3:1 Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people but as carnal, as if you are infantile as far as the Anointed is concerned.

3:2 I gave you milk to drink instead of solid food because you couldn’t take that— and you still can’t.

3:3 You are still carnal, with your inflamed passions and rivalry. Are you not carnal like everyone else?

3:4 When you say “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos,” are you not merely human? For those who say such things are carnal.

3:5 So who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Only servants through whom you believed as the Master assigned each of them.

3:6 I planted and Apollos watered, but God makes it grow,

3:7 so that neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes it grow.

3:8 The one who plants and the one who waters are each paid according to their own labor.

3:9 We are co-workers of God on his field, and you are the building.

3:10 According to the favor God granted me, I laid a foundation as a wise foreman, and someone else is building upon it. But let each one be careful how they build!

3:11 For no one can lay any other foundation beside the one already set: Jesus the Anointed.

3:12 The material someone builds with— gold, silver, gems, wood, hay, or straw—

3:13 that person’s work will become obvious in that Day. It will be revealed with fire; the fire will test the quality of each one’s work.

3:14 Whatever is left standing will be the basis for their reward.

3:15 But if someone’s work is completely burned up, they will forfeit any reward. Yet they themselves will be saved, in spite of the fire.

3:16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God has taken up residence in you?

3:17 If anyone ruins the temple of God, that one will be ruined, for the temple of God is holy, and that’s what all of you are.

3:18 Don’t be deluded! If anyone among you presumes to be wise in this age, let them become foolish in order to become wise.

3:19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. As it is written, “He captures the wise in their craftiness,”

3:20 and again, “The Master knows that the thinking of the wise is pointless.”

3:21 So then, no more bragging about people, for everything is yours—

3:22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or what exists or is still to come— it’s all yours.

3:23 Yet you are the Anointed’s, and he is God’s.