James Nisbet Commentary - 1 Corinthians 3:9 - 3:9

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James Nisbet Commentary - 1 Corinthians 3:9 - 3:9


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SANCTIFIED FOR SERVICE

‘We are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.’

1Co_3:9

Your soul is God’s seed-field, God’s building; we are labourers together with God. Such a description of each individual life is very significant everywhere.

I. To us who are here as teachers they are just a parable of our own life; setting forth to each of us what should be his estimate of his own work and aim and purpose, exhibiting to him his field of work with the Divine light on it, and interpreting to him his own endeavours as a fellow-labourer with God, hoping to contribute in some degree towards the filling in and completing that Divine plan, that ideal picture of the life of every one of you which is in the heavens, and which in imagination he sees as a thing some day to be realised, and the realisation of which, or its failure, may largely depend on his own share in our life and work. It is this feeling that every heart contains the germ of some perfection that makes our life so profoundly interesting, and, it may be added, our responsibilities for the cultivation or neglect of any such germ or capacity so serious and engrossing.

II. But to you, too, these apostolic suggestions about the Divine influences at work in each heart, and the value of each life in God’s sight, and the Divine voices claiming to be heard in it, should be quite as stimulative as they are to us. They have in them the germ of all striving after purity and goodness, and of all hatred of sin, and enthusiasm for the uplifting of social life. The words of St. Paul to his Corinthian converts may furnish you with new interpretations of your own daily life and duty.

(a) If they were God’s husbandry, or God’s building, are not you? If the Spirit of God dwelt in them, how does He not dwell likewise in you? striving for your growth in holiness and good purpose, and for your salvation from sin and its defilements, as he strove for theirs?

(b) And if it was good for every man in that Corinthian community to be warned how he built upon the foundation of life that had been laid in Christ; if it was good for them to be reminded that every man’s work would be made manifest, and that the fire would try it, of what sort it was; it is good also for us to remember that we are living under the same law, and that we should take care lest haply we be found to be working against God.

III. That Epistle of St. Paul’s was written in pain and anguish of heart.—The seeds of Christian life which he had sown among them, the purifying influences of the Holy Spirit which were working among them through him and his fellow-labourers, all these ought to have produced fruits easily described, such as peace and love, and purity, and good works; but instead of these, and threatening their destruction, there had sprung up dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, and gross sins which I need not name. In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did they not prove that his work was threatened with failure? Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. And herein is the value of this word of his that God is dwelling and working in us.

Bishop Percival.



GOD AND THE SOUL

‘Ye are God’s husbandry.’

1Co_3:9

What this text tells us is this—that Christian people are to God just what the tillage of the earth is to us.

I. Our hearts and souls are like wild, uncultivated land.—As waste land wants time and labour and expense to bring it into cultivation, stones removing, weeds clearing, roots of old trees to be torn up, and then to be ploughed and dressed besides, so we are to understand it is with us. Land cannot bring itself in cultivation. Land cannot bring itself into a state fit for a crop. If land has been out of cultivation for a few seasons only, it wants ever so much care and trouble to bring it back again. It is so with us. We cannot bring ourselves into a state to give God a harvest. All that we produce of ourselves is against it. God has to bring our souls into a state fit to produce a harvest. Bad habits have to be rooted out, and our souls prepared to receive the seed of God’s Word, before there is the least possibility of His Word bringing forth what it ought to do. And we can no more do this for ourselves than the land we till can clear itself of weeds, or tear up the dead roots of trees, or remove its stones, or dress itself for sowing. It is God and God alone Who does this.

II. How does God prepare souls?—He has many ways. All land needs preparing for the seed, but it is not all land that wants exactly the same preparation. And what this text tells us is this, that just as a landowner with land to reclaim deals with each portion according to its nature, so God deals with souls. He knows your nature, and He knows mine, and He sets about preparing our hearts for His harvest, each of us according to what we require. If we will but let Him deal with us as He pleases, and take all that happens to us as His sending, we may be quite sure that all must go right. He knows how to prepare our souls—we are His tillage—and it is as great a mistake for us to murmur at His dealings with us, as for a piece of waste land to grumble at the way its owner takes to bring it into fruitful cultivation. Some hearts He prepares by sorrow, some by anxiety, some by sickness. Some by much trial in the world, others in loneliness and solitude. Others He deals with more gently. But with all He deals rightly; for He knows our nature, and all that He desires is our good.

III. In our hearts He sows His seed.—What that seed will bring forth will depend on how far we have let Him prepare our souls. Land cannot help being properly prepared if the farmer knows his business and takes the proper pains. God indeed knows how to prepare our hearts, and if we will let Him, He prepares them perfectly. But whether we are properly prepared for His sowing depends largely on ourselves. The land cannot resist the farmer, but we can and too often do resist our God. This, alas! is why you see such different results in different souls. Children of the same family, members of the same congregation, dwellers in the same parish, God is tilling all their souls, and you would often say that there was no difference at all in the opportunities they have had, and yet how differently they turn out! And here is the reason. God has been tilling them all; but some of them have yielded themselves to His tillage, and some have not.

Just as men rejoice in harvest over the fruit of their labours, so, too, in the great harvest, the end of the world, God will rejoice, and Christ will rejoice with joy unspeakable over every saved soul, over every one of us who has let God teach and train him, and lead him out of sin and into holiness, and make him fit for the heavenly home.

Illustration

‘Men vary. Men are not all alike. Thus one man is suited to one particular sort of goodness, and another to another. One man is suited to serve God in one way, and another in another. God calls one person to be very patient, and another to be very active; one man to serve Him by being learned, another by working hard in a trade; one man by a life of bustle and mixing much with his fellow-men, another by a life of seclusion and quiet. All are called to be honest and kind, to be true and sober and temperate; to fear God and to love their neighbours. But though all are called to these first duties, still each man has his own particular line, just as different kinds of land are suited to different crops, and therefore no one of us should judge another, but each should strive to do his own duty in the calling wherewith God calls him.’