Original Meaning

IN THIS PASSAGE Paul continues the theme of godly wisdom as the key to growth in the Christian faith, which 2:6–16 introduced. But now he shifts from contrasting Christians (those with the Spirit) and non-Christians (those without the Spirit) to comparing two kinds of Christians—those who are being controlled by the Spirit and those who are not.

The latter are described in 3:1–4 as factious. Their quarreling not only mocks the cross-centered gospel (1:18–2:5) but fails to recognize the fundamental equality of all believers when measured against the attributes and character of God. Paul illustrates this equality with the metaphors of farmers in a field (3:5–9a) and construction workers on a building, specifically one as valuable and holy as the temple (3:9b–17). First Corinthians 3:18–23 forms an inclusio (a repetition that marks off the beginning and end of a section of text) with verses 1–4, as verses 4 and 22 both refer back to the Corinthians’ aligning themselves with rival leaders. Verses 18–23 thus round off chapter 3 by stressing believers’ access to all spiritual blessings, making such rivalry unnecessary and inappropriate.

The contrast between “spiritual” and “worldly” in 3:1–4 thus differs from the contrasts in 2:6–16. “Worldly” in verse 1 is a slightly different Greek word than in verse 3, but both are pejorative.1 The KJV translates both as “carnal,” that is, “fleshly” or dominated by one’s sinful nature, in this context manifested by jealousy and quarreling. “Spiritual” must therefore mean not merely having the Spirit but having the Spirit in charge. Even at the end of Paul’s one-and-one-half-year stay in Corinth, he had expected these young Christians to be more transformed in their behavior. Now, a full three years later, their squabbling is that much more inexcusable. Their immaturity resembles that of adults acting like infants by still eating only baby food (v. 2). Or, to change the comparison, they are acting like unregenerate people (“mere men”—v. 3b) rather than those in whom the Spirit has come to reside. Verse 4 reminds us of the specific problem at hand and reiterates two of the slogans of 1:12.

Verses 5–9a clarify another problem with the Corinthians’ divisiveness. Not only is their behavior diametrically opposed to a focus on Christ crucified (the point of 1:18–2:5), but it also ignores the fact that all Christian leaders are merely “servants” (v. 5) with relatively equal and insignificant roles to play compared to the role God plays in causing his church to grow.

Verse 5b confirms our suspicions from 1:13–17 that part of the factionalism involved allegiance to those individuals who had personally led different groups of the Corinthians to the Lord.

Verses 6–7 compare the church to a field and its leaders to workers in that field. Particularly in the first century, farmers were keenly aware that their own contribution to a successful harvest in any given year was rather minimal compared to the vagaries of nature, which were seen to be directly in the hand of God or the gods. Verse 7a is thus not an absolute statement but a relative one: compared to God’s role, humans’ roles are nothing of consequence. And although there is diversity of function (vv. 5b, 6a, 8b), all godly leaders have a common purpose (literally “are one”—v. 8a), which is the growth of the church.

Verse 9a must thus be interpreted not as teaching that Paul and Apollos were on a par with God but that they are fellow workers in God’s service and hence on a par with each other.2 Indeed, the emphatic position of the word theos in all three of its occurrences in the Greek of verse 9 makes it clear that Paul is stressing God as the one to whom the “fellow workers,” “field,” and “building” belong.

The end of verse 9 belongs with verses 10–15 as the start of a new paragraph. The NIV omits the Greek “you are” which prefaces “God’s building.” Just as Paul has described the church and its leaders with an agricultural metaphor in verses 6–9a, he now does so by turning to the world of construction (vv. 9b–17). Here again God’s sovereign guidance comes to the fore (v. 10). Paul likens himself to an “expert builder,” literally a “wise master-craftsman” or “chief-engineer.” Paul deliberately chooses the word for “wise” to contrast his godly wisdom with the Corinthians’ misguided claims to wisdom. The word for “builder” is the word from which the English “architect” derives, but in Greek it referred not so much to the one who drew up a blue print as to the on-site supervisor.3 The foundation of any truly Christian edifice must, of course, be the cross-centered gospel of Jesus Christ (v. 11).

