Practical Principles for Present Crises

Psalm 84:8-12                               1 Corinthians 7:1–40                        Matthew 6:25-34

Practical Principles for Present Crises

Few chapters in Scripture have generated more confusion, misuse, defensiveness, and anxiety than 1 Corinthians 7. Entire traditions have treated marriage as spiritually inferior sparking enforced celibate priesthoods and strict monastics movements. Others have reduced marriage to little more than a legal arrangement for sexual fulfilment or procreation. Some have twisted Paul’s words into a defence of passivity in the face of injustice, while others have ignored his urgent pastoral concern altogether.

Yet beneath all the debates stands a remarkably practical and deeply compassionate chapter.

Paul is not writing abstract theology detached from real life. He is writing to believers living under pressure. Corinth was in distress. There were food shortages. There was economic instability. There was social stratification…the hierarchical division of society into classes based on socioeconomic status, wealth, or power. And these things were raising their ugly faces within the church of God in Corinth. So as in the case of the poorer believers, marriage carried unbelievable financial burdens. Families were strained. Did you really want to risk another unwanted pregnancy when you were struggling to feed the children you already have? 

And so the believers in Corinth were navigating difficult relationships, financially strained marriages, along with questions of divorce, social status, slavery, singleness, widowhood, and this thing called sexuality.

And into that confusion Paul does not offer simplistic rules. He offers gospel-shaped wisdom.

This chapter is about how Christians are to live faithfully in difficult times. It does not deal with how to escape difficulty or how to gain financial freedom or how to manipulate circumstances, but how to belong wholly to Christ in whatever condition we find ourselves.

And that makes this chapter intensely relevant to our own age.

As humans often do, we too are tempted to define ourselves by our status, our relationships (the more big names we can drop in one conversation the better we feel about ourselves), our sexuality (whatever that means in this age of bizarre and phantasmagorical redefinitions), our achievements, our economic security, or our sense of superiority. 

And like the believers in Corinth and doubtless throughout time, we also constantly think: “If only my circumstances changed, then I could finally serve God faithfully.”

In reply to these types of thoughts and anxieties Paul says something profoundly liberating: your usefulness to God is not suspended until your life becomes ideal. Did you hear that? Your usefulness to God is not suspended until your life becomes ideal. God didn’t choose you to be his child because you are someone special or someone important or influential or whatever…he chose you because he loves you and he loves you because he is love.

So, having this reality as our baseline, let’s unpack what the Holy Spirit has to say through Paul.

Paul begins with marriage and sexuality because the Corinthians themselves raised the issue. Apparently, some believers had concluded that abstinence within marriage was spiritually superior…perhaps because they viewed physical desires as inherently inferior…or perhaps they were concerned because of the current crisis…or perhaps because of ascetic philosophical influences.

Whatever their reasoning may have been Paul responds carefully.

Later in verse 26, he acknowledges the underlying anxiety behind these issues…they were experiencing some “present distress”…but notice that he refuses to treat marital intimacy as something unclean or spiritually lesser. Instead he says: “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.”

Now while this may not sound revolutionary to you, that statement was astonishing in the first century.

In Jewish society, while wives possessed certain protections under Mosaic law, divorce largely remained in male hands, and the reasons could be as arbitrary as her serving him tasteless or burnt food…an interpretation based on Deuteronomy 24:1 which states that a husband can divorce his wife if he finds "some unseemly matter" in her. 

In Greco-Roman society women possessed somewhat greater legal flexibility, yet the culture remained deeply patriarchal and sexually exploitative. Men frequently exercised unilateral authority. Sexual double standards were normal.

But Paul does something radical. He speaks of mutual authority within the marriage. Not merely the wife’s obligation to her husband. But the husband’s obligation to his wife. “The wife does not have authority over her own body,” he says, “but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

This is not tyranny. This is not coercion. This is not ownership. It is reciprocal selfless giving and receiving.

As you all know, the curse introduced distortion into male-female relationships. Instead of a mutually cooperative relationship, men and women strive to rule over each other…we seek to establish some form of self-centred dominance in the relationship. But in Jesus, the pattern of Eden begins to re-emerge; complementarity, dignity, mutual honour, and covenant faithfulness. A man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh…and only people with severe trauma issues or mental challenges treat their own body disrespectfully or poorly.

