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Observe here, 1. The honourable title put upon the ministers of God, they are labourers or workers together with God.
But in what sense are they so?
Ans. Not so by any power or their own to produce any spiritual effect, as if they without God could work faith and repentance in the hearts of sinners; but they work only by an external application of the ministry of the work, and the means of grace to the souls of men. They are under-labourers to God, and God honours them by working by them, and working with them, for the conversion of men.
Observe, 2. The honourable relation in which the church stands to God: the church and people of God are his husbandry, and his building: Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
Which phrase implies, 1. Power and goodness in making them so: a building is not of itself, nor is a field clothed with goodly corn of itself.
2. It implies dominion and absolute sovereignty: the master is the orderer of the house, and the husbandman the disposer of his ground.
3. It denotes propriety and interest, that we are not our own, but God's. The house is the owner's, not its own. God is theirs, and all that God has is theirs also.