1 Corinthians (1 Co) 3
3
1As for me, brothers, I couldn’t talk to you as spiritual people but as worldly people, as babies, so far as experience with the Messiah is concerned. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, because you were not yet ready for it. But you aren’t ready for it now either! 3For you are still worldly! Isn’t it obvious from all the jealousy and quarrelling among you that you are worldly and living by merely human standards? 4For when one says, “I follow Sha’ul” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you being merely human? 5After all, what is Apollos? What is Sha’ul? Only servants through whom you came to trust. Indeed, it was the Lord who brought you to trust through one of us or through another. 6I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. 7So neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, only God who makes things grow — 8planter and waterer are the same.
However, each will be rewarded according to his work. 9For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. 10Using the grace God gave me, I laid a foundation, like a skilled master-builder; and another man is building on it. But let each one be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Yeshua the Messiah. 12Some will use gold, silver or precious stones in building on this foundation; while others will use wood, grass or straw. 13But each one’s work will be shown for what it is; the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire — the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. 14If the work someone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward; 15if it is burned up, he will have to bear the loss: he will still escape with his life, but it will be like escaping through a fire.
16Don’t you know that you people are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17So if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you yourselves are that temple.
18Let no one fool himself. If someone among you thinks he is wise (by this world’s standards), let him become “foolish,” so that he may become really wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is nonsense, as far as God is concerned; inasmuch as the Tanakh says, “He traps the wise in their own cleverness,” 20and again, “Adonai knows that the thoughts of the wise are worthless.” 21So let no one boast about human beings, for all things are yours — 22whether Sha’ul or Apollos or Kefa or the world or life or death or the present or the future: they all belong to you, 23and you belong to the Messiah, and the Messiah belongs to God.
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1 Corinthians (1 Co) 3: CJB
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3
Laying a true foundation
1And yet, I myself, brethren, did not speak to you as spiritually minded beings, possessing the mind of Christ, but I spoke to you as to carnal men, still entangled in the mind of the flesh, and in Christ the merest babes, 2needing milk, not real meat. That was your condition. You were not able to receive what I might have told you. And that is still your state. 3The mind of the flesh works in you still. You are not spiritual, you are the human being, the human rent by division and strife, 4one of you saying that he is Paul’s disciple, another that he is Apollos’. 5-6That is not the divine unity, wherein Paul planted and Apollos watered, and wherein all life and growth is of God. What is Paul or Apollos? Servants of your faith, each one according to the task assigned by God. 7-9In this great oneness each receives the fulfilment and reward of his own function, sower and tiller all belong to one unity which is God’s field and harvest, or God’s building. In ourselves we are nothing. 10What if I, resembling a good and skilful architect, laid a foundation on which another is building? My function was an expression of God’s own grace imparted to me, and all the building similarly is of God, its parts expressing the grace which He confers. 11If a man misapply his own mission, and attempt to lay a foundation other than that already laid which is Christ Jesus, let him be sure he will receive the appropriate reward for such a corruption and reversal of the grace God gave him. 12Or if, instead of building on this foundation gold and silver and costly marble and stone, he build wood, thatch, straw, 13he shall certainly receive the appropriate reward of this faithlessness. The fire will burn up his work. 14-15The great day of truth will dawn, and reveal his faithless evil work, and the havoc he has made of the Church. It will all be destroyed, all pass away, yet shall he himself thereby be saved. 16For this is God’s temple, God’s building, the Spirit of God dwells here, 17and you yourselves are the one building of God, and therefore not one shall perish though the evil doer reap his own destruction.
Self-deception to be guarded against
18Cleverness and the wisdom of the world are not sufficient for these things. Thereby you may become self-deceived. 19And if one must become a fool in order to be wise, this is the wisest course, for the world’s wisest is a species of folly. “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (Job v. 13.). 20“The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity” (Ps. 94:11.). 21There is nothing in merely human wisdom, and why? because you already have the wisdom that includes all, 22that includes Paul, Apollos and Cephas, yes, and the world, life, death, the present and the future; 23it is yours because it and you are Christ’s, who is of God, and who therefore includes it all.
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.