Paul’s vision of marriage is profoundly countercultural because it destroys selfishness and self-centredness. In his understanding, marriage is not a relationship between two autonomous people negotiating competing rights or one in which one partner uses or abuses the other. No, marriage is a relationship between two believers who are both learning how to serve the other better.

And notice something else. Paul refuses extreme ideas. While on the one hand he rejects sexual immorality, on the other hand he rejects hyper-spiritual denial within marriage. Abstinence may occur, he says, but only for concentrated prayer and only by mutual consent and only temporarily. 

Why? Because, as we have already seen, Christianity does not treat our embodiment as evil. God made us embodied creatures. And therefore, as marriage is a covenant made between two embodied people, their physical intimacy is good and pure and holy.

One of the reasons why some marriages collapse is not because of sudden conflict, but rather through a slow process of selfishness. One spouse withdraws emotionally…another weaponizes affection…another becomes cold and indifferent…another treats intimacy as leverage.

But Paul calls Christian marriage back to mutual service. He flips the question from “what can I get out of this relationship” to “what can I give to this relationship…how may I love faithfully?” And that transforms everything.

Then secondly, in 7:6–24, Paul tells us that faithfulness matters more than status. As the discussion unfolds, Paul addresses singles, widows, married couples, mixed marriages, slaves, Jews, and Gentiles…almost every social category imaginable. And he speaks about these categories because the Corinthians were obsessed with status.

In first-century society, marriage carried status just as freedom carried status and ethnicity carried status. Obviously, upward economic mobility carried status and respectability carried status.

Corinth was a culture obsessed with climbing the proverbial ladder, but Paul dismantles the entire system.

“Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what matters.”

Again, to us that doesn’t really leave much impact, but in their situation in life, that statement is extraordinary. Remember, circumcision had once marked covenant identity itself. Yet Paul now says external distinctions no longer define spiritual worth because Jesus has fulfilled what circumcision pointed toward. The stripping off of the flesh through the shedding of blood. 

Likewise, slave and free stand equal before Christ. Of course, this does not mean slavery was good as some have argued in the past. In verse 21 Paul explicitly says slaves should gain freedom if possible. But he refuses to allow worldly hierarchies to define Christian identity.

The Church was revolutionary precisely because it created a community where worldly status lost ultimate significance. Imagine the scandal of master and slave sharing the Lord’s Supper together as equals.

The Roman world had never seen anything like it. And Paul keeps repeating the same principle: remain faithful in whatever state God has called you.

Again, this does not mean that Christians must never seek to change or better their circumstances. Paul is not condemning marriage, freedom, or improvement in this chapter. Rather, he is attacking the restless belief that spiritual worth depends upon external advancement.

That temptation still dominates modern culture. “If only I had more money…” “If only I were married…” “If only I were single…” “If only I had another career…” “If only my social standing improved…” Then I would finally matter.

But identity rooted in status always enslaves. While the world constantly urges us to become more, the gospel says that we have everything we need because we already belong to Jesus who is the sovereign king over all things.

And therefore Paul says: “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.” That applies far beyond literal slavery. Many people today are enslaved to approval or to image or to ambition or to romantic fantasy or to social comparison.

But Christians belong to another kingdom. Our worth was settled on the cross. God demonstrated his love for you by paying a penalty that was not his to pay, but yours.

Then thirdly, in 7:25–31Paul speaks about the present form of this world that is passing away. Now, this section is often misunderstood.

Some imagine Paul expected the physical end of the universe within months. But the context points more naturally toward a present historical crisis affecting Corinth…a period of severe instability and suffering which Paul believed God would mercifully shorten. Now, after saying that he believed the time of distress has been shortened,  he offers them some startling advice: “Those who have wives should live as though they had none… those who mourn as though they were not mourning… those who buy as though they possessed nothing.”

