1 Corinthians 3:21-23

1 Corinthians 3:21

Consider:

I. How Christ's servants are men's lords. "All things are yours: Paul, Apollos, Cephas." These three teachers were all lights kindled at the central light, and therefore shining. Each was but a part of the mighty whole, a little segment of the circle. In the measure in which men adhere to Christ, and have taken Him for theirs, in that measure they are delivered from all undue dependence on, still more, all slavish submission to, any single individual teacher or aspect of truth. The true democracy of Christianity, which abjures swearing by the words of any teacher, is simply the result of loyal adherence to the teaching of Jesus Christ.

II. Christ's servants are the lords of the world. The phrase is used here, no doubt, as meaning the external material universe. These creatures around us, they belong to us, if we belong to Jesus Christ. That man owns the world who despises it. He owns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling-ground, on which, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which he may do service. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and the best use of the outward frame of things is that we shall take it as the field upon which we can serve God.

III. Christian men who belong to Jesus Christ are the lords and masters of "life and death." Both of these words are here used, as it seems to me, in their simple physical sense, natural life and natural death. (1) In a fashion we all possess life, seeing that we are all alive. But that mysterious gift of personality, that awful gift of conscious existence, only belongs, in the deepest sense, to the men who belong to Jesus Christ. The true ownership of life depends upon self-control, and self-control depends upon letting Jesus Christ govern us wholly. (2) Even death, in which we seem to be so abjectly passive, and in which so many of us are dragged away reluctantly from everything that we care to possess, may become a matter of consent, and therefore a moral act. If we feel our dependence on Christ, and yield up our wills to Him, then we may be quite sure that death, too, will be our servant, and that our wills will be concerned even in passing out of life.

IV. Christ's servants are the lords of time and eternity, "things present or things to come." All things present, the light and the dark, the gains and the losses, all will be recognised if we have the wisdom that comes from submission to Jesus Christ's will as being ours, and ministering to our highest blessing. And then "all things to come"; the dim vague future shall be for each of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shoreless to the horizon; every little ripple flashing with its own bright sunshine, and all bearing us onwards to the Throne that stands on the sea of glass mingled with fire.

A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Dec. 2nd, 1886.

I. "Christ is God's." This is the greatest outgoing of infinite love. Unspeakable, inconceivable is the satisfaction of the Father in Christ as the substitute and advocate of men. The Father's delight in the Son incarnate is the uppermost link of the chain whereon all our hope for eternity hangs.

II. "Ye are Christ's" His property and possession. Think of this in two aspects. (1) How He obtains His property, and (2) how He will use it. He obtains it (a) by the sovereign gift of God, (b) by the price of His own blood, (c) by the renewing of the Holy Spirit. He will use His own (a) as objects to exercise kindness on, (a) as servants to do His work, (c) as living epistles in which the world may read the riches of His grace, (d) as company at His coming.

III. "All things are yours." Here is a right royal promise. The shout of a King is in the camp of Christians. All the fulness of the Godhead bodily has been treasured up in Christ, expressly that it may be within the reach of His people. (1) The ministry. Not the greatest of Christ's gifts, in their own intrinsic value, but appearing the largest at the moment, as occupying the foreground of the view, foremost in the list of possessions belonging to the King's children, come Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, ministers through whom they had believed. (2) "The world." The world is a birthplace for the new creature, and an exercise-ground for invigorating the spiritual life. (3) "Life." Life in the body possesses an unspeakable worth to the man who, being in Christ, lives anew and lives for ever. (4) "Death." When death is near the Christian meets it calmly, if not joyfully, as the dark, narrow door in the partition wall between time and eternity through which the children are led from the place of exile into the mansions of the Father's house. (5) "Things present or things to come." All things are yours, Christians, whether they lie within the horizon of time or beyond it in the unseen eternity. Whatsoever the Father owns becomes the portion of His children.

W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits,p. 119.

The Christian's Possession.

I. Look first at the main lesson of the text. It is one which the Churches of Christendom have not mastered yet. Must we not plead guilty to something which closely corresponds to the fierce and intolerant partisanship of the Corinthian Church? It is God's will that the unity of every Church should be made up of diversity, but one aspect after another of Divine truth should be periodically accentuated by a master-mind, and commended afresh to the consciences of men. It is by His appointment that now a St. Paul stands forth as the champion of faith and now a St. James as the champion of works. But the disastrous mistake so often repeated is to regard the teachers of these different types as antagonistic instead of being what God intends them to be, supplementary to each other.

II. Look at the items of the boundless wealth of which the Apostle has taken inventory: (1) The world, he says, is yours. There is, then, a sense in which we may gain the whole world and not lose our souls. Nay, St. Paul would say it is only through care of the soul that the world, in any true sense, can be gained at all. But observe, he is here speaking of the whole framework of creation, the whole handiwork of God, and he declares that this belongs to the Christian. Not only are the invisible forces and its mystic order overruled for us, but all its appliances, all its resources, are ours if we are Christ's. Centre your affections on these things, work for them, live in them apart from Christ, and they truly cease to be yours; they do not belong to you, but you to them. It is only a surrender to Christ that can teach any man the lofty use of this world. (2) "Life is yours." All it means, all it involves, all the stores of joy which it is treasuring daily, all that must grow out of it throughout eternity all is yours. And why? Because every burden, every difficulty has been borne, every danger faced, the whole pressure of life's strain measured, by One who loved you with an infinite tenderness. (3) Death is yours death, the last enemy that shall be destroyed, the most merciless and arbitrary of tyrants, whose awful sway it is so vain to dispute. Death is yours, despoiled of his terrors, handed over to you, your slave and not your master; for you belong to Him who has the keys of death and hell, and you share the fruits of His victory over the grave. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

R. Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 145.

References: 1 Corinthians 3:21. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 408; J. Caird, Sermons,p. 247; J. Duncan, Pulpit and Communion Table,p. 221; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 49. 1 Corinthians 3:22. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xv., Nos. 870, 875. 1 Corinthians 3:22. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 291. 1 Corinthians 3:23. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 12. 1 Corinthians 3:23. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 189.