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I. THE IMMEDIATE APPLICATION OF THE TEXT.

1. Believers though they were, Paul could not address the Corinthians as spiritual persons, for they moved in the lower, earthly region of man's nature, where strife and division have place, and into which it was impossible to introduce exalted subjects.

2. He then proceeds to show on what a mistake this party feeling proceeded. The different teachers were but humble instruments in the hand of one and the same God, who commissioned each with spiritual gifts, and who alone prospered their work. Paul might have taken a different course. He might have urged on his own party to more determined action. But, instead of that, he deprecated the existence of any parties, and bade all rise into that higher region in which they would discern that different spiritual teachers were working together with one God, and for the same spiritual results.

3. Oh, that these words had been heeded by the Church since! They would have rendered impossible most of the divisions which have been, and are still, its weakness and its curse. All of us "labourers together with God!" No thought could be more exalted. Well might anybody who felt it protest against what else might be deemed the honour of leading a party.

II. THE WIDER APPLICATION. For is it not profoundly true that, since we ale Divinely made, and since we live in a Divine world, all the work we any of us do here is for Divine purposes, and by Divine energy, and so is a "labouring together with God"?

1. It may be said: On this view all other things work for God. True; for "fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, fulfil His Word." It would be a healthy Christian thing to see God's ministers in all the forces of nature, whether silent, like those at work in an opening flower and decaying leaf, or imposing, like those revealed in earthquakes and volcanoes. It is a deeply Christian and a deeply scientific thought, too, to see God at work in these law-abiding and universal changes; and unchristian and unscientific is the too common thought that, in general, things go on of themselves, hut that sometimes, in answer to prayer, God steps in to interfere with them and work special providences. That idea sets God apart from His universe, supposes it can go on without Him, and sees His presence only in irregularities. The other belief supposes God at work always and everywhere, and recognises His intelligence as displayed in the glorious order of His works. The unconscious energies of nature, then, are working together with God. The universe "is God's husbandry and God's building."

2. But, if so, the same may be said, with much higher emphasis, of men. On what a far higher level of being do they live and work, possessed of spiritual faculties resembling those of their Maker, and entrusted by Him with a certain independence in little spheres of activity! So that they can delightfully feel that they are co-operating with Him, or idly neglect to do so, or wilfully oppose His will. The region in which we can help or hinder God's plans is a narrow one indeed; but, to have such a power at all, how wonderful and great! There is work for us to do — no grand, famous work, but sacred daily duty.

(T. M. Herbert, M. A.)

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KJV: For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

WEB: For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's farming, God's building.