1 Corinthians Episode 4: Building the Church in Light of Judgment Day Testing

Wes

Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to twojourneys.org. Now on to today’s episode.

This is episode four in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study podcast. This episode is entitled Building the Church in Light of Judgment Day Testing, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 3:1-23. I’m Wes Treadway, and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?

Andy

Well, this is a great chapter and very significant. Paul goes right at the matter that was dividing the church, which is factions and divisions following key leaders. “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” et cetera. And what Paul wants them to know is that human servants, human workers in the church are not anywhere near as significant as God who sent them and assigns each his task and empowers each one.

It is God’s church, it is Christ’s church, and we are merely chosen laborers to work in it. Paul also wants them to know that the labor they do on Christ’s church is going to be tested with fire on Judgment Day. And so, we had that famous gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw passage. We’re going to talk about that, the testing of works on Judgment Day. And then finally, the beautiful conclusion to the matter is there should be no faction and divisions because every true, every genuine worker on the church belongs to the whole church. So, we don’t have to choose between Luther and Calvin and Zwingli or any others. We get them all. All of them can help us in our walk with Christ. So, it’s an exciting chapter.

Wes

It is indeed. Let go ahead and read 1 Corinthians 3 as we begin:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw- each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness,’ and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’ So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future- all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Andy, why is Paul so critical of the Corinthian church here, and what does he mean when he says he could not speak to them as spiritual people, but rather only as people of the flesh?

Andy

Yeah, this is a very significant verse historically because from this, some, I think, they’ve gone too far in what Paul says, and they’ve crafted an idea of somebody called the carnal Christian. This is the carnal Christian passage. The word carnal, sometimes translated fleshly, et cetera. And so, the idea is you could accept Jesus as Savior and not worry about whether he’s Lord or not. Just as long as you pray the sinner’s prayer, it really doesn’t matter how you live. You could be living really in a very sinful worldly way, but you know you’re a Christian because you prayed that prayer. So, there’s this category of the carnal Christian, et cetera.

Well, the whole thing is a misunderstanding of this passage here. Campus Crusade for Christ, when I was at MIT, they had two booklets. One was The Four Spiritual Laws and the other was the Holy Spirit book, the blue booklet. And at the center of the blue booklet back then was the idea of the carnal Christian. You could have a carnal Christian, they just hadn’t learned the power of the Spirit-filled life yet. Well, I think that whole thing’s a misunderstanding.

Quite frankly, the more worldly you are thinking and living, the more likely it is that you were never born again at all. And so, we should not take this passage and think there’s this separate category of person called the carnal Christian. So, we need to just take that off the table. What is Paul saying then? He said, “Look, you are acting as though you are still in the flesh. You’re acting as though you’re still unconverted.” Sometimes we can be genuine Christians and masquerade temporarily as the world. And so, the best remedy to that is good sound, biblical instruction. And Paul says, “Look, I’d like to address you as Spirit-filled people, but I have to deal with this immaturity on your part. You’re like infants needing milk instead of needing solid food.”

The author of Hebrews does the same thing on the teaching of Melchizedek. He said, “Look, I’d like to say more serious things, but I can’t because you’re slow to learn. By now, you ought to be further along in your Christian lives.” So, the issue he’s dealing with here, their fleshliness, their carnality, is this faction and division. “You’re thinking like children, you’re thinking immaturely about Paul, Apollo, Cephas and all laborers. I need you to grow up in your thinking here.” And so that’s what he’s going to address.

Wes

How significant are the jealousy and quarreling in the Corinthian church, and what is Paul’s point then in verse three?

Andy

It is very significant. It’s rendering their unity. Jesus said, “By this will all people know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” And so, this was really destroying their witness to the world. Again, in Jesus’s high priestly prayer in John 17, he said, “Father, bring them to perfect unity to let the world know that you sent me.” So, the onlooking world will be watching Christian unity to decide if Jesus is actually the Son of God. And so therefore it’s vital for local churches, like this Corinthian church, to be clearly united as best as we can. And so, the fact that there was jealousy and quarreling amongst them was really destroying their witness there in the city of Corinth.

Wes

Paul even gives an example of what this looked like. He says in verse four, “One says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another ‘I follow Apollos.'” And he says, “You’re being merely human.” What’s so wrong with these folks saying, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” and do we see this kind of mentality today?

