After the initial greeting and thanksgiving, Paul spends the remainder of the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians talking about the divisions in the church. The divisions have two primary causes. The first is that the Corinthians are spiritually immature. Those who are immature will always find reasons to quarrel. The second is that they lack an accurate understanding of the nature of man and his relative position to God. This causes them to divide into groups based on their loyalty to certain leaders.

Paul exposes their faulty view of man with the following points:

• Man's wisdom is nothing compared to God's wisdom. Why should you put so much faith in a man when his wisdom is foolishness from God's perspective? Plus, how can you select the best man to follow using your worldly wisdom?
• God does not choose to work through those whom human wisdom would say are our best representatives. This is a pattern seen over and over in the Old Testament. If God does not use human wisdom as a criteria for leadership, should we?
• God is wise, but his wisdom is revealed through spiritual means. The Corinthians were not mature enough to have this wisdom. Worse still, they thought that they were wise.
• Man cannot judge spiritual things very well. Only God can judge the heart. Therefore, the Corinthians should be careful judging the relative merits of their leaders' works.
• God works through man, but it is not man's doing. It is “only God who makes things grow.”

The Corinthians did not realize that God's power is not to be found in man's abilities and wisdom. Those who were quarrelling probably thought they were fighting God's fight by trying to raise their man to a position of preeminence in the church. They thought they were rich but proved to be spiritually poor. They thought they were wise but proved to be fools.