According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble, each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire.
Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv10–16 10. As a wise master-builder It is a most…
10. As a wise master-builder It is a most apt similitude, and accordingly it is frequently met with in the Scriptures, as we shall see ere long. Here, however, the Apostle declares his fidelity with great confidence and fearlessness, as it required to be asserted in opposition not merely to the calumnies of the wicked, but also to the pride of the Corinthians, who had already begun to despise his doctrine. The more, therefore, they lowered him, so much the higher does he raise himself up, and speaking as it were from a pulpit of vast height, he declares that he had been the first master-builder of God among them in laying the foundation, and that he had with wisdom executed that department of duty, and that it remained that others should go forward in the same manner, regulating the superstructure in conformity with the rule of the foundation. Let us observe that these things are said by Paul first of all for the purpose of commending his doctrine, which he saw was despised by the Corinthians; and, secondly, for the purpose of repressing the insolence of others, who from a desire for distinction, affected a new method of teaching. These he accordingly admonishes to attempt nothing rashly in God’s building. Two things he prohibits them from doing: they must not venture to lay another foundation, and they must not raise a superstructure that will not be answerable to the foundation.
According to the grace He always takes diligent heed not to usurp to himself a single particle of the glory that belongs to God, for he refers all thing’s to God, and leaves nothing to himself, except his having been an instrument. While, however, he thus submits himself humbly to God, he indirectly reproves the arrogance of those who thought nothing of throwing the grace of God into the shade, provided only they were themselves held in estimation. He hints, too, that there was nothing of the grace of the Spirit in that empty show, for which they were held in esteem, while on the other hand he clears himself from contempt, on the ground of his having been under divine influence.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 Now he speaketh to the teachers themselves, who succeeded…
Now he speaketh to the teachers themselves, who succeeded him in the Church of Corinth, and in their person, to all that were after or shall be Pastors of Congregations, seeing that they succeed into the labor of the Apostles, which were planters and chief builders. Therefore he warneth them first, that they persuade not themselves that they may build after their own fantasy, that is, that they may propound and set forth anything in the Church, either in matter, or in kind of teaching, different from the Apostles which were the chief builders.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv10–16 10 According to the grace of God which is…
10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
Ver. 10. As a wise master builder] Artificers also have their wisdom, as Aristotle yieldeth. "For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him," Isa 28:26. As he did Bezaleel and Aholiah.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace of God which is given…
According to the grace of God which is given unto me: χαριν here signifies either the ability which God hath given Paul to preach the gospel, or the apostolical office, to which God had called him; he maketh both to proceed from God, and to be the effects of his free love and favour to him. According to this he saith: Look,
as a wise master-builder first layeth the foundation, then buildeth upon the foundation which he hath laid; so
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I, being the first whom God pleased to employ in this his work at Corinth, have laid the foundation, that is, have first preached the gospel in this famous city: thus the first preaching of the gospel is called, a laying the foundation, Rom 15:20; Heb 6:1.
Another buildeth thereon; afterwards Apollos and other ministers further carried on that work of preaching the gospel amongst them.
But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon; but (saith he) whoever cometh to preach after me had need take heed what he buildeth; for, Gal 1:8, though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 16 Observe here, 1. The character which St. Paul assumes…
Observe here, 1. The character which St. Paul assumes to himself, namely, that of a master-builder, yea, of a wise master-builder.
But was it not vain-glorious in the apostle thus to describe himself? Is not Christ the great and wise master-builder of the church?
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Yes, undoubtedly: but the apostles were instruments in his hand, which he honoured with success: for which reason St. Paul thus speaks.
Learn hence, That in some cases it is not vain-glory, but a necessary duty, for the ministers of Christ to magnify their work and office received from Christ.
Observe, 2. The special work performed by St. Paul, the wise master-builder: he laid the foundation; that is, he first acquainted them with the rudiments and fundamental principles of the Christian religion, which they had never heard of before.
Learn thence, That it is a special part of divine wisdom in a minister to lay at first a good foundation of scripture knowledge in the minds and understandings of his people. Unless we having a knowing people, we are not like to have a gracious people. All our sermons will be dashed to pieces upon the rock of our people’s ignorance, if they be not well catechised and instructed in the fundamentals of Christianity.
Observe, 3. How very careful our apostle is to ascribe all his strength, his assistance and success, as a master-builder, to the grace of God: According to the grace of God given to me.
Learn thence, That it is the property of every godly man, much more of every gracious minister, to attribute all that good which is either received or done by him, to the grace of God. What man ever received more grace from God, or did more service for God, than St. Paul? And so enlarged is he upon all occasions in magnifying the grace of God, that he is never satisfied in exalting of it: Not I, but the grace of God that was with me, &c.
Observe, 4. The cautionary direction by St. Paul, to all succeeding ministers of Christ, to take heed that they lay no other foundation than what was laid by him; and that they build suitably upon that foundation : Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.
Learn hence, That the ministers of Christ are to take especial care that they preach no other doctrine than what Christ and his apostles preached, and laid as the foundation of Christianity: and that they do not build upon that foundation any doctrine which may endanger their own or their people’s salvation: I have laid the foundation, and let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv11, 16 Here the apostle informs us what foundation he had…
Here the apostle informs us what foundation he had laid at the bottom of all his labours among them - even Jesus Christ, the chief corner-stone, Eph 2:20. Upon this foundation all the faithful ministers of Christ build. Upon this rock all the Christians found their hopes. Those that build their hopes of heaven on any other foundation build upon the sand. Other foundation can no man lay besides what is laid - even Jesus Christ. Note, The doctrine of our Saviour and his mediation is the principal doctrine of Christianity. It lies at the bottom, and is the foundation, of all the rest. Leave out this, and you lay waste all our comforts, and leave no foundation for our hopes as sinners. It is in Christ only that God is reconciling a sinful world to himself, Co2 5:19. But of those that hold the foundation, and embrace the general doctrine of Christ's being the mediator between God and man, there are two sorts: -
I. Some build upon this foundation gold, silver, and precious stones (Co1 3:12), namely, those who receive and propagate the pure truths of the gospel, who hold nothing but the truth as it is in Jesus, and preach nothing else. This is building well upon a good foundation, making all of apiece, when ministers not only depend upon Christ as the great prophet of the church, and take him for their guide and infallible teacher, but receive and spread the doctrines he taught, in their purity, without any corrupt mixtures, without adding or diminishing.
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II. Others build wood, hay, and stubble, on this foundation; that is, though they adhere to the foundation, they depart from the mind of Christ in many particulars, substitute their own fancies and inventions in the room of his doctrines and institutions, and build upon the good foundation what will not abide the test when the day of trial shall come, and the fire must make it manifest, as wood, hay, and stubble, will not bear the trial by fire, but must be consumed in it. There is a time coming when a discovery will be made of what men have built on this foundation: Every man's work shall be made manifest, shall be laid open to view, to his own view and that of others. Some may, in the simplicity of their hearts, build wood and stubble on the good foundation, and know not, all the while, what they have been doing; but in the day of the Lord their own conduct shall appear to them in its proper light. Every man's work shall be made manifest to himself, and made manifest to others, both those that have been misled by him and those that have escaped his errors. Now we may be mistaken in ourselves and others; but there is a day coming that will cure all our mistakes, and show us ourselves, and show us our actions in the true light, without covering or disguise: For the day shall declare it (that is, every man's work), because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is, Co1 3:13. The day shall declare and make it manifest, the last day, the great day of trial; see Co1 4:5. Though some understand it of the time when the Jewish nation was destroyed and their constitution thereby abolished, when the superstructure which judaizing teachers would have raised on the Christian foundation was manifested to be no better than hay and stubble, that would not bear the trial. The expression carries in it a plain allusion to the refiner's art, in which the fire separates and distinguishes the dross from the gold and silver; as it also will silver and gold and precious stones, that will endure the fire, from wood and hay and stubble, that will be consumed in it. Note, There is a day coming that will as nicely distinguish one man from another, and one man's work from another's, as the fire distinguishes gold from dross, or metal that will bear the fire from other materials that will be consumed in it. In that day, 1. Some men's works will abide the trial - will be found standard. It will appear that they not only held the foundation, but that they built regularly and well upon it - that they laid on proper materials, and in due form and order. The foundation and the superstructure were all of a piece. The foundation-truths, and those that had a manifest connection with them, were taught together. It may not be so easy to discern this connection now, nor know what works will abide the trial then; but that day will make a full discovery. And such a builder shall not, cannot fail of a reward. He will have praise and honour in that day, and eternal recompence after it. Note, Fidelity in the ministers of Christ will meet with a full and ample reward in a future life. Those who spread true and pure religion in all the branches of it, and whose work will abide in the great day, shall receive a reward. And, Lord, how great! how much exceeding their deserts! 2. There are others whose works shall be burnt (Co1 3:15), whose corrupt opinions and doctrines, or vain inventions and usages in the worship of God, shall be discovered, disowned, and rejected, in that day - shall be first manifested to be corrupt, and then disapproved of God and rejected. Note, The great day will pluck off all disguises, and make things appear as they are: He whose work shall be burnt will suffer loss. If he have built upon the right foundation wood and hay and stubble, he will suffer loss. His weakness and corruption will be the lessening of his glory, though he may in the general have been an honest and an upright Christian. This part of his work will be lost, turning no way to his advantage, though he himself may be saved. Observe, Those who hold the foundation of Christianity, though they build hay, wood, and stubble, upon it, may be saved. This may help to enlarge our charity. We should not reprobate men for their weakness: for nothing will damn men but wickedness. He shall be saved, yet so as by fire, saved out of the fire. He himself shall be snatched out of that flame which will consume his work. This intimates that it will be difficult for those that corrupt and deprave Christianity to be saved. God will have no mercy on their works, though he may pluck them as brands out of the burning. On this passage of scripture the papists found their doctrine of purgatory, which is certainly hay and stubble: a doctrine never originally fetched from scripture, but invented in barbarous ages, to feed the avarice and ambition of the clergy, at the cost of those who would rather part with their money than their lusts, for the salvation of their souls. It can have no countenance from this text, (1.) Because this is plainly meant of a figurative fire, not of a real one: for what real fire can consume religious rites or doctrines? (2.) Because this fire is to try men's works, of what sort they are; but purgatory-fire is not for trial, not to bring men's actions to the test, but to punish for them. They are supposed to be venial sins, not satisfied for in this life, for which satisfaction must be made by suffering the fire of purgatory. (3.) Because this fire is to try every man's works, those of Paul and Apollos, as well as those of others. Now, no papists will have the front to say apostles must have passed through purgatory fires.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace of God which is given…
According to the grace of God which is given unto me,.... Lest the apostle should be thought to be too much elated with the characters he had given of himself, and other ministers, or to assume too much to himself, in what he was about to say of himself, he ascribes all the gifts he had, and the usefulness he was of, as a labourer and builder in the church of God, to rich grace; by which he was called unto, and qualified for such work: as a wise master builder. This same phrase, , "a wise master builder", is used by the Septuagint interpreters, in Isa 3:3 by which they render , "the cunning artificer", or the wise man of the carpenters, or artificers. The architect of all is God the Father, Son, and Spirit; God the Father is the builder of all things; Christ builds his church on himself the rock; and the saints are built up an habitation for God, through the Spirit; ministers are builders under God, instruments he makes use of, and who would labour in vain, unless the Lord build the city: such an one was the apostle, though he calls himself a master builder with respect to inferior ministers; he being in the highest office in the church, as an apostle, and not a whit behind the chief of them; and was the chief apostle of the Gentiles, and was principally concerned in preaching the Gospel to them, and in raising churches among them. The allusion is to the Jews, who use to call the Rabbins and doctors, and the disciples of the wise men, "builders": they ask in a certain place (h), ,
"who are the builders? says R. Joehanna, these are the disciples of the wise men, who employ themselves in the building of the world all their days (i).''
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That is, the law, as one (k) of their writers explains this building; hence they are sometimes called builders of the law, and which was looked upon to be an high character: it is said (l) of a certain person, that
"R. Zeira praised him, and called him, , "a builder of the law."''
But the apostle was a Gospel builder, a builder of Gospel churches in Gospel truths, and in faith and holiness; these were foolish builders, but he a wise one; and his wisdom lay in the knowledge of Christ, in preaching him, and in winning souls unto him; and particularly in that he took care in his ministry, to lay a good foundation:
I have laid the foundation; meaning not only that as at other places, so at Corinth, he first preached the Gospel to them, and was the first instrument of their conversion, and laying the foundation of a Gospel church state; but that in his preaching he laid Christ as the one and only foundation, for men to build their faith and hope upon, for everlasting life and happiness, mentioned in the following verse:
and another buildeth thereupon; which designs not a private Christian, who was directed in the apostle's ministry to build his soul upon the rock of ages, Christ the sure foundation laid in Zion; though there is a truth in this, the apostle laid Christ as a foundation, and encouraged others to build their faith and hope upon him, as to eternal salvation; and many were enabled to do so, which was the happy fruit of his ministry, and what gave him pleasure; and in this sense he also himself built upon this foundation, for this cannot be said of another, to the exclusion of himself; he would never lay a foundation, and direct others to build on it, and not build upon it himself; but another minister of the Gospel is meant, as Apollos, or any other who might follow him, and be a means of carrying on the building upon the foundation he had laid; and of edifying and establishing souls upon it; and of rearing up superstructure truths, upon the foundation one:
but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon; that he builds by line, evenly, according to the analogy of faith; that he builds in proportion to the foundation; and lays such things upon it as are becoming it, and suitable to it.
(h) T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 114. 1. (i) Jarchi, Maimon. Sampson, & Bartenora in Misn. Mikvaot, c. 9. sect. 6. (k) Juchasin, fol. 81. 1. (l) T. Hieros. Gittin, fol. 48. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace of God given to me…
According to the grace of God given to me - This he premises, lest he should seem to ascribe it to himself. Let every one take heed how he buildeth thereon - That all his doctrines may be consistent with the foundation.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv10–16 Verse 10. As a wise master builder] Ὡς σοφος…
Verse 10. As a wise master builder] Ὡς σοφος αρχιτεκτων. The design or plan of the building is from God; all things must be done according to the pattern which he has exhibited; but the execution of this plan was entrusted chiefly to St. Paul; he was the wise or experienced architect which God used in order to lay the foundation; to ascertain the essential and immutable doctrines of the Gospel-those alone which came from God, and which alone he would bless to the salvation of mankind.
Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.] Let him take care that the doctrines which he preaches be answerable to those which I have preached; let him also take heed that he enjoin no other practice than that which is suitable to the doctrine, and in every sense accords with it.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv10, 12, 13, 14, 16 1Co 3:10-11. According to the grace of God —…
1Co 3:10-11. According to the grace of God — This he premises, lest he should seem to ascribe any thing to himself; as a wise master-builder — A skilful architect, directed by divine wisdom; I have laid the foundation — Jesus Christ and him crucified, a foundation sufficient to support the whole fabric of Christianity, with all its blessed effects: and another buildeth thereon — Succeeding teachers bestow further labour for your instruction and edification. But let every man — Every minister; take heed how he buildeth thereon — That all the doctrines which he teaches may be consistent with the foundation. For other foundation — On which the whole church, with all its doctrines, privileges, and duties, may be built; can no man lay — How much soever he may endeavour to do it; than that which is laid — In the counsels of divine wisdom, in the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament, and in the preaching of Christ himself and his apostles, St. Paul in particular; which is Jesus Christ — Who in his person and offices, in his love and sufferings, his humiliation and exaltation, his atoning death, his victorious resurrection, his glorious ascension, and his prevalent intercession, is the firm, immoveable rock of ages; a foundation every way sufficient to bear all the weight that God himself, or the sinner, when he believes, can lay upon him, even to support his immortal hopes. Christ, in his prophetic office, as a teacher come from God, is the foundation of all the doctrines of Christianity, and as made of God unto us wisdom, the source of our knowledge of, and faith in those doctrines: in his priestly office, atoning and interceding for us, he is the foundation of all the privileges of Christianity; and, when made of God unto us righteousness, puts us in possession of those privileges; in his kingly office he is the foundation of all the duties of Christianity, and when made of God unto us sanctification, of our power to perform those duties; for when the tree is good, the fruit is good; when we are created anew in Christ Jesus, good works are the never-failing consequence, Eph 2:10. Add to this, that as the firstborn of them that sleep, and our forerunner into glory, he is the foundation of all our hopes; and when made of God unto us complete and eternal redemption, he brings us to the enjoyment of the blessings hoped for.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace of God - By the…
According to the grace of God - By the favor of God which is given to me. All that Paul had done had been by the mere favor of God. His appointment was from him; and all the skill which he had shown, and all the agency which he had employed, had been from him. The architectural figure is here continued with some striking additions and illustrations. By the “grace of God” here, Paul probably means his apostleship to the Gentiles, which had been conferred on him by the mere favor of God, and all the wisdom, and skill, and success which he had evinced in founding the church.
As a wise master-builder - Greek “Architect.” The word does not imply that Paul had any pre-eminence over his brethren, but that he had proceeded in his work as a skillful architect, who secures first a firm foundation. Every builder begins with the foundation; and Paul had proceeded in this manner in laying first a firm foundation on which the church could be reared. The word “wise” here means “skillful” or “judicious”; compare Mat 7:24.
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I have laid the foundation - “What” this foundation was, he states in 1Co 3:11. The meaning here is, that the church at Corinth had been at first established by Paul; see Act 18:1, etc.
And another - Other teachers. I have communicated to the church the first elements of Christian knowledge. Others follow out this instruction, and edify the church. The discussion here undergoes a slight change. In the former part of the chapter, “Christians” are compared to a building; here the “doctrines” which are taught in the church are compared to various parts of a building. Grotius. See similar instances of translation in Matt. 13; Mark 4; John 10.
But let every man ... - Every man who is a professed teacher. Let him be careful what instructions he shall give to a church that has been founded by apostolic hands, and that is established on the only true foundation. This is designed to guard against false instruction and the instructions of false teachers. People should take heed what instruction they give to a church:
Because of the fact that the church belongs to God, and they should be cautious what directions they give to it; Because it is important that Christians should not only be on the true foundation, but that they should be fully instructed in the nature of their religion, and the church should be permitted to rise in its true beauty and loveliness; Because of the evils which result from false instruction.
Even when the foundation is firm, incalculable evils will result from the lack of just and discriminating instruction. Error sanctifies no one. The effect of it even on the minds of true Christians is to mar their piety; to dim its lustre; and to darken their minds. No Christian can enjoy religion except under the full-orbed shining of the word of truth; and every man, therefore, who gives false instruction, is responsible for all the darkness he causes, and for all the lack of comfort which true Christians under his teaching may experience.
(4) Every person must give an account of the nature of his instructions; and he should therefore “take heed to himself, and his doctrine” 1Ti 4:16; and preach “such” doctrine as shall bear the test of the great Day. And from this we learn, that it is important that the church should be built on the true foundation; and that it is scarcely less important that it should be built up in the knowledge of the truth. Vast evils are constantly occurring in the church for the lack of proper instruction to young converts. Many seem to feel that provided the foundation be well laid, that is all that is needed. But the grand thing which is needed at the present time, is, that those who are converted should, as soon as possible, be instructed fully in the nature of the religion which they have embraced. What would be thought of a farmer who should plant a tree, and never water or trim it; who should plant his seed, and never cultivate the grain as it springs up; who should sow his fields, and then think that all is well, and leave it to be overrun with weeds and thorns? Piety is often stunted, its early shootings blighted, its rapid growth checked, for the lack of early culture in the church. And perhaps there is no one thing in which ministers more frequently fail than in regard to the culture which ought to be bestowed upon those who are converted - especially in early life. Our Saviour’s views on this were expressed in the admonition to Peter, “Feed my lambs,” Joh 21:15.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv10, 12, 15, 16 I have laid the foundation well, as a wise…
I have laid the foundation well, as a wise architect, not of myself, but according to the grace of God, and the gifts he bestowed upon me: and another, or several others, built upon it, continue the building. --- But let every man take heed how he buildeth, and that it be always upon the same foundation, which is Christ Jesus, his faith, and his doctrine. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v16 16Know ye not that ye are the temple of…
VI—THE RUPTURE OF THE CHURCH BY PARTY SPIRIT PROVOKES HEAVY JUDGMENT. THE RENUNCIATION OF OUR OWN WISDOM THE CONDITION OF TRUE WISDOM. THE LOFTY TITLE OF CHRISTIANS TO ALL THE INSTRUMENTALITIES AND MEANS OF SALVATION
1Co_3:16-23
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16Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, [God’s temple15] and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 17If any man defile [destroy] the temple of God, him16 shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are [of which sort are ye]. 18Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world,17 let him become a fool, that he may be [become] wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness 20with God: for it is written, He [that] taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. 21Therefore let no man glory in men: for all things are yours; 22Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are [om. are18] yours; 23And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[“He passes to another argument against the sin of ranging themselves in opposite factions under human leaders, particularly such as corrupt the essential purity and fundamental soundness of the spiritual fabric of the Church.” Words.].
1Co_3:16. Know ye not that ye are God’s temple?—It will hardly do to connect these words directly with the preceding—if for no other reason than simply because the threat of destruction made in the following verse stands in direct contradiction to the promise of salvation there held forth, showing that Paul has a new case in mind. [Olshausen, however, regards the Apostle as simply intensifying and carrying out still further his previous figure. The edifice is now spoken of as God’s temple, and the guilt of desecrating or injuring the building by introducing incoherent materials into its structure is enhanced in proportion. And still further, the taught as well as the teachers are also here brought into view. So substantially Hodge, Alf., Stanley; Calvin says more correctly: “Having admonished the teachers as to their duty, he now addresses himself to the pupils”]. Οὐκοἴδατε: know ye not? This phrase is not to be confounded with ἤ οὐκ οἴδατε: or know ye not?—and it might very well serve to introduce a new turn of thought, indirectly suggested by what precedes. Thus far, Paul has contemplated the Church as a building belonging to God, and has exhibited the great responsibility attendant on the work of erecting it, after the only proper foundation has been laid. Now he describes its sacred character more fully by likening it to a temple inhabited by God’s Spirit, the violation of which incurs condign punishment. By the question: Know ye not? he appeals directly to the consciousness of Christians and intimates to his readers that in that spirit of partisanship which they cherished and which was so destructive to the integrity of the Church, there was a strange and criminal obscuration of true Christian feeling, inasmuch as they were conducting themselves just as if they possessed it not, and knew not what belonged to their profession. In the objective clause the emphasis lies on temple (ναός), marking an advance upon the more indefinite term, building, used before. ναός, according to its derivation, (ναίω) means indeed a building in general. But the Greeks used the word only to denote the dwellings of gods, and especially that room where the image stood. [“ναὸς is more holy than ἱερόν.” Words.]. Here it denotes the spiritual sanctuary, the place where the true God reveals His presence, and bestows blessings, and is worshipped, forming one complete whole, and consisting of all such as carry in themselves the Spirit of God. This appears from the explanatory clause following—and (km explicative) that the Spirit of God dwells in you.—Hence Christians are called “a spiritual house” (1Pe_2:5), also “a habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph_2:22); comp. also 2Co_6:16 ff.; Rom_8:9; Rom_8:11; 2Ti_1:14; Eze_37:27, etc. οἰκεῖν, to reside permanently (comp. Joh_14:23.) The words ἐν ὐμῖν, in you (not, ‘among you’), refers, like the statement: ‘ye are the temple,’ to the Church, or to individual believers, not, however in their separate capacity, but in their organic connection. Here the law of all organization obtains, that every organ is a complete whole in itself. As Christendom unitedly is a “temple of God,” so is also every Christian congregation and every individual Christian. But as the whole is to be understood and apprehended only in its parts, so are the parts to be understood only as connected in the whole. The translation: ‘the temple of God’ is by no means needed for the Bake of setting aside the idea of a plurality of temples. We can employ the rendering: ‘a temple of God,’ simply as signifying the kind of building implied. [Meyer on the contrary more justly says: “ναὸς θεου is the temple of God, not a temple, for Paul does not conceive of the various churches as various temples of God, which would be inconsistent with the Jew’s conception of God’s temple; but of each Christian church as in a mystic sense the temple of Jehovah. So there are not many temples, but one only, and many churches, each one of which is ideally the same temple of God.” So Stanley and Alford].
1Co_3:17. If any one destroy the temple of God, him will God destroy.—This is the first clause in an inference which rests upon the undoubted recognition of the inviolability of the temple of God, as maintained also in the Jewish Scriptures. All injuring, or desecrating, or even disturbing the sanctuary of God’s manifested presence, was deemed a sacrilege, which incurred the Divine vengeance. This is strongly indicated by the immediate succession of the same word in the two forms, φθείρει and φθερεῖ. “If any the temple of God destroyeth, destroy him shall God.” See a like case in Rev_22:18. The punishment here implied as related to the old temple was that of temporal death. Used, however, in relation to the spiritual temple, the word, in the first instance, signifies the rupturing of the Church by violent partisanship, which must finally end in its entire dissolution; and in the second instance, as indicating the consequent punishment, it denotes exclusion from salvation (απώλεια), [Stanley says that “φθείρειν, in the LXX. and in the New Testament, seems to have lost the sense of ‘defile,’ and merely to retain that of ‘mar’ or ‘destroy.’ ” And so Hodge, who says “the passage may be rendered ‘If any man injure the temple of God, him will God injure.’ “Olshausen goes still further: “The connection shows that the word cannot be understood of absolute destruction. Probably the Apostle chose the strong word only on account of its having been used just before for the purpose of intimating that God would requite like with like.” But such modification of its plain meaning is certainly contrary to the parallel which the Apostle introduces. The violater of the sanctuary of the ancient temple was unquestionably punished with death. And to preserve the analogy, we ought to maintain the word φθείρειν in its original signification].
Next follows the proof with the application of the penal principle just stated to the case in hand.—For the temple of God is holy.—It lies in the very idea of a temple that it is holy and inviolable, and that therefore all injury done to it is a crime.—And of this sort are ye—οἵτινές ἐστε ὐμεῖς ὅστίς refers to the object generally as one of a class, and not definitely, thus serving to render a proposition general; here it means: of which sort, viz., “holy.” The antecedent here is not “temple,” but the adjective “holy.”19 That they were the temple of God he had already asserted in 1Co_3:16. “Recurring to 1Co_1:1 he hereby awakens a feeling of reverence and a holy communion of Spirit in opposition to that unworthy servility engendered by a divisive regard for human authorities.” Osiander. [“Meyer well remarks that this clause is the minor proposition of a syllogism: Whoever mars the temple of God, him will God destroy, because His temple is holy: but ye are are also holy as His spiritual temple: therefore whoever mars you shall be destroyed by God.” Alford].
1Co_3:18. The Apostle now proceeds to point out the real source of the mischief he rebukes. The rupture of the unity of the Church by a party spirit, sprang from a pride of knowledge, and a vain conceit of that wisdom which belonged to and this world, and not to God’s kingdom. This was especially the case with the party of Apollos, which the Apostle seems chiefly to have in his eye, throughout this chapter. As it took pride in Apollos, because of his dialectic and rhetorical skill and learning, and clung to these qualities in him, so also did it seek to imitate his manner, and signalized itself for laying a great stress upon secular wisdom, and for no little conceit in that respect. This tendency Paul denounces as unfounded in truth, and unsuited to such as strive for the kingdom of God. In his view it involves a self-deception, more or less gross, against which he felt constrained to warn them.—Let no one deceive himself.—The deception here consisted in a person’s imagining himself to possess a profound insight into the truth and ways of God, when in fact he was utterly devoid of it, yea, was involved in entire misapprehension and gross blindness in reference to it. Such delusion passes away only when all conceit of wisdom is given up, and a person is willing to be regarded a fool, or consents to renounce all secular wisdom in the exercise of that simple faith which he before had regarded as folly, and which passes for folly with the world. And this is what the Apostle requires when he says:—If any one thinketh to be wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise.—Δοκεῖν may mean either: to think, or to appear; hence the clause may here be translated, “if any one passes for a wise man, either in his own estimation,” or “in others’ estimation.” The former rendering is best sustained by what has been said before. Hence the exhoration, “let him become a fool,” must be understood as relating to his own, and not to others’ judgment, and in such a way that either the words παῤἑαυτῷ, in his own esteem, shall besupplied; or that the person be regarded as passing over to a standpoint, which had until then appeared to him and to others like-minded as folly. The latter sense best suits the word. [And here it must be borne in mind that this renunciation of our own wisdom, or of the world’s wisdom, is required because all such wisdom is one only in appearance, and not in reality. It is its intrinsic worthlessness that renders it discreditable]. The phrase “in this world,” lit. “in this age,” is not to be united with the clause following, [as Origen, Chrysostom, Luther, Rosenmuller] as though it meant, “let him become a fool in this world;” the order of the words forbids this. But it belongs to ‘wise,’ as designating the sphere where this wisdom prevails; q. d. ‘wise in this world’ (comp. 1Co_3:19). [Alf. following Meyer says: “it belongs not simply to ‘wise,’ but to the whole clause going before; to the whole assumption of wisdom made by the man, which as made in this present world, must be false; “for,” adds Meyer, “those very persons who thought to become eminent among Christians through their wisdom in this premessianic period, when the knowledge of Divine things is yet in its infancy, and exceedingly limited, were not really wise, but were ensnared by their own self-decit.” Such a limitation, however, of the meaning of the word αἰων, age, here is very questionable. It is plain from the following verse, that “this age” is to be interpreted not temporally, but qualitatively, as synonymous with “this world” (κόσμος)]. Ἐνὑμῖν, among you, designates the sphere in which the person supposed hopes to shine by his wisdom.
1Co_3:19-20. Sustain the previous exhortation, and shows that in becoming a fool a person but coincides with God’s judgment—For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God—As such, therefore, it deserves to be cast aside. “Wisdom of this world” (κόσμος), comp. 1Co_1:21; 1Co_2:6. “It is a wisdom ruled by the spirit of this world that oversteps its proper bounds, seeks to satisfy itself about divine and human things, is tainted with error, and therefore stands in direct opposition alike to the highest reason, and to God, and to great objects for which the world and man were created (μωρία).” Osiander. [παρὰ τῷ θεῷ—παρά is used with the Dative “to express standing before a person as a judge, and submitting to his decision or sentence.” Hence the expression ‘before God’ carries a deeper meaning than simply ‘in his sight.’ God has passed upon it and condemned it.]—The proof of this.—For it is written, “He taking the wise in their own craftiness.”—This passage is cited from Job_5:13, and is a part of the speech of Eliphas. It accords with the original text, and agrees in sense with the Septuagint. [The phraseology of the latter, however, is changed for stronger terms, δρασσόμενος, catching for καταλαμβάνων, taking and πανουργίᾳ, craftiness for φρονήσει, prudence]. The sentence is incomplete, since Paul quotes only the words suited to his purpose, omitting those on which these grammatically depend. Hence they need no supplement. Human wisdom, art, cunning are here stated to be incapable of standing before the wisdom of God, since God catches those who rely on these aids, in their own craftiness, and the very excellencies on which they pride themselves, are turned into a snare through which they are entrapped. By thus causing them to be destroyed by their own devices, God shows them up to be nothing less than the veriest fools. This citation, the only one in the New Testament, taken from the book of Job, like much which Eliphas spoke, belongs to that wisdom which uttereth her voice in the streets, and is marked as here with the stamp of Divine truth.—And again.—‘The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.’—This second passage, taken from Psa_94:11, was originally directed against those proud contemners of God, who acted as if there were no God above, observing and noting down all their unrighteous deeds. In accordance with the object he has in view, Paul here employs the word “the wise,” instead of “men,” as it stands both in the original Heb. and in the Sept. But this is no arbitrary alteration, since the whole Psalm treats of those vain sophists, who pride themselves on their perverse and groundless notions respecting God. Διαλογισμοί in Hellenic speech, was used to denote all those capricious reasonings and reflections which either opposed Divine truth or tended to render it doubtful, comp. Rom_1:21; Eph_4:17. Μάταιοι, groundless, void of truth, therefore, counter to wisdom, and belonging to folly. Whether this word in the original belongs to the wise themselves, or to their reasonings, is questionable. The essential meaning is the same in either case. [“It appears from these two verses thus placed in juxtaposition, that St. Paul followed the LXX., but uses his own discretion in doing so, and sometimes substitutes for it a translation approaching more nearly the original.” Words.].