Andy

Let me go to the phrase that he used, “You’re acting like mere men.” The implication is you should be better than mere men. You should be better than natural normal people. And frankly, Jesus uses the same kind of logic when he says, “If you love only those who love you, what are you doing more than others? And if you greet only your brothers, aren’t you acting like anyone else? You should be better than that.”

And so, the idea is when you are born again, you should live a better quality of life. And so, them acting this carnal way, this immature way, this fleshly way, they’re acting like they’re not converted, like in 2 Corinthians 5:17, they’ve not been made new creations. And so the issue here is they’re, by saying, “I follow Paul,” “Oh yeah? Well, I follow Apollos,” “Well, I follow Cephas,” all of that is a very fleshly, divisive way of thinking.

By the end of the chapter, he is going to say, “You get us all.” If Paul and Peter and Apollos are, and we are, genuine servants of Christ, anything we bring to the table is yours. Any food we cook, you can eat. Any building we do, you’re part of it. There’s no competition here. So, stop acting like you’re unconverted people. And so, he’s addressing this issue of “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos.”

Furthermore, and he’s going to say this very plainly, and we’ll get to this, I think, next, you shouldn’t be focusing too much on the human servants anyway because we are nothing. And we’re going to get to that. But fundamentally, the only reason we have anything to offer is that Christ has raised us up, converted us, transformed us, and is now using us by his Spirit.

Wes

Andy, I think many who are listening can probably think of contemporary examples where perhaps we have made too much of an individual ministry and seen some of the impact of that. Why is it so vital that we not make too much of human ministry, and how do we balance that reality with what Hebrews says in chapter 13 that it’s right to honor those who lead well and teach the word of God?

Andy

Right. It’s a complex question. First of all, pride is a big problem in the Christian life. We as leaders are constantly tempted to feel proud of the way that God uses us, especially if we’re teachers and preachers and writers, and people follow us and get benefit from our ministry. It can go right to our heads. And the Lord will be pleased to humble us if that ever happens.

That’s very dangerous. I think it’s good, however, to encourage, if somebody preaches a sermon that’s helpful to you, for you to go say, “That was very helpful. I was blessed by that and encouraged.” Furthermore, God in His wisdom, has not given equal gifts to everyone that has the same role. Some people have the gift of giving, some have the gift of super giving or super abundant giving. They’re famous for their giving because they’re wealthy men, industrialists, who then give huge percentages of their earnings to the Lord’s work, like R.G. LeTourneau, who gave a reverse tithe. He kept 10% of what he made and gave 90% away. Well, that’s because he was wealthy. He could live on 10% of what he was making, but also, he was just very generous.

So, it is with teachers. There are just some teachers in the 20 plus centuries of church history that are just better than any of the other teachers. We’re still reading John Calvin half a millennia later. He was just a clearer, better Bible teacher than anyone else of his generation. And so, you’re still going to read him. He’s not equally good to all the others. So, it is also true of John Owen or John Bunyan in his writing of Pilgrim’s Progress. And so, because God gives a variability of gifts, there’s going to be this temptation to prefer the one over the other.

Now, it’s not a remedy to say, “I wish all of them would write anonymously.” Written by Anonymous, Pilgrim’s Progress by Anonymous. The problem is then every writer is named Anonymous. And we’re not all the same. It actually is helpful that John Calvin published his works under his name, and that John Bunyan published his works under his name, so we can make distinctions. Not that they would feel any ego, because they’re dead and they have absolutely no sinful pride at this point, but because we can identify their works for their distinctiveness, by what they’re good at, some ways they can help.

We have to manage this thing. There are different ones with different names that have different size and scope of ministry and of their gifts, and that’s all appropriate. The ego, the pride, and the unbridled fawning after such, that’s got to go, that’s not right.

Wes

And Paul even says as much at the end of verse five when he says basically, “We are serving as the Lord has assigned to each of us this role and responsibility and gifting.” I can’t help but think about Paul’s language regarding the body of Christ elsewhere and how there’s diverse gifts, and God has gifted each one to play a particular role.

Andy

He doesn’t give to each person the same task. And he does give to some people bigger tasks than to others. And those individuals have a greater impact on church history than the more obscure people did. And so,we need to realize that God does fit people for different levels of glory in heaven. And so, the individuals that were given big chunks of work to do and did those big chunks, by God’s power and grace, will be worthy of greater honor than those that did less. But it is, as Paul says here, “As the Lord has assigned to each his task.”