What on earth does he mean? Well, I don’t believe that Paul is calling believers to emotional detachment or abandonment of responsibility. I think that he is speaking about perspective. He is saying that as every earthly structure is temporary, none of them are ultimate. Marriage, though it matters deeply, it is not ultimate. While sorrow is real, it is not ultimate. While possessions are useful, they are not ultimate. Because the present form of this world is passing away. Everything in creation is moving towards a new creation where the temporary will be discarded for the eternal.

You see, Paul wants believers to live free from total absorption in temporary realities. That is as desperately needed today as it was in the first century. Modern society teaches us to absolutize temporary things.

Politics, romance, career, possessions, personal fulfilment…these things are all presented to us as ultimate…and when temporary things become ultimate things, they crush us.

But followers of Jesus must live differently within the world.

Of course we date, we get engaged, and we marry…we work, we grieve, we rejoice, we buy, we sell…but we hold all these things with open hands, because our citizenship lies elsewhere.

But unfortunately, some believers are spiritually exhausted because they are trying to extract eternal meaning from temporary things.

Finally, in 7:32–40, Paul summarises everything he has said by urging undistracted and undivided devotion to the Lord.

His final concern is not anti-body or anti-marriage. It is undivided devotion.

Of course the unmarried believer possesses certain freedoms for ministry that married life naturally limits because marriage brings legitimate responsibilities, concerns, and obligations.

But Paul is not criticising those responsibilities. He is simply being realistic given their present circumstances. While marriage is glorious, it is demanding.

But notice that he also says that singleness is not deficiency. Now, while our culture does not frown on singleness, Roman society strongly incentivised marriage and often penalised lifelong celibacy socially and economically. Voluntary singleness was unusual unless tied to some philosophy or religion.

Yet Paul says Christianity honours both marriage and singleness, because neither state determines spiritual worth. Marriage is good. Singleness is good. Neither is ultimate because only Jesus is ultimate.

And that means every believer…married or unmarried…must ask this simple question: “How may I serve God most faithfully in my present calling?”

You see, at the heart of 1 Corinthians 7 lies a single, liberating truth: followers of Jesus do not belong to themselves. They belong to God.

And that changes the way we view marriage, singleness, giftedness, suffering, status, and ambition because following Jesus ultimately changes our identity.

In this chapter, Paul is teaching believers how to live faithfully during unstable times without being consumed by instability itself.

The Corinthians feared scarcity, uncertainty, and social pressure. And I think we do too. But Paul keeps redirecting our eyes away from panic or self-preservation, toward faithful devotion. We are to serve faithfully in whatever state or circumstance that God has placed us because we do not belong to ourselves…we have been bought with a price and that defines who we are in the present form of a world that is passing away.

So here is the great comfort of the chapter: Because Christ reigns, believers are free. Free to marry without idolising marriage. Free to remain single without shame. Free to serve faithfully even in hardship. Free from slavery to status. Free from the exhausting need to prove themselves.

You see, the Christian life is not about constructing the perfect earthly existence. It is about wholehearted devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ in whatever circumstances he has appointed. And then one day, when the present form of this world finally passes away completely, those who belong to Christ will discover that none of their faithfulness was wasted.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2026

Cleansing God’s Community

 1 Peter 1:13-16                   1 Corinthians 5:1–13 & 6:1-11 & 6:12-20

Cleansing God’s Community

One of the most frightening things that can happen to a church is not that it becomes small…or that it becomes poor…or even that it becomes unpopular. No, the most frightening thing that can happen to a church is when it loses the ability to blush. 

When sin no longer grieves us, when compromise no longer shocks us, when holiness becomes negotiable, and when obedience is treated as extreme, the church has already begun to rot from within.

That is precisely the situation in Corinth. 

The Corinthians were proud of their spirituality. They boasted in wisdom, gifts, freedom, and knowledge. Yet while they congratulated themselves on being enlightened, educated, and mature, gross immorality had settled comfortably into the church itself.

And Paul does not tip-toe around the issue nor does he soften the language of rebuke. He does not hide behind ambiguity. He does not fear offending the culture. Because when the holiness of God and the purity of Christ’s church are at stake, silence becomes betrayal.

