“For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” 1 Corinthians 3:9
How do you see yourself when you fail, when you completely blow it? Do you spend time thinking about all the ways you failed and that you are only as good as what you didn’t do right? What does the enemy whisper in your ear when you’ve failed? Reminders of how you will never change, never grow? Reminders of the sin you have committed since you became a Christian?
For me, it’s the latter again and again: reminders of the sin I have committed since I became a Christian. Even though I have repented of it, the enemy loves to whisper in my ear, tempting me to doubt my salvation, my forgiveness, and my freedom.
Paul has just given the Corinthian church a strong rebuke. He said to them only eight verses earlier that he “could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” In other words, they are so much like the non-Christian world around them that he can’t even speak to them like the people of God, but instead needs to talk to them in baby talk, because they are so immature.
How then could Paul tell these Corinthians that they are God’s fellow workers, God’s field, and God’s building so shortly after? He can tell them this because their identity is not found in what they have done, but what God in Christ did for them. They can be God’s fellow workers, field, and building because, as verse 6 says, “God gave the growth.”
God is working through you to build up his kingdom and will use you in whatever way he chooses to be made much of. So, the next time the enemy would seek to whisper lies in your ear, remind him that you have been bought with the blood of Christ and are one of God’s workers, a part of his field, and a brick in his building. Jesus will not let the church he is building fail or fall.