1Co_3:21-23. From all this a warning is derived.—So then—ὥστε.—[“This word is used by St. Paul to introduce the summing up and conclusion of his argument here and elsewhere in this Epistle, 1Co_3:7; 1Co_4:5; 1Co 8:33; 1Co_11:33; 1Co_14:39; 1Co_15:58.”—Words.] It serves even in classical writers to introduce an imperative clause when this follows upon another which contains the reason why such command is given. (Comp. Passow, ii. 2.) [Also Winer, N. T., Gr. Pt. 1Co_3:5, note 1; also Jelf. Gr. Gram. , § 867, 1].—Let no one glory in men.—That is, so far as they set up for themselves, and rely on their natural powers—not as possessed of spiritual gifts and because of such. In the latter case the boasting would be in the Lord. The caution is addressed to those who are inclined to make much of men in consequence of their education or supposed wisdom, cleaving to them in partisan attachment, and disparaging other servants of Christ in comparison, to the overlooking of the unity of the Church. Such persons are guilty of putting the highest value on what is merely a natural advantage. And all such should be avoided by reflecting, that the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For this there was an additional reason:—For all things are yours.—Here he exhibits to us the dignity of Christians, [in contrast with the World and its folly], as persons who, by virtue of their union with Christ and, through Him, with God, are precluded from dependence on men, and have a direct claim on every thing Which belongs to God and Christ, so that all things serve their advantage and promote their exalted destiny (Rom_8:28)—even as all things are compelled to serve Christ (Mat_21:3; Mat_27:60; Mat_11:27). As Neander well says: “The sovereignty over the world was indeed conferred on man in his original estate. But this, being lost through sin, was restored again by redemption. The spirit which is bestowed on Christians, carries in itself a principle which every thing must eventually obey, and which will subjugate the world ever more and more, until at last the promise, that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth,’ is fulfilled, and the world has become the theatre of the Divine kingdom.” From the drift of the passage we may see the utter groundlessness of Billroth’s view, who supposes the warning here to be addressed to teachers, cautioning them against boasting on account of their partisans. In such a case, we should be obliged to interpret ‘yours’ of the teachers, which would be impossible. It is to the Church in general that Paul is here speaking. Instead of glorying with a one-sided partiality, in the fact that, this or that person belonged to them as their master, he would have them maintain a blessed consciousness of the privilege, that all things and persons belonged to them alike.
What in particular these things were, he goes on to specify, beginning with the teachers whom they had made the occasion of their strifes.—Whether Paul, or Apollos or Cephas.—(Comp. 2Co_4:5.) Each one of these they were all to turn to their own advantage, instead of adhering to any one exclusively. Here he could not add, “or Christ,” for this would be to reduce Christ to the same footing with his servants. The Christ-party do not come into view here, and could hot, “since their relation to the Apostles was only a negative one “(comp. on 1Co_1:12).—or the world.—“This leap from Peter to the whole world gives a sudden breadth to the discourse, as if he were borne on with a sort of impatience to set forth his theme in its fullest scope.”—Bengel. Comp. Rom_8:38. There is here neither a climax, as if he were proceeding upward from the lowest point, nor an argument from the less to the greater, [as Calvin, when he says: “If Christ has subjected to you also the world and life and death, how much more men, so that they should serve rather than rule you?”] Nor is the term ‘world’ to be understood as denoting: ‘the university of the learned;’ nor yet: ‘the knowledge of all natural things’ wherein the learned boast; nor: ‘unbelieving teachers as contrasted with the aforementioned believing ones;’ nor: ‘all the rest of mankind.’ But the word is to be taken in its most comprehensive sense; Christians, who are the destined “heirs of the world” (Rom. 4:38), have even now a claim upon the world. It belongs to them. It must serve them. Yet in order not to make the term synonymous with the expression: “all things” (1Co_3:21) we shall have to limit it (with Osiander) to mean the visible world, with a special reference to mankind dwelling in it. [“The present order of things,” says Hodge, “is maintained and directed to the promotion of the great work of redemption.” And Barnes well expands the thought, ‘the world is yours,’ under four particulars: (1) The world was made by the common Father, and all His children have an interest in it as His work. (2) The frame of the universe is sustained and upheld for their sake. (3) The course of providential events is ordered for their welfare. (4) They have the promise of as much of this world as is needful for them (Mat_6:33; Mar_10:29-30; 1Ti_4:8)]. With this view the following members of the sentence best accord.—There we have indicated the most momentous states and changes belonging to this visible sphere.—or life, or death.—The former expresses the fullest exercise of all our vital energies in all its varied influence and bearings; the latter denotes the entire suppression of this activity. And both these must promote the advantage of believers and help onward their salvation. [“They are dispensed and administered so as best to fulfil the designs of God in reference to the Church. The greatest men of the world, kings, statesmen and heroes, ministers, individual believers and unbelievers, live and die just as best subserves the interest of Christ’s kingdom.”—Hodge. “ ‘Life is yours’: (1) Because believers enjoy it. It is a real life, not vain show. (2) Because its various events tend to promote their welfare and work together for their good.” “ ‘Death is yours’: (1) Because believers have peace and support in their dying hour. (2) Because it is the avenue which leads to their rest. (3) Because they should triumph over it, in that it will be swallowed up in the glory of a higher life, releasing us from what is mortal to put on immortality.”—Barnes.]—Or things present or things to come.—These terms alike refer to the present life, and include all its vicissitudes from the passing moment onward, whether joyful or sorrowful.—All are yours.—A summing up and emphatic reassertion of what he opened with. And from this he passes on to state the ground on which Christians possess such wealth; But ye are Christ’s.—[“Here the category changes; Christ is not yours in the sense in which ‘all things’ are—not made for and subserving you—but (δέ) you are His.”—Alford]. It is this fact which gives to believers their royal power over all creaturely existences. By partaking in Christ’s redemption, they once more attain unto a dignity which originally belonged to man (Gen_1:26; Psa_8:6) and which is promised God’s people (Exo_19:6). And this is a dignity far transcending all that ever was surmised by Pagans or is expressed in their most famous sayings—such as: ‘the wise alone are kings—are rich—are free, “The analogousness of such language to that of the New Testament indicates the remaining traces of the nobility of human nature; but without Gospel redemption the dignity of man thus set forth would be wholly unrealized. Antiquity planted itself upon self-exaltation, Christianity on self-humiliation.”—Neander. (Comp. 1Co_2:15; 1Jn_5:1; Rev_3:21; 1Pe_2:9). By belonging to Christ, the Church and all its true members become partakers of his glory as the One to whom all things have been given by the Father. In their fellowship with Him—a fellowship involving entire dependence on their park—they are made independent of all else, and all else stands at their service. By the fact expressed in: “ye are Christ’s,” all partizanship is cut off, all generic differences are dissolved, and a proper relation to all teachers established. Meyer says finely that the active relation of possession mentioned in 1Co_3:22 (‘all things are yours’) and the passive relation of being possessed here brought out (‘ye are Christ’s’) are both alike opposed to the disorders arising from subservience to human authorities. We may, perhaps, detect here a slight intimation intended for the Christ party, that in their partisan appeal to Christ there was an ignoring of that connection which all alike sustained to Him, and a disparaging levelling of their Lord to an equality with human leaders.—But Christ is God’s.—[“And even being Christ’s does not reach the highest possession: He possesses you not for Himself, but (δέ, again) the head of Christ is God,” (1Co_11:3).—Alford.] Thus it is shown that by belonging to Christ we indirectly belong to God, and are planted upon an immovable basis of independence and power (comp. Joh_10:28-30). And so, on the one hand, we see our union to God to be mediated by Christ, and, on the other, that Christ is subordinated to the Father, as shown in 1Co_11:3. To consider this subordination however as belonging solely to His human nature, would not accord with a correct view of the whole subject. It is the whole Christ that is here spoken of, and that too not simply as in His state of humiliation, but also in His state of glory (comp. 1Co_15:28; Php_2:9). In His essential equality with God, He is at the same time subordinated to God (comp. Joh_5:23-26; Joh_14:28; Joh_17:8). [“There is,” says Alford, “a striking similarity in the argument in this last verse to that in our Lord’s prohibition, Mat_23:8-10, ‘But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ; and call no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father, who is in heaven.’ ”]. “This last clause gives to the whole course of thought a most exalted close, and to the argument presented its strongest and noblest foundation, and rounds off the whole paragraph by a most fitting allusion to the idea of the one holy temple of God with which it opened (1Co_3:16, comp. 1Co_3:9), in order to show Christians that by virtue of their union to God through Christ they are really taught of God.”—Osiander.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The sacredness and inviolability of the Church. It is God’s temple. If so, then it is the place of His gracious presence—His sanctuary, to be treated with tender reverence and awe. To introduce strange fire (Lev_10:1-2) into it is a sacrilege which incurs the heaviest judgment, even an exclusion from the communion of saints. Of this crime they are guilty who bring into the Church some other authority than that of God’s word, and pin their faith to something else than that which God has given, and prize another wisdom beside that which is in Christ. By such conduct the Church is desecrated, and robbed of its true character as the temple of God. In fact it is as such destroyed. And this occurs whenever party spirit prevails. In such a case man’s word and wisdom usurp the place of God’s word and wisdom. Then adhesion to some particular human leader is made a test of Christianity and a condition of brotherhood. Then Christ, “who of God is made unto us wisdom,” etc., (1Co_1:30), is crowded out of His supremacy. In place of this one holy image of God, the only proper pattern for believers, there comes in the idol of some human personality to be copied as the true standard of character, and this not for the sake of any resemblance it may bear to Christ, but for the sake of some natural peculiarities it may happen to possess. Instead of the flame of a holy love kindled by the Spirit and warming toward all, there burns the Are of human partialities, which begets alienation and hostility towards all who do not cherish like preferences; and when such are the results of party spirit, it must be seen that he who engenders or furthers this spirit mars the work of God, and desecrates His sanctuary. And can such a person hope to escape condign punishment from Him who is thus insulted in His own temple?
2. The Christian’s regal glory in its nature and grounds. “All things are yours and ye are Christ’s, and Christ’s is God’s.” Since God is love itself, He keeps nothing for Himself, but imparts to others all—yea, His very Being in the fulness of its perfections and blessedness. This He does in an original and eternal way within the sphere of the Godhead, to his only-begotten Son, who, by virtue of this communication, is, has, and can do every thing the same as the Father. He does it also in an indirect manner towards all creatures made in His image, according to their measure. Hence the appointment of man to lordship in his own province. [This lordship he indeed lost by reason of sin, and became the slave of the circumstances which he ought to have ruled. But in the work of redemption it has been restored to him through the interposition of this Son, who became the second Adam, and, in His assumed humanity, reestablished this supremacy for all who should believe on Him. “Fear not,” He says to His own, “for I have overcome the world.” Hence it is] in Christ that we see this appointment to Lordship actually fulfilled; and how it was fulfilled may be seen, both during His life of humiliation, when He controlled all things by the word of His power, and in His exaltation to universal power and authority at the right hand of God. In this power believers are now invited to share by union with Him. Through Him the whole creation stands subject to their disposal. Every thing He has is made to subserve the purposes of His love in them and promote their sanctification and glory.
But since now, for a period, their life is, to a certain degree, hid with Christ in God, so also is their power. Nevertheless this power is to be experienced even here in striking ways, and ever more and more through the prevalence of their prayers. And the terms on which they receive it show the ground on which it rests, viz.: the fellowship had with Christ, and through Him with God. Prevailing prayers are such as are offered in the name of Christ or according to the will of God (Joh_14:13 f.;Joh_17:23; 1Jn_2:14), or as are presented in faith (Mat_17:20). In them there is an identifying of ourselves with God through Christ, so that all private preferences are given up, and we keep ourselves in exclusive dependence on Him. Besides, as in Christ Himself there was manifested this same demeanor towards the Father; as He, the Divinely equal Son, kept Himself in perfect dependence on God, and determined to be nothing else but the revealer and executor of the Father’s will; as He, the first man, was obliged to qualify Himself for the exercise of Divine power in the way of obedience,—just so it is with believers. Their voluntary and complete dependence on Christ and through Him on God is the condition and source of their all embracing power. The fact that they belong to Him is the ground that all things belong to them.
[3. All sound title and right to use the creatures of God, together with the ability to use them to advantage, are conditioned on faith in Christ. He, having by His obedience recovered for man his lost sovereignty, makes those who believe on Him joint heirs with Him to this inheritance. And He also imparts to them that purity by which all things are pure to them. Hence to them every creature of God is good, when received with thanksgiving and sanctified with the word of God and prayer. And in the ordering of His providence all things are made to work together for their good. Not so is it with the wicked. A kind of natural right to possession and use they may indeed have in the present condition of things; but—it is under God’s toleration and only for a time. If they continue unbelieving to the last, they are finally despoiled of all. While even in this life the good they seem to have is no real good, and “nothing is pure, since even their very mind and conscience is defiled.” This is what Origen seems to teach. “All things belong to the saint. The whole world is the possession of faith. But the unbeliever has no claim to even an obolus; for the goods which he has he holds as a robber, since he knows neither how to use them nor yet the God that made them.” (Taken in substance from Wordsworth)].
4. [Christ is God’s. On the subordination of Christ to the Father, see on 1Co_8:6 and 1Co_11:3].
