God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 3:1-2 Mere infants in Christ
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, November 21, 2022
3 Brothers, I could not preach to you as spiritual people but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Nor are you ready for it now.
At the beginning of the letter, Paul showed deep concern that the Corinthians were divided into factions. Since then, in chapter 2, he moved into something like an essay on the gospel and true wisdom. This wasn’t a mere tangent, but an insight into the true problem in Corinth: The gospel itself was in question, and deeply misunderstood. He calls them worldly. There is a difference between the word sarkinois (σαρκίνοις) here and the sarkikoi (σαρκικοί) we will read about in verse 3. For the moment Paul uses a term that means that the Corinthians are not truly spiritual people, understanding the value of Christ’s work and letting Christ rule in their lives. They are worldly, the substance they are made from is flesh. The word tells us that this is their nature—a serious fault, but not as serious as being ethically opposed to Christ. They are mere infants in their faith. But this stage of spiritual infancy should not last very long. Even in a human baby, the infancy stage does not remain long before the infant has become a toddler, then a little child running around who knows his prayers, and then a schoolboy learning and growing and saying his Ten Commandments and his catechism. But the Corinthians have made no progress. They remain on the threshold of infancy.
Such a continuing state isn’t healthy. From a truly spiritual perspective, they are better off than an unbelieving pagan, and yet as long as they remain infants in their faith, they are not ready nor fit for any useful work in the church. They can’t share a faith that is only nascent in their own hearts. In the words of one anonymous pastor, “In spiritual things they are weaklings. They draw upon the resources of the Church rather than add to them… they require much looking after. The Church has to nurse them when she should be converting the world. Yet withal they often have a very high opinion of their own powers. They are often fretful and peevish. They are faultfinders, and if they cannot find faults, they can always make them.”
Paul softens this criticism by calling them “brothers.” The milk that these little brothers need is “nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). This isn’t law in the sense of law vs. gospel, but rather the vary basic teaching of Christian faith.
Most congregations are made up of both infants in their faith and the more advanced adult faith. And for the most part, the infants probably outnumber the latter. The minister must preach to both. He can’t pass the larger group by and leave them wondering what it was they just heard, and he can’t skip over the smaller group and leave them wondering if there’s ever going to be anything deeper to think about. He has to touch on the basics all the time and then explain some deeper things, hopefully at least once in a sermon. In a way, we have an extreme example of this in the Old Testament chapters that are devoted to nothing but genealogies and lists. Each one of those chapters is arranged so that a Jew with a simple faith but obsessed with correctness could read and count and be satisfied. Yet each one of those chapters also and invariably has a passage that says more, a story to illustrate sin, grace, or faith. These include the Tower of Babel in 1 Chronicles 1:19, Judah’s family troubles in 1 Chronicles 2:3-4, the evidently peaceful life of Daniel, the son of David and Abigail, who does not come into the intrigues of his brothers Amnon, Absalom, or Adonijah (1 Chronicles 3:1-2). The search to find these little hints of stories can benefit one’s reading of those long lists.
So it is with the mature Christian who listens to preaching about the basics of Christian faith for the benefit of his brothers and sisters sitting in the pews all around. The deeper things are there, too. For myself, I think of this when we have babies that fuss and cry a little in worship. The noise from the babies never bothers me at all. But it makes me think: They are not the only ‘infants’ in the room. Preach to everyone, pastor. Let them all pray: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word” (Psalm 119:9).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.