These two passages from 1 Corinthians confront three great corruptions threatening the church:

1. Tolerated immorality within the church body.

2. Worldly legal systems being used by believers against other believers.

3. Sexual rebellion against God’s original creation design.

And behind all three stands one central truth: The church belongs to God, and therefore the church must reflect the holiness of God.

Paul opens with shocking words: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you of a kind not even tolerated among the pagans!”

Now, the word Paul uses here is porneia…a broad term referring to sexual activity outside God’s ordained covenant of marriage. In this particular case, a man is involved sexually with his father’s wife, something explicitly condemned in the Law of God. (Leviticus 18:8)

But what is astonishing is not only the sin itself. It is the church’s response…or to be more precise, their lack of response. Not only did they do nothing to prevent this sin, but they also seemed to have accepted it.

In addressing this unthinkable and unacceptable reality in the church of God in Corinth, Paul says: “And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn?”

And that, dearest beloved brethren, is the true scandal.

The church was proud when it should have been ashamed.

As Paul rightly alludes to, even the pagan world recognised incest as shameful. Greek mythology itself treated such relationships as catastrophic violations that brought pollution and judgement upon entire cities. Roman law prohibited incest. Yet this church…people who claimed to follow a holy God…had become more tolerant of sin than the surrounding culture.

Dearest beloved brethren, this remains one of the great dangers of modern Christianity. We live in a culture that increasingly treats sexual autonomy as sacred. The highest moral good today is not holiness but self-expression. 

The world says: “Your body belongs to you.” “Your desires define you.” “Love is love.” “What consenting adults do privately is nobody’s business.”

But Scripture never speaks that way.

The body of believers belongs to God. We are his holy Temple…as I said last week, we are sacred space…we do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God.

And therefore the church cannot bless what God forbids simply because the culture celebrates it.

There are churches today that proudly affirm what Scripture clearly condemns. Churches that apologise for biblical teaching. Churches that treat holiness as intolerance. Churches that fear social rejection more than divine judgement. Churches that boast that they are “all inclusive”.

Paul would say to such churches exactly what he said to Corinth: “Your boasting is not good.”

So Paul commands the church to remove the unrepentant man from fellowship. Now, that may sound harsh to modern ears because modern Christianity often confuses love with permissiveness, but biblical love is not the removal of moral boundaries.

Biblical love seeks restoration through truth and therefore Paul says: “Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

This is not a call for violence like stoning or flogging or burning at the stake. Nor is this vengeance or cruelty. No, this is the removal of the man from the covenant protection and fellowship of the church so that he might be awakened to the consequences of sin and be led to true repentance.

You see, Church discipline is restorative and healing more than it is punitive.

While it most certainly says: “You cannot persist in rebellion while claiming fellowship with Christ” it also says that the goal of Church discipline is that the sinner might be saved….“that his spirit may be saved.”

Divine discipline is driven by divine mercy and divine love.

Indeed a church that never disciplines serious unrepentant sin does not love sinners. Rather it abandons them to self-deception.

However, it is equally true that the church as a body is in danger if habitual, serious, and unconfessed sin is either tolerated or even condoned. To illustrate this Paul uses the image of leaven. “A little leaven,” he says, “leavens the whole lump.”

You see, sin has a tendency to spread. Unchecked compromise never remains isolated. What one generation tolerates quietly, the next generation celebrates publicly.

That is true in families as it is true in nations. And it is also true in churches.

Like leaven, unchecked corruption in the church cannot be contained. Indeed, unchecked corruption is contrary to what we ought to be as the Church.

Why? Because the Church is meant to be an unleavened people, because we are a Passover people. “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Here Paul reaches back to the Exodus. At Passover, Israel removed leaven from the house as an image of repentance, sanctification and renewal, because their holy God had redeemed them from slavery and brought them to himself.

In the same way, Christians are redeemed people. Christ has delivered us from slavery to sin. Therefore the old leaven must be removed. We have been saved from sin and therefore we must show our saved status by living lives that mirror the one who saved us…if we don’t, we deny our own confession.