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Starke:—To be “the temple of God,” inhabited by the Holy Spirit, is the highest dignity of Christians. It ennobles the humblest to a greatness that far surpasses all secular honor and glory. The Spirit dwells in us: 1, through faith in Christ; 2, through peace with God; 3, through hope; 4, through love; 5, through special gifts and powers; 6, through comfort, cheer, patience, joy in the cross; 7, through true life in the soul, continuing even when it passes out of the body; which itself also partakes of this life, whether it be in this or in the future state, (Selnecker) 1Co_3:16.—How fearful the woe which awaits those who mislead and destroy souls, either by false doctrines or by an ungodly life (1Co_3:17).—“Let him become a fool.” What a paradox! A fool first—then wise! The world seeks to be wise and then becomes foolish. But what is this “becoming a fool?” Not the losing of our understanding and will, [but the confession of ignorance, the avowal of our knowing nothing, that we may be willing to be taught, so as truly to know every thing] (1Co_3:18).—God sometimes lets “the wise” run their course, accumulate their knowledge, construct their cunning systems, so as at last to be caught as in a snare by their own devices, and be the more thoroughly convinced of their folly. [Few are so profoundly sensible of the incompetency of the human intellect and the meagreness of human attainments as those who have most profoundly and honestly explored and discussed the great problems of nature, humanity and God] (1Co_3:19). The Church is not for the teachers, that it should be subject to them and called by their names; but they are for it, to serve its welfare and build it up. Hence no man or set of men has power over Christians to prescribe laws for them and bind their consciences. Let no one therefore choose a mere man for his guiding star unconditionally, or follow his lead blindly; much less should any one count himself blessed in having adopted this one rather than that as the controller of his life and conscience. Nor yet let him provoke dissensions and divide the Church by asserting his partialities to an undue extent (1Co_3:21).—“All things are yours”—[all true Christian teachers of every name, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or Calvin, or Wesley, or Leighton, or Fuller. Every faithful minister profits the whole Church; and every member of the Church may and ought to derive benefit from the teachings of all. It is thus the mind is expanded beyond party limits into a true Catholicity]. And “this world,”—sun, air, water, fire, earth, all stand at your service, and ye can use them and praise the Creator for them. Your natural “life,” too, preserved by this world’s goods, [is, while preserved, for your advantage, even though it may be passed amid pains, and privations, and disabilities, that seem worse thin death]. Finally, “death” is yours, as it opens an entrance into eternal blessedness and glory (1Co_3:22).—‘Ye are Christ’s.’ He has bought you with His blood, and is your proper Lord and Master. He is the Head—you, the members. Hence cleave to Him only. Be called after him only. “Christ is God’s,” as the appointed Mediator and Ambassador of God to men. Likewise, as Head of the Church, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and acted ever in the Father’s service and to His glory (1Co_3:23).
Heubner:—The indwelling of the Spirit is opposed to all party strife. Hence in moments of holy inspiration, [in times of religious awakening], sectarianism melts, [and the hearts of believers of every name flow together], 1Co_3:16.—The conceit of our own unimpeachable wisdom is self-deceit or self-betrayal (1Co_3:18).—The wisdom which would know nothing of God and would discard a Saviour, will be finally exposed by God in all its nakedness, and all its aims baffled and punished (1Co_3:19).—To be proud of our own denomination or of our own leaders is nothing but a concealed self-love, which seeks to shine in the glory of another. And this is derogatory to the Christian name, for the believer is servant to no man (1Co_3:21).—Since all things are ours through Christ, all things should conduct the Christian to Christ. [Failing in this, their use and enjoyment become so far prejudicial and unlawful. They are then not properly “ours”]. (1Co_3:22).—“Ye are Christ’s,” then ye should serve Him, even as He, the image of God, served God in all things and conducted all to God (1Co_3:23.)
W. F. Besser:
1Co_3:18. “Be not deceived.” Self-deception is an injurious thing; it renders much labor useless, and despoils us of our reward. But worst of all is that self-betrayal which hardens the heart against brotherly admonition.—“Let him become a fool.” Such is the power and wonder working of God’s word, that it moves me to become an enemy to myself; and to empty myself of all that which best pleases my flesh; and to become a fool in this world, to give up the reputation of being a sagacious man, who moves on with the party of progress, and stands upon the apex of the civilization of the time; and so to pass into obscurity and contempt.—(1Co_3:19). God weaves a snare for the wise out of their own craftiness, wherein he catches them while they think to slip from Him by their arts: e. g., explaining away His miracles through their rationalism.—(1Co_3:21). The building here does not belong to the builders but the builders to the building.
1Co_3:22 as compared with 1Co_1:12. Christ does not stand in the second rank with His servants. He is the Lord of Glory. The declaration “all is yours” promises the world to Christians preëminently in this sense, that all secular art and service help to furnish mortar for building the temple of God. Christians are called not to curse the world, but to overcome and rule it for God. The world is nothing but a scaffolding that will be broken up when it has served its end in assisting to construct God’s house. But this house, which is destined to be eternal, are we.—All this world’s wisdom is folly with God, if it insists in playing the mistress in His house; but if it act the part of handmaid, it is in its place.—(1Co_3:23). Though Christ may employ His servants for bringing all those who have been purchased by His blood to become His by faith; still the saints thus called hang upon Christ, independently of any man, just as needles are drawn and held by the power of the magnet, even though some other needle, which had been first attracted, should sustain them by virtue of the magnetic power streaming through it.
[Barnes: 1Co_3:20. “Words of the wise, vain.” This admonition especially applicable to ministers. They are in peculiar danger on this subject, and it has been by their yielding themselves so much to the power of speculative philosophy that parties have been formed in the Church, and that the Gospel has been so much corrupted].
[J. Barrow: 1Co_3:16. The Divinity of the Holy Ghost. I. His nature and original—the Spirit of God. II. His personality—He dwelleth in us. III. His Divinity—Christians are called the temple of God because He dwelleth in them. IV. His sanctifying virtue—in that he constitutes us temples by His presence in us. Application. 1. We are obliged to render all adoration to the majesty of the Divine Spirit. 2. The consideration of His presence and work should awaken devoutest gratitude. 3. We should desire and pray for God’s Spirit. 4. We should demean ourselves worthily toward the Spirit. 5. The doctrine full of comfort and encouragement.—J. Howe:
1Co_3:16. The Christian a living temple, I. built, and II. inhabited, by the Holy Ghost.—See this whole subject largely discussed in Howe’s works, pp. 77–113.—R. South:
1Co_3:19. Worldly wisdom. I. Principles: a. Dissimulation in concealment or false pretences; b. Self-interest as opposed to conscience or religion; c. Self, the chief end; d. All its beneficence and gratitude are practiced with an eye to advantage. II. The folly and absurdity of these principles: a. The end pitched upon not suited to man’s condition, either as to duration or rational nature; b. The means pitched upon are unsuited to his end, inasmuch as they are insufficient and often contrary to it].
Footnotes:
[15]1Co_3:16.—[“God’s” should stand first as in the Gr. to mark the emphasis].
[16]1Co_3:17.—Τοῦτον. Lach., Tisch., and others read αν̓τόν according to many and in part weighty authorities [A. D. F. Syr.]. Meyer: τοῦτον, because after εἴ τις in the protasis αὐτόν is most usually employed, and it was corrected to this as more usual.” [So Alf., Words., and others following B. C. L. Cod. Sin.].
[17]1Co_3:18.—[The proper order is, “If any one thinketh to be wise among you in this world.” See exegesis].
[18]1Co_3:17.—ἐστιν is to be omitted according to preponderant authorities [A. B. C. D. F. Cod. Sin.].
[19]Hodge prefers the rendering of the E. V. which follows that of all the previous English versions, as well as the Syriac, Vulgate and Lather’s. And this rendering is sustained by Jelf. Gr. Gram. § 816. 7, § 821. 3. The plural in οἵτινες is to be explained on the principle of attraction.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv10–16 grace . . . given unto me--Paul puts this…
grace . . . given unto me--Paul puts this first, to guard against seeming to want humility, in pronouncing himself "a WISE master builder," in the clause following [CHRYSOSTOM]. The "grace" is that "given" to him in common with all Christians (Co1 3:5), only proportioned to the work which God had for him to do [ALFORD].
wise--that is, skilful. His skill is shown in his laying a foundation. The unskilful builder lays none (Luk 6:49). Christ is the foundation (Co1 3:11).
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another--who ever comes after me. He does not name Apollos; for he speaks generally of all successors, whoever they be. His warning, "Let every man (every teacher) take heed how," &c., refers to other successors rather than Apollos, who doubtless did not, as they, build wood, hay, &c., on the foundation (compare Co1 4:15). "I have done my part, let them who follow me see (so the Greek for 'take heed') to theirs" [BENGEL].
how--with what material [ALFORD]. How far wisely, and in builder-like style (Pe1 4:11).
buildeth thereupon--Here the building or superstructure raised on Christ the "foundation," laid by Paul (Co1 2:2) is not, as in Eph 2:20-21, the Christian Church made up of believers, the "lively stones" (Pe1 2:5), but the doctrinal and practical teaching which the teachers who succeeded Paul, superadded to his first teaching; not that they taught what was false, but their teaching was subtle and speculative reasoning, rather than solid and simple truth.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv10–16 10. Wise master-builder—At the proper time Paul does not…
10. Wise master-builder—At the proper time Paul does not hesitate to style himself a sophos—a wise.
I laid… another—Nor does he at all abdicate his prerogative as founder.
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But—From this point commences a solemn caution to ministers, even who build on Christ as their foundation, what structure of doctrine, or morals, or churchdom they build thereon. The fire of the judgment day will test whether its materials be combustible. If so, the building will be burned up; yet the builder, as having built on Christ, will escape, like a householder, through the conflagration of his home, losing all else, but saving his life. All this, and what follows to 1Co_4:6, Paul figuratively speaks as in the persons of himself and Apollos, 1Co_3:4-8; but it is equally applicable to all other preachers and to all ministers in all ages.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 10. According to the grace of God which is…
10. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder] Rather, which was given to me, i.e. when he laid the foundation. St Paul now desires to identify himself with the teachers of the Corinthian Church, so far as they were really carrying on the work which he had begun. His object is to combat the individualism which had led the Corinthian Church astray. If their teachers be genuine ministers of Christ, it is but one work that they are carrying on. They are merely proceeding with the superstructure of that which the Apostle had founded. Comparison of their personal claims with those of St Paul, and still more an attitude of antagonism to him and to one another, are entirely out of place.
But let every man take heed] A fresh subject is here introduced. We are now told of what kind the labour of a minister of Christ is to be, and what his reward. There is, there can be, but One Foundation, but there are many ways of building on that foundation.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 (10) According to the grace of God.—The Apostle being…
(10) According to the grace of God.—The Apostle being about to speak of himself as “a wise masterbuilder,” takes care by commencing his statement with these words to show that he is not indulging in self-laudation, but merely pointing out what God had given him the grace to do. (See Rom_1:5; Rom_12:3.)
Wise—i.e., skilful or judicious.
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Another buildeth thereon.—The sequence of the work here is the same as in the planting and watering of the previous illustration. The use of the indefinite word “another” avoids what might be considered the invidiously frequent repetition of the name of Apollos, and also indicates that there were others also who came after Paul, as is evident from 1Co_4:15. (See Rom_15:20.)
But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.—Better, But let each one see in what manner he buildeth thereon. The argument in this and the following verse is that there can be only one foundation in the spiritual building—namely, the personal Jesus Christ. That foundation the Apostle has laid. None can alter it or add to it as a foundation; but there may be an immense variety in the materials with which those who come after the laying of the foundation may build up the superstructure. Therefore their own work and “how” they build (i.e., with what materials), and not the one foundation once for all and unalterably laid, should be the subject of their thought and care.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace of God which is given…
According to the grace of God which is given unto me; rather, which was given. Here, again, we have St. Paul"s baptismal aorist his habit of regarding his whole spiritual life as potentially summed up inthe one crisis of conversion and baptism. This phrase is a favourite one with him (1Co_15:10; Rom_15:15; Gal_2:9; Eph_3:2) As a wise master builder. "Wise" only in the sense of subordinating every pretence of human wisdom to the will of God; and here the adjective only applies to the wisdom required by a builder. In other words, "wise" is here equivalent to "skilful." Since Paul had received the grace of God for this very purpose, he was made "wise" by the knowledge of Christ. (for the metaphor of building, see Mat_7:24; Eph_2:21 1Pe_2:5) The foundation; rather, a foundation. Though in truth there is but one foundation, as he proceeds to say, St. Paul always refused to build on the foundation laid by another. (Rom_15:20) Another. Perhaps the special allusion is to Apollos.
Vers. 10-15.
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The true foundation of character.
to the grace of God," etc. The words suggest certain important thoughts concerning character.
I That there is an ANALOGY BETWEEN THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER AND THE ERECTION OF A BUILDING. "If any man build," etc. It is like a building in three respects.
1. In the variety of its materials. Buildings are generally formed of a variety of materials stone, wood, iron, etc. Moral character is built up by a variety of things the impressions that are made on us, the emotions that rise in us, etc.
2. In the unity of its design. Every building is formed on some plan. One design shapes the whole. So with character. The master purpose of the soul, whatever it may be, gives unity to the whole.
3. In the function it fulfils. Buildings are generally residences of some kind or other. The soul lives in the character. It is its home. In some cases the home is the mere sty of the animal; in some, the shop of the barterer; in some, the prison of the guilty; in some, the temple of the saint.
II THAT CHRIST IS THE ONLY FOUNDATION OF A TRUE CHARACTER. "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." There are sometimes splendid edifices and poor foundations, and the reverse. All characters are based upon some one idea.
1. Some are based on the sensual idea; such as that on which the prodigal son started, etc.
2. Some are based on the secular idea. On this Judas, the young lawyer, and Demas built.
3. Some are based on the ambitious idea. Absalom, Haman, Herod, are examples.
1. Some are based on the Christian idea. What is that? Supreme sympathy with God; and this requires Christ. Christ is its Foundation, for he does two things to generate this supreme sympathy in the soul.
1. Demonstrates to man the propitiableness of God.
2. Reveals to man the moral loveliness of God.
III THAT TO CHRIST, AS A FOUNDATION, MEN BRING WORTHLESS AS WELL AS VALUABLE MATERIALS. Some build edifices of "gold, silver, precious stones," and some of "wood, hay, stubble.
1. There are edifices partially formed of "wood, hay, stubble.
(1) The mere creedal character is worthless.
(2) The mere sentimental character is worthless.
(3) The mere ritualistic character is worthless.
All these characters are formed of "wood, hay, stubble things of no solidity, no value, no duration.
2. There are edifices entirely formed of valuable materials brought to Christ. They are formed of "gold, silver, precious stones." The profoundest thoughts, the strongest sympathies, the gold and silver of the soul, are connected with Christ.
IV THAT THERE IS AN ERA TO DAWN WHEN ALL THE EDIFICES BUILT ON THIS FOUNDATION SHALL RE TRIED. "Every man"s work shall be made manifest." Heaven has appointed a day for testing character. Individually, it is the day that dawns at the end of our mortal life; universally, it is the day that dawns at the end of this world"s history.
1. This day will be injurious to those who have built on this foundation with worthless materials.
(1) They will suffer loss the loss of labour, opportunity, position.
(2) Though they suffer loss, they may be saved yet so as by fire." Though his favourite theories and cherished hopes shall burn like "wood and hay," yet he himself may survive the flames.
2. This day will be advantageous to those who have built on this Foundation with right materials. "If any man"s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
Vers. 10-15.
Christian work and its testing.
I CHRISTIAN WORK:
1. Should be rightly based. Christ is the only Foundation for the spiritual building. This Foundation may have been already laid for us by others where we are called to labour: if so, we must see that we are building upon it; if it be not laid, by "the grace of God" (ver. 10) we must seek to lay it without delay. All our teaching must rest upon Christ. He is not only the Omega to be ended with, but the Alpha to be begun with. All our efforts will be fruitless unless identified with him. The well constructed house built upon the sand perishes; so the most earnest and devoted labour is thrown away where Christ is ignored. The Christian builder should look carefully to his foundation. Whilst others build upon all sorts of things, he should build only upon Christ.
