Do we belong to our teachers? (Modified extract from "Called, Gathered and Gifted")

1 Corinthians ch3 v4 “One says ‘I belong to Paul’ and another ‘I belong to Apollos’.”

Paul was complaining about this issue in the first chapter, and returns to it now as illustrating the point that the Corinthians themselves are not yet fully “spiritual”. That word “belong”- they are beginning to treat their favourite teachers as their masters. 

V5 “What then is Apollos? What is Paul?”

Yet the teachers are not masters but servants, acting as God’s agents. People had been called into the faith by means of one teacher or another, as God had assigned in each case, but the calling had not come from the teachers themselves.  

V6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

The church can be compared with a field, in which case Paul and Apollos are the farm-workers. Paul planted the seeds (which gives him a certain priority), while Apollos came along later and watered the plants. Neither of them were working for themselves. They are “one”- they are on the same level- because they are fellow-labourers, employed and “paid” by the same farmer. God owns the field (and  must have provided the seeds in the first place). Even as they were working, it was God who provided the increase. So the workers themselves are “nothing” in this business, and God is everything 

V10 “Like a skilful master-builder, I laid a foundation.”

Alternatively, the church can be compared with a building (or a building-project) .Once again, Paul had the first task. The work of Apollos is “building upon” that foundation. What really matters is that the building-work cannot be based on anything but Jesus Christ. As long as they’re using the same foundation, they’re doing the same work. 

Commentators find a slight paradox here, because Paul says he laid the foundation, and the next verse says the foundation was laid already. I don’t think there’s any real conflict. V11 is clearly about the “once-for-all” establishment of Christ as the foundation of the church at large, whereas Paul’s task was to place the foundation locally.