1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 3
A Reproof of Spiritual Pride. 1 Cor. 3, 1–23.
Every Christian church a temple of God: V. 16. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? V. 17. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. V. 18. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. V. 19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. V. 20. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.
This is not merely a warning lest any of the readers find themselves sharing the fate of such whose efforts will not stand the test of the last day, but it is an arraignment of those who become destroyers of God's house, whom therefore, in turn, God will destroy. To bring this out, Paul shows a different side of the picture: Do you not know that a temple of God you are, and that the Spirit of God lives in you?
All Christians, being built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ and the apostles, have received the Holy Spirit, the Triune God, as the tenant of their hearts. Their hearts have become a shrine, a true temple, of the Godhead.
And the underlying idea is that they all, because of this indwelling, together form the great temple of the invisible Church, the habitation of God through the Spirit.
If, therefore, any person will corrupt, defile, desecrate the temple of God, this man will God destroy. If the agitators and false teachers in Corinth, if the errorists of all times, will persist in defiling the holy place of the pure temple of God in the individual Christian as well as in the Church as such, by a perversion of doctrine, by inciting wrangling and strife, then the wrath of God will strike them at last. For the holiness of God can never permit such a defilement to go unpunished; every injury of that kind is a desecration of the sanctity of the temple.
And the added clause, "which you are," reminds the Corinthians of the obligation which is imposed upon them by their sanctity; it urges them to be on a sharp lookout against the defilers of their temple, and not to permit the desecration to take place. The work in which they are engaged is a sacred work; they themselves are hallowed and consecrated to God; therefore they must watch over their sanctity with a jealous eye.
Since there was great danger that some of the Corinthian Christians might have been so thoroughly imbued with the glittering show of human wisdom in the work of the Church as not to heed the apostle's warning, he adds another word. No one in their midst should deceive himself; no one should be involved in misapprehension and blindness; no one should presume willfully to know more concerning this matter than the apostle. If anyone among them had the idea that he was wise in the wisdom of this transitory world, he had better become a fool according to the standards of this world, for then only could he become wise in the sight of God.
"Those who follow human wisdom exalt human masters at the expense of God's glory, and there are teachers who lend themselves to this error and thus build unworthily on the Christian foundation, — some who are even destroying, under a show of building, the temple of God." 25)
The power of the Word of God over the heart of man must be demonstrated in this way, that he places all the wisdom of this world at the disposal of the true wisdom from above, and that he rejects all wisdom which in any way conflicts with the revealed truth of the Bible, though he be mocked and derided a thousand times as a hopeless fool and as a narrow-minded bigot. For it is only by taking all human thoughts and opinions captive under the obedience of Christ that a person will be placed in the position that he may understand the wisdom of God in the Word of Salvation.
In support of this St. Paul reaffirms what he has spoken of at length in chapter 1: For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God; and as such it deserves only one fate, namely, to be cast aside as worthless before God.
This statement the apostle substantiates by two passages from the Old Testament. In Job 5, 13 it is said of the Lord: He that grips, catches, the wise in their own craftiness, their supposed wisdom. The wisdom of the world is here pictured as a craft, a subtle trade, which is carried on to the detriment of others. But God catches those that practice such cunning in their own wiles, thus showing how foolish their professions are.
The second passage is from Ps. 94, 11: The Lord understands the arguings of the wise that they are futile. What is true of the vanity of human thoughts in general is true in particular of those that assume the leading position in the counsels of human philosophy. Whenever they leave the eternal truth of God's Word, they become groundless, void of truth, and therefore full of folly.