2. Should be wisely ordered. It is not enough to work; we must work wisely and well. Some seem to think that if they engage in Christian service, it is no matter how they engage in it; if the work be but done, it is no matter how it is done. Some of the most slipshod slatternly work under God"s sun is done in God"s Name and in connection with his kingdom. In other departments of life, care, watchfulness, anxiety, assiduity, are demanded; but in the religious sphere the thing is to get the work done somehow or other, and if it be but done somehow, all is likely to be well! Such careless builders sadly need the apostolic blast of warning: Let every man take heed how he buildeth (ver. 10). Christian work should be conformed to Christ in every particular. The superstructure should correspond to the Foundation. Epithets may go for little with us; in our teaching we should be just as "narrow" as Christ and just as "broad" as Christ. Our building will be of right dimensions if it is neither wider nor less wide than the Rock foundation upon which it rests. As to being "old fashioned," we need not greatly dread this if thereby we are more fully identified with our Lord; or "new fangled," if thus we and our work are more truly after his mind. Christian work is planned work. As the architect has a plan for his work, so the great Architect has a plan for his work, and for that part of his work which he entrusts to us to perform. If we "take heed how we build," we shall take heed that we build only according to the Divine plan. Knowledge of this is to be sought in prayer and from the Divine Word. There is one way in which our life work should be done; that way has been conceived by the Divine mind; we should seek a revelation of it. The Christian must not be his own architect.
3. In Christian work right materials should be used. It is not enough that we teach; we must teach the truth, and we must teach the truth as it is in Jesus. Our doctrine must be of Christ, and it must be sound doctrine, the "sincere milk" of the Word; the revelation of God, unedited by man. What rubbish has been and is taught by not a few! how much "wood, hay, stubble," placed in the great spiritual building! No wonder that the Christian soldier is so often worsted when he fights with gingerbread weapons. Shame upon men that, when the right material for labour is provided, they go hunting about for the wrong. The Scriptures are the great quarry and mine in which costly stones and gold and silver abound, and no zealous spiritual builder need lack who will search these mines.
II CHRISTIAN WORK WILL BE TESTED. A solemn thought. Our work will be tested! When Christian work is done, that is not the end of it. It will be tried. Well may we ask:
1. When? On "the day," says the apostle. Christian work is tested on many days. Much of it does not stand the test of these days. But on the day the day of days the judgment day all shall be tested and finally tested. "Each man"s work shall be made manifest;" its true character will then be seen. "The day shall declare it" as it is, not as it has been thought to be. Now it may look well; but then? A veil now rests upon Christian work, then the veil shall be taken away; now the scaffolding obscures the building, then it shall fall, and then shall be seen "of what sort" the building is. The final test cannot be escaped from.
2. How? By "fire." (Not by the fires of purgatory; the apostle speaks of fire applied to work, not to persons, not remedial, but testing. ) The test will be thorough, searching, perfectly efficient. The false work will stand this test when hay and wood and stubble can abide unchanged in the flame; but not till then. Our work may look well now, but how will it bear the fire test?
3. By whom? God. At the great day he will be Judge, and will try every man"s work. He will apply the fire test. He loves truth and hates lies, which we call shams. On that day he will manifest the truth concerning work done in his Name. Whatever it has seemed before, it will then seem as it really is. The careless and the false may well tremble at the thought of this ordeal; but the sincere and faithful may have confidence; for as no work then will be made to appear better than it is, none will be made to appear worse.
III THE ISSUES OF THE TESTING OF CHRISTIAN WORK.
1. As to the work tested. Some will stand. The pessimists will then be ashamed; railers and mockers will then be silenced There is some work (and who shall say that it is little?) which will approve itself to God, and stand the final and most searching trial. This, doubtless, will be the work done in Divine strength, and, whilst the doers of it will rejoice with exceeding joy, they will as assuredly cry, "Not unto us." Some work will not stand the test. As hay and wood and stubble are speedily consumed in the fire, so this work will perish in the last testing flames. To see a life work destroyed in a day! A life lived and no fruit. No "Well done" because all has been ill done. And perhaps all through carelessness, sluggishness, self reliance, inattention to the "mind of Christ." Sad, sad close of a "Christian course.
2. As to workers. Some shall "receive a reward;" their work has borne the test. Though they say truly that this reward is "unmerited," they shall have it. "Doth Job serve God for nought?" Certainly not; no man ever did or shall. We lose nothing by labouring for Christ; and note that we lose nothing by labouring thoroughly for him. We may lose by labouring half heartedly we may lose our reward. It is best every way to do our best in Christ"s service. Some receive no reward. Their work perishes and they "suffer loss," but they themselves are saved, "yet so as by fire," i.e. barely, with difficulty. The reference is to those who hold fundamental truths (for they are supposed to build on the one Foundation, ver. 12), but who mingle with their teaching the wood, hay, and stubble of human notions. Strikingly are we here taught that salvation is not of works; for the works perish, but the salvation abides. Doubtless we must suppose that in such cases there is true Christian living and a real desire to do the Master"s will; for these are necessary evidences of a saved, regenerate state; but the vital truth of salvation by faith is pointedly illustrated by the chief works of the life (upon which all would have been resting if salvation were of works)suffering ignominious rejection. Being saved "so as by fire" is in Striking contrast to "the abundant entrance." May we have the ecstatic joy of the latter, and the holy gladness which comes from seeing that we have not "lived in vain"! H.
Vers. 10-15.
The Foundation and the superstructure.
Under the figure of a building, the apostle continues to speak of the work of Christ"s ministers, and specially of his own labours at Corinth. As the first to preach the gospel there, he had laid the foundation, upon which the teachers that succeeded him were to build. The reference is primarily to doctrine, but the principles apply to work and life as well.
I THE FOUNDATION. This is Jesus Christ the Mediator. (Isa_28:16; 1Pe_2:6) He is the Foundation of truth: the system of Christian theology is built upon him. All Christian teaching and preaching must have him for their basis. The entire structure of knowledge rests upon him who is the Source of all wisdom, He is also the Foundation of life. The Church is built upon him, believers being "living stones" in the great spiritual temple. In both these respects Jesus Christ is:
1. A Divine Foundation. "Behold I lay." The Church requires a basis laid by God himself.
2. A sure Foundation. No work of God can fail. Jesus Christ is a Foundation, not of sand, but of solid rock. (Mat_7:24-27) It will bear any strain, even the weight of a world.
3. The only Foundation. This is the point emphasized here. Men build on other foundations when they rest their systems of belief on human opinion, or base their hope of heaven upon their own worlds, the merits of others, the general mercy of God, etc. But "other foundation can (dunatai) no man lay;" there is but one.
II THE SUPERSTRUCTURE. Having found the true Foundation, we must "take heed how we build thereon." The work of ministers or of believers in general is here viewed as the superstructure. Two kinds of materials may be employed: "gold, silver, costly stones the beautiful and lasting materials, suited for a temple; or "wood, hay, stubble the baser and more perishable materials, fit only for a temporary house. Apply this to:
1. Doctrine. The "gold," etc., represents pure, scriptural teaching. Take Paul"s Epistles, e.g., as a noble structure of truth built on Jesus Christ. Such doctrine is precious and abiding, like its Foundation. The "wood," etc., represents human opinions and speculations put in the place of God"s truth. In Paul"s time, Jewish tradition, Gnosticism, etc.; in ours, Popery, Ritualism, etc. Such doctrines are not truly edifying.
2. Life. The "gold," etc., is a Christian life of the noblest kind, built out of faith, hope, love. Pure, unselfish, Christ like character. Variety may be indicated in the three materials. Gold may denote the most brilliant service rendered by consecrated genius, heroic faith, patient suffering. Silver may indicate a work less brilliant, but useful the honest doing of the Lord"s will. Costly stones marble or granite, e.g. a life of solidity and strength, on which others may lean. Each of these classes has its own place and value. All are genuine. The "wood," etc., is a Christian life of the poorest kind, Dull as wood, with little spiritual insight. Swayed by public opinion, as the grass by every breeze. Barren as stubble, bringing forth little to the glory of God. What differences in the lives of Christians! Gold or stubble: which?
III THE FIERY TRIAL. The true nature of our life and work is not always seen here. We judge wrongly of others and of ourselves. Men praise the wood as if it were gold; depreciate the gold as if it were wood. But the day shall declare itDies irae, dies illa the day of fire, when Christ comes to judge. (Mal_3:2, 3 4:1; 2Th_1:8) Time tests but partially; the thorough test is the judgment fire. Shall our work stand that?
1. The edifice of "gold," etc., shall stand. Truth will come through the fire; so will a genuine, unselfish, Christly life. Work for time perishes; work for eternity endures. The fiery ordeal will only bring out more clearly its true quality. The builder shall receive a reward in seeing his work abide, (Php_2:16) in being recognized as a good workman, (Mat_25:21) and in wearing the crown of life. (Jam_1:12) Observe, the reward is not for being on the Foundation, but for what is built thereon. Salvation is of free grace; the reward is "according as his. (Rev_22:12)
2. The structure of" wood," etc., shall be burned up. Error, falsehood, unreality; a life animated by a worldly, selfish spirit; these shall be consumed. The builder is glad to get away with his life, as one escapes from a house in flames, saved "so as through fire." Picture the consternation of the poor builder as he sees the fire doing its awful work, and hears the crash of his life structure! He himself is saved for Christ"s sake, but his labour is lost.
Lessons.
1. See to the nature of your life and work as Christians. Apply specially to Christian workers.
2. Be not satisfied with bare salvation at last. Build with materials that will endure. Have an eye to the "full reward". (2Jn_1:8)
3. If many on the true Foundation shall be saved only "so as through fire," how shall they escape that are building on a false foundation?. B. (1Pe_4:17, 1Pe_4:18)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 16 According to the grace of God … as a…
1Co_3:10-15
According to the grace of God … as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation … But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
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All of grace
Now when we say a godly man acknowledgeth all to grace, consider--First, he doth it heartily, seriously. No fountain doth run more sweetly, fully, and purely than he doth. Oh, his heart is a happy spring from whence comes such rivers of living water! Secondly, this acknowledgment is accompanied with a renouncing all his own works. His own strength, his own duties, he doth not so much as think of them, nor mention them. Thirdly, this acknowledging it must be from an inward sense of our own sin and unworthiness, how ill we have deserved at Gods hand. No man can ever praise grace that hath not felt the sting of sin, the power of the law. Fourthly, he must wholly and solely acknowledge grace. He must not give some piece to grace and the rest to his own free-will. He must not by grace mean the outward manifestation and revelation of it, but the inward efficacy of it. Lastly, he must set up this grace of God in a Scripture way. Not to oppose godliness or holiness, or to sin more securely and boldly: this is not to acknowledge grace, but to abuse grace. In the next place consider why the godly are so sensible of Gods grace. And first, this is the final cause of all the good that God doth enable us unto. This is all He looks for. Secondly, the children of God are endowed with an ingenuous, free, and excellent spirit; therefore they cannot but confess by whom it is they have obtained grace. Thirdly, the real sting, smart, and danger they have been in makes their heart full and mouth full of the grace of God. Fourthly, they are an humble debased people in themselves. They have low thoughts of all that they do. And therefore it is that they are so precious with God. Fifthly, they must needs acknowledge grace, because they have the experience how hard it is to do anything spiritual and upon heavenly grounds. And therefore if they are ever enabled thereunto they cannot but exalt grace. Sixthly, to praise and exalt the grace of God, it is a very profitable and advantageous duty also. It is two ways profitable.
1. It procures more grace and mercies from God: He giveth grace to the humble (Jam_4:6).
2. This acknowledging of grace will enlarge a man, and make a man more willing and ready in all the ways of God. It is like oil to the wheel; it is like wings to the bird. Duties done with the spirit of praise and thanksgiving have great life and vigour in them. Now I shall add one caution: corrupt doctrines and opinions in religion may much cool this duty of giving thanks. I shall instance some. As first, the denying of original sin is a great engine against the grace of God. Secondly, the maintenance of free-will doth much detract from free grace. Thirdly, that the law is not to be preached; no, not for direction or obligation. Whereas Christ and Paul do often press this. (A. Burgess.)
A good foundation
This Paul makes the principal part of his wisdom, that he began with a good foundation. The point therefore in hand is of great consequence, both to the preacher and to the auditor, to consider what foundation his religion and godliness is fixed upon. For the opening of this, consider that divines do ordinarily make a twofold foundation. The one they call the foundation of our knowledge and faith in matters of religion; and this is the Scripture only. We can lay no other foundation for the matters of faith but the Word of God. Secondly, there is the foundation of the being, or existence of all our glory and salvation, and that is only Jesus Christ. I shall instance in four unquestionable foundations, which are the four main pillars that support our Christian building, for the necessary things of religion are these four. Either--
1. The matters to be believed.
2. The worship and necessary service of God.
3. The spiritual benefits and mercies, justification and salvation.
4. The things to be done by us in our way to salvation.
We will begin with the first, the foundation of our faith or Divine assent in matters of religion. What is that which every man must build his faith upon? And that is the Word of God. As God at first put all the light into the sun, and the stars shine by a borrowed light from it, so God hath now put all supernatural light into the Scripture, and all guides are to shine by that. Now that the written Word of God is the only foundation of our Christian faith, appeareth by these reasons--First, a Christian faith ought to be a Divine, supernatural faith, not a bare human faith. Now nothing can be the ground of a Divine faith but a Divine authority. Secondly, the Scriptures are only the foundation because they are the immediate verity or truth coming from God, who is the first essential truth. They have not only a Divine authority, but evident infallibility. Take a tree from the river side and plant it in a wilderness, what can you expect but withering? And thus it is if you take a man from the Scripture; his seeming faith, graces, godliness will all presently vanish. Thirdly, the Scriptures only are the foundation of faith because they are only immutable and unmovable. They abide always the same, they are not subject to changes, to perturbations of affections, as men are. Councils consisted of men carried by passions and- interests. Lastly, the Scripture is only to be laid for a foundation because this only is strong enough to support and bear up in sad hours of temptation and dangerous times of persecutions. Our Saviour quelled Satans temptations by arrows out of the Scripture quiver. Now for the matter of doctrine to be believed, some men lay four rotten and weak foundations; others may be reduced to this. The first is that of the papist, the authority of the Church and the Pope, being wholly ignorant themselves, but resting all on their authority. The second foundation men lay is the authority of the civil magistrate. This is a mere political faith. The third is private revelation and enthusiasms. Fourthly, another false foundation is mere human reason. (A. Burgess.)
Foundations
The foundation therefore of every good duty or work we do hath these parts. First, there is a foundation by way of a direction or rule, to which everything we do must be commensurate, and by which it must be regulated, now that is the Word of God. For Gods Word is not only a rule of faith but of manners. And as thou must be of no other religion than the Word directs to, so thou must do no other actions or live any other life than that guides thee too. A second part of that foundation we must lay for the practice of holiness is the justification and reconciliation of our persons with God through Christ. Thirdly, another foundation we must lay is to receive power and strength from Christ only, both in the beginning and progress of al1 good actions. Fourthly, the last part of this foundation is a renewed and sanctified nature. Now let us consider why we are to be careful about laying this foundation. First, because it is very dangerous, and it is very easy to miscarry in this matter, if the foundation be not well laid thou art undone for ever. In matters of mens estates, or of their bodily life, how careful are they to go upon a sure foundation. Only they wilfully venture their ruin in the matters of their soul. Thou wouldst be unwilling to live in an house whose foundation is rotten! Consider, then, am I in the right? Fear would make thee jealous and suspicious. Secondly, we mistake easily. We see the greatest part of Christians never attend to these things. And withal the difference between true and false foundations is spiritually to be discerned. Oh then say, I do the outward works of religion, I am careful to discharge them! But how easy may I build all upon a false foundation! Thirdly, therefore we must look to our foundation because of the great confusion that will be at last on those who have failed therein. Fourthly, therefore lay a good foundation, for if that be wanting, thou doest nothing but sin in all thou doest. In the third place, let us take notice what are those weak and rotten foundations that many men build upon in regard of their practice. First, a conformity to the life of others; they do as most do, they shall speed as well as they; what would ye have them to be singular, to be different from others? This is a most rotten foundation. Secondly, others build upon a partial practice of good things. The hypocritical Jews they rested upon their temple, their sacrifices, their outward worship of God; in the meanwhile their hands were full of blood, of unrighteousness and injustice. Thirdly, another rotten foundation is the mere work done. They consider no more than the external act of religion, of justice, of charity, and so they think they have obeyed the commandment. This was the Pharisees foundation. Fourthly, another rotten foundation is the goodness, yea, supposed perfection, of the work they do. (A. Burgess.)
