1 Corinthians 3:1-4

I had a conversation yesterday with 3 of my closest friends….3 of us were from Catholic backgrounds, 1 protestant. My husband and I were both raised in Catholic homes where we never missed a Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation and we attended Catholic Schools in two different states. Our upbringing was amazingly the same. We are both divorced and now attend Church of God were we are actively involved. Both of us miss the solemnity and holiness of the Church that we were raised in. I was talking about our separation from our childhood upbringing with the girls and expressing how much we both miss it…..it occurs to me that I was missing the point of this passage in 1 Corinthians. 

We are all one in Christ..WE. ARE. ALL. ONE.

Praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit in them alone are we saved… how we get there and where we are fed is not as important as the fact that we got there! 

Could this mean that I am growing and maturing? We will know them by the love that they show one to another and anyone who loves is of God because He alone enables us to love.

Paul did not expect the Corinthians to be mature in Christ at the time of their conversion. By placing their faith in Christ, they had been justified. They had been united with Him and his death on the Cross, and the Spirit of God had come to live in them. They were considered righteous before God because of Jesus’ righteousness. Thus when Paul first established the church at Corinth he taught them as new converts, as those justified. Yet he expected them to grow in their faith—that is, become sanctified. Paul was surprised that the Corinthians had not yet grown into spiritual maturity or become able to distinguish between good and evil.

1 Corinthians 3:1-4

3 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. ² I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; ³ for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? ⁴ For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal?

⁶ However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 

1 Corinthians 2:6

¹⁴ that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 

Ephesians 4:14

² as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 

1 Peter 2:2