Wes

Andy, in the next number of verses, much as Jesus used agricultural imagery in his parables, Paul turns to an agricultural image here. How does the image of planting a seed and watering show the limitations of humans in building the church?

Andy

All right, he says, “As the Lord has assigned to each his task,” and then he goes on and says, “My task was to plant the seed. Apollos came later and watered it, but it was the Lord that gave the growth.” Growth is life. To go from a dead seed, a non-living seed, to a green, growing, little tiny shoot that comes up out of the ground with shiny green leaves and a little slender stalk, that’s God. God alone can give life.

Here we’re talking about spiritual life. God alone can bring someone from spiritual death to spiritual life. And then God alone can bring someone from spiritual life to spiritual maturity. All of that growth is given by God alone. Now, we amazingly are given significant tasks. The ministry of the word is what accomplishes these things. It is by the word that people are brought from spiritual death to spiritual life. As someone preaches the gospel, that is the instrumentality by which someone believes when they are hearing the gospel.

“God alone can bring someone from spiritual death to spiritual life. And then God alone can bring someone from spiritual life to spiritual maturity. All of that growth is given by God alone.”

So, the preacher of the gospel at that moment was a significant actor in the drama, but it was still God alone that did the actual work of giving life. And then later, as Apollos comes and just pours on doctrine and does good sound teaching and instruction from the Old Testament, which is what they would’ve worked with, and maybe some of the teachings of Jesus that they had to work with, et cetera, when Apollos comes and does that skillful teaching, and he was a skillful teacher, he watered and made them grow. But it was God that gave the growth.

Then Paul concludes, “So then neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything.” So, if we’re not anything, that equals nothing. We’re nothing. That’s what Paul’s saying: we are ultimately nothing. It’s similar to John the Baptist’s statement, “Do not say that we are children of Abraham. I tell you that God is able out of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” We should think like that. God could raise up a donkey to preach the sermon I just preached if he wanted to. He did that with Balaam. And so fundamentally, we should be humble. We should say, “Neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything. But thank God we get to have a role to play at all.”

Wes

How is verse eight then a great encouragement to labor in the Lord? And how does the realization that the Lord has limited the scope of our labors, and that He alone can make our work successful, give us peace?

Andy

Yeah, I love this verse. He says, “The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose.” And that one purpose is, we could say simply, the body of Christ or the kingdom of God or this rising temple, Ephesians 2 uses that same image that Paul uses here. 1 Corinthians 3, “You are God’s temple.” We all have one purpose- that is the perfection, the completion of the building project, the full maturity of the body of Christ. To full mature manhood, he uses that image in Ephesians 4. And so that’s our purpose. We have one purpose, and that is the final perfection of the church.

And secondly, we’re going to be rewarded proportionately to our labor. As we were faithful to what God gave us to do, he’s going to reward us. And he’s going to talk about that later, so I’ll leave that for later, but we’re going to be rewarded. We have one purpose, and we’ll be rewarded according to our labor.

What that means is, I look to you, Wes, and I realize you have a different ministry than me, but you have the same ultimate purpose that I do, which is that the body of Christ might be built up to full maturity. Also, other pastors that I know about, other authors that I know about, other people that do various things, we all who are genuinely followers of Christ, leading, being led by his Spirit, we all have one purpose. But we each will get different rewards based on the role God gave us.

Wes

Paul’s been talking a lot about what he and Apollos and others like them are doing. In verse nine, he turns to speak of the church, and he speaks of the church as God’s field and building. Is a little bit of a mixed metaphor here. How is the church like a field and a building?

Andy

And it’s also like a body. So-

Wes

We’ve got lots of images.

Andy

And it’s a bride, and it’s a nation, it’s a priesthood. It’s just amazing, the pictures of the church. Here this-

Wes

What I’m getting is it’s complex.

Andy

It is complex.

Wes

We need more than one simple image to understand it.

Andy

But we just have two in verse nine, so let’s just stick with that. And it’s like we’re looking for more and more images. But yeah, I think it’s just the church is beautifully complex. And so, in this case, the work is an agricultural image he’s been using, and now he’s shifting. He’s going to go to an architectural image. The next number of verses are all architectural. “I laid a foundation, and now someone else is building.” Earlier we could have used an agricultural image: “I plowed a field and scattered some seed and then someone came along and watered and weeded the field,” and all that, whatever. The idea is that there is a project that each are working on, and that project is the church, and those laborers were called by God to different functions for that.