However, at this point, Paul offers a corrective. This disassociation or disfellowship is only applicable within the confines of the covenant community. Indeed, if we disassociate from those of the world, how will they hear or see the Gospel? Besides, Jesus associated with sinners, tax-collectors, prostitutes, outcastes and the like because they needed a Saviour. So, Paul teaches us to let God judge those outside the Church…Church discipline is for those in the Church. “For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside?” Pauls asks. “Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges.”

And so, Paul now turns to lawsuits among believers.

Apparently, Christians in Corinth were dragging one another before pagan courts and Paul is horrified. “Do you not know,” he asks, “that ultimately the Church will judge the world? “So, if you have judgements concerning this life, why do you seek judges who have nothing to do with the Church?” 

You see, the Church is meant to display a completely different kingdom. The world operates through power, pride, self-interest, and revenge. The kingdom of Christ operates through obedience, humility, holiness, mercy, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, reconciliation, and truth.

And here Paul says something astonishing: “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?”

The modern world cannot understand those kinds of statements. Our culture is obsessed with rights. My rights. My body, my choice. My way or no way.

But Christians follow a crucified Messiah. Jesus was wronged. Jesus was slandered. Jesus was falsely condemned. Jesus suffered injustice without retaliation.

And Peter tells us: “When (Jesus) suffered, he did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)

The Corinthians wanted revenge through lawsuits. Paul wanted holiness through obedience to the law of Christ.

There is a profound difference.

The courts of the day were presided over by the unrighteous…those who neither knew God nor upheld his moral code of ethics. These are people Paul says that will not inherit the Kingdom. So why seek “right” from the unrighteous? 

Paul gives us one of the clearest moral warnings in this letter. “Do not be deceived…”

These words matter because people are often deceived even those who call themselves believers. Many imagine they can persist in their own ways and yet still inherit the kingdom of God, but Paul says otherwise.

And he lists a number of examples of things that disqualify us from the kingdom: sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, greed, drunkenness, theft, same-sex practices, slander or gossip, and swindling.

Now this is by no means an exhaustive list, but I do want you to notice something important: Paul does not single out one sin as though others are less serious. Sexual sin – sexual immorality, adultery, and same-sex practices – these are not the only damning sins. Greed is listed here. Drunkenness is here. Stealing. Slander or gossip. And cheating. Paul includes them all as behaviours that may disqualify those who practice them from inheriting the kingdom of God. 

And herein lies a very important lesson. The church must never become selective in its outrage against sin by making one sin worse than another…damning one while overlooking ther other.

But neither may the church erase nor ignore what Scripture plainly says.

For instance, same-sex practices have become an unmentionable or taboo subject in many churches today, but in this list here, Paul explicitly includes both participants in same-sex acts among those practices that may bar someone from inheriting the kingdom. 

However, it is important to note in terms of Church discipline or judgement that his previous rule about the acts of those outside the covenant community applies here. What unbelievers do is beyond the judgement of the Church. God will judge them as he sees fit. What we ought to be focussed on is sin within the Church that must be addressed and dealt with.

And please note that Paul is not referring to temptation here. Rather he is describing settled, habitual, unrepentant practices and an identity formation rooted in rebellion against God’s created order. And this matters because modern culture insists that affirming behaviours contrary to what Scripture teaches is compassion.

But the church cannot redefine holiness in order to gain cultural approval.

If God created humanity male and female, if marriage between one man and one woman is rooted in creation itself, if Christ affirmed that design, then the church has no authority to rewrite what God established.

But here is the glory of the gospel: Paul says, “And such were some of you.” “Were”, but not “are.”

The church of God in Corinth, like most churches in the Greco-Roman world, included former idolaters, former adulterers, former sexually immoral people, former thieves, former homosexual practitioners, former drunkards.

You see, in the face of human depravity, the Gospel proclaims human transformation.

Paul says: “You were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified.”

The gospel does not merely speak of forgiveness. It speaks of a new creation…it speaks of a new people.

And because of this, Paul now confronts the Corinthians’ distorted theology of freedom.

Apparently, some were saying: “All things are lawful for me.”

