The apostle now combined the threads of his argument, which began at 1:18, and drew a preliminary conclusion. If his readers insisted on taking the natural view of their teachers and continued to form coteries of followers, they would limit God's blessing on themselves needlessly. Rather than their belonging to Paul or Apollos, both Paul and Apollos, and much more, belonged to them because they were Christ's and Christ is God's.
3:18 Paul continued the subject of spiritual rather than natural wisdom. He urged his readers to turn away from attitudes the world regards as wise and to adopt God's viewpoint so they would be truly wise.
3:19-20 Again Paul used Old Testament quotations to give added authority to his thought (cf. 1:19, 31; 2:9, 16). Here he referred to Job 5:13 and Psalm 94:11. The best wisdom the natural man can produce is foolishness compared with the wisdom God has revealed in His Word. Unbelieving humanity cannot avoid God's judgment through its own rationalizing. The reasoning of the wise of this world is useless regarding the most important issues of life. In 1:18-25 Paul had said that the wisdom of God, namely Christ crucified, is foolishness to the world. Here he made the same point in reverse: the wisdom of the world is foolishness in God's sight.
3:21 "So then"marks the apostle's conclusion. It is wrong to line up in cliques behind one or another of God's servants. In doing so, the Corinthians were only limiting God's blessing on them. They were rejecting God's good gifts by not appreciating all the people God had sent to help them.
3:22 All of God's servants were God's gifts to them. The world (Gr. kosmos, universe) belongs to the Christian in the sense that we will inherit it and reign over it with Christ one day. Life and all it holds contains much blessing for us. Even death is a good gift because it will usher us into the presence of our Savior. This list is similar to the one in Romans 8:38-39 and, as there, is a way of saying "everything."The figure of speech is a merism.82
"The five things . . . represent the fundamental tyrannies of human life, the things that enslave us, the things that hold us in bondage."83
3:23 All the Corinthians belonged to Christ, not just those of the "Christ party"(1:12). They belonged to Him, not to one of His servants. Even Christ belongs to God in the sense of being under the authority and protection of the Father (cf. 8:6; 11:3; 15:28). This is functional rather than ontological subordination. All things belong to the Christian because the Christian belongs to Christ, and all things are His. Thus in Him we possess all things, but it is only in Him that we do.
Paul made several references to the administrative order of God when correcting disorders of various kinds in the Corinthian church. This order is the Father over the Son, the Son over the man, and the man over the woman (e.g., 8:6; 11:3; et al.). The apostle stressed divine order because the Corinthians were disorderly having failed to submit to the Holy Spirit's control.
"On this high note Paul's response to the Corinthian pride in man and wisdom has come to a fitting conclusion. But the problem is larger still; so he turns next to deal with their attitudes toward him in particular."84
