NOTES for Co1 3:10-23
Continuing the conversation about priorities, Paul notes another very important point for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. He tells the Corinthian Christians: you have nothing to argue about; the whole world belongs to each of you. All are yours, everyone you meet on the spiritual path, and life and death, and the present and the future. But on one indispensable condition: you are Christ's. For Christ is God's, the apostle tells the Corinthians, and if you are Christ's, then you too are God's; and then everything that is God's is yours as well (vv. 21-23). Yet it is possible to live this way only when the one living becomes a bearer of the Kingdom. The apostle expresses this thought by reminding his readers that they themselves are that temple of God where God dwells, just as before the coming of Christ He dwelt only in those places which He Himself marked as places of His special presence, such as the Jerusalem Temple (vv. 16-17).
But the Kingdom, all of it, wholly and completely, becomes the place of God's special presence, and Christians become its living bearers. And the chief task both of the individual Christian and of the church community as a whole is precisely the preservation of the Kingdom, which is possible only if the system of priorities of neither the individual nor the community is distorted. It is no accident that Paul pays special attention to the inadmissibility for Christians of replacing the wisdom of the Kingdom with the wisdom of "this age" (vv. 18-19): for wisdom in those days was, first of all, the art of righteous living; in a certain sense it was a synonym for such a concept as spirituality. Thus in this case the apostle is essentially warning against replacing the spirituality of the Kingdom with the spirituality of this world. And on this in turn depends the quality of the ministry that each Christian carries out.
It is no accident that Paul speaks of the foundation on which one or another follower of Christ builds his work (vv. 11-15). The apostle understands perfectly well that for true servants of Christ and the Kingdom there can be only one foundation, common to all. And the quality of the building depends on what material the builder has at his disposal. Here the measure of rootedness in the Kingdom proves decisive: allegorically, the apostle distinguishes materials from diamond to straw. Of course, not one of those who share in the Kingdom will perish, but the quality of spiritual life and, accordingly, of ministry still matters. One can be saved by jumping out of one's ministry as out of a burning house, but such a version of salvation and such a ministry can hardly be called normal by anyone. And Paul calls precisely for full life in the Kingdom and true ministry, not for mere vegetation, whose consequence is collapse, ending without the final destruction of the unfortunate servant only by the mercy of God.