In other words: If I’m saved by grace through faith, what I do with my body no longer matters…I’m going to discard this body anyway…this is an anti-body ideology based on some Greek philosophical thought.

But Paul answers with devastating clarity. “I will not be dominated by anything.”

You see, Christian freedom is not freedom to sin. It is freedom from slavery to sin.

While the modern world defines freedom as the absence of restraint, the Bible defines freedom as joyful obedience to God. A train is most free on the train tracks. A fish is most free in water. Human beings are most free when living according to the purpose for which they were created.

And Paul says here that the body was created “for the Lord.”

And that changes everything. Your body matters to God because God created it and because God indwells it and because God will raise it. The body…your body and what you do with your body is important.

Christianity is not anti-body. The resurrection proves the opposite. We are not destined to be disembodied spirits. Our bodies are to be raised and glorified.

 But at this point, Paul says something profoundly important: He says sexual sin is never merely physical. Sexual union is never merely biological.

Quoting from Genesis Paul reminds us that “the two shall become one flesh.” You see, God designed sexual union as covenantal, spiritual, and personal.

While the modern world treats sex recreationally, Scripture never does because sex joins persons.

That is why sexual sin wounds so deeply.

It takes something designed for covenant faithfulness and tears it from its created purpose.

Paul therefore says: “Flee sexual immorality.” Not manage it. Not negotiate with it. Not flirt with it. Now, flee from it.

Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife because some temptations are not meant to be debated but escaped.

And then Paul reaches the climax of the chapter: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?”

Now, think about how staggering that is. The God who created all things and sustains all things…the God who once manifested his presence in the Tabernacle…the God who filled Solomon’s Temple…this God now dwells in believers. This God now dwells in you.

And therefore Paul says: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” And that price was the blood of Christ. The cross forever destroys the myth of personal autonomy. You are not self-owned. If you belong to Christ, your body belongs to Christ. Your sexuality belongs to Christ. Your desires belong to Christ. Your relationships belong to Christ. Your private life belongs to Christ. Everything belongs to Christ.

In short, we are to be a holy people in an unholy world because we belong to a holy God.

Corinth was a sexually confused, morally compromised, spiritually arrogant city. And the church was in danger of becoming indistinguishable from it.

Now we live in a world that is slowly becoming very much like the Greco-Roman world of Paul’s day…a world that celebrates what God condemns and mocks what God calls holy. But the solution to this dilemma is not retreat from the world nor is it surrender to the world.

The solution is faithful holiness within the world. We must endeavour to live lives that show that while we might be in the world, but we are not of the world.

The Church must once again become a people who tremble at God’s Word more than public opinion. A people who love sinners enough to tell them the truth. A people who understand that grace is not permission for rebellion. A people who remember that Christ died not merely to forgive us, but to make us holy and to conform us to his image…to make us like him. And perhaps above all, a people who remember this: “You are not your own.”

That is either ludicrous or glorious.

If Christ is not your Lord, it is ludicrous.

But if he is your Saviour, then it is glorious beyond words. Because the One who owns you is the One who died for you. The One who commands holiness is the One who purchased you on the cross. The One who calls you to purity is the One who gives you his Holy Spirit.

And therefore the final command of this passage becomes the calling of every believer in Jesus: “Glorify God in your body.”

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2026

Building God’s Temple with Care

Isaiah 53:1-3                 1 Corinthians 3:1–4:21                 Matthew 7:24-27

Building God’s Temple with Care

A building can look so sound in calm weather. A straight strong structure with a sound roof, solid doors, and sealed windows. But let hurricane force winds rise. Let the rain come down in torrents. Let the power of nature test its very foundations and challenge every joint and seam to the utmost and suddenly you discover what had not been quite obvious at first.

Paul is writing to a church that looks impressive on the surface. Of all the New Testament churches, Corinth appears to be the most gifted, active, and confident of them all…but as several ill winds blow through the house churches in the city, something troubling is revealed. The church may not be as impressive as it seems.

Arrogance. Pride. Jealousy. Division. Boasting. Competition. All these things had bubbled up to the surface, and Paul’s diagnosis is as sharp today as it was back then: “You,” Paul says to the church of God in Corinth, “you are still infants.”

