Co-Laborers with God - Synergy

1 Corinthians 3:9 -  For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Paul has been addressing the church at Corinth over the divisions that had arisen - particularly the division over who was most important. Now Paul wants them to understand that all believers need to work together to accomplish the will of God. He spoke about the fact that God is the important One in the mission of the church. He referenced that we would be rewarded for our work. He spoke that some planted, some watered, and some would reap the harvest.

Today, we muse over what he says - "For we are co-workers in God's service...." In the Greek structure of this sentence, we have the words used out of normal grammatical order. This is a figure of speech called a hyperbaton, and is used to call attention or emphasizing a point. This could be translated as "God's fellow-workers" calling attention to the point that we are the fellow-workers with one another and we belong to God and work for Him. We do the work together - and God then gives the increase. We are not equal with God in our work, we work for Him - we are equal with each other in accomplishing the mission.

The Greek word used for co-workers in this passage is the word sunergoi, and we get our word synergy from this base. Synergy is a combined action or operation that produces results. It actually is the increased effectiveness that results when two or more people work together. The Greek word means to work with - and we understand the full intention of Paul as the challenge to work together - so that the sum is greater than the individual parts.

It has been said that it is yet to be seen what the church could accomplish in this world, if no one cared who got the credit. This is partially correct. We need to synergistically work together and only care that God gets the credit. Today, muse over what you can do in co-operation with fellow believers to advance the kingdom of God and see that He gets all the credit.