The agricultural image is one of life. The architectural image is one of stability and structure and strength and grandeur. There’s nothing I think very dramatic and grand about a stock of wheat growing. I guess you could say a field of wheat is pretty to look at. But if you think about Solomon’s temple covered in gold, and it’s glistening in the sun, it’s just very dramatic, and it’s very stable and strong and kind of permanent. So, one of them is alive, bringing fruit and life, et cetera. The other is stability and majesty and glory, different images.

Wes

So, in verses 10 through 15, he turns and focuses on this image of the church as a building, the work being one of adding to or working on this structure. What’s the significance of the foundation he mentions in verse 10? And based on verse 11, what is the foundation that Paul laid?

Andy

Yeah. Yeah, I want to answer that. I do want to say something about verse 10 because he says, “By the grace God has given me,” et cetera. Now, I think it’s amazing, Wes, that he uses us at all. He could just convert us and say, “Now sit on this three-legged stool off in the corner and stay out of my way. I’m going to be sending angels. You guys are just going to mess it up.”

Wes

“Watch me work.”

Andy

Yeah, “I will just work. You guys are just going to mess it up.” Well guess what? In 20th centuries, what have we done? We’ve messed it up. Over and over. Look at church history. We have royally messed it up, but we’ve also been faithful too. And we have shared the genuine gospel, and people have been genuinely converted, and the church has genuinely made progress. We’ve also royally messed it up at the same time. It’s really such a mixed bag.

“By the grace God gave me, I had a role to play.” Paul never gets over the fact that, in his conversion, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus. Now get up and go into the city, listen. You’ll be told what you must do.” He had a role for him right away. It’s amazing. And he was preaching the gospel almost right away in the synagogue in Damascus. It’s incredible. So, he never got over it. “By the grace God gave me, I had a role to play.” What was your role? “I laid a foundation,” he says “as an expert builder.”

He’s not being arrogant or boastful there. He said, “I did it well. I laid the foundation…” He’s going to say in a moment what that foundation is. “No one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid. So what I did is I came and told you the foundation has already been laid. But in doing that, I was laying the foundation.” The idea is he was establishing in the hearts of the elect, the as yet unconverted elect who were that day being converted. He laid in their hearts the foundation of Christ’s finished work, his once for all work on the cross, as the author of Hebrews said. Once for all, never to be repeated. It is finished, it is done. He laid that finished work in the hearts of these people by his preaching. In doing that, he laid the foundation for the local church.

Wes

So, the foundation then, as you just mentioned, is Jesus Christ. And Paul turns to talk about how anyone would build on that foundation, the nature of that work and why it matters. What is the nature of this building and also the loss described in the verses that follow? How can we avoid that?

Andy

We have a lot to talk about here. All right, so what Paul was, was a trailblazing, church-planting apostle to the Gentiles. It was always his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ wasn’t named. So, he would go and set up shop in an area and preach the gospel initially and win some initial converts and start building them up. Then he would leave.

And then others would come along. And so, in this case, Apollos is the one. “I planted the seed, Apollo’s watered. I laid the foundation.” And he doesn’t say Apollos this time, but he says, “Others are building on it.” Others came along to build. And he gives a cautionary warning. He says, “Let each one be careful how he builds.” So, what is it? No one can lay a foundation other than one already laid, which is Christ and him crucified, 1 Corinthians 2:2: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Okay, that’s the foundation. What is the rising structure? Well, you get the sense in Ephesians 4, the rising structure is growing to full maturity in Christ-likeness. That would be the individual converts are being built up in their faith. The individual converts thinking more and more like Jesus, living more and more like Jesus, they’re being sanctified. Now, we know from Romans 6:17, “Thanks be to God though you used to be slaves to sin you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” What is that? It’s the gospel. Your souls were entrusted to a pattern of teaching. What Paul’s saying in Romans 6:17 is, “The gospel is enough to get you the whole way.” Christ crucified and resurrected has more to say to you just than that your sins are forgiven. It’s also going to teach you that you also died to sin, and you also are now alive like Christ to live a new life.

