Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. What does it take to understand the wisdom of God? Well, if we were to consider ourselves spiritual, but lived and acted like immature infants, how would our church leaders treat us? What would they do? How did Paul treat the Christian members of this church in Corinth? Let’s find out.

First Corinthians chapter 3. Grow up. True or false? Young people have been taking longer to mature into grown-ups capable of managing their own lives each successive generation. I used to wonder if that was just my imagination, that young people are growing up slower and slower. I’m sure if you are under 30, that sounds like boomer trash talk to you.

But I checked some research and statistics on that. It’s pretty undeniable. It was very common for girls to be married by their mid-teens 150, 200 years ago, boys a little older. Of course, far more people lived on farms then. Most didn’t graduate high school, and life expectancy was a lot shorter. But it was common for people in their mid-20s to have a few kids already and seemed like what we’d consider now real adults.

In our generation, many people do not bother to get married. That’s another topic. But of those who do, the average age now is about 30 years old. And here’s something that may be even more definitive. In America currently, a third of young adults age 13 to 34 still live with their parents. And in some countries, it’s even higher.

I read that in Italy, where one of my daughters lives, a whopping 69.4% of that age group, 18 to 34, still live with their parents. Wow. Why are people growing up much slower? Why can so many parents be heard to say, You know, at your age I was doing this and that and the other thing, and here you are still in my basement playing video games? I’m not a sociologist, so I’m not qualified to explain why or whose fault this is, or even if it’s a serious problem. But the Apostle Paul raises a very similar question about spiritual maturity in 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

Listen to what he wrote there. Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you, I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk to you as though you still belonged to this world, as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger, and you still aren’t, for you’re still controlled by your sinful nature. You’re jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove that you’re still controlled by your sinful nature?

When one of you says, I’m a follower of Paul, and another says, I follow Apollos, aren’t you acting just like people of this world? By people of this world, or mere humans, as other translations put it, Paul is saying that although these people were believers in the church at Corinth and had been in Christ for some years now, saved, we would say it, they had put their faith in Christ, most weren’t acting anything like mature Christians. In fact, they didn’t behave much differently than non-believers. As we mentioned last time, their church was therefore wracked with problems and divisions. And when that’s true, it’s because the individual members aren’t being who they ought to be. In this case, Paul says the Corinthians were acting like babies, still on a bottle, at a time they should have been acting like grown-ups and eating grown-up food.

By that he meant deeper things in God’s Word. What does immaturity look like? My grandson, Theo, who I just spent the whole day with the other day, he’s five years old now, and he started school. Actually, today was his first day of school. I just saw the photos on Facebook this morning. And he was ready, too.

He’s got the camouflage backpack. He’s got the new Crocs with cool jibbits decorating them, a cool haircut, and he was smiling from ear to ear. He was excited to go. His mom’s a little worried, but I’m not at all. He’s going to do well. His teacher’s going to love him.

Perhaps I’m a little biased. But you know there are some kids, especially boys, who are not ready at five years old for school, and their immaturity will show up in a lot of different ways. For one thing, they’re going to be selfish, just like a toddler. Everything they see is mine. They’ll be grabbing things from other kids and always putting their selfish interests ahead of everybody else in the class. Another way it shows up is not accepting instructions or following directions.

Kids just do their own things and act out when they’re corrected. To be ready for school, I’ve read this in a journal somewhere, a child should be able to regulate their own emotions, play well with others, and have a reasonable attention span. Good luck with that. We just learned kindergarten goes all day here, just like the older grades in our state. I remember at that age, it was only a half day of school for kindergarten. Man, I don’t envy kindergarten teachers these days.

Imagine a classroom of five-year-olds where half of them are from homes that have not prepared them for school. It could get very, very chaotic. And that’s what was going on, more or less, in the Corinthian fellowship of Christians. Paul uses terms like carnal, fleshly, worldly, depending on which translation you’re reading, and they’re all the opposite of spiritually mature. What he describes at the end of the previous chapter as having the mind of Christ. We’ve talked before about the fact that when we become believers, God sends the Holy Spirit to live inside us.

