'Labourers together with God.'--1 COR. iii. 9.
The characteristic Greek tendency to factions was threatening to rend
the Corinthian Church, and each faction was swearing by a favourite
teacher. Paul and his companion, Apollos, had been taken as the
figureheads of two of these parties, and so he sets himself in the
context, first of all to show that neither of the two was of any real
importance in regard to the Church's life. They were like a couple of
gardeners, one of whom did the planting, and the other the watering;
but neither the man that put the little plant into the ground, nor
the man that came after him with a watering-pot, had anything to do
with originating the mystery of the life by which the plant grew.
That was God's work, and the pair that had planted and watered were
nothing. So what was the use of fighting which of two nothings was
the greater?
But then he bethinks himself that that is not quite all. The man that
plants and the man that waters are something after all. They do not
communicate life, but they do provide for its nourishment. And more
than that, the two operations--that of the man with the dibble and
that of the man with the watering-pot--are one in issue; and so they
are partners, and in some respects may be regarded as one. Then what
is the sense of pitting them against each other?
But even that is not quite all; though united in operation, they are
separate in responsibility and activity, and will be separate in
reward. And even that is not all; for, being nothing and yet
something, being united and yet separate, they are taken into
participation and co-operation with God; and as my text puts it, in
what is almost a presumptuous phrase, they are 'labourers together
with Him.' That partnership of co-operation is not merely a
partnership of the two, but it is a partnership of the three--God and
the two who, in some senses, are one.
Now whilst this text is primarily spoken in regard to the apostolic
and evangelistic work of these early teachers, the principle which it
embodies is a very wide one, and it applies in all regions of life
and activity, intellectual, scholastic, philanthropic, social.
Where-ever men are thinking God's thoughts and trying to carry into
effect any phase or side of God's manifold purposes of good and
blessing to the world, there it is true. We claim no special or
exclusive prerogative for the Christian teacher. Every man that is
trying to make men understand God's thought, whether it is expressed
in creation, or whether it is written in history, or whether it is
carven in half-obliterated letters on the constitution of human
nature, every man who, in any region of society or life, is seeking
to effect the great designs of the universal loving Father--can take
to himself, in the measure and according to the manner of his special
activity, the great encouragement of my text, and feel that he, too,
in his little way, is a fellow-helper to the truth and a
fellow-worker with God. But then, of course, according to New
Testament teaching, and according to the realities of the case, the
highest form in which men thus can co-operate with God, and carry
into effect His purposes is that in which men devote themselves,
either directly or indirectly, to spreading throughout the whole
world the name and the power of the Saviour Jesus Christ, in whom all
God's will is gathered, and through whom all God's blessings are
communicated to mankind. So the thought of my text comes
appropriately when I have to bring before you the claims of our
missionary operations.
Now, the first way in which I desire to look at this great idea
expressed in these words, is that we find in it