The apostle now returns from his lofty subject to the low state of the Corinthians. The subject of the chapter is divisions (vers. 5-9) and their correction (vers. 10-23). He could not speak unto them as to spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. They were not natural men, for they were converted; still they were carnal, babes in Christ. We have three different men described in these verses: 1st, the natural man, understanding not the things of the Spirit of God; 2nd, the spiritual man, having the mind of Christ, realizing his union with Him; 3rd, the carnal man, who follows the leaders of sects and not Christ alone. Compare Rom. 7, Heb. 5. The apostle had fed them with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto they were not able to bear it, neither yet were they able. Their divisions were a proof of this. Alas; for the divisions of Christendom! The very things men glory in prove their carnality. To say, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, was carnal. Who were these men? They were only servants by whom they believed. Paul had planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. What was a planter and a waterer beside the Lord of the garden? They should receive their reward according to their labour, but the truth was the saints on earth were God’s husbandry (cp. John 15:1-6). They were God’s building. This is the mighty lever to draw back saints from their divisions. You don’t belong to Calvinists, or Baptists, or Wesley, or this sect or that party, you belong to God. You are God’s husbandry; you are God’s building. Oh, if the saints would only listen to these words, they would drop all sectarianism at once, and come back to this, that they belonged to God.
What was Paul? The Lord had handed over to him the responsibility of being a wise master-builder of His building; so Paul had laid the foundation and another built upon it. Let every one take heed as to this, is the exhortation. As to the foundation, no man can lay any other than is laid, that is Christ Jesus. That foundation had been laid. The builders were to take care what they built upon it. Here the apostle brings out the doctrine of the house of God handed over to the responsibility of man, and tells it out to the Corinthians for their warning, and to correct their divisions. The real building would go on, but Christ was the Builder of the latter (see Matt. 16:18; 1 Pet. 2:5, 6). This building was beyond the responsibility of man, and was growing up to be a holy temple in the Lord (see Eph. 2:19-21). The gates of hades should not prevail against it. But here it is the house handed over to man’s responsibility. Man was the builder. One might build on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones; another might build on it wood, hay, stubble: every man’s work should be made manifest in the day of Christ, and every man’s work tried by fire. The good workman’s work would abide, and he should receive a reward on that day. The bad workman’s work should be burned up, and he should suffer loss. Wood; hay, stubble, could not abide the fire. Yet he himself should be saved, yet so as by fire. It is not here a question of salvation, but of the saved one’s getting reward or suffering loss. There might indeed be a defiler of the temple of God, but him God would destroy. He had never got on the foundation at all. The conclusion for the saints was this, that they corporately were the temple of God; and that the Spirit of God indwelt them.
They were the living walls of the temple, but the Holy Ghost was the Inhabitant of the house. Wondrous truth; that the Assembly should be made so clean by the blood, that inside living walls composed of Christian men, the Holy Ghost could dwell. Such was the visible Assembly at Corinth, builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. Alas, what has it come to now! But the truth is, as it was ever, that the Holy Ghost is there. What has that Spirit to do with divisions? He is the Spirit of Unity and Love. Divisions must end amongst the saints if we come back to the acknowledgment of His presence and power in the house of God. Oh, that the gracious Lord might bring about this! All this division was the fruit of worldly wisdom, putting men-leaders at the head of schools of thought. All was vanity before the Lord. The truth was, by circling round men, and thus forming sects, they were confining themselves to two or three gifts, whilst all were theirs, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, for all belonged to God, and they were Christ’s and Christ is God’s. The great truths pressed are, first, that the saints belong to God, and not to men; second, that the Holy Ghost is present in the Assembly. He is the Spirit of Unity and Love—the very opposite to division. In 2 Cor. 6:14-18, the presence of the Holy Ghost is brought in as the corrective power to worldliness; here (ch. 3) to division; the two evils at work in the present day. There is on the one hand national Christianity, the religion of the world; on the other hand, sectarian dissent, narrowing and dividing the membership of the body. The presence of the Holy Ghost in the house of God is the corrective power to each; and till the saints come back to the acknowledgment of the wondrous truth, division and worldliness must go on. But then everything contrary to it must be dropped. The saints then were brought back to the truth, that they were Christ’s and God’s, and that God the Holy Ghost was in the temple of God, the Spirit of unity and not of division. We see through all these chapters how sectarianism strikes at the root of the nature of the Assembly. It is human wisdom in contrast to God’s wisdom which is centered in Christ. The cross is its judgment. The church as the temple or house of God is founded on these two things, and the Holy Ghost is its Builder, through the workmen, Inhabitant and Ruler.