Homilies on First Corinthians

For we are God's fellow-workers: “you are God's husbandry, God's building.”

Do you see how to them also he has assigned no small work, having before laid it down that the whole is of God? For since he is always persuading them to obey those that have the rule over them, on this account he abstains from making very light of their teachers.

“You are God's husbandry.”

For because he had said, “I planted,” he kept to the metaphor. Now if you be God's husbandry, it is right that you should be called not from those who cultivate you, but from God. For the field is not called the husbandman's, but the householder's.

“You are God's building.”

Again, the building is not the workman's, but the master's. Now if you be a building, you must not be forced asunder: since this were no building. If you be a farm, you must not be divided, but be walled in with a single fence, namely, unanimity.