2 I have had to feed you with milk and not with solid food because you couldn’t digest anything stronger. And even now you still have to be fed on milk.
3 For you are still only baby Christians, controlled by your own desires, not God’s. When you are jealous of one another and divide up into quarreling groups, doesn’t that prove you are still babies, wanting your own way? In fact, you are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord at all.
4 There you are, quarreling about whether I am greater than Apollos, and dividing the church. Doesn’t this show how little you have grown in the Lord?
5 Who am I, and who is Apollos, that we should be the cause of a quarrel? Why, we’re just God’s servants, each of us with certain special abilities, and with our help you believed.
6 My work was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos’ work was to water it, but it was God, not we, who made the garden grow in your hearts.
7 The person who does the planting or watering isn’t very important, but God is important because he is the one who makes things grow.
8 Apollos and I are working as a team, with the same aim, though each of us will be rewarded for his own hard work.
9 We are only God’s coworkers. You are God’s garden, not ours; you are God’s building, not ours.
10 God, in his kindness, has taught me how to be an expert builder. I have laid the foundation and Apollos has built on it. But he who builds on the foundation must be very careful.
11 And no one can ever lay any other real foundation than that one we already have—Jesus Christ.
GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION
2 I had to feed you milk, not solid food, because you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready for it,
3 because you still live as the people of this world live. When there is jealousy among you and you quarrel with one another, doesn't this prove that you belong to this world, living by its standards?
4 When one of you says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos”—aren't you acting like worldly people?
5 After all, who is Apollos? And who is Paul? We are simply God's servants, by whom you were led to believe. Each one of us does the work which the Lord gave him to do:
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plant, but it was God who made the plant grow.
7 The one who plants and the one who waters really do not matter. It is God who matters, because he makes the plant grow.
8 There is no difference between the one who plants and the one who waters; God will reward each one according to the work each has done.
9 For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.
You are also God's building.
10 Using the gift that God gave me, I did the work of an expert builder and laid the foundation, and someone else is building on it. But each of you must be careful how you build.
11 For God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid.
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