The Holy Spirit’s goal is to help us develop that mind of Christ, Jesus’ values, Jesus’ character. Elsewhere, this is referred to as sanctification, like in Romans. Sanctification, the process of replacing wrong actions and values and becoming who God wants you to be. Paul describes this in Galatians 5 like this: When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results of that are clear. You’ll be in sexual immorality, impurity, lustful, idolatrous, sorcerous—that means using drugs—hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissension, divisions, envy, other sins like these, he says. Then he also described the difference in a believer that has become a mature follower of Christ.

He says, When the Holy Spirit is inside of you, you’re following Him, this is the kind of fruit that will be in your life: love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness, and self-control. The Holy Spirit’s work in a believer, though, can certainly be resisted. He can be quenched when we ignore His promptings. He can be grieved when we do on purpose what our old nature tells us to do rather than what God prefers. God does not force us to grow up. We must want to, and we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit inside us.

One favorite verse that describes this is at the beginning of Romans chapter 12. I think Margie commented on it. He wrote there, Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all that he’s done for you. Let them be living and holy sacrifices, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t keep copying the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God’s will for you. Let God transform you. Let him do it. We must want this and we must cooperate. If we do, the transformation process will start when we believe in Christ and will be ongoing until we grow up into mature believers with the mind of Christ. It doesn’t ever really stop.

We keep being fine-tuned all our lives long as we are attentive to the Holy Spirit and we learn and follow God’s Word. But the problem was in Corinth, for some reason or reasons, this had not been happening among most of the believers there. Paul indicates that while he was there, and remember that was for a year and a half, he could only bottle-feed them like babies. And since that time, over the next few years, little if anything had improved. In fact, without him there like a stern kindergarten teacher keeping things together, things sound like they had actually gone in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s because, as we’ve already noted, Corinth was such an extremely evil place.

Not to make excuses for them, but some people are in much worse environments than others to try and break out of old wrong patterns and grow up spiritually. Surrounded daily by much worse stuff. That could have been part of the problem, but whatever the reason, like an out-of-control kindergarten class, that church was infected with selfishness, divisions, immorality, lots of pride, and more. And whoever was there supposed to be leading them was either not being listened to or was not effective at maintaining an orderly, harmonious environment in their church where spiritual growth could occur. So, let’s assume you want to grow spiritually, okay? You want to turn from a baby Christian into a spiritual grown-up.

That’s the healthy state of affairs. That’s what’s supposed to happen. If a baby does not grow and change, that’s going to get noticed by doctors at a regular checkup and taken seriously, I hope. The reason needs to be discovered and addressed as soon as possible. In the same way, if a young Christian is not growing, that should also be noticed. It’s normal and healthy for them to be growing spiritually.

So what things contribute to that transformational process we call spiritual growth? Well, good spiritual nourishment is essential for one thing. Baby can’t grow physically without getting what they need, and having that adjusted as they turn into a toddler and then move forward toward adolescence. If you’ve accepted Christ recently, you are, we could say, a baby Christian. I suggest you check out our blog article, Now That I Believe, What’s Next? It’s full of advice about exactly that.

I strongly suggest you check it out. It’s on our website at sharetheword.org under the blog link. It’s going to make some great suggestions about spiritual nourishment. Speaking of being a baby Christian, one of my favorite online personalities is Elsa Kurt, K-U-R-T. She has a bit called, I’m a Baby Christian. She’s very entertaining.

She really is a baby Christian, and she made a little video about it, like a reel about it. You’d like to hear her. Watch that one. But hear me out for a few more minutes before you search Elsa Kurt online. By the way, just the fact that you’re here listening to Share the Word, that’s a great spiritual discipline in itself. Because if you stay with us, listening consistently chapter by chapter, thinking about what God has to say, you’re going to grow wiser, whether you realize it or not.