Building on the foundation
To amplify this, consider, there may be a twofold building or addition to the Word of God, either destructive and corruptive, such as wholly overthroweth the true meaning and sense of the Holy Ghost. And this is a very dangerous sin. Or else perfective and explicative. Thus the New Testament was added to the Old as a perfective addition, not corruptive; though it could not have been added as Scripture, but that the authors thereof had a Divine infallibility. And now what the ministers of God in their ministerial labours do, it must be an addition explicative of the foundation, though it be not with Divine infallibility. Secondly, the Word of God, which containeth the foundation that the apostles have laid, may be either considered in respect of the words only, or in respect of the sense clothed with words. In the next place, let us consider why we ought so to take heed, and that is to be manifest in many respects. First, from God Himself, His glory and honour is greatly concerned herein. Secondly, on Gods part we are to take heed because He hath so severely threatened all those that add or detract to His Word. Any that shall alter these foundations or change these bounds. Secondly, on the peoples part. Therefore we ought greatly to take heed. For--
1. The Word of God in the true sense of it is the only food and nourishment of the soul.
2. If we build not on this foundation, the preaching of the Word loseth those glorious and excellent effects for which it is appointed.
3. On the peoples part we had need to take heed, because they are more prone and ready to receive any corrupt sense than the pure meaning of the Scripture.
Lastly, on the ministers part it is necessary theft he should take heed. For--
1. He hath not a magistery but a ministry committed to him.
2. He is accountable for all the sin and error people run into through his neglect.
3. He must take heed because, though a man do preach the substantials and the necessary things of salvation purely, yet if he add or mix any corrupt opinions, though of a less nature, that mans salvation is very difficult. (A. Burgess.)
The spiritual foundation
I. The foundation.
1. Is laid.
2. Is one.
3. Is sure.
II. The superstructure.
1. Is in course of erection.
2. Is variable in character.
III. The test is--
1. Certain.
2. Severe.
3. Decisive.
The foundation of faith
I. The text establishes a distinction between fundamental doctrine and that which is not fundamental. It speaks of the foundation which must be laid in all Christian teaching. It speaks also of the superstructure, which varies according to the disposition or knowledge of the individual teacher.
II. Christian teaching may legitimately be carried beyond the limits of fundamental doctrine. There have certainly been seasons in the history of the Church in which its secondary doctrines have usurped the first place. Times of re-action, in which the Christian mind was recalled to the foundation, have in some cases promoted the development of other secondary doctrines, which have overshadowed the foundation no less than those which obtained acceptance before. One phase of the Reformation was a return to the heart of Christianity from the intricate subtleties of scholasticism. Yet Calvinism in its extreme development is at least as barren, and as subversive of all place and keeping in the mutual relation of doctrines, as any part of the scholastic system. It is no wonder that men are tempted from time to time to cast aside all but the most elementary doctrinal teaching, as to content themselves with accepting the bare letter of the Bible, denouncing every inference from it as a corruption of Evangelical simplicity. Far different was the teaching of the apostle. As a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation, he does not add Let no man build thereupon; but Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. While he disparages the wisdom of this world, he congratulates his converts that they are enriched … in all utterance, and in all knowledge, and declares his intention to speak the wisdom of God not indeed to the carnal babes in Christ, but among them that are perfect and able to bear the highest teaching. The Hebrew Christians also are reproved, as those of Corinth are, for their backwardness in the school of Christ (Heb_5:12-13).
III. Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1. To preach Christ is the chief office of Gods messengers. The leading events of the gospel history, the doctrine of Christs nature which is a necessary inference from and the only consistent explanation of those events, and the efficacy of His redeeming work which rests on the truth of His nature, make up one complex whole, the due and proportionate exhibition of which is preaching Christ. This is presupposed in all farther Christian teaching.
2. All more advanced teaching must rest upon this.
(1) It must not be inconsistent with it. For the superstructure may not merely overshadow, it may disturb and destroy the foundation. Doctrine which comes into collision with fundamental doctrine is a virtual denial of the foundation.
(2) It must stand in a definite relation to it and grow out of it. Thus the doctrine of the Sacraments cannot be duly taught, except as it is taught in connection with those of the Incarnation and Atonement.
IV. let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
1. There may be teaching which is not inconsistent with the leading Christian verities, and which nevertheless is false or worthless. Those who promulgate it will have to answer for it before God. The day shall declare it. Paul was thinking mainly of vain, subtle, and barren questions such as those against which he frequently warns Timothy and Titus (1Ti_1:4-7; 1Ti_4:7; 1Ti_6:3-5; 2Ti_2:16; 2Ti_2:23; 2Ti_4:4; Tit_3:9). But the words apply to every form of teaching which is in itself false and groundless, which is barren and unprofitable, and which ministers questions, rather than godly edifying.
2. If men are answerable for teaching which is not inconsistent with the foundation of the faith, how much more for that which directly or indirectly overthrows it. If vain and unprofitable religious questions cannot be raised with innocence, how can men teach heresy without guilt? If an unwise builder injures the Temple of God by unskilful workmanship, a judgment is pronounced against him: how then shall he escape, who has either never laid the foundation at all, or who (when it has been laid) has succeeded in disturbing it? (Bp. Basil Jones.)
Building the true life
I. Christ is the foundation of Christian trust and character. No other King and Saviour of men is possible to those who know and understand what He was and taught. Great teachers of religion, and great examples of conduct, have been in the world: but in comparison with Christ, they are but stars in the firmament of the worlds night, which become lost to sight when the glorious sun has risen. He stands unique and preeminent in all history, the only true Saviour of mankind. A Congregational minister once said to a Unitarian minister, Can you conceive of anything greater and higher than the life and teaching of Jesus Christ? and the Unitarian minister frankly answered, No. Then what is the difference between your conception of the character of God and the character of Christ? and he as frankly said again, That it was a very fine point. The apostle, as a wise master builder, had laid this foundation as the basis of the new life; not himself, or Apollos, or Peter. The Corinthians were to be rooted and built up in Christ, and in no other. But they were to take heed how they built themselves up on Him.
II. Two structures are possible even upon Christ. A Christian life must have Christ as the model as well as the foundation. The gold and silver, and precious stones, that constituted the glory and beauty of Christs character, must constitute the glory and beauty of theirs. But it was possible for men holding some connection with Christ to build up a pile of perishable rubbish, a hut instead of a temple. They might mingle doctrines and practices which had no necessary connection with Christ and Him crucified; and they were doing it.
1. Some men never think of building up anything, but take life just as it comes. They have no plan of life to work at. Indeed, nothing is so irksome to such men as to live by rule. They live on impulses, come from where they may, from inward passion or from outward circumstances. Dreadful, indeed, is the fate of those who have tried to make this life a holiday.
2. Others live for a purpose; but they are building only for this world, and not for eternity. Their foundation is on the very surface of things, and as the building rises it tapers off into nothingness. A man may bring to it intellect, will, energy; and all for what? Perhaps to have it said of him, That man started with half-a-crown, and he has made a fortune. But the Divine soul within him has not been built up; his nobler nature has lain despised and neglected; he has been building up his circumstances, but he has not been building up himself.
3. I once watched the building of a new church, and remember what trouble they had in getting a foundation for the tower, and how long they were in reaching down to a solid basis of stone that would bear the immense mass of weight that was to rest upon it. I remembered also when the foundation was laid, how carefully the plan of the building was studied and followed by the workmen; how every principal stone was selected and measured, and chiselled to a nicety. It was all done by faithfully working according to the plans of the architect; and when the building was complete, it was but a transcript of what had been in the architects mind before a stone had been laid. It was a parable in stone of the manner in which a human life must be built. We must get down beneath the surface and rubble of things before we can reach Christ as our foundation, as the rock upon which our eternity of life is to rest. Hearing and doing His sayings is trusting to Christ; nothing more and nothing less (Mat_7:24, &c.). He drew with a Divine hand and an unerring pencil the plan of a human life, not only by His words but by His deeds, to show what God meant in creating man. To believe in Christ is to believe that His plan is to be our plan, faithfully worked out after the living pattern He exhibited. But our mistake and disaster is, that we mix up the wood and the gold, the stubble with the silver, and the hay with the precious stones. One man has great gaps in his character because he thinks God regards faith as the transcendent virtue; and if faith meant the prompt and active loyalty of the mind to all Christs commandments, he would be right; but if faith is taken to mean an indolent confidence, such a notion will arrest the progress of the building up of the soul. Another man says that prayer is the principal thing. Now, though Christ says that we ought always to pray and not to faint, He says also that it is he who does His will who is most eminent before God. What would be otherwise gold, becomes wood or stubble when we put it out of its place, and make it a substitute for other equally essential things. The doors of a house are necessary things; but if we put them at the top instead of on the floor, they are useless and absurd. It is this jumbling of things which often makes the spiritual structure of our lives unsightly and unprogressive. We want symmetry,
III. If we could follow the Divine order in the building of the soul, how beautiful our lives would be! If the first act of the new life could be an act of faith, grandly receptive and grandly active at the same time; and if to such a faith we could add virtue or mental valour--an enterprise of soul that would launch us forth upon every difficult work with enthusiasm; and if to such valour we could join knowledge, &c., &c. (2Pe_1:5, &c.). These are the gold and silver and precious stones of the Christian life, if we could but build them into our characters with symmetry and beauty.
IV. We are like men who are building in the night, who cannot see exactly what they are doing, but every mans work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, the full daylight shall show the true value or worthlessness of that which we have been building. A great part of the building that is going on is an unconscious operation, or nearly so. That which we knowingly build into ourselves is but a small part in the structure of our lives. A habit steals upon us with furtive steps, and embraces us with arms which are as soft as velvet but as strong as chains. We forget the work that has been wrought upon us in the past, because we were never distinctly conscious of its kind and extent. And so each man is a mystery to himself, an enigma in his own eyes. He feels that there is in him such a strange mixture that he is doubtful of himself, doubtful whether the gold or the alloy is in the larger proportion. Therefore the apostle exhorts us to take heed, to be vigilant, and as far as possible to know how we are building. For the daylight will break, and this compound structure which we call ourselves shall become more clearly defined by and by. (C. Short, M. A.)
Building men
St. Paul here calls himself a builder; and nothing could be more significant of the specific end he has in view than this word. The word build means work fitted to set up, to strengthen and establish. In this sense we see it illustrated in all the business and varied occupations of human life. The apostle, in his sphere as a preacher, was as much a builder as a carpenter, or a mason; for the work of an apostle was a most assured reality. It implied all the deep intensities of a most zealous soul in order to save and to bless.
I. What is a builder? A builder is one who brings together materials and adjusts them properly, in order to secure symmetry, strength, coherence, and beauty. A wise master-builder in Gods Church seeks soul after soul; its rescue from sin; so that each godly soul may take its proper place in the spiritual temple of the Lord Jesus. This process sets before us the vocation of a spiritual builder. He has two aims before him. His work is first to get hold of souls, and then, second, to fix them, as permanent parts or members of the Church of God.
1. This getting hold of souls is a great work, and success therein in the test of a real builder for God. For so great is the subtilty of Satan, and such is the hardness of the heart of man, that to effectually resist the one and to prevail with the other is the surest proof that the preacher is sent of God. No mere human learning, sense, skilfulness, or eloquence, can make a master-builder for God. No! He must have that spiritual magnetism by which one soul, strong in the might of God, can go out to another soul, and grapple with its guilt and hate, and overcome it by the love of Christ.
2. But souls, when saved, are to be fixed into the temple of God, as permanent parts or members thereof. Thus St. Paul tells the Ephesian Christians: Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of faith; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom, adds the apostle, all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord. Here we have this permanent abiding of saints, their fixedness in Gods Church, graphically set forth. So much, then, with regard to the qualities of a builder.
II. Let us now consider what is the obligation of being builders of souls. Surely, it is to be this, or else to be destroyers! In the universe of God there are two great principles ever antagonistic, one to the other; that which conserves, and that which destroys. And to one of these two classes every one of us belongs. There are, indeed, differences of character and degrees of depravity. See the singular light which comes upon this point from the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus. When you examine the character of Dives you can discover nothing prodigious in immorality. But during his lifetime he was not a builder for God. Self, and not God, was the mainspring of his being. His life work was not to save and bless. Hence he was ranked with the class of destructives in time, and sent to keep company with them in eternity! It is your duty not to be destroyers, but to be builders, consciously and with purpose. Note here what God is--a Builder; ever since, as a great Architect, he laid the foundations of the universe, and built all the great fabrics of His creation: the globe, beasts, birds, fishes, and man, the crown of all! And if this is the fashion of the Omnipotent being of God, what then should men be, who are His image and likeness? Ought we not to be builders, as God is? How otherwise shall we show our similitude to Him? The new creation, in Christ Jesus, for what is it wrought in us, if not to make us co-workers with Him? Join to this the testimony of your own nature. Look into your spiritual framework, and see that in every way, the soul of man was fitted in every attribute to be a builder of souls. What is the power of thought but a power formative in all its activities? What is reason but a constructive force? What imagination but a creative faculty? Our physical members are also formed for creative action. Take the hand, and mark its wonderful adaptedness to operations creative and fashioning. It can demolish. But every one sees that that is not its special vocation. It was made to construct. Hence, naturally from the functions of the hand have sprung up the divers formative trades of men, in clay, wood, leather, stones, and metals. But the hand of man, of itself, had no skilful cunning, no ingenious art. No more than the claw of a bird, or the foot of a squirrel or a rat. But the hand is the instrument and agent of the soul. And because the soul of man is a builder, therefore it is that there are carpenters and wheelwrights, blacksmiths and machinists, ship-builders, stonemasons and architects, painters and sculptors. But what are all these functions and faculties of men, compared with the grand creative power of God? God made man in His own image. But man fell into ruin; and then God began again the refashioning of humanity out of the ruins of the Fall. And ever since He has been building up man, by all the operations of the kingdom of grace; by the workings of the Spirit. But angels, and men too, are workers together with God, to the same gracious end. Jesus died to build men. For this purpose the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. So again, to build men, the ministry was commissioned, and the Scriptures were given. As God is a builder of souls, so are all His disciples. And although ministers are set apart to special duty in this grand work of soul-building, the laity of the Church, in a subordinate way, are likewise called the same solemn vocation.
III. And now, lastly, let us consider the classes of persons we should build up.
1. First, of course, ourselves. It is a great trust to have souls. Broken and impaired as are the spirits of men, they show, even in fragmentary powers, the skill of a Divine architect.
2. Next to ourselves, are our kinsfolk and relatives to be built up in the faith of Jesus. It is our duty to strive to build up parents and children in the most holy faith; by all the several means of training and teaching, by admonition, by prayer and spiritual example. In the family relation this is, without doubt, the most obvious of all duties to train up our children and servants. Build them! that is the word; not tear them down to ruin by indifference, by carnal indulgence, by foolish vanity!
3. But besides kinsfolk and family, there is a further outer circle of human beings separate from ourselves, for Whom it is our duty to live, and our aim to build up in the temple of the Lord. So, then, it seems quite apparent that our life-work among our fellow-men is primarily, constructive and restorative. Christ came to seek and to save the lost.
