THIS chapter teaches us that God is the true source of blessing, and that there is no other. “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” “Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” “And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” Well might the apostle inquire of the Corinthians, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?” Well might he say, “Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours.” Paul could not speak to the Corinthians “as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.” His letter finds them in the same state, “For ye are yet carnal.”
When the glory filled the Tabernacle and the Temple there was no room for any thing else (Ex. 40:3434Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34); 2 Chron. 5:1414So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. (2 Chronicles 5:14)); no place for the flesh; no room for glorying, save in the glory that filled the place. The Corinthians, by setting up man and human headships, delighting in elements foreign to the Cross, became carnal. To be spiritual is to be a debtor to God for everything, to hold all in subjection to Him. Then the bondage and terror of man cease, and those fleshly elements of his, that captivate the senses, lose their enticing power. This is our high calling, to honor the Cross at any cost. To acknowledge no teaching but that of the Spirit of God; and no other source of divine power but that of the Living God.
Such is the substance of the Apostle’s teaching in the three first chapters of this epistle; and such is the instruction needed now, as well as then, to save the Saints from those things which charm their senses and exclude God. Our only safeguard is to keep our eyes so fixed on Jesus as to be able to say with godlike liberty of soul,
“We ask not, need not, ought beside;
So safe, so calm, so satisfied!”