1 Corinthians 3:21-23 “So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future–all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”

Did you have a favorite Sunday School teacher growing up? Something about the way that teacher taught struck a chord with you. He or she opened up the Scriptures in a way you could understand.

But did you get nothing at all from the rest? Weren’t they all God’s gifts to you, feeding your faith, moving you along toward maturity? It is a matter of God’s grace to you that he has given you not just one cook to prepare dinner for your soul, but many teachers and pastors, each with their own flavor, just like God gave Paul, Apollos, and Cephas to the whole congregation in Corinth to serve them all. As long as God’s word is being served in all its truth, there is always some good thing there for us, no matter whose mouth it is coming from, even if it is just a reminder and confirmation of truths we have known for a long, long time. Why boast about just one when the Lord has given us all of them?

Have only the pleasant things and the easy things served you in your life? Haven’t your injuries and your sicknesses, your disappointments and struggles, your losses and your crosses taught you humility, deepened your empathy, and developed your patience? Haven’t they stretched your faith, enabled you to see God’s faithfulness in action, and helped you to look forward to heaven with genuine longing?

Then Paul is right when he says the world, and life, and death, and the present, and the future–in other words, all of our experience, everything that touches us this side of heaven– is “yours.” God has put it all under you. As a believer in Jesus Christ everything is working for you, even when it seems the opposite. That’s not something that happens to members of some closed club of Christians who have attached themselves to some human teacher. Every believer has everything in Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Doesn’t every one of us belong to Jesus by faith? Jesus didn’t purchase some of us with his blood. He purchased all of us. Our sins are equally forgiven. Our souls are equally saved. He isn’t preparing a place in heaven for some of us. He is preparing a place for all of us. “You,” all of you, “are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” You don’t get that by belonging to a clique or dedicating yourself to some favorite teacher, even if that teacher is the Apostle Paul. You belong to Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Do you need something really worth boasting about, something that builds the church instead of tearing it down, something based on God’s wisdom not man’s, something that leaves the politics behind and leaves the spotlight on Christ? Paul has that identified for us too, in the last chapter of one of his other letters (Galatians): “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”