“Christ crucified and resurrected has more to say to you just than that your sins are forgiven. It’s also going to teach you that you also died to sin, and you also are now alive like Christ to live a new life.”

Live a new life. What does that mean? To think like Christ and act like Christ. What does that mean? Well, that’s building on the foundation. The church is rising. So, what he’s saying is, “The ones who come after me better be very careful how they build. They better be teaching right doctrine.” And so that work is going to be tested, and the quality of each one’s workmanship will be tested on Judgment Day. We have a lot more to say about that, but I’ll pause now.

Wes

We get this imagery of loss and reward, depending on what materials are used in the building, whether gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw. Let’s talk first about the loss that’s described in 13-15 and then circle back to the rewards. This is a big theme, as we think about what it means to build on this foundation. What is the loss described, and how are we to avoid that?

Andy

Right. Very, very important. First of all, I want to say something. Just like the beginning of this chapter, the accusations made that the whole carnal Christian came from a misunderstanding of these verses, so also other scholars have come along and said that whole “gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw” is taken out of context, if you’re going to apply it to all Christians and all the works they do and the testing of all of our works by fire. Well, I actually disagree in that case. I think that home base is: Paul planted or laid a foundation, Apollos came later and worked on it, and Paul’s giving a general warning to anyone who comes to Corinth to teach this Corinthian church that he planted, they better be careful how they build. That is home base. At least we’re talking about the teaching ministry, the teaching preaching ministry, the pastoring.

What right do we have then to extend it to all Christians? Well, it’s because I think all Christians are involved in this building project. It’s not like pastors alone and preachers alone work on the rising temple, and we are God’s temple, and then others are just doing hobbies like ship building in bottles or something like that and they have nothing consequential to add. That is not what Ephesians 4 says. Ephesians 4 says, “He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers,” that those are all word-based ministries. The delivery system is the word of God. All right, but to what end? To prepare God’s people for what? Works of service, so that by the works of service the body of Christ may be built up.

Everybody’s involved in this building project. It’s like an Amish barn-raising here. We’re all involved. The whole community’s involved in raising this structure. So yes, we have every right to extend it to every Christian, and every Christian’s works are going to be tested.

Now, you asked about loss. The issue is the gold, silver and costly stones cannot be harmed by the fire. When silver and gold is subjected to fire, it is purified. The fire there is a purification image, but fire can also destroy. And so, whatever it is that the Lord is doing in us, it’s still imperfect. None of us do perfect work. And so even our best works need to be purified. And so, there’s a sense of purification. There’s a little bit of dross in everything we do. There’s a little bit of pride, there’s a little bit of something wrong.

But the wood, hay and straw are not helped by the fire. It’s gone, it’s disappeared. The idea is there are some works that we could do that will have literally no consequence, no eternal consequence. They will be gone, they’ll be destroyed. They were not helpful. And so, the idea is, if your works are of the category of wood, hay and straw, they will disappear, and you will thereby suffer loss. What is the loss? It’s what might’ve been. You could have used your time better, you could have used your life better, you could have had more treasure to show. You could have stored up more treasure for the glory of God than you did.

And so, on that day, you’ll have a sense of acute loss. And what is that day? It’s the day of fiery testing. It’s the day of Judgment Day. It’s Judgment Day, in which you will see all of your works. And so 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says very plainly, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.”

Now, you add the word “or bad,” that’s wood, hay and straw. That’s going, it’s going to get burned up. This reminds me of a very painful experience I had when I was an MIT student, and I want to share it with you. This is the end of my career, and I had to do a senior project to get my Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. It was a research project, like a thesis. And I had research to do in a lab, and I had a 100-page report to write. My advisor brought me in in late February. And he sat me down and he said, “Andy, I like you. And I’ve seen a lot of students come and go. And because I like you and because I’ve seen a lot of students come and go, I want you to know that I don’t see any way you’re going to be able to graduate this spring. Thought you might want to know.”

And I was like, “You have my attention.” He said, “Well, I just think the number of hours you’re going to have to spend doing research and the report you’re going to have to write, I don’t know how there’s enough time between now and the deadline. Just thought you’d want to know.” He was clearly trying to light a fire under me, and it worked. I basically lived in the lab over the next four weeks. I did tons of research, and then the time came to write it.

