What does 1 Corinthians 3:23 mean?

Paul has written to the Christians in Corinth that they should not limit themselves to following one Christian teacher or another. After all, God has given to them the service of several Christian teachers, including Paul, Apollos, and Peter. Why should the Corinthians declare themselves dependent on one and reject the others? His presumption here is that this applies to multiple teachers of legitimate truth (1 Corinthians 3:12–15). Paul is not, in any sense, telling believers to accept every single person who claims to have spiritual knowledge (James 3:1; Galatians 1:8–9) .

Instead, he has urged them to see that, as heirs with Christ, everything that is His is theirs, too. This even includes the world, life, death, the present time, and the future. Belonging to Christ brings with it enormous and endless gifts. We can, and should, seek to benefit from the spiritual wisdom of any godly teacher (Proverbs 24:6; 1 Corinthians 12:12–13), rather than artificially separating ourselves from other Christians over which teacher we prefer.

Paul adds that Christ is God's. Taken together, Paul's writings do not mean to say Christ is separate from God or that God "owns" Christ in a crass sense. The three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist together as one God. We come to God through Christ. Christ "lives to" God and to nothing else, though, mysteriously, both are one.