The apostle Paul taught that God gives every believer gifts to use in doing God’s work. We are all different, and God needs each person’s individuality, shaped by our God-given gifts, to accomplish God’s purposes. Today we read Paul “walking his talk” about the value of each Christian’s gifts. He wrote that, although he and another teacher named Apollos had played
differing parts in building up the church in Corinth, neither of them (or their followers) could or should claim that one was superior to the other. Both served God, and in the end, any glory for what they had done went to God.

• Scholar William Barclay wrote of this passage, “This is extremely significant because it means that you can tell what a man’s relations with God are by looking at his relations with his fellow men. If he is at variance with his fellow men, if he is a quarrelsome, argumentative, trouble-making creature, he may be a diligent church attender, he may even be a church office-bearer, but he is not a man of God.” Who do you know who shines at drawing people together, rather than driving wedges between them? By the standard Barclay draws from this passage, how are your relations with God doing?