Back then, 1984, I used an electric typewriter and whiteout and other things like that to do the actual document. I was sitting down to write this 100-page document, and a friend of mine came and said, “You need to go down to the computer lab. They have this new thing called a word processor, so you can just go down and…”

And I said, “Well, what is it?” They said, “They’ll get you set up.” So, I went down there, and it looked like a little TV set that had a typewriter connected to it. I was like, “Oh, and then the letters appeared on the screen.” It’s like, “Well, how do you get the paper out?” I knew nothing. I didn’t know it what was. And they said, “Well, just work.”

I settled in, and I’ll never forget that. I worked and worked and worked and worked. I worked for something like 10 or 12 hours, and I wrote 24 pages. I wrote about a quarter of the thing. Then suddenly there was some kind of a power surge or some such thing back then. And the person who ran the computer lab came in and said, “We are very sorry. We’ve had a power surge and a glitch. Just go back to your backup copy and take it from there. We’re very sorry for anything you lost.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I said, “My what?” He said, “The backup copy you’ve been making.” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Well, he said, “Move over.” He typed some things, and then he got page one came back up, and that was it. Somehow, I’d inadvertently made a copy of page one, and the rest was gone. I can’t describe to you how that felt. The depression, the inky waves of depression that came over me. But years later I’ve thought about that.

And all I could do is just, the next day, I went home and went to bed. I was so depressed. Next day, I came back and just started all over again. And I worked, and I rewrote it and all that.

But it struck me, it’s a metaphor, the number 24 represents the hours in a day. And I wonder what percentage of my average day was spent serving the Lord and what percentage was spent on fleshly pursuits or gold or wood, hay or straw? And I wonder how much of it I’m going to lose on Judgment Day. It became a cautionary tale to not waste time, to not waste my life, to give myself fully to the service of the Lord.

That’s what I think of when I think of gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw. All of our works, good or bad, are going to be tested. And if what we have done gets burned up, we will suffer loss. What is that loss? What might’ve been. We could have used our time better.

Wes

In that way, the fire of Judgment Day really should cause us to be sober-minded, to live circumspectly, a word we don’t use often. But this sense of examining our lives, being mindful of how we’re investing time, even as you just articulated.

Andy

And the centerpiece is what is God doing in the world? What he’s doing in the world is building this spiritual temple. Ephesians 2, 1 Corinthians 3: it is the church. What are you doing to build the church of Jesus Christ? How are you encouraging brothers and sisters in Christ in their faith? How are you leading lost people to faith in Christ? How are you using hospitality in your home? How are you giving money away? What are you doing?

Every member of the church should have a ministry. What is your ministry? That’s what you need to ask. If you’re just living a regular life, a pagan life, most of that is going to be lost.

Wes

Those sorts of works that are done by faith then are seemingly those that might survive these fires of judgment. What is the nature of the reward that Paul speaks of in these same verses for those things, gold, silver, precious stones that survive Judgment Day? And how’s it not sinful but essential to actually live for the rewards that Christ will give?

Andy

I’ve studied about rewards for a long time, I’ve thought about it. And some time ago, God gave me, I think, three Cs that sum it up. First crowns, we think about the 24 elders laying their crowns or casting crowns before the Lord. These are symbols or emblems of unique honor given by the Lord to His servants. Paul himself talks about the Philippians as his joy and crown in which he will glory in the Lord on that day. The Thessalonians also, the church he planted. Those are crowns. Commendation, that’s praise from God. God saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And not just once on Judgment Day, but for all eternity.

He says, “Enter into the joy of your master.” He will let you know how pleased He was with your life of service. And that’s incredibly valuable. That we should want as much commendation, that is praise from God, as there could be. Because it says in 1 Corinthians 4, “Each will receive his praise from God.” We’ll get to that next chapter, verse six. And then third, and this is complex, but I do believe it’s true: capacity for God’s glory. The ability for us in heaven to appreciate God’s glory.

All of us will be full, but not all of us equally. That we think of it this way: different vessels have different diameters, different volumes. A thimble, a cup, a bucket, a vat, a super tanker. If all of them were completely submerged in the Pacific Ocean, they’d all be completely full, 100% full, but not equally full. The idea is, how much of God do you want? How much of His glory do you want to be able to appreciate and understand in heaven?

It’s not egalitarian. There are differences. Star differs from star and glory. And so those three, that’s rewards. Now, what will God reward? Anything done by faith to build up the body of Christ. Any sacrifice given. Suffering is rewarded. Any money given to the poor and needy. Any effort you make, any cup of cold water you give to help another servant do their work, you get the same reward they do.