It’s affecting your heart and your mind. It’s growing you up. Some parts of the Bible are more suitable for younger believers, for sure. So if you haven’t already, I suggest, if you are a baby Christian, listen carefully to the episodes from the Gospel of John, and then from the Gospel of Luke, to listen to Jesus in his own words. Next, prayer is something that you will learn about in Now That I Believe, that blog article I mentioned. Learning how to communicate to God and listening as the Holy Spirit seeks to communicate with you.

Learning the importance of confession and being sensitive to the things God is trying to weed out of your life that displease Him, as well as the things He wants to build into your life that will spiritually strengthen you. Do you have a regular time for prayer each day? It doesn’t need to be complicated. It certainly doesn’t need to be formulaic. Just spend a few dedicated moments confessing things you know happened that day which didn’t please God. Ask Him for the grace to do better.

Let him know what worries and concerns you. Ask for wisdom in how to proceed in those areas. Thank him for anything you see that is an evidence of his goodness in your life. Pray for others that you care about. Prayer in your life should just develop as a natural, ongoing communication with your heavenly Father. Very importantly, getting involved in a good local church family that will have learning opportunities that fit you is indispensable.

Trying to grow as a baby Christian apart from a healthy spiritual body of believers is next to impossible. God made us to be part of a body. Not every church is a healthy one, though, as we’re seeing even from Paul’s New Testament letters, so choose carefully. Be certain, first of all, that it’s a church committed to the Bible as God’s very Word, that you understand what is being taught there. Be certain it is serious about sharing the gospel with those who still need to hear it. Remember all the one anothers we ran across in the practical section of Romans.

Those are key to sensing the health of a church, whether you’ll be nurtured and grow there. Do you feel noticed? Do you feel valued? Do you feel accepted? Can you see that members are devoted to one another, that they’re serving one another and their community, honoring one another? Do members respect and follow their church’s leaders?

Do people’s faith there seem genuine? Take adequate time to figure that out, to find out if it’s really a good church family. Let people who greet you there and seem interested in knowing you in on the fact that you are a younger believer, and see what they have to offer you so that you can grow in your faith. Some churches offer new believers classes or small groups for baby Christians, or even one-on-one or one-on-two personal discipleship. Whether intentional, like a program, or unintentional, younger believers grow up as they watch and learn from others, just like little kids do with their parents, through we call modeling. I can tell you the names of several excellent role models that didn’t just teach me about what it means to follow Christ when I was young, but they showed me.

I learned by watching them, just like the apostle Paul taught as well as showed Timothy, Titus, Luke, and many others. He not only taught these people in church settings, he was with them. They got to see him up close. Jesus did the same thing with his disciples, didn’t he? If you can connect with a close friend or two like that who you see as a serious believer, someone that’s ahead of you in the faith, whose faith is genuine, someone you respect, they could well become the biggest asset in helping you grow in your faith too. One more thing I’ll mention: find a way to serve others.

Following Christ is the opposite of living selfishly. Get involved in serving others. When you find that right church family, I’m sure there are going to have many ways you can plug into a ministry. The church that Tony and I are part of has scores of different ministries. When we serve others using the gifts that God has given us and some of our time, that really strengthens us. The healthier a church is, the higher the percentage of its members are going to be involved in using their time and talents in serving others.

You can count on that being true. Unhealthy churches, like the one Paul was having to write to and admonish here in Corinth, those churches almost always have a few overworked people trying to carry on the ministry. A majority of people who are watching them and often criticizing them. If you pick up on that vibe, that is not a place for you to grow. I’ve heard the analogy to hunting dogs. If pointers and setters get ample opportunities to do what God created them to do, they will be healthy and happy.

