Partnership

Partnership with God names the working relationship in which human labor counts but the increase comes from God. Three Pauline passages set the shape: planters and waterers are coworkers but God gives the growth; ministers urge their hearers as those "working together" with God; and the willing and working in the believer is itself God working within.

Coworkers, but God Gives the Increase

Paul refuses to credit the planter or the waterer for what makes the field bear: "So then neither is he who plants anything, neither he who waters; but God who gives the increase" (1Co 3:7). Yet the working pair are still genuinely working — "Now he who plants and he who waters are one: but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor" (1Co 3:8) — and the partnership is named outright in the next verse: "For we are God's coworkers: you⁺ are God's husbandry, God's building" (1Co 3:9).

Working Together with God

The same vocabulary returns in 2 Corinthians as Paul appeals to the Corinthians: "And working together [with him] we entreat also that you⁺ do not receive the grace of God in vain" (2Co 6:1).

God Working in the Believer

The relation is not only outward labor for shared ends; it is also inward agency. The Philippians' obedience itself rests on God's prior work in them: "for it is God who works in you⁺ both to will and to work, for his good pleasure" (Php 2:13).