Evangelism is going to be rewarded. Secret acts of piety, such as going to your room and closing the door and praying to your Father who’s unseen, he’ll reward that. The doctrine of rewards is everywhere. As a matter of fact, Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith, it’s impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.” You actually have to believe in rewards, and you have to go after them and store up treasure in heaven. What do you storing up in heaven other than rewards? So yes, rewards are a vital part of the Christian life.

Wes

Paul makes one final statement in verse 15 before we move to the last few verses of this chapter. What does Paul mean by, “He himself will be saved but only as through fire”?

Andy

Yeah, it’s very, very challenging statement. Boy, there’s a lot of false doctrine that’s flowed out of 1 Corinthians 3. This could be misunderstood as purgatory, like you have to be purged almost like hellfire. There didn’t seem to be much difference in the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory and hell, except that purgatory did end at some point, after 10,000 years or something like that. Other than that, it’s kind of hell. And the idea is you’d be purged.

That is not, I think, what’s going on here. What he’s saying is, “You wasted your life. You had nothing to show.” Now, I believe that there’s literally no fruit. John 15, “You’re going to be thrown in the fire and burned,” and that’s hell. All right. But this is somebody who is saved. He himself will be saved, but only as if one escaping through the flames. He’s got a little pocket of gold or silver or costly stones in his pocket, a gold coin or two, or else he’s not a Christian. If there’s no fruit, there’s no life. But there could have been so much more.

The point is warning: don’t live that kind of a carnal life. Let’s not be those that have very little to show for Christ on Judgment Day.

Wes

In the last number of verses in this chapter, Paul turns to another architectural image, speaking of the church as God’s temple or Christians as God’s temple. What does Paul mean in verse 16 when he says that we are God’s temple? And what warning does he give to the enemies of Christ in verse 17?

Andy

This is a rich and powerful image that the Jews in the Old Testament were very, very focused on and proud of, indeed: Solomon’s temple. It was their pride and joy. As a matter of fact, Ezekiel 24, Ezekiel’s wife dies, and he’s not allowed to grieve or mourn over it. And then when the people ask, “What does this have to do with us?” he said, “I’m going to take away the delight of your eyes, which is the temple. I’m going to destroy it.” This is the Babylonians are going to come in and destroy it. They were proud of the temple.

The idea also in Ezekiel, is that the radiant glory of God left the temple, went out from it and disappeared. Whereas when Solomon dedicated it, the glory cloud came in. It was a sense of the visible presence of the eternal God living in that structure, in that temple.

Now Paul’s transferring that over and saying, “Actually there isn’t a temple anymore. It’s been destroyed by the Romans,” in that case. Actually, I don’t know if it had been destroyed by the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, but it was going to be destroyed. Jesus said, “Not one stone would be left on another.” But the real temple, now it’s moved on. Once the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, that building became nothing. Jesus said, “Not on this mountain or in Jerusalem will you worship the Father God as Spirit.”

Now the temple is the church. The place where God dwells by His spirit is the people of God. And so when people are brought to faith in Christ, they’re brought into that building project. Peter says, “We are living stones.” You’re like a living stone put into the wall of the temple. And this temple in Ephesians 2 is rising to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. So that’s the image that we have here. “You yourselves are God’s temple, and God’s spirit is dwelling in you.”

Wes

What warning does he offer in verse 17 to any who would oppose or attack God’s temple?

Andy

Yeah, if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. So, unlike the Solomon’s temple or Herod’s temple, this cannot be destroyed. It will never be destroyed. But if anyone attacks the temple, God will destroy him. Now, what’s so amazing here to me is it says in the Book of Acts, in Acts 8 it says, “But Saul began to destroy the church.” Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison. The very man who wrote these words, “If anyone destroys God’s church, God will destroy him,” he knew he deserved to be destroyed, but Jesus didn’t destroy him. It’s amazing. The point is, Jesus will defend his church, and if anyone attacks or destroys it, God will destroy him.

Wes

Now, in some ways, verses 18-20 really go back to the themes of chapter one. How does Paul want the Corinthians to become, we might say, fools like him?

