Verse of the Day — Monday, July 6, 2026
1 Corinthians 3:6
1 Corinthians 3:6. The Verse of the Day for Monday, July 6, 2026, with a short reflection.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
1 Corinthians 3:6
What this verse means
Paul tells a church quarreling over which leader they belong to that the leaders are only farmhands. One planted, another watered, but the growth came from God. No servant can claim the harvest as his own.
The verse sits in the middle of Paul's response to a very human problem in Corinth. The church there had split into fan clubs, some saying "I follow Paul," others "I follow Apollos," each sure their teacher was the one who mattered. Paul answers with a picture from the fields.
He and Apollos, he says, are farmhands, nothing more. Paul planted the church when he first preached there; Apollos came later and watered it with more teaching. But neither of them made a single thing grow. That was God's doing, and it was happening the whole time, quietly, underneath the work.
The Greek sharpens the deflation. The planter and the waterer are "nothing" next to the One who gives the increase, and the verb for that growth is an ongoing one, something God kept doing rather than a favor handed over once. The workers come and go; the growth is continuous and belongs to someone else.
Read on its own, the verse resets how we hand out credit. It honors real labor, since planting and watering are still necessary, while refusing to let any one worker claim the harvest. The increase was never theirs to own.
