Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
All Things Are Yours
1 Corinthians 3:18-23
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. · WEB
The chapter ends by inverting the whole quarrel — the parties were dividing up teachers who had already been given to all of them.
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise 1 Corinthians 3:18.
Self-deception is named as the mechanism. The route out is deliberately paradoxical: let him become a fool — accept the world's verdict on the cross 1 Corinthians 1:18 and be reclassified as a fool by the people whose opinion he wanted. There is no path from Corinth's wisdom to God's by improvement; the first step is a demotion.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God 1 Corinthians 3:19.
The symmetry is exact and worth pausing on. The world calls the cross foolishness; God returns the verdict on the world's wisdom. Two assessments, and only one of them is the assessment of the one who will hold the assize 1 Corinthians 4:5.
Two texts are produced, and both come from books about wisdom. He has taken the wise in their craftiness is from Job Job 5:13 — the cleverness works, and closes on the clever. And the Lord knows the reasoning of the wise, that it is worthless 1 Corinthians 3:20 adapts a psalm about the futility of human thoughts Psalms 94:11. Not that reasoning is wicked; that it comes to nothing, like the rulers of the previous chapter 1 Corinthians 2:6.
Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours 1 Corinthians 3:21.
And now the inversion that ends the argument. The parties said I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas 1 Corinthians 1:12; Paul answers whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas... all are yours 1 Corinthians 3:22. They were fighting over the division of an estate they jointly owned. Each faction had claimed one teacher and thereby forfeited the other two, so the party spirit is not merely wrong but impoverishing — a man who is a partisan of Paul has given up Apollos and Cephas for no reason. Sectarianism always costs its holder more than it gains.
And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's 1 Corinthians 3:23.
The chain is the safeguard. All things belong to them, and they are not their own — they belong to Christ, and he to God. The possession runs upward, so the enormous grant of verse 21 cannot be read as license; the same two-step will settle the argument about food and freedom later 1 Corinthians 11:3 1 Corinthians 15:28. Everything is theirs precisely because they are not their own.
settled What this mark means