There remain, however, two quite different ways of building on that foundation. Gold, silver, and costly stones reflect valuable materials that do not easily burn. Wood, hay, and stubble cost less and are quickly consumed by fire (v. 12). In the ancient world, people would have built a temple out of the former and an ordinary home out of the latter. Verse 13 likens “the Day” (i.e., the Day of the Lord or Judgment Day) to just such a fire. “It will be revealed” (v. 13b) probably refers to “the Day” and not to “the work.” When Christ returns, all believers will have to appear before him, “that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).4

“What he has built” (v. 14a) is more literally “the work which he built.” Paul is not teaching salvation by works but is referring instead to Christ’s assessment of the way Christians have lived their lives subsequent to salvation (elaborating the theme of v. 8b). These works flow from faith and include everything that pleases God, aligns itself with kingdom priorities, and advances his purposes in the world.5

The nature of believers’ rewards remains unspecified here (v. 14b), but in 4:5 it will be described as “praise from God.” One naturally thinks, for example, of the master’s words to the faithful stewards in the parable of the talents: “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21, 23) or of the imagery of Revelation 14:13 in which the good deeds of those who die in the Lord follow them.6 Such people receive the reward of knowing that they spent substantial time building relationships that would last into eternity.

The “it” with which the NIV begins verse 15 is spelled out in the Greek as a person’s “work.” This work thus becomes the nearest and most natural antecedent for the unexpressed object of “suffer loss.” As Prior puts it, “No doubt every Christian’s work is mixed in quality; no doubt we all shall have the awesome sadness of seeing much of our work burned up.”7 But it may be that Paul has in mind also the loss of the reward, that is, diminished praise and increased shame as we stand before Christ’s judgment seat (cf. 1 John 2:28, in which avoidance of shame before the Lord is one of the motives for faithful living now) and as we realize how much of our lives were spent in activity of no eternal value.8 Such believers are still saved, but by the skin of their teeth or, to use Paul’s metaphor, like escaping from a burning house (v. 15b).

If the temple imagery is implicit in the metaphor of building with costly stones and metal (vv. 9b–15), Paul makes it explicit in verses 16–17. The church is not just any building; it is the most holy and valuable of edifices. Of course, Paul does not mean a literal place of residence, but the body of Corinthian believers. All the “you’s” of these two verses are plural; corporately these Christians form one temple. “In you” at the end of verse 16 would be better translated “among you.” Just as Jewish and pagan temples were believed to be the dwelling place of God (or the gods), so also the Christian fellowship is the special place of the Spirit’s presence. That is why the threat of verse 17a is so harsh. Here Paul warns against any who would try to destroy9 the church. These are clearly different people (potentially some of the patrons or local leaders of the Corinthian factions) from those who used poor building materials in the previous paragraph. Here people are trying to tear down the structure! Understandably, God’s response will significantly differ as well: he “will destroy” (i.e., eternally condemn) them.

Verses 18–23 close the chapter with Paul repeating his appeal to banish divisiveness. The quarrelsome Corinthians are deceiving themselves into thinking they are wise by following society’s standards of self-promotion, when in fact they must become foolish by the world’s standards and embrace the godly wisdom which Paul has been expounding (vv. 18–19a).

The futile end of those who fail to take this corrective action is again underlined by two Scriptures: Job 5:13 and Psalm 94:11, quoted in verses 19b–20. In both Old Testament contexts, sinful, godless behavior is in view, so again it is clear that Paul is not condemning all wise people, merely those who think they can be wise without God. 10

Verses 21–23 highlight a final reason for the futility of such attitudes: the Corinthians have everything they could legitimately need or want in Jesus. Indeed, Paul turns their slogans upside down. They do not belong to human leaders; those leaders, as servants (v. 5), belong to them, as does everything else in creation, present and future, inasmuch as they are in Christ who shares in all the Father’s sovereignty (cf. Rom. 8:38–39).