Learn:
1. Do not destroy! Keep from ruining souls for whom Christ died! Do not destroy little children! Do not ruin women! Boys and girls, baptized into Christ, do not destroy! Nay, strive to save other boys and girls. Yea, all of you, do not destroy! Do not destroy by whisky or by wine! Do not destroy by cursing, nor by oaths! Do not destroy by scoffing or by filthy speech, or carousing.
2. Build! Strive to mould, to compact and strengthen the immortal spirits around you, that they may become powerful for Christ. Endeavour to root and ground every soul you meet in the truth. Labour to build men in the knowledge and love of Christ. Make it the aim of your life to strengthen and uphold, and build immortal souls. Build men! by speech, by influence, by godly example. Use every possible instrument and agency, both small and great, at all times, and in all places, in your families, in the world, at the workshop, on the highway or in the street, to save men, and to glorify Christ. (A. Crummell.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv10–16 10–15. According to the grace given to me. Given…
10–15. According to the grace given to me. Given when? When he was called to be an apostle. I have laid the foundation. The figure of the building is retained. Paul is a discreet master-builder. He had laid the foundation at Corinth, when he was preaching Christ, and working through faith in him (2:4, 5). Notice it is not a foundation, but the foundation, because God's spiritual temple (v. 16) can have only one. Another buildeth thereon. After Paul left Corinth, Apollos and other teachers continued to build upon the foundation that Paul had laid. Let every man take heed how, etc. Since there is only one foundation of the temple, viz: Jesus Christ, there should be most careful and conscientious building upon it (verse 12).
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv10, 16 1Co_3:10.—Was given … I laid, q.d. “when I was…
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co_3:10.—Was given … I laid, q.d. “when I was at Corinth.” “A foundation,” “which I subjectively laid in my teaching at Corinth, because God had already laid the same objectively in heaven” (Evans). “Laid objectively for the whole Church in the Great Facts [by God], … laid subjectively in the hearts of the Christians at Corinth as the firm ground of their personal hopes by Paul” (Beet).
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1Co_3:11-15.—See Homiletic Analysis; also Appended Note. No valid analogy to warrant the application of this to the doctrine of Purgatory. This rests upon (a) the distinction drawn between venial and mortal sins with temporal and eternal penalties attached, and (b) the doctrine of merit. The temporal penalty of sins not “paid off” at the date of death must be “paid up” in Purgatory fire. The accumulated stock of merit, of Christ and the saints—a surplus beyond their own requirements—may be drawn upon by an indulgence, and the amount be applied to reducing the purgatorial term.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_3:10-15
Work tried by Fire.
I. The imagery employed.—Ancient cities, and some modern ones (e.g. St. Petersburg), not so sharply divided into rich quarters and poor quarters as often the case with us. Houses of highest and humblest much more closely associated and intermingled. Palace and hovel might literally jostle. Buildings adorned with costly marbles [=“precious stones”], perhaps made priceless by the lavished art of the sculptor, stood surrounded with (sometimes literal “lean-to”) houses of stucco, of wood, or even of clay, thatched with hay and stubble, the houses of the artisan, the poor, the slave. St. Paul sees the work of a great fire, such as that which under Nero was made the occasion of a great persecution of the Christians, or that which a century before, on the capture of Corinth itself by Memmius, had laid the city in ruin. [Not to be made too precise, but may be conceived of thus:] The fire breaks out (say) at midnight, in some obscure dwelling, and quickly reduces to a heap of ashes the frail tenement of “wood, hay, stubble.” It catches adjoining houses; the winds fan and spread the flames, till a whole quarter of the city is wrapped in a conflagration which seems to Paul a fit emblem of the fires of “The Day” of all days, God’s Day of testing and doom. In the morning little knots of curious spectators and of sufferers wander about the ruins, discussing the work of the night. The slave is looking for his house of wood, hay, stubble. It stood there where that heap of ashes lies. He stirs them with his foot, and lays bare the stone foundations still unconsumed. The fire could not touch those. And, like many more, the homeless man recounts to any sympathetic listeners how his own life and that of his family are all they could save out of the wreck and loss of all. They were awakened, perhaps, and saved at the very last moment, “saved through the fire.” Another little group gathers round the stronger-built and still-standing stone walls of a better class of house. Stucco, woodwork, ornament have perished; but the man who built it “has his reward” for the money and pains spent over his substantial walls. There is something, more or less, to begin with, in restoring his ruined house. Close by stands a temple or a palace, as if almost contemptuous of its ruined neighbours, as it stands in the isolation of its survival. It has passed through the ordeal almost unscathed. Contents uninjured; cunning works of the goldsmith; spoils of conquered nations,—all untouched by the fire. Its costly marbles and statues within have not felt it. Its strong walls, besmirched with smoke indeed, have defied the flames. That builder, too, has his reward. He built with good material; it stands the fire.
II. Paul’s use of the imagery.—
1. In the course of a somewhat lengthy stay in the city, Paul had founded the Church of Corinth. No man could pretend to dispute or share with him the honour of being the “master-builder,” the first to preach Christ in the city. Some little time after his departure, he sent over from Ephesus his friend Apollos to carry on the work. Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, worked in perfect harmony of heart and aim after Paul; but perhaps felt himself more free than Paul had done to use the Alexandrian rhetoric and human learning in setting forth the Gospel. Every Greek was a born “politician,” or at least a born party man; the Corinthian Church early showed the effects of this partisan spirit within its membership. Parties sprang up with men’s names for their badges. [Little “schisms” Paul calls them, dissidences within the body, not yet grown to separations from it.] Whether we have the exact names 1Co_4:6 perhaps makes a little doubtful, nor is it clear that Paul’s list is exhaustive. Yet the characteristics and tendencies of the parties may be easily gathered.
2. There was an “Apollos” party. They liked such rhetoric as Apollos gave them, and chose to think their intelligence flattered by what of philosophy he may have employed in the shaping of the truth. Their danger was perhaps (e.g. in 1 Corinthians 15) to exalt reason at the expense of faith; we may not unreasonably think that in trying to be philosophical Christians they were denying or refining away the facts and doctrines of the Gospel, frittering away their power, or rejecting them as contrary to reason. It might not to be an unwarrantable borrowing of a modern name to call them the “rationalising” party at Corinth.
3. There was a “Cephas” party, belonging to that “wing” of the Christian Church who had been Jews, and whom at this period of Paul’s life we everywhere find dogging his footsteps, denying his Apostolic standing, often defaming his character. These at Corinth glorified Peter,—no, “Cephas.” “Call him by his honest Hebrew name!” Old school men, who could not so rapidly or readily unlearn as Paul had done the habits and training and teaching of years; who mistrusted him as “sadly radical”; who, though Christians, sought to enforce upon the Gentiles the worn-out ritual of Moses’ law and the now meaningless circumcision. Old style, conservative men, with a leaning to ceremonialism. The “ritual” party.
4. “No,” said another party. “We stand by Paul. He will have none of your Law for Christians. We will have none of it. He is a ‘liberty’ man. We are ‘liberty’ men too.” Only, where he meant the formal law of Moses, they meant the very principle of law itself. When he taught “liberty,” they interpreted “licence,” and some lived “licentiousness.” The Christian Church from the beginning has always had some too “liberal” in thought and in practice.
5. Yet one party more. They owned no human teacher, indeed. They had climbed to a sublime, serene height far above where their poor, misguided brethren were rallying round, and fighting over, this man or that, Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. Possibly hyper-conservatives, fresh from the Lord’s brother, James, in Jerusalem; at all events, they said, “We are of Christ!” A beautiful party-cry; very attractive to the unwary and simple-hearted. But when it means “Christ as we understand Him” it is not quite so beautiful.
6. So, then, to the Church at Corinth had happened on a small scale what has been happening in the Church of Christ ever since. These were all Christians as yet. The differences between them and their heathen or Jewish neighbours were far greater than those which distinguished them from each other. All acknowledged one Divine Head, and had some great doctrines connected with Him as a bond of union. But some of them were building up the Church [and Christian lives] with doctrine and practice which Paul regarded as “wood, hay, stubble”; useless at best, and sure to perish in “The Day,” when God’s judgment should “try every man’s work, of what sort it is.” Some there were, he knew, who happily were building after his own heart and judgment, “gold, silver, precious stone.” Great should be their reward! Some also there were whose work gave him only mingled satisfaction. “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour,” partly according to how much he has done, but still more according to what kind of work he has done. Of those for whom he feared that they should find the labour of their life wasted, yet he hoped they should at least “save themselves,” if even like men snatched out of the flames which left them nothing but “their foundation” and “their lives.” [The opening words of the paragraph suggest:] “Woe to any builders whose work should really be a disturbing of the very Foundation itself, other than which none may lay a basis for faith, or life, or hope.”
7. These Church parties at Corinth were our modern “Churches” and “sects” in miniature. The causes at work at Corinth have never ceased to work wherever we have Christian men, until we have a Christianity not even outwardly at one. Yet we need to give Paul’s recognition that they are nearer to each other than to the world outside. Their unity is a more striking and deep thing than their diversities. They are one Church still. The broadest and deepest diversities at Corinth were still within the Church, insomuch as they were only surface cleavages; they did not run down into the foundation. That was one. Men weep because there is not external unity of all the Churches in one communion. As well weep that the sapling, which a thousand years ago was one simple undivided stem, has branched out into the oak with its hundred arms, many of them really big trees themselves. The branching is an inevitable consequence of life. And the tree is one at stock and root. Minds will always differ in cast and capacity. Training is of endless diversity. Race will make a difference. No one man ever sees the whole round of a truth; hardly any one Church or age does; no two ever see the same phase of presentation of it. There will always be men liable to pay too great honour to Reason; always some too ready to insist upon and overvalue Ceremonial. Reasons convincing to one do not appeal to another. An order of service not to the taste of one suits another and helps him. And so on, in endless diversity. What then? Recognise the fact that the diversity is a necessity. It has often become an evil; it need not be, and will not be, when men become broad as Paul, and recognise other patterns of doctrine and life and church order as all fairly to be included in the One Church. 8. It were a good thing for some to be as narrow as Paul about the “One Foundation.” It is unreal “liberality” to attempt to include within the “Christian” Church both those whose Christ is God-man, the Father’s equal and man’s fellow, Messiah of the Jews, Mediator for the Race, and, on the other side, those whose Jesus is at the highest a creature whom His Creator could annihilate, and who was perhaps a mere man, who might or even did make mistakes, a man not superior to Paul, and to whom Christianity owes not more than it does to Paul. Their status and acceptance before God depend on other considerations, but they are not on the Foundation in Paul’s sense. The lesson of the paragraph is not indifference to what a man believes, or what his neighbour believes, or how he works or worships. Each should be honest and earnest in accepting and living and defending that special aspect or portion of The Truth, which he or his Church sees. Experience shows that, as a rule, they do most for the broad work of Christ who work with a fixed creed and with a definite Church attachment. Each should give and claim equal recognition. The paragraph teaches charity, since experience also teaches that perfectly honest church-and creed-builders have built in what others saw clearly was “wood, hay, stubble,” and have rejected what some saw was “precious stone,” if not “gold” or “silver,” of system and doctrine. Probably no uninspired teacher ever built upon the One Foundation nothing but what would endure the fire.
III. A personal application of the words lies not far from this.—
1. If a man is to be saved in “The Day” of God’s judgment, Christ must be the foundation of his life. “Saved” and “perishing” (2Co_2:15) mingle together it the closest intercourse of life, with closest similarity of outward course and bearing. Indeed, sometimes the balance of amiability or of strict probity seems to be on the side of the “perishing.” What is there to make Paul’s classification so sharply definite?
2. Dig down to the foundations of the two lives.—In the man really “being saved” this is the starting-point: Time was when he felt himself a sinner, guilty before God, and his heart full of sin. He cast himself on God’s mercy in Christ; he was forgiven; ever since, the Spirit has dwelt in him, doing something towards cleansing the heart, and putting there a new motive for all he does and feels—love to God who gave him Christ. If not, he is not a Christian. Others are “perishing,” because, go back far as we will, dig down deeply as we may, we cannot find that. There never was the fundamental experience of “sin” and of “faith in Christ” as the “spiritual man” understands them. Reform may only be throwing the arch of a culvert over the sin of the past and the sin of the heart; the man covered up his past and began to build the new life over it. But there, lowest of all, are the past and the sin, not Christ and His atonement. The other foundation and beginning of all life-building is Rock! [Turning over a new leaf is a good thing if it do not mean simply fastening down the old, without having first the record “blotted out.”] The superstructure of Eddystone Lighthouse was good enough when it was removed a few years ago; but the sea was undermining the foundation. A good superstructure upon a good foundation: lesson the first.
3. Then build something upon the foundation.—See in the suburbs of growing towns unfinished property. Walls of a certain height, but left unfinished; perhaps hardly more than the foundations got in when the money failed. Ground lies waste; weeds grow, rubbish accumulates, till it becomes difficult to see without some search whether there are any foundations at all. Like some lives. The true foundation was made right some years ago, but scarcely anything has been put upon it since. The accumulations of a worldly life have gathered, until an observer—and perhaps the man himself—hardly knows whether the foundations are still there. Rear a Christian character; build a superstructure of work for Christ. No better evidence that the foundation is there, and is sound, than the growing, fair superstructure. Build something. Some builders never get very far. What they build is good—stone, if not gold or silver, but it never amounts to much. A day’s unfaithfulness pulls down a week’s building. “Sinning and repenting.” “Ever learning, never coming to the knowledge of the truth.”
4. Build something every day.—“How did Michael Angelo accomplish so much?” “Nulla dies sine linea!” he replied. No day without something which will endure the testing fire: this will be the secret of some very unobtrusive, little-noticed lives which by-and-by are crowned with large reward when the reward is according to the work—in amount as well as quality (cf. supra).
5. Test all employments by this.—“Will they stand ‘the fire’? Do they now help towards an abiding, thorough Christian character? Or are the things I have done to-day mere ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ sure to perish?”
6. Build something to-day; at least, find the foundation to-day.—If to lay the one and only foundation [so far as we can be said to lay it at all] were the last act of a wasted life, the builder should escape “saved as by fire.” But it would be a very unworthy use to make of Christ and His salvation. “To-day.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv10–16 10. “According to the grace of God which was…
DIVERSITY OF REWARDS
10. “According to the grace of God which was given unto me as a wise master builder I laid the foundation; and another buildeth thereon.” Paul had been instrumental in founding the Corinthian church. Apollos and other God-sent laborers had followed on, lending a helping hand to rear up this stupendous superstructure on the foundation laid by the great apostle to the Gentiles.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv12, 16 1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians
THE TESTING FIRE
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1Co 3:12 - 1Co 3:13.
Before I enter upon the ideas which the words suggest, my exegetical conscience binds me to point out that the original application of the text is not exactly that which I purpose to make of it now. The context shows that the Apostle is thinking about the special subject of Christian teachers and their work, and that the builders of whom he speaks are the men in the Corinthian Church, some of them his allies and some of them his rivals, who were superimposing upon the foundation of the preaching of Jesus Christ other doctrines and principles. The ‘wood, hay, stubble’ are the vapid and trivial doctrines which the false teachers were introducing into the Church. The ‘gold, silver, and precious stones’ are the solid and substantial verities which Paul and his friends were proclaiming. And it is about these, and not about the Christian life in the general, that the tremendous metaphors of my text are uttered.
But whilst that is true, the principles involved have a much wider range than the one case to which the Apostle applies them. And, though I may be slightly deflecting the text from its original direction, I am not doing violence to it, if I take it as declaring some very plain and solemn truths applicable to all Christian people, in their task of building up a life and character on the foundation of Jesus Christ; truths which are a great deal too much forgotten in our modern popular Christianity, and which it concerns us all very clearly to keep in view. There are three things here that I wish to say a word about-the patchwork building, the testing fire, the fate of the builders.