Not because they lack knowledge or gifts but because their behaviour is no different from the world around them.

And so Paul does something deeply pastoral and yet deeply confronting. He takes them back to their original construction site. Because the question is no longer, “How impressive is your church?” But rather: “What are you building on – have you forgotten…have you forsaken the one and only true foundation? And how are you building on that one and only true foundation?” What materials are you using?

Paul begins with a tension we must not miss. While he calls them brothers and sisters in Christ, he speaks to them as if they were unspiritual.

And this is crucial.

While their confession of faith and the abundance of spiritual gifts show that they have the Spirit of God, as only the Spirit gives such gifts, their lives reveal that they are not living in step with him. So Paul does not deny their identity as Spirit-filled believers…no, he acknowledges that they are the church of God in Corinth…but while he does not deny their identity as believers, he does expose their glaring inconsistencies.

Their behaviour…rather than reflecting the likeness of Jesus…their behaviour was reflecting the lives of what he calls “people of the flesh”…not in the sense of an unconverted person, but in the sense of being a believer whose life is shaped by worldly values rather than heavenly values.

And what are those values? Well, pretty much the same as they have always been. Unhealthy relational assessments and evaluations and judgements based on perceived perfection, on social status, and an unhealthy alignment with personalities, cliques, groups, or factions.

“For when one says, “I follow…fill in the blank,” and another, “I follow…fill in the blank,” are you not being fleshly?”

These worldly values make the church looks less like the body of Jesus and more like a marketplace of competing brands.

And Paul’s response is devastating in its simplicity: “What then is Paul? What is Apollos?” Are they not simple servants? The Greek word used here, diakonoi, is functional but not flattering. These are not celebrities. They are not spiritual elites. They are waiters at God’s table…workers in God’s field. One plants…the other waters…but God gives the growth.

And this dismantles every form of worldliness in the church, because if God is the one who gives growth, well then no one gets to boast. And if both planter and waterer are “one” and on an equal footing as servants, then there is no hierarchy to fight over. Only shared service.

The church is God’s field. This is Old Testament language. Israel is often portrayed in the Old Testament as God’s field or his vineyard or his vine or his fig tree. This agricultural metaphor implies cultivation, care, and fruitfulness, the point being that like field and horticultural crops, believers are meant to grow. You are meant to produce something that reflects the one who planted you and the one who grants you growth because you are God’s field. 

At this point, Paul changes the metaphor from a field to a building, and his point becomes a little more precise. There is one foundation and only one: Jesus Christ. There are no alternatives, no upgrades, and no replacements.

And this is where Paul presses hardest: “Let each one take care how he builds.” Note that he doesn’t say when you build or whether you build, but how you build, because he is assuming that if you are a believer, you will be building on that one foundation with something whether that something is gold, silver, precious stones…or wood, hay, or straw.

And while the difference between these materials may not be always obvious and visible to us and others, it will be revealed in time, because there is a Day coming…a day of divine evaluation.

Now this Day is not meant to condemn the believer as the believer is saved by grace through faith in Jesus already…no, rather the Day is designed to reveal or expose the structure of the believer’s life in much the same way as a storm exposes the solidness of a building or as fire reveals the durability of substances. Some work will endure. Some will vanish, but the believer remains saved.

But here is the sobering truth: It is possible to be saved…it is possible to be a believer…it is possible to be part of a church…and yet still see your life’s work reduced to ashes.

But now Paul’s metaphors reach a climax. “Don’t you know,” he says, “that you yourselves are God’s temple?” This is not just any building. This is the place in which the holy, almighty, creator God has chosen to live.

What the Tabernacle and the Temple symbolised in the Old Testament…what the prophets promised…all is now fulfilled: God’s Spirit dwells in his people…which means you are no ordinary construction project.

You are sacred space. Each and every one of you. You are sacred space.

And therefore how you live as a member of God’s church…whether you live to build up your life and the lives of the other members of the body…to cultivate and nurture growth in both yourself and them, always esteeming others better than yourselves, or whether you cause damage to the church of God by being selfish, self-centredness, self-absorbed of by being individualistic or divisive or destructive or dismissive is not a small matter.

