1 Corinthians 3:9 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Though compared with God we are nothing, yet our station is no mean station; God works as the principal efficient Cause, we work with God as his instruments; God worketh one way, by his secret influence upon the heart, we another way, by publication of the gospel in people's ears, but the scope and end of the work is the same. The Lord is said to work with his ministers, Mark 16:20, and they are here said to work with him. Hence he proveth what he had before said, that they should be rewarded; God will not suffer those who work with him to be without their reward: as also that they were one, for they are all labourers together with God. Yet do not think yourselves our husbandry, for you are God's husbandry: thus God's people, Isaiah 61:3, are called the planting of the Lord. God's building: thus the church is called the house of God, 1 Timothy 3:15. Still the apostle minds them, that they were God s, not their minister s; it was God to whom they were beholden for their conversion, for their edification, &c.