Bridging Contexts

THE OVERARCHING THEME of chapter 3 suggests a fourth way to overcome divisiveness: recognize the fundamental equality and humble position of all Christians when compared against God’s infinitely holy and perfect standards (for the first three methods, see above, p. 67). To be sure, 3:1–4 is sometimes kept with 2:6–16, as it continues the theme of “spiritual” people. Similarly, 4:1–5 is sometimes tacked on to 3:5–23 because of its reference to judgment. But despite these thematic overlaps, the inclusion of 3:4 and 22, coupled with the pervasive contrasts between right and wrong ways to live out one’s Christian life, mark chapter three out as a self-contained unit.11

The major issue we must resolve in order to apply 3:1–4 today is the question of who in contemporary Christianity corresponds to the “carnal” Christians in Corinth. There are in fact two ever-present dangers to avoid in coming to grips with the identity of these carnal Christians. The first is to deny the category altogether, in flat contradiction to Paul. There are those who seem to claim that there is no such thing as a carnal Christian.12 This is an unfortunate way of putting things, since the term carnal comes straight out of the Bible here.

The second danger is to define carnality in much broader terms than Paul does, so that anyone who has ever made a profession of faith, however superficial, can be counted as a true (but carnal) Christian, irrespective of his or her subsequent lifestyle.13 We must remember that Paul is not talking about such people here. These Corinthians have received the Spirit, exercised his gifts, and grown in wisdom and knowledge (1:7; 12:13) but are now using what they have learned and experienced in a destructive rather than constructive fashion. What is more, spirituality in Paul’s world was much more bound up with group behavior than with individual piety.14 The New Testament knows of no Christians who are not associated with a fellowship of believers. This does not mean that a person cannot be saved if he or she never goes to church, merely that Paul is not likely to have had such people in mind when he spoke of carnal Christians.

A subordinate issue is whether or not Paul imagines carnality (or worldliness or immature behavior) as acceptable for those who are new Christians but not for those who have had time to mature. Although this approach is widely touted, it is probably invalid.15 It often results from reading Paul’s contrast between milk and solid food in verse 2 in light of Hebrews 5:12 or 1 Peter 2:2, in which milk takes on more positive connotations. But neither of these letters was yet written when Paul penned 1 Corinthians. And if “spiritual” in verse 1 means being controlled by the Spirit, exhibiting the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, and so on (Gal. 5:22–23), then such spirituality is possible for every believer from the moment of conversion on and in every subsequent stage of life. So, too, is carnality, whenever a person rebels against the Spirit’s guidance.16

The view that denies carnality altogether does rightly stress that many Christians have interpreted this concept out of context. Carnal or worldly Christianity is nothing more or less than being controlled by one’s sinful nature, performing what Galatians 5:19–21 calls “the acts of the sinful nature”—sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and on and on (cf. the vice lists of Rom. 1:29–31 and 1 Cor. 6:9–10).

Those who deny that Christians still have a sinful nature run afoul of the twin emphases of Romans 6–8, in which Christians are promised substantial victory over sin but repeatedly commanded to put to death the old self which continues to compete with the Spirit for an individual’s allegiance. But a person who seems never to submit to God’s will is more likely the “natural” person of 2:14 than a carnal Christian, regardless of what professions he or she has made at some time in the past. Again, we must remember 1:6–7, where Paul states that these Corinthians had seen remarkable transformation in their lives and spiritual empowerment but were now abandoning these victories in favor of petty infighting.

Fee concisely captures the correct balance: “There is no question that Paul considers his Corinthian friends believers and that they are in fact acting otherwise. But Paul’s whole concern is to get them to change, not to allow that such behavior is permissible since not all Christians are yet mature.” Again, “spiritual people are to walk in the Spirit. If they do otherwise, they are ‘worldly’ and are called upon to desist. Remaining worldly is not one of the options.”17

The major interpretive debate that affects our application of the rest of chapter 3 is the controversy over whether Paul teaches degrees of reward in heaven. Otherwise, Paul’s metaphors remain quite universal. People in most all times and places understand the basic concepts of planting and harvesting. And temples continue to stand and be viewed as holy places by people in many cultures.

