Labourers Together with God: Unity in Divine Purpose

For we are labourers together with God.—The immediate application of this text cuts through the Corinthian divisions. Though believers, Paul could not address them as spiritual persons, for they moved in the lower, earthly region of human nature, where strife and division held sway. He then shows the fatal mistake underlying their party spirit: the different teachers were but humble instruments in the hand of one and the same God, who commissioned each with spiritual gifts and alone prospered their work.

Paul might have urged his own party to determined action. Instead, he deprecated all parties and bade believers rise into that higher region where they would discern that different spiritual teachers laboured together with one God for the same spiritual results. Oh, that the Church had heeded these words! They would have rendered impossible most of the divisions which have been, and still are, its weakness and curse.

The wider application proves profoundly true: since we are divinely made and live in a divine world, all work we do serves Divine purposes through Divine energy. Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind—all fulfil His Word. A healthy Christian perspective recognizes Elohim at work in both silent forces (opening flowers, decaying leaves) and imposing ones (earthquakes, volcanoes). This belief supposes God at work always and everywhere, displaying His intelligence in the glorious order of His universe.