Andy

Yeah, I think this is a fascinating section. He says, “Look, simply put, stop thinking in this carnal worldly way.” See, understand, before Paul even came to town, before the gospel even came to town, the Greeks were used to following philosophical mentors and leaders by name. They had famous philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, et cetera, and they would open up schools. And so, they were used to this carnal man-centered way of thinking. He said, “Don’t think like that anymore. You need to start thinking like God does. Become a fool,” like I talked about in chapter one, “so that you can truly become wise.” And that’s what he’s saying.

“Don’t think of yourself as wise, and don’t follow men anymore, Peter, Apollos, Cephas, et cetera. Don’t do that.” And then he says, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written, He catches the wise in their craftiness.” Now, this is interesting. This Job 5:13, which was a statement made by Eliphaz the Temanite, one of Job’s friends. That’s what makes the book of Job so complicated. Paul’s actually quoting one of the friends about whom God later said, “They have not spoken what is right concerning me.”

But God didn’t mean everything they said was false. And so that’s what makes Job an interesting book to interpret. We’ll do another podcast about Job someday, but he is quoting. He says, “Look, God is opposed to the human philosophers,” and He’s going to catch them. “Don’t be among those that God catches in their craftiness.”, And again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise are futile.” That’s Psalm 94. He’s saying, “Look, let’s not do that. Don’t boast about men anymore.”

Wes

That final point, “Don’t boast about men anymore,” how is boasting in men foolish? How were they doing that? And what does Paul mean at the end of this chapter when he says, “All things are yours?”

Andy

Yeah, let’s go to the last one first. The idea here is, as I’ve said earlier in this podcast, anything that Paul or Apollos or Cephas, Peter, offers or brings to the table, it’s really God that’s given it to them, that their right doctrine and their beautiful ministry, you get all of it. You don’t have to pick and choose. We’re all on the same team. He’s going to say later in 1 Corinthians 12, “We’re all part of one body of Christ.” And if one part of the body is honored, guess what? The whole body is honored with it.

So, if Paul is an honored teacher, everybody in the body is honored by that. If Peter is an honored teacher, everyone is honored by that. You get everything Paul writes, all of his epistles, and you get everything Peter writes, all of his epistles. Apollos never wrote anything. But whatever he did to serve the body of Christ, we all celebrate it.

We don’t pick and choose. We’re all on the same team. We’re all one together. The idea here is that vision that Jesus had of Trinitarian unity, “Father, let them become perfectly one that the world may know that you sent me.” The idea is the more the church thinks like one body, thinks in a united way, and isn’t doing this carnal, divisive type thinking, the better the gospel is going to flourish in Corinth. That’s what I think he means by “All things are yours.”

Now, he starts at the human level. “All things are yours, such as Paul, Apollos, and Cephas.” But he goes beyond that. Says, “The world is yours. Life is yours. Death is yours. The present is yours. Everything is yours.” It’s like, “Wow.” What does that mean? Well, what it means is that in Christ we’re heir of all things. What does it mean that life is ours and death is ours? The point is, you’re going to soar above all of those things. Death itself is going to be thrown in the lake of fire, and you’ll still be alive. So, all of these things belong to you. And you belong to Christ. So don’t get a big head. Just understand Christ owns you. You’re bought with a price. And Christ belongs to God, so all things, like in 1 Corinthians 15, go back up to God.

Wes

It’s amazing how powerful it is to, as Paul says in Colossians 3, “set our minds on things above.” It’s amazing how powerful that is in pushing back against this foolish boasting in men that seemed to be so prevalent in the Corinthian church. Andy, what final thoughts do you have for us today on this chapter?

Andy

Wow, what a chapter. There’s so much in here. And the idea, I think, fundamentally, is to see and be in awe at the glorious work of the building of the church that’s been going on now for 20 centuries. I don’t mean any local church. The local churches come and go. They’re just feeder systems, or they’re temporary scaffolding. The real work though is the body of Christ that is only getting bigger and more glorious with every succeeding generation.

Let’s see the work that God’s doing in building this rising temple to be a dwelling in which God lives by His spirit. And secondly, let’s make certain we’re doing everything we can in our generation to be part of that work. Let’s not waste our lives on foolish, carnal things: wood, hay, and stubble. Let’s instead make certain that everything we do is either gold or silver or costly stones for the glory of God.

Wes

Well, this has been episode four in our 1 Corinthians Bible study podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for episode five entitled Courageous Stewards of the Gospel, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 4:1-21. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.