The theme in verses 5–9a of the fundamental equality of Christians, including Christian leaders in particular, must be stressed in order to make sense of Paul’s teaching about judgment in verses 8 and 12–15. From a human perspective, it is natural to imagine that the great evangelists and faithful sufferers among God’s people deserve much more than the convicted criminal who converts on death-row. But to demand what we deserve is to wind up defeated from the outset. Compared to the perfection God requires, the differences among his people are like the differences in elevation between Mt. Everest in the Himalayas and the Mariana Trench in the West Pacific—seemingly vast from an earth-bound perspective yet negligible when viewed from another planet! There is diversity of performance to be sure (vv. 5b, 8b) but not at expense of this ultimate leveling factor (v. 7).

Why are only Paul and Apollos named in verse 5? Some think the reference to building on another foundation in verse 11 implicitly reproaches those who were overly exalting Peter, perhaps in light of Christ’s promise that he would be the rock on which the church would be built (Matt. 16:18). But this seems overly subtle. Others suggest that the Apollos party was the most troublesome because of its apparent attachment to (false) wisdom. Although this may be more likely, we must take care not to read in too much. Perhaps Paul and Apollos were the only two rival leaders who had personally evangelized Corinth. More probable still, based on the observation that Cephas does reappear in verse 22, is the interpretation that Paul is giving just a representative rather than an exhaustive list of the factions.

Because Paul applies his metaphors of farm and construction workers to church leaders, some are tempted to limit the application of this imagery to a minority of believers. Once this is done, it is possible even to identify the judgment of verses 13–15 as separate from the final judgment of all humanity.18 But “the Day” is not easily turned into anything other than the universal, public reckoning which all people must face on Christ’s return (cf. Matt. 25:31–46, in which pronouncements of salvation and condemnation are combined with an assessment of the works that demonstrate the presence or absence of faith). Given that all believers are potentially leaders in some small sphere of ministry, and that all ultimately contribute in one way or another to the growth or stagnation of the church, it seems far too restrictive to limit the judgment of these verses to any select group of Christians.

At first glance, verse 11 seems flatly to contradict Ephesians 2:20, in which the apostles and prophets are the foundation of the church. This tension is one of several reasons many have denied the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. Such protests completely overlook the fluidity of metaphorical language. If Christ is the ultimate foundation, from a human perspective those who plant churches and proclaim the gospel also form a necessary base for the growth of any new congregation (cf. 1 Cor. 12:28). For the hypercritical, there is potential tension even between verses 10 and 11 here: does Paul lay the foundation (the preaching of the gospel) or was it already laid (in the completed work of Jesus)? Clearly both are true, depending on which aspect of church planting one wishes to stress.19

Interpreters of verse 12 must guard against allegorizing the six individual building materials. Their significance is collectively to contrast three relatively fireproof elements with three that quickly burn up. Nor may this fire be interpreted literally. The “as” of verse 15b makes plain that Paul is still writing at the metaphorical level. Historically, this passage has been the single most important New Testament text used by traditional Roman Catholic theology to support the doctrine of purgatory. But modern Catholic scholars are increasingly recognizing the illegitimacy of this interpretation. Nothing in the text refers to any process of purgation that would last beyond Judgment Day. But this very observation renders equally suspect the common Protestant doctrine of varying degrees of status or hierarchies in heaven.20 Doubtless all will have varying degrees of praise and blame from Christ on Judgment Day, but nothing in this passage even remotely suggests that such differing responses are somehow perpetuated throughout all eternity. Other New Testament texts that have been taken as teaching eternal rewards refer, on closer inspection, either to this same temporary differentiation before Christ’s judgment seat, to heavenly bliss without degrees of distinction, or to varying privileges in this life. The idea that our eternal happiness is at all contingent on performance in this life should be fundamentally depressing for all who are honest about their level of maturity or growth in the faith.21

A misinterpretation of the judgment seat of Christ is often bound up with a misrepresentation of carnality. The apparent injustice of being able to profess faith but never show any fruit of it and still be saved seems to be ameliorated by assuming that such a person will in some sense not get as much out of heaven. If one recognizes that neither verses 1–4 nor 13–15 admit such a person to be a Christian at all, then the tension is relieved by stressing that such people are not even saved.

