthian believers themselves are like a field being cultivated or a building under construction, with God as the one who owns the project and brings about the growth or the completion.
The context is essential to understanding the verse rightly. First Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul to the church he had planted in Corinth, a congregation that was spiritually gifted but immature, prone to quarreling, and easily impressed by eloquent teachers. In the verses just before this one, Paul explains that he planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but neither of them caused it to grow—God did that (1 Corinthians 3:6-8). He is deliberately deflating the personality cults forming around human teachers by reminding the church that ministers are merely servants carrying out tasks that belong to God. Verse 9 is the summary statement of that argument: the workers matter far less than the One they work for, and the church itself is not the possession of any human leader but God's own field and God's own building.
Theologically, this verse teaches several important truths. First, it establishes a proper view of Christian leadership: pastors, teachers, and evangelists are
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