At – Only God Makes Things Grow 3: 5-9

Only God Makes Things Grow
3: 5-9

Only God makes things grow DIG: What point does Paul make in the use of the farm metaphor? How does Paul describe his and Apollos’ role in the Corinthian church? Were they leaders of opposing “fan clubs” as they might be in the world? How were the Corinthians “missing the point?” Where did their allegiance need to be rooted? How are the planter and the waterer the same? How are they individually rewarded?

REFLECT: Paul makes it clear to the believers in Corinth that Yeshua is the foundation of the Church. What does that mean in today’s world? What should be the driving force behind your ministry? Why is it tempting to evaluate your success based on external results? What happens when you give in to such temptation? What is your role in building God’s church?

It is not the human laborers who produce the harvest, but the Lord of the harvest.

In a series of three metaphors, using images from agriculture to architecture, Paul proceeds to address three closely related issues. He takes up the imagery of a servant and places it in the familiar setting of the farm. Beginning with a farm metaphor, he takes up the question of how the Corinthians as a whole were to regard their shepherds. There is a transition here. The worldliness of the Corinthians is no longer spoken of and the names of Paul and Apollos give rise to the topic of how ADONAI sustains His shepherds and His Church. The Corinthians did not correctly understand that relationship.⁸⁴

After all, Paul declared: What is Apollos? What is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to trust. Indeed, it was the Lord who brought you to trust through one of us or through another (3:5). Servants translates diakonoi, a term which originally meant a table waiter. It came to be used of lowly service generally, and in the B’rit Chadashah it is often used of the service that any believer would render to YHVH. In time it was applied to the ministry of a deacon, but this is not an example of that use. The context here stresses the lowly character of the service rendered and ridicules the tendency to overestimate the importance of Messianic rabbis and ministers in the Gentile Church. They come and they go, but ADONAI’s own work continues. Who would set servants on pedestals? The real work was done by God Himself.⁸⁵ It cannot be overstated that being a servant in the Body of Messiah, ran contrary not only to Hellenistic thinking, but also to the Corinthian-competition thinking.⁸⁶ It was as if Paul were saying, “No one builds a movement around a waiter or busboy, or erects monuments to them. Apollos and I are just waiters or busboys whom the Lord used as servants to bring you spiritual food. You do not please us by trying to honor us. Your honor, your glory, is misplaced. You are acting worldly, fleshly. Give your praise to the One who prepared the spiritual food we delivered.” The world honors and tries to immortalize great men because men are the highest thing it knows. The world cannot see beyond itself.⁸⁷

Paul and Apollos were not leaders of opposing “fan clubs” as they might be in the world’s value system. Paul declared that they were merely servants of God who had no significance apart from Messiah. The reason he did not mention the Peter or Messiah “fan clubs” as he did in 1:12 should be obvious. Only Paul and Apollos had ministered in Corinth, and therefore the extended metaphor of the farm and farmhands could apply only to them. In fact, Paul could use this metaphor precisely because he and Apollos were not at the root of the problem. He could present himself and Apollos as models of the noncompetitive teamwork he wanted the Corinthian believers to copy.⁸⁸ I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it. Yeshua expressed the same idea (John 4:34-38). The sower and the reaper not only work together, but one day they shall rejoice together and receive their own rewards. But, in the final analysis, it was God who made it grow (3:6).

This next verse could almost be a proverb: So, neither the planter nor the waterer is anything. Neither made the plants grow. It is only God who makes things grow (3:7). He is doing the real work. The verb makes things grow (Greek: auxanon) is imperfect, whereas those for planting and watering are aorist. The work of Paul and Apollos is viewed as being completed, but God’s activity in making things grow continues on. Having established this important point, Paul proceeds to draw some important conclusions.⁸⁹

The planter and waterer are the same (3:8a). Paul makes several points here. First, the labor of one without the other would be useless. They are interdependent and complementary, contributing to the same goal of producing a crop. Second, though both roles are essential to the task, the laborers are interchangeable. The value of the labor of one worker cannot be thought of as being more important than that of the other. Third, a rivalry between a planter and a waterer in working a field is absurd. The field is not a battlefield where workers vie with one another for supremacy. It is farmland to be brought under cultivation to produce fruit (Matthew 21:43). And fourth, ADONAI is the life force who produces the harvest. Planters only scatter the seed supplied to them by God (Second Corinthians 9:10) and put it on the ground created by Him. Waterers only keep the soil moist for growth by using rainwater supplied by God.⁹⁰