We must exercise great care, therefore, not to use the category of carnal Christian to give false hope to people that perpetual “backsliddenness” is a viable option for those who want to spend eternity with the Lord. It is important to stress too that this conclusion does not favor either perspective in the Calvinist-Arminian controversy. Both sides recognize that those who die in unbelief and rebellion are lost. They merely differ as to what that proves about whether or not such people once were saved.

The major error to avoid in verses 16–17 is the individualistic interpretation. Later, 6:19 will teach that believers are each little temples of the Holy Spirit. But this passage speaks only of the church, corporately, as the residence of God.

A subordinate error equates the people trying to destroy God’s temple with the poor builders of the previous paragraph. Even shoddy construction is at least erecting a building of some kind, but those Paul warns in verses 16–17 are trying to demolish it.

The transition between verses 9b–15 and 16–17 seems to be as follows: God will indeed respond differently to different kinds of believers on Judgment Day, but the real danger to fear is the eternal destruction of those who would divide and tear down the church now. Paul never says that any of the Corinthians have crossed over this line, but he clearly warns against the activity in which some are engaging as having the potential to lead to this extreme. Once again, this does not necessarily imply that true Christians can lose their salvation. It remains possible that Paul would agree with John that those who split the church demonstrate by their behavior that they were never truly born again, no matter what previous professions they may have made (1 John 2:19). What is important is that Paul does not take for granted that every church member is a true disciple of Jesus, particularly when someone’s behavior remains fundamentally contrary to the spirit of unity that the gospel promotes.

The term for “destroy” (v. 17) must not be watered down to refer merely to temporal judgment nor taken as support for any doctrine of annihilation, in light of the consistent testimony of Paul elsewhere, the rest of the New Testament, first-century Judaism, and the Apostolic Fathers.22 The reason Paul chose this term, over against more common terms for eternal condemnation, is to show that the punishment fits the crime. They who would do away with God’s sacred enterprise will themselves perish. Overall these two verses form the strongest warning in all the New Testament “against those who would take the church lightly and destroy it by worldly wisdom and division.”23

Verses 18–23 climax Paul’s discussion on a more positive note. Divisiveness and fear of judgment both prove unnecessary for true believers because of their present, partial, and future full access to all spiritual blessings in the universe. This enables Christians to persevere in faith and obedience even when others ridicule both their beliefs and their behavior (vv. 18–19a). They can relax, knowing that those who exalt themselves against God will eventually come to ruin (vv. 19b–20).

The Job 5:13 quotation (“he catches the wise in their craftiness”), comes from one of Eliphaz’s speeches. Like Job’s other “friends,” Eliphaz is not always a reliable interpreter of God’s perspective. But this particular statement proves true as a generalization, even if Eliphaz seems to have misapplied it to Job.

Verses 21–23 then give the ultimate rationale as to why believers should not quarrel with each other—there is no spiritual blessing someone else has which they cannot have access to as well, either now or in the future. Paul generalizes beyond the various Christian leaders who unwittingly triggered these rivalries to include all of the cosmic forces people tend to fear, most notably the uncertainty of the future and the inevitability of death. In short, judgment for the true believer functions in a consistently positive fashion in this chapter, as compensation for present, often inglorious labor, and as a threat only for the person not genuinely related to Christ.24

Contemporary Significance

CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR Christ has popularized the concepts of 1 Corinthians 2:6–3:4 with its well-known circle diagrams for the natural, carnal, and spiritual persons. The natural person does not have the cross of Christ anywhere in his or her life; ego is on that person’s throne. The carnal Christian has the cross inside the circle of his or her life, but ego still remains on the throne. The spiritual Christian has the cross central and ego dethroned.25 These diagrams are both helpful and misleading. They correctly remind us that believers do not automatically have Christ in charge of every area of their lives. Christians are free to take back a certain measure of control and in essence do so every time they consciously sin. The diagrams also correctly capture the fundamental difference between Christian and non-Christian, though it is perhaps worth noting that ego is not always on the throne of an unbeliever’s life. More noble, family-centered or humanitarian concerns may be central, but the point remains that God is not.