But if they’re just bored, sitting in their pens all the time, they will start snapping and growling and turning on each other. I thought of that when I read Paul’s line about envying and quarreling that was going on in the Corinthian church between members. Christians who are busy serving the Lord together with other people don’t have the time or the desire for that unhealthy nonsense. Maybe you’re listening today and you’re not a baby Christian. You’ve been a believer for some time, but realize you have not grown very much. Your spiritual transformation has stalled out at some point.

Part of that is on you, for sure, no offense, but you’ll not grow without taking in proper spiritual nourishment consistently and developing some spiritual disciplines in your life. But it could also be that you’re not in a church where you are challenged and where spiritual maturity is properly modeled to you. Or maybe you’re not in a church family at all because something disappointed you in the past. Realize local churches are sort of like restaurants. There’s lots of them, and they are all different. Don’t let a disappointing experience with one that’s spiritually sick discourage you from finding one that’s vibrant and healthy, any more than you would quit eating out because of one bad experience at Captain Max Seafood House.

You wouldn’t do that, would you? Once your insides recovered from Captain Max tainted seafood, you’d try other spots because there are lots of good places to eat. Same with local churches. Find a really good one, and if you don’t feel like you’d know where to start with that, email us at paul@sharetheword.org with your zip code, and we will actually try and help you find a good one. Okay, the rest of chapter 3 describes something we discussed before in some detail, so I’ll cover it briefly here. In context, I think the apostle Paul is saying, without coming out and actually saying this, that the current leaders of the church at Corinth were not doing a good job.

That was obvious. Organizations rarely rise above their leadership. Paul had previously been there for 18 months when the church was planted, and then the excellent teacher Apollos had followed him for an undisclosed time. But since then, as Paul is writing this letter now, there are unnamed leaders in the Corinthian church who it sounds to me like he is sternly admonishing. Listen at verse 10 in chapter 3. By the grace of God given to me, I laid a foundation there as a wise builder, and someone else is now building on it.

But let each one build with care, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on that foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and fire will test the quality of their work. If what has been built by them survives, the builder will receive a reward. But if it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet he himself will be saved. Even though only as one escaping through the flames.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is sacred, and you together are God’s temple. It was in episode 41, actually, that we learned about the judgment seat of Christ, which is what Paul is describing here. He points to the fact that at this future day, he calls it that day, it’s the time of evaluation for the life’s work of Christians by Jesus Christ. This is after we die, when we’re in heaven.

It’s not a judgment where believers will be deciding whether they are lost or saved, but one deciding whether we will be rewarded or not rewarded for what we have done in this lifetime. It certainly sounds to me like Paul is specifically applying that here to this church’s leaders. Those who accept the mantle of spiritual leadership will be held to a very high standard by Christ. It’s an awesome responsibility to care for the souls of people and to shepherd God’s flock. The responsibility for the disorder and the chaos going on at this point in Corinth, Paul sounds like he’s laying in large part at the feet of whoever was leading that congregation currently. He says to them, Realize God’s people are His temple.

If anyone destroys that temple, God will destroy that person, for God’s temple is holy. That’s a serious warning to those who want to be spiritual leaders. If you’re in that role and failing to teach His word accurately, or failing to be a model of what it means to follow Christ, or mismanaging things out of laziness or lack of courage, or in any other way contributing to or causing confusion or unhealthiness in a local church, man, it would be very wise for you to just get out of the way. One day, every believer will give an account, and on that day, spiritual leaders will be held to a higher standard than anyone else. On that uplifting note, I think I’m out of time for 1 Corinthians 3. But the big idea we want to remember for this chapter is that God is looking for all of His children to grow up and stay healthy.

I hope that’s your goal, and if so, we’re here to help. Thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. You know, the necessity of spiritual maturity and the unity in Christ is a vital role that every believer should participate in in order to build the church. It’s God who will judge each and every one of us.

It’s God who evaluates the quality of our work in His kingdom. Are you still on milk or are you on to meat? Another great episode that brings to light the big ideas of 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Stick with us and let everyone know that we’re here. Be part of this Great Commission project and check out the website at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers goes out to all of you.