I. First, the patchwork structure.
‘If any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.’ In the original application of the metaphor, Paul is thinking of all these teachers in that church at Corinth as being engaged in building the one structure-I venture to deflect here, and to regard each of us as rearing our own structure of life and character on the foundation of the preached and accepted Christ.
Now, what the Apostle says is that these builders were, some of them, laying valuable things like gold and silver and costly stones-by which he does not mean jewels, but marbles, alabasters, polished porphyry or granite, and the like; sumptuous building materials, which were employed in great palaces or temples-and that some of them were bringing timber, hay, stubble, reeds gathered from the marshes or the like, and filling in with such trash as that. That is a picture of what a great many Christian people are doing in their own lives-the same man building one course of squared and solid and precious stones, and topping them with rubbish. You will see in the walls of Jerusalem, at the base, five or six courses of those massive blocks which are the wonders of the world yet; well jointed, well laid, well cemented, and then on the top of them a mass of poor stuff, heaped together anyhow; scamped work-may I use a modern vulgarism?-’jerry-building.’ You may go to some modern village, on an ancient historic site, and you will find built into the mud walls of the hovels in which the people are living, a marble slab with fair carving on it, or the drum of a great column of veined marble, and on the top of that, timber and clay mixed together.
That is the type of the sort of life that hosts of Christian people are living. For, mark, all the builders are on the foundation. Paul is not speaking about mere professed Christians who had no faith at all in them, and no real union with Jesus Christ. These builders were ‘on the foundation’; they were building on the foundation, there was a principle deep down in their lives-which really lay at the bottom of their lives-and yet had not come to such dominating power as to mould and purify and make harmonious with itself the life that was reared upon it. We all know that that is the condition of many men, that they have what really are the fundamental bases of their lives, in belief and aim and direction; and which yet are not strong enough to master the whole of the life, and to manifest themselves through it. Especially it is the condition of some Christian people. They have a real faith, but it is of the feeblest and most rudimentary kind. They are on the foundation, but their lives are interlaced with the most heterogeneous mixty-maxty of good and evil, of lofty, high, self-sacrificing thoughts and heavenward aspirations, of resolutions never carried out into practice; and side by side with these there shall be meannesses, selfishnesses, tempers, dispositions all contradictory of the former impulses. One moment they are all fire and love, the next moment ice and selfishness. One day they are all for God, the next day all for the world, the flesh, and the devil. Jacob sees the open heavens and the face of God and vows; to-morrow he meets Laban and drops to shifty ways. Peter leaves all and follows his Master, and in a little while the fervour has gone, and the fire has died down into grey ashes, and a flippant servant-girl’s tongue leads him to say ‘I know not the man.’ ‘Gold, silver, precious stones,’ and topping them, ‘wood, hay, stubble!’
The inconsistencies of the Christian life are what my text, in the application that I am venturing to make of it, suggests to us. Ah, dear friends! we do not need to go to Jacob and Peter; let us look at our own hearts, and if we will honestly examine one day of our lives, I think we shall understand how it is possible for a man, on the foundation, yet to build upon it these worthless and combustible things, ‘wood, hay, stubble.’
We are not to suppose that one man builds only ‘gold, silver, precious stones.’ There is none of us that does that. And we are not to suppose that any man who is on the foundations has so little grasp of it, as that he builds only ‘wood, hay, stubble.’
There is none of us who has not intermingled his building, and there is none of us, if we are Christians at all, who has not sometimes laid a course of ‘precious stones.’ If your faith is doing nothing for you except bringing to you a belief that you are not going to hell when you die, then it is no faith at all. ‘Faith without works is dead.’ So there is a mingling in the best, and-thank God!-there is a mingling of good with evil, in the worst of real Christian people.
II. Note here, the testing fire.
Paul points to two things, the day and the fire.
‘The day shall declare it,’ that is the day on which Jesus Christ comes to be the Judge; and it, that is ‘the day,’ ‘shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall test every man’s work.’ Now, it is to be noticed that here we are moving altogether in the region of lofty symbolism, and that the metaphor of the testing fire is suggested by the previous enumeration of building materials, gold and silver being capable of being assayed by flame; and ‘wood, hay, stubble’ being combustible, and sure to be destroyed thereby. The fire here is not an emblem of punishment; it is not an emblem of cleansing. There is no reference to anything in the nature of what Roman Catholics call purgatorial fires. The allusion is simply to some stringent and searching means of testing the quality of a man’s work, and of revealing that quality.
So then, we come just to this, that for people ‘on the foundation,’ there is a Day of revelation and testing of their life’s work. It is a great misfortune that so-called Evangelical Christianity does not say as much as the New Testament says about the judgment that is to be passed on ‘the house of God.’ People seem to think that the great doctrine of salvation, ‘not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy,’ is, somehow or other, interfered with when we proclaim, as Paul proclaims, speaking to Christian people, ‘We must be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ,’ and declares that ‘Every man will receive the things done in his body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.’ Paul saw no contradiction, and there is no contradiction. But a great many professing Christians seem to think that the great blessing of their salvation by faith is, that they are exempt from that future revelation and testing and judgment of their acts. That is not the New Testament teaching. But, on the contrary, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,’ was originally said to a church of Christian people. And here we come full front against that solemn truth, that the Lord will ‘gather together His saints, those that have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice, that He may judge His people.’ Never mind about the drapery, the symbolism, the expression in material forms with which that future judgment is arranged, in order that we may the more easily grasp it. Remember that these pictures in the New Testament of a future judgment are highly symbolical, and not to be interpreted as if they were plain prose; but also remember that the heart of them is this, that there comes for Christian people as for all others, a time when the light will shine down upon their past, and will flash its rays into the dark chambers of memory, and when men will-to themselves if not to others-be revealed ‘in the day when the Lord shall judge the secrets of men according to my Gospel.’
We have all experience enough of how but a few years, a change of circumstances, or a growth into another stage of development, give us fresh eyes with which to estimate the moral quality of our past. Many a thing, which we thought to be all right at the time when we did it, looks to us now very questionable and a plain mistake. And when we shift our stations to up yonder, and get rid of all this blinding medium of flesh and sense, and have the issues of our acts in our possession, and before our sight-ah! we shall think very differently of a great many things from what we think of them now. Judgment will begin at the house of God.
And there is the other thought, that the fire which reveals and tests has also in it a power of destruction. Gold and silver will lose no atom of their weight, and will be brightened into greater lustre as they flash back the beams. The timber and the stubble will go up in a flare, and die down into black ashes. That is highly metaphorical, of course. What does it mean? It means that some men’s work will be crumpled up and perish, and be as of none effect, leaving a great, black sorrowful gap in the continuity of the structure, and that other men’s work will stand. Everything that we do is, in one sense, immortal, because it is represented in our final character and condition, just as a thin stratum of rock will represent forests of ferns that grew for one summer millenniums ago, or clouds of insects that danced for an hour in the sun. But whilst that is so, and nothing human ever dies, on the other hand, deeds which have been in accordance, as it were, with the great stream that sweeps the universe on its bosom will float on that surface and never sink. Acts which have gone against the rush of God’s will through creation will be like a child’s go-cart that comes against the engine of an express train-be reduced, first, to stillness, all the motion knocked out of them, and then will be crushed to atoms. Deeds which stand the test will abide in blessed issue for the doer, and deeds which do not will pass away in smoke, and leave only ashes. Some of us, building on the foundation, have built more rubbish than solid work, and that will be
‘Cast as rubbish to the void
When God has made the pile complete.’
III. So, lastly, we have here the fate of the two builders.
The one man gets wages. That is not the bare notion of salvation, for both builders are conceived of as on the foundation, and both are saved. He gets wages. Yes, of course! The architect has to give his certificate before the builder gets his cheque. The weaver, who has been working his hand-loom at his own house, has to take his web to the counting-house and have it overlooked before he gets his pay. And the man who has built ‘gold, silver, precious stones,’ will have-over and above the initial salvation-in himself the blessed consequences, and unfold the large results, of his faithful service; while the other man, inasmuch as he has not such work, cannot have the consequences of it, and gets no wages; or at least his pay is subject to heavy deductions for the spoiled bits in the cloth, and for the gaps in the wall.
The Apostle employs a tremendous metaphor here, which is masked in our Authorised Version, but is restored in the Revised. ‘He shall be saved, yet so as’ {not ‘by’ but} ‘through fire’; the picture being that of a man surrounded by a conflagration, and making a rush through the flames to get to a place of safety. Paul says that he will get through, because down below all inconsistency and worldliness, there was a little of that which ought to have been above all the inconsistency and the worldliness-a true faith in Jesus Christ. But because it was so imperfect, so feeble, so little operative in his life as that it could not keep him from piling up inconsistencies into his wall, therefore his salvation is so as through the fire.
Brethren, I dare not enlarge upon that great metaphor. It is meant for us professing Christians, real and imperfect Christians-it is meant for us; and it just tells us that there are degrees in that future blessedness proportioned to present faithfulness. We begin there where we left off here. That future is not a dead level; and they who have earnestly striven to work out their faith into their lives shall ‘summer high upon the hills of God.’ One man, like Paul in his shipwreck, shall lose ship and lading, though ‘on broken pieces of the ship’ he may ‘escape safe to land’; and another shall make the harbour with full cargo of works of faith, to be turned into gold when he lands. If we build, as we all may, ‘on that foundation, gold and silver and precious stones,’ an entrance ‘shall be ministered unto us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’; whilst if we bring a preponderance of ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ we shall be ‘saved, yet so as through the fire.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv10–16 According to the grace [apostleship with its attendant gifts--…
According to the grace [apostleship with its attendant gifts-- Rom_1:5 ; Gal_1:15-16 ; Eph_3:8 ] of God which was given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder I laid a foundation [In Corinth Paul had preached Christ as the foundation of the church and of each individual Christian, and this foundation admitted no mixture of philosophy and no perversion which could produce sects ( Gal_1:9 ). All this Paul asserts without any shadow of boasting, for the skill or wisdom by which he had done it had been imparted to him by God]; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon .
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv10, 14, 15 Grace (imparted). 1Co 15:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18
grace
Grace (imparted). 1Co 15:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv12, 16 The building itself:
The building itself:
v. 12. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble,
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v. 13. every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
v. 14. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
v. 15. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.
Paul here treats of the superstructure which is erected upon the one foundation, and distinguishes between rich and durable material on the one hand, and poor, paltry, and perishing on the other, both, however, serviceable for the erection of the building. He is not referring to the believers that make up the temple of God so much as to the doctrine by which they are won for Christ, and the manner in which their faith serves the entire building in all forms of Christian works, both pictures, however, being closely associated in his mind. However, among these [in the body which is built upon the true foundation, i. e. , upon Christ and faith] there are also many weak persons, who build upon the foundation stubble that will perish, i. e. , certain unprofitable opinions [some human thoughts and opinions], which, nevertheless, because they do not overthrow the foundation, are both forgiven them and also corrected. And the writings of the holy Fathers testify that sometimes even they built stubble upon the foundation, but that this did not overthrow their faith. And we need not even think of human thoughts, opinions, and faults, but only of the great diversity of gifts and abilities in the kingdom of God, since the building is all done on the basis of the same good foundation, Jesus Christ. "Whether it be the gold of prophecy, or the silver of doctrine, or the precious stones of hymns, or the wood of keeping rank, or the hay of discipline, or the stalks of alms; whether it be high, brilliant endowment or endowment for the service in small, insignificant things; whether it be the oratory of spiritual tongues or the hand that offers assistance: everything may serve for the benefit of the congregation and reward the worker in the building of God, if he but offers it in the intention of Christ, that it may serve for the growth of the building on the foundation which is laid, not only as a mere outward appendage, but grown together inwardly with the foundation and charged with the love of the Spirit. " Of all these attempts the apostle says: The work of each man will become manifest, for the day will disclose it. So much, indeed, is evident even now with what kind of material everyone is serving in the Church; it can be seen to some extent what special abilities he possesses; but how a person works, what success he has in his efforts, whether they redound to the blessing or the harm of the believers in the Church, that shall be disclosed and made manifest on the day, the great day, the Day of Judgment and of the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For on that day it shall be revealed with fire, in fire, and the work of every man, what kind it is, that fire will assay, will show. It is a probationary, not a purgatorial fire; and not the persons are subjected to this fire, but their works in the Church. The idea of a physical purgatory is absolutely remote to this passage. Consuming fire is the element of the last day, and in flaming fire the Lord Jesus will reveal Himself from heaven, 2Th 1:8. "This fire will reveal what was worldly and perishable as well as what was spiritual and imperishable in the building of God. Outward honor and dishonor, splendor of wisdom and cover of foolishness, will then be judged infallibly; the fire of probation will penetrate through all pretext into the inner substance, and only that will remain which was built in a Christian manner, borne up by and of the same material as the indestructible foundation, Jesus Christ. The dross of reason and the vagaries of men, even if they be meant ever so well, will be mingled with the ashes, and in the light of the perfect knowledge, wherewith the fire of that day will shine round about us, will be revealed what was imagination and what was divine wisdom, what was hollow talk of art and what powerful word, what was mere opinion and what infallible truth. " Note that all this presupposes a building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ and His blessed Word.
The result of the test is now shown: If the work of any man will remain that he has built, he will receive a reward; if any man’s work shall be burned up, he will suffer loss; himself, however, will be saved, but in this manner as through fire. The statement is very general and refers to every kind of material, to all the various abilities and gifts. For whether a Christian is highly, moderately, or poorly gifted, so far as the work of the Church is concerned, that is of little or no consequence; everything rather depends upon this, that the work in the Church be free from the dross of human reason and vanity, that it rest upon the true foundation, and that it be actuated by love of Christ. In such measure as any Christian’s work will stand the test of the last day he will receive the reward of grace. And whatever part of the work will not stand up under the test of the fire of that day will be consumed. By so much as the imperfections of every man’s work will be revealed, by so much will his reward of mercy be reduced, by so much will he forfeit what he might have possessed, had his work all measured up to the standard set by God. But though such a person will not have the enjoyment of an unusual degree of glory, yet he will have the possession of the heavenly salvation, but so as through fire. He is like a person that has escaped with his naked life from a fire that threatened death and destruction, or like one that escapes from a shipwreck, but loses both money and goods. The special reward which God promises to faithful and excellent work such people lose, but that which is not the wages of their work, but only Christ’s merit, namely, life and salvation, that they inherit, because they retained faith in the forgiveness of their sins, also of their hidden sins, to their end. Mark that the apostle throughout the passage has in mind especially the teachers of the Church, but that the others, in all their several posts in the Church, are by no means excluded.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv10, 12, 14, 16 According to the grace of God that was given…
According to the grace of God that was given to me
This can be stated in active form. AT: "According to the task that God freely gave me to do" (See: Active or Passive)
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I laid a foundation
Paul equates his teaching of faith and salvation in Jesus Christ to laying a foundation for a building. (See: Metaphor)
another is building on it
Paul is referring to the person or people who are teaching the Corinthians at that time as if they are carpenters who are constructing the building above the foundation. (See: Metaphor)
let each man
This refers to God's workers in general. AT: "let each person who serves God"
no one can lay a foundation other than the one that has been laid
This can be stated as active. AT: "no one can lay a foundation other than the foundation that I, Paul, have laid" or "I have already laid the only foundation that anyone can lay" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
grace
found
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv10, 11, 12, 16 3:10-17 All people are accountable to God for the…
3:10-17 All people are accountable to God for the way they serve Christ.
3:10 Paul laid the foundation when he first began the church in Corinth. Now others were building on it by what they were teaching the young Christians.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.