The diagrams tend to mislead, however, when they are interpreted as meaning that a room full of Christians could be divided into carnal and spiritual. If carnality, or worldliness, means yielding to one’s sinful nature, while spirituality means yielding to the indwelling Spirit, then genuine believers may often be spiritual at one moment and carnal not long afterwards, or vice-versa. Some perhaps stay in one state longer than another. Many mature believers have been transformed by God’s Spirit over time (cf. Rom. 12:1–2) so that they sin much less than they once did, while many immature believers have experienced significantly less transformation. But to remain worldly, in rebellion against God’s Spirit, for too long a period of time calls into question one’s salvation, while to claim not to have sinned for some equally long interval trivializes the amount of conscious and unconscious violations of God’s perfect standards which all humans regularly commit.

The current debate over “lordship salvation” presents similar pitfalls.26 On the one hand, there is no biblical justification for a two-stage process in which one accepts Christ as Savior at one point in life but acknowledges him as Lord only at another point. No one may come to Christ who does not surrender his or her entire self in allegiance to a new master. On the other hand, this call must not be presented in such a way that it appears as if one must understand or be able to anticipate everything that will be involved in following Jesus. Similarly, inability to conquer sin in certain, specific areas must not automatically call one’s salvation into question. The seemingly paradoxical statement that encapsulates the biblical balance is that salvation is absolutely free but it costs people their entire lives.27

The view that one can be carnal for long stretches of time and still sneak into heaven with lesser rewards continues to remain prominent in certain conservative circles. These circles also tend to spawn sharp differentiations between the many biblical pictures of judgment. So, for example, the judgment seat of Christ is often separated off from the judgment of all humanity at Christ’s return. But, as already noted, the language of verse 13 renders this unlikely. Questions of how our experience with Christ during “the intermediate state” relates to coming resurrection, judgment, and the fullness of the kingdom tantalize us because of the lack of clear biblical answers, but we must resist the temptation to separate that which Scripture does not.

Presumably, for believers, final judgment is simply a public vindication and declaration of what they already knew about their destiny from death onwards. This further reinforces the idea that Judgment Day for Christians is not designed to separate believers into various ranks or hierarchies for all eternity. Ironically, those who most want to preserve the biblical doctrine of grace often unwittingly allow works a greater prominence in determining believers’ destinies than do those who stress lordship salvation.28 As one of my students once put it, much conservative Christianity reminded him of an exclusive country club trying to attract a broader clientele. The club, therefore, advertised that membership for the first year would be absolutely free. But after that, you paid through the nose!

Much of the application of Paul’s warnings against factionalism in 3:5–23 has already been highlighted in our discussion of chapters 1–2. Verse 5 anticipates a key definition of ministry—servanthood—which our discussion of chapter 4 will elaborate. The key distinction of 3:5–23, namely, the fundamental importance and relative equality of all believers’ contributions to God’s work in this world, requires further exploration here.

The metaphors of field and building anticipate Paul’s more developed metaphor of the body, in chapters 12–14, with all Christians exercising their spiritual gifts for the edification of the church (cf. Eph. 4:11–13). This vision of every-member ministry is being increasingly recaptured in growing churches today,29 but it still tends to empower only a minority of congregations and a minority of members within a given congregation. The image of Christ as the church’s one foundation (v. 11) functions much like Galatians 1:6–9 to warn us against following the proliferation of pseudo-Christian sects and organizations that profess allegiance to Jesus but lack fundamental orthodox tenets of the faith, most notably, the true Jesus of the Scriptures.