However, each will be rewarded according to his labor (3:8b). This is consistent with the parable of the workers in the field (see the commentary on The Life of Christ, to see link click Il – The Rich Young Ruler: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard). God rewards on the basis of labor, not success or results. A missionary may work faithfully for 40 years and see only a handful of converts. Another may work far fewer years and see far more converts. Jeremiah was one of God’s most faithful and dedicated prophets, yet he saw little result of his ministry. He was ridiculed, persecuted, and generally rejected along with the message he preached. Jonah, on the other hand, was petty and unwilling, yet through him, God won the entire city of Nineveh in one brief campaign.⁹¹ What we think of our ministry is unimportant; what God thinks of our ministry is all that counts.

Dear Heavenly Father, Praise You for being such a gracious father who rewards His children, but not by the biggest dollar amount of gift that is given, but rather according to the person’s heart of love (Matthew 7:21-27). The biggest reward is to please You and hear You speak words of approval over what we have done with the gifts or talents that you have given to us. His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful with a little, so I’ll put you in charge of much. Enter into your master’s joy” (Matthew 25:21 and 23)! You praised the extremely poor Macedonian churches’ example of giving, for their heart attitude of love for You – they gave of themselves first to the Lord (Second Corinthians 8:5b).

It cost You so much to leave heaven’s serene peace and joy for shame, sorrow and pain to be made inhuman likeness (Philippians 2:6-11), but Yeshua did it for the joy set before Him.  Focusing on Yeshua, Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2). May we follow Yeshua’s example and rejoice in serving You for the joy of pleasing such an Awesome God and Father! In Yeshua’s holy name and the power of His resurrection. Amen 

Paul concludes by taking up the main points of the analogy, and drives his present concerns home with a terse, but pointed, saying: For we are God’s co-workers, and you are God’s field under cultivation (3:8c-9a). Paul and Apollos were workers together in a common cause and belong to God, and that the Corinthians, therefore, did not belong to either Paul or Apollos because they, too, belong to God. Everything is God’s – the Corinthian church, its ministry, Paul, Apollos – everything. Therefore, it is absolutely unacceptable to say, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” since the only legitimate slogan would be “we all belong to God!”

Because the imagery presented here is so common in Paul, and because it so clearly reflects the teaching of Yeshua as well, one may be certain that Paul would intend these words to go beyond their particular historical circumstances to apply to the universal Church at all times and in all settings. What form ministry finally takes, and on that we have been divided for centuries. But there can be no mistake as to its nature – servanthood – of the kind exhibited by the Lord Himself (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Kh – Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet). He gives us the supreme example.

Paul’s teaching needs to be reviewed regularly. The universal Church, made up of Messianic Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14), belongs to Him alone, and those who minister are His servants. Paul’s intent here, of course, was to correct a misguided perception on the part of the Corinthian church who made way too much of its ministers. Our need to hear the same message probably reflects the same realities, although most would think of themselves as above the Corinthian attitude.

All too often those “in charge,” be they Messianic rabbis, pastors, elder boards, deacons, deaconesses, or whatever, tend to think of the “church” as theirs. They pay lip-service to its being “Messiah’s church, after all” . . . then proceed to operate on the basis of very pagan, secular structures, and regularly speak of “my” or “our” church. Nor does the church belong to “the people,” especially those who have “attended all of their lives,” or who have “supported it with great sums of money,” as though that gave them special privileges.

The Messianic synagogue or church belongs to Messiah, and all other things – structures, attitudes, decisions, the nature of ministry – everything – should flow out of that realization. Moreover, those “in charge” must always remember who is really in charge. To be a servant does not mean kidnapping a leadership position; nor, on the other hand, does it mean to become everybody’s “errand boy or girl.” It has to do with attitude, perspective, not with one’s place on the organizational chart. Servant leadership is required precisely because servanthood is the basis of all godly behavior, modeled after the Servant King Himself.⁹²