the ministerial office in its true light. 1. Ministers were not heads of schools or rival sects as were the Grecian philoso- phers, but mere servants, without any authority or power of their own. One may plant, and another water, but the whole increase is of God, vs. 5-7. 2. Ministers are one. They have one master and one work. They may have different depart- ments in that great work, but they are like fellow-labourers on the same farm, or fellow-jjuilders on the same temple, vs. 8. 9. 3. In the discharge of their respective duties they incur a great responsibility. If they attempt to build up the temple of God with the rubbish of their own wisdom, they will be severely punished. K they employ the materials which God has furnished, they will be rewarded, vs. 10-15. 4. It is because the church is the temple of God, that ministers will be held to this strict account for the doctrines which they preach, and for the way in which they execute their office, vs. 16. 17. 5. No minister need deceive himself in this matter. He cannot preach a higher wisdom than the wisdom of God ; and to learn that wisdom he must renounce his own, vs. 18-20. 6. Therefore the people should not place their confidence in ministers, who belong to the church, and not the church to them. To the interests and consummation of the church, all things, visible and invisible, are made subservient, vs. 21-23.
1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal,* (even) as unto babes in Christ.
There were two classes of opponents of the apostle in Corinth. The false teachers, some of whom he denounces as anti-Christian, and others he speaks of as only errorists ; and secondly, those members of the church whom these false teachers had seduced. As against the false teachers and the unconverted Jews and Greeks he upheld the simple gospel as higher than the wisdom of the world. His only answer to their objection that he did not preach with "the wisdom of words," was that the wisdom of the world was foohshness with
* Instead of trapKiKoTs, unto carnal, acli, Tischendorf and others read
ffapKivois, to those made of flesh, comp". 2 Cor. 3, 3. The latter term, used in a moral sense, would be stronger than the former, as indicating the very nature as carnal. In all the places in the New Testament where the form a-dpKiuos appears, except in 2 Cor. 3, 3, the reading is doubtful Rom. 7, 14. Heb. 7, 16, and here.