For we are laborers together with God: you are God's field, you are God's building.
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Caesarius of Arles
AD 542
Coworkers of God are those who, when once they see the poison of pride creeping into the heart of a brother, with all haste try to destroy it with the medicine of true humility.
For we are labourers together with God. S. Dionysius (Cælest. Hierarch. c3) says, "A great, an angelic, nay, a Divine dignity is it to become a fellow-worker with God in the conversion of souls, and to show openly to all the Divine power working in us."
Ye are God"s husbandry. Not Paul"s or Apollos": so you cannot boast yourselves in them. S. Paul continues the illustration drawn from agriculture. The chief tiller is God; Paul and Apollos are his servants; the Corinthians are the field; the seed is grace, the fruits good works. God by His Spirit cultivates within: Paul assists Him by his preaching from without. So Anselm.
Ye are God"s building. He inculcates the same truth by another illustration from building and architecture. The first architect is God; the secondary minister is Paul; the building is the Church and every Christian soul. So Anselm.
We should observe that the Hebrews and Syrians rejoice in metaphors and parables, and run them together, easily passing from one to ano...
We are God's coadjutors, labouring in his service, as he hath employed us.
You are God's husbandry, the soil, where virtues are to be planted. You are God's building, the edifice, the house, or even the temple of God; we are employed as builders under God. (Witham)
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.
The building does not belong to the workman but to the master. If you are a building, you must not be split in two, since then the building will collapse. If you are a farm, you must not be divided but rather surrounded with a single fence, the fence of unanimity.
I answered and said to her, "When, then, will they be useful for the building, Lady? "When the riches that now seduce them have been circumscribed, then will they be of use to God.
