1 Corinthians 2:12-3:7
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
Reflection
Reborn Christians have the terrible habit of bringing their egos into the church of Christ. When we say we are reborn, this means that we shed the old us and live peaceably in the new. Instead, it is more common to find Christians fighting among themselves, sometimes over the smallest details.
God gave us His spirit so that we can commune and love one another the way Jesus loves the church. We grow in maturity when we learn how to keep peace between us and our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Think back to a time when you had strife with a fellow member of the church. Did you ask God to bring peace between you and your brethren? Or did you behave in ways as you did as a child of the world before you got saved? Are you holding fast to long-suffering patience and utilizing kindness and forgiveness when you communicate? Or are you regressing to old habits that didn’t bring peace into your old life and you’re trying to bring it into a Christ-filled life?
Please share your comments below. We’d love to hear how God moves in your life!