The positive function of Christ’s judgment seat in verses 13–15, parallel to the doxology in verses 22–23, should relieve the fear of death and of life after death that continues to haunt many Christians. No one should want to displease God or look forward to hearing his censure, but if there are no eternal hierarchies in heaven, then motivation by guilt should recede in importance in Christian ministry. In fact, there are good signs that this is happening increasingly. 30

On the other hand, verses 16–17 preserve a crucial warning which is not adequately being heeded—that the powerful, dynamic church leaders who consistently split congregations, engage in “witch hunts” and heresy trials against fellow Christians, and in general seek to build their own kingdoms in opposition to, rather than in cooperation with, fellow ministers may be headed down the road to outright apostasy themselves. Like the Corinthian faction leaders and their “groupies,” such people and their followers are not usually thought of as Paul’s primary candidates for carnality or even eternal condemnation, but in many ways they are the closest modern equivalents to those who went about quarreling and destroying the Corinthian church from within.31 Even in less extreme instances, Jerry Vines’ pointed remark rings true: “Many people in America today … are building crowds but are not willing to pay the price to build a church.”32

Freedom from fear of judgment should have profound effects on true believers in other ways. Our culture grows ever more performance-centered with each passing year. Competition infects our play, school, sports, and work. Adults face longer hours on the job with less security and more performance-based evaluation than was ever anticipated a generation ago when labor-saving devices were being heralded as ushering in the thirty-hour work week with vastly increased leisure and recreation time. Not surprisingly, but nevertheless tragically, the spirit of competition, comparison with one another, and rewards based on merit have overwhelmed many aspects of Christian living as well, both corporately and personally. Too many Christians continue to think that God relates to them just like the taskmasters they have known in their families and jobs, as they expect daily blessings or punishments according to their level of faithfulness and obedience. How liberating it can be when the church decides instead to model a counter-cultural lifestyle, loving people unconditionally, as Christ did.33

We need to recover too the foundational Reformation (and especially Lutheran) emphasis on gratitude as the primary motivation for living the Christian life. A person needs little added incentive for being friends with someone who has rescued him or her from drowning. Christ’s death for us on the cross should provide all the motivation we need to serve him. If we need more incentive, we have failed to grasp the most foundational logic of the gospel (cf. Rom. 6:1) and perhaps have not really appropriated God’s forgiveness at all. In that case, fear of not making it to heaven, not merely loss of reward, should provide ample motivation!34

The doctrine of grace is arguably the watershed that separates Christianity from all other world religions. It should cause no surprise, then, that the church has a difficult time warding off the persistent intrusion of works-righteousness. It is central to fallen, human nature to say that grace is unfair and we should get what we deserve. But no one honest about his or her own sinfulness could ever really want that. What makes God’s grace-filled gospel “good news” is that we don’t have to get what we deserve. Verses 12–15 remind a society preoccupied with statistics that God desires quality as well as quantity as his church grows. But true progress occurs when believers obey him in joyful response to the salvation Christ has already provided, rather than in the hopes of gaining greater reward (cf. Luke 14:12–14; 17:7–10).

Thus we receive “all things” (v. 21), and the way Paul defines “all things” in verses 21b–22 leaves little room for some believers to have certain blessings excluded. Such promises can enable ostracized, marginalized, and suffering disciples, who form perhaps a majority of all Christians worldwide today, to endure the pain of this world.

All too often we try to accumulate more and more possessions without finding lasting satisfaction in them. But we should not compete for limited goods at others’ expense when we realize the eternal compensation that will make present affliction pale into insignificance (cf. 2 Cor. 4:17; Rom. 8:18). The “baby busters” are increasingly recognizing what the rest of the world long since knew—that there is not enough material wealth for everyone to “have it all” in this life. Yet spiritually that is precisely what Christ promises. It is indeed worth becoming a “fool” (v. 18) to gain eternity!