At this point, Paul turns to the root issue beneath everything:

The Corinthians think they are better than what they really are because they are using the wrong standards of measurement.

They are evaluating everything…status, success, spirituality…according to the wisdom of their age, and Paul says that that wisdom is foolishness. Not slightly misguided. Not partially helpful. No, foolish, stupid, because it operates without reference to God.

So Paul calls them to a radical reversal: “If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become ‘fools’ so that you may become wise.”

In other words: Lay down the metrics of the world. Stop measuring success by eloquence, influence, or status. Because all of it, Paul says, is already ours in Christ.

This is one of the most liberating truths in the passage: “All things are yours…you are Christ’s…and Christ is God’s.” In other words, there’s no need to compete when everything already belongs to you because you are in Jesus.

Then in chapter 4, Paul turns to address their views on leadership and again, he dismantles it. In the church, all leaders are nothing more than servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Servants and stewards. And what does Paul say is required of servants and stewards? Faithfulness. And here is where Paul relocates healthy evaluation. Healthy evaluation is not a matter of opinion, whether it is the opinion of others or whether it is your own opinion. No, healthy evaluation belongs to the Lord, because only he sees the hidden things. Only he sees the true motives. Only he sees the real intentions. 

And therefore, Paul says, it is best to reserve judgement – and we need to listen here to what Scripture says – it is best for us to reserve judgment or evaluation for that Day when every one of us will be correctly judged and evaluated by God…who is the only one who knows every single detail about every single one of his children. Our insight is so limited…it is so finite…we know so very little about the lives of others…so it is rather arrogantly hypocritical to think we can evaluate or judge other members of God’s church, don’t you think? 

“Who makes you different from anyone else?” Paul asks. “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not?” Why do you think that you are better than other believers?

And so, Paul says, that if we want to know what believers ought to look like in the church, we should look not to status or success, but rather we should look to the “product” produced by suffering…we should look to what is left standing after the storms of life have passed by.

Using himself and the apostles as examples he says, “We are fools for Christ… we are weak…we are dishonoured…to this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed, we are brutally treated, we are homeless.”

Now, in Paul’s case, this was not exaggeration. This was apostolic reality. But his point is that his building was still standing despite all manner of strife, struggle, and suffering.

And as such it reflects something deeper…it reflects the pattern of Jesus himself. As Isaiah says, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; he was despised as one from whom men hide their faces, and we esteemed him not…he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

You see, life in the church ought to be shaped by the cross. Believers ought to mirror the humility, obedience, faithfulness, and self-sacrificial nature of the one they profess to follow. 

Now in this light, the question comes to us. What does your building look like? What does your field look like? What are you building with? 

Because you are building something. Something ought to be growing in your life and in the lives of your fellow believers.

But what are your standards? What materials are you using? Are they shaped by Scripture or by the spirit of our age? Are they durable or merely impressive? Are you building for the approval of others or are you building for the evaluation of God? Or perhaps most importantly, are you truly open to the evaluation of God? Or has the beam in your own eye blinded you to your need to grow in the likeness of Christ?

And perhaps more searching still: How are you treating others in God’s church? Because if you are God’s temple and they are God’s temple and together we are all God’s temple then your words and your deeds matter. Your attitudes matter. Your behaviour matters.

So, what does maturity look like in your life? I’m not asking how much you know. I’m not asking how neat your theology is packaged. 

I am asking how deeply your life reflects the life of Jesus.

When others look at you, do they see Jesus? When others hear you speak, do they hear Jesus? 

Does your life mirror the life of Jesus or the lives of those who opposed him?

When the storms of life pass over you, after the skies clear, what is left standing?

Have you been tried and tested and weighed in God’s balance and been found wanting?

But perhaps more importantly what we should all ask is what will be left standing in that Day when God will test every thought, every word, every life, every work, every foundation.

On that Day the question will not be how impressive did I appear to be, but rather did my life’s labour endure?

So, dearest beloved brethren, build carefully. Build faithfully. Build as Jesus built because in the end only what is built on him will stand.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2026