What are you building?
There is a question most of us never stop long enough to ask. We fill our weeks with activity, our calendars with commitments, our churches with programs and events — and somewhere in the middle of all of it, we forget to ask the one question that changes everything: What kind of builder am I? The apostle Paul opens 1 Corinthians 3 with that very question, and this Sunday we are launching a new series called Building on the Foundation that will take us deep into one of the most searching passages in all of the New Testament. Before we get to the blueprints and the building materials, though, Paul insists we start somewhere more personal — with an honest look at the kind of person we actually are.
Paul had a problem on his hands in the church at Corinth. These were genuine believers, real brothers and sisters in Christ, and yet they were acting like anything but. Envy had taken root among them. Factions had formed. They had begun to rally around their favorite preachers the way people today rally around a political party or a sports team. "I follow Paul." "I follow Apollos." The language sounds almost harmless until Paul names it for what it is — carnality. Spiritual immaturity. The behavior of people who have the Holy Spirit living inside them but are choosing to live as though He is not there. Paul doesn't write them off. He calls them brothers and sisters. But he does tell them the truth: you are still acting like babies when you should be growing up.
What does spiritual immaturity look like in practice? Paul says it shows up in envy and strife — in the divisions we create, the rivalries we nurse, the way we fight for our preferences inside the very community that is supposed to model something better to the world. Carnal Christianity is not just a private problem. It is a corporate one. When believers choose the patterns of the world over the patterns of the gospel, the whole church pays the price. The good news is that immaturity is not a permanent condition. It is a starting point, not a destination. God calls us forward, not just inward. The question is whether we are willing to do the honest work of growing.
Once Paul has established what kind of people we are, he turns to the question of what kind of servants we are called to be. And here the text takes a turn that should challenge every one of us who has ever been tempted to think too highly of ourselves in ministry. Paul asks two simple questions: What is Apollos? What is Paul? His answer is as humbling as it is liberating — they are servants. Instruments. God gave them their roles, God used their work, and God alone produced the growth. The Corinthians had made the mistake of exalting the messengers above the message, of worshiping the instruments rather than the hands that held them. It is a mistake every generation of the church must be warned against, because it is a mistake every generation of the church tends to make.
The image Paul reaches for is a farm. Paul planted the seed. Apollos came along and watered it. But here is the thing about farming — you can plant, and you can water with everything you have, and you still cannot make a single thing grow. Growth belongs to God. He is the Lord of the harvest, and no amount of human strategy, talent, or effort will change that. This is not a word of discouragement for those who labor faithfully in ministry. It is a word of immense freedom. You are not responsible for outcomes that only God can produce. You are responsible for faithfulness. Plant well. Water well. Then trust the One who makes things grow.
From the farm, Paul moves to a construction site, and it is here that the text becomes perhaps its most searching. He describes the church as a building — God's building — and every person who serves within it as a builder laying material on the foundation. That foundation, Paul says plainly, is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. No other foundation will hold. No personality, no program, no political agenda, no social platform can substitute. Churches built on anything less than the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ are not churches at all — they are impressive structures waiting to collapse. What you build on matters. But Paul also insists that how you build matters just as much.
Two kinds of builders appear in Paul's illustration, and from the outside they can look remarkably similar. Both are active. Both put in the work. But one builds with gold, silver, and costly stones — materials that represent ministry done for God's glory, through God's Word, by God's Spirit, with pure motives. The other builds with wood, hay, and straw — materials that represent ministry driven by ego, performance, approval-seeking, and people's praise. The difference is not always visible to us. We do not always have the clarity to distinguish genuine kingdom work from its imitation. But God can. And Paul tells us that a day is coming when every builder's work will be tested by fire. The work that was done for God will stand. The work that was done for oneself will burn.
Before we move past that warning too quickly, we should sit with it. It is possible — Paul says it plainly — to be a saved person whose life's work amounts to a pile of ash. Saved, yes. Rewarded, no. The judgment seat of Christ is not about salvation. It is about service. It is not about whether you go to heaven but about what you brought with you when you came. This should not terrify us, but it should sober us. It should drive us to examine our motives regularly, to ask hard questions about why we do what we do in the church, and to ensure that the labor of our lives is offered to God rather than merely to our own reputation.
There is a third image Paul uses of the church that carries enormous weight and is perhaps the most stunning of the three. The church is not only God's field and God's building — it is God's temple. The very dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Paul asks the Corinthians, almost incredulously, "Don't you know that you are God's temple?" The inner sanctuary. The holy place. What the Jerusalem temple was in the old covenant — the place where God's presence uniquely dwelt — the gathered community of believers is in the new. This means that how we treat the church is how we treat something sacred. To divide it, to corrupt it, to serve it carelessly — Paul says God takes that seriously. Those who build the temple well will be rewarded. Those who destroy it will themselves face destruction.
Paul closes the chapter with a declaration so sweeping it almost takes your breath away: everything is yours. Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, things present, things to come — all of it belongs to the believer in Christ. Why? Because you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. The Corinthians were tearing their church apart over which leader they preferred, all while sitting on an inheritance that made every human leader look small. We do the same. We fight over preferences and styles and personalities while forgetting that in Christ we already have everything we could ever need. When you know what you truly possess, you stop grasping for what others carry. When your identity is secured in the One who holds all things, you are finally free to build — not to prove something, not to earn something, but simply out of gratitude for a foundation you did not lay and a grace you did not earn. The foundation is fixed. It is Jesus Christ. Now come, and build.
Join us this Sunday as we launch Building on the Foundation.
Union Avenue Baptist Church | 2181 Union Avenue | Sundays at 10:45am
unionavenue.org