We’re continuing a sort of Bible study series of the first part of 1 Corinthians which serve as the Epistle readings during the season of Epiphany. Since I’m not really preaching specifically on these texts, I figured that the newsletter was a great place to engage with them. Today we’re looking at 1 Corinthians 3:1-9. 
Spiritual Infants – As I write this, I’m in the hospital with my wife Liz who had a procedure done. Being in this hospital brings back memories of infants as this hospital was where all three of my girls were born. So when Paul writes to the Corinthians that they were not mature, but were infants, the amount of work involved comes to mind. Infants are cute and beautiful and….so…much….work. They can’t eat what you eat, they don’t sleep when you want to sleep, they need to be carried, held, diapered, and kept warm. There is similarity between a newborn and a new disciple. When we take on a new disciple ourselves, we have to do so knowing that they will need us to provide things for them that we normally provide for ourselves. Similarly, if we look to the mature around us and we see them providing things for themselves, we can look forward to that spiritual maturity that we might grow into. Even we who are mature in Christ are all simultaneously the discipled and the disciplers of others, and so we get to see this “infanthood” from both sides.
Cultivating vs Growing – Of course my girls are growing. The oldest one is 5, and thanks to one of those “look at this photo from 3 years ago” prompts from my phone this morning, Liz and I reveled in how little she looked then and how much she looks like a young lady now. Who made that baby grow into a preschooler? I guess you could say Liz and I (along with a host of other family and friends) had a part in it. We fed her, put her to bed, carried her, held her, diapered her, kept her warm, chauffered her, and we have a lot more of a lot of that stuff to come. But God made her grow, really. We cultivated her growth, but God made her grow. If you walk past my door on a Sunday morning you’ll see that my name plate says “cultivating leadership for the next generations of the Church”. I chose that word “cultivating” because it gets at this reality from 1 Corinthians 3. Cultivating is creating an environment of growth, but it is not growing. That’s what we are called to do for our disciples. We are called to create environments of growth for people who will be our disciples – this can be through studying the Bible with them, praying with them, eating with them, talking about struggles with them, and the like. Through those actions, God promises that He will provide what only He can – growth. Like a parent then, we provide what we can – spiritual food, spiritual shelter, spiritual love, spiritual warmth – and we trust that God will give the growth.