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n Planting and Building the Corinthian Congregation (3:5–17)

This passage depicts Paul and Apollos in the metaphors of field workers and builders with the Corinthians as the field of God they cultivate (3:5–9b) and temple of God they erect (3:9c–17). Through the first image, Paul teaches against discord several ways.106 First, with the rhetorical questions, What, then, is Apollos? And what is Paul?, the apostle sets up an answer that deflates status seeking and competition—Paul and Apollos are lowly servants through whom the Corinthians believed the gospel.107 The congregation must envision their leaders being no better than slaves and day-laborers, the very people despised by elitists and sophists who pride themselves in not working with their hands.108 Second, the Lord has given Paul and Apollos their assigned roles; both of them are God’s coworkers under divine authority and belonging to God (3:5c; 3:9a).109 Their unique gifts are given by God who increases their produce, and if God is doing the work through them and granting it success, this leaves no room for boasting in human talent. Third, Paul and Apollos are one; they are unified in laboring for the Corinthians’ spiritual growth (3:5, 8a). Paul planted by first evangelizing the Corinthians (Acts 18), and Apollos watered afterward by nurturing them (Acts 19:1). Auditors can draw the inference that Paul, not Apollos, is founder of their congregation, and yet they are equal despite different roles.110 Fourth, the one who evaluates Paul and Apollos’s work should not be the Corinthians, but God. These workers, who get paid at the end of the “day,” will receive their own reward from God for their own labor, which presumably will take place when Christ returns; each person is accountable for what they do (cf. 3:13; 4:1–5).