Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
BB,
In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul is continuing his discussion about the teachers that they have been lining up behind and fighting over. Now he keeps making mention of three pretty good ones. But I suspect that these were not the only ones in play. He mentions Peter, Apollos, and himself. At one point he makes a turn in his rhetoric. He refers to the teachers as farmers and builders. And he refers to the Corinthians as the farm and the building.
He then turns back to the teachers and discusses how they might build (continuing with the metaphor of building). Sort of a Three Little Pigs comparison. Straw, sticks, or brick. You know the materials he actually mentions.
Paul does make mention of their foundation in the faith which was Christ. (And while Paul was the one who had brought them that foundation, he is not suggesting that only he could provide it.) Then he talks about how the teachers might build. In the end (on "the day") their work would be tried. In terms of their reward, or lack thereof, the nature of what they built would be the evidence for or against them. The building that met the standard would gain them favor, while the building that did not would cause them loss, but not of salvation.
Now if the building in such a poor manner does not result in the loss of salvation of the builder, do we suppose that those on whom he built are still, nonetheless, lost? It might be easy to confuse the materials with which the teacher built as being the people. But then it would indicate that the materials (wood or stones) are the people rather than what was added to them.
There was a foundation of Christ. That is not burned in the fire. So the core of the believers' faith withstands the fire of the day. However, Paul does not provide any hint as to their fate. But he does not seem excessively concerned about it. At least not within this particular passage. He does provide them a lot of sound advice for moving forward. Things about a sinner, gifts, meetings, the life to come, and other things.
But he never suggests that their status before God is at risk.
Since we are talking about Christians (mostly) I can only accuse Lee of being a purveyor of flammable materials. Outside of the question about those who wandered into a Love Feast, got excited and stood and called "Oh, Lord Jesus" three times then disappeared, I believe that we are talking about people who have the foundation that Paul laid. Even those who started in that tenuous position of simply calling three times, but who stayed and began to mature a little, surely they came to truly believe in the one that they only sort of met by chance when those 9 words were spoken.
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My dad said the same things to me when we were discussing 1 Cor 3. I'll just describe my understanding of this matter.
Hebrews 12:29 says God is a consuming fire. Isaiah was the most holy man of Israel, a man who lived in repentance and obeyed the Lord. Yet when he appeared before God's presence he was totally undone simply because he dwellt among sinners.
Isaiah 6:5 ESV
And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"
The presence of God is so holy that it seems to have a nature of obliterating everything that is not holy. You get a sense of this when Uzzah laid his hand on the ark of the covenant and got blasted to death because he did not go through the proper consecration rituals laid out in Leviticus (2 Samuel 6).
If God's holiness has this effect on people who are pretty righteous, what effect would it have on mouth professing Christians who say they believe in Jesus, go to church on Sundays, but live like heathens the rest of the week?
In 1 Cor 6:13 Paul says that God will destroy the stomach along with the food that is inside it. He then relates this analogy to the Corinthian believers who may be practicing sexual immorality. This is interesting because earlier in 1 Cor 3:16-17 Paul states that the believers are the temple of the Holy Spirit and warns that God will destroy them along with the practice of sin that has defiled it if they don't repent:
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
Now if Jesus' blood has washed our sins away, not just from a legal standpoint, but also tangibly whereby the power of sin is no longer over us and we are freed from being slaves of sin (Romans 6) whereby we can become slaves to Christ, then we have nothing to worry about because our temples will be clean and spotless. In this case, our temple would pass through God's consuming fire without a problem.
So in the preceding verse 15 Paul is talking about two things getting burned when we are judged: our works and our temples. Our salvation is not based on works, so whether or not our works are burned has no bearing on our status for inheriting eternal life. However whether or not our temples can make it through the fire *DOES* matter for salvation.
15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved;
yet so as by fire.
1 Corinthians 6:13
"Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"--and
God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Regarding works, I believe the only works that will pass through God's fire are those that were born out of faith working through God's love.
Galatians 5:6
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only faith working through love.
A great story to read on this is Howard Pittman's testimony. He was a baptist preacher who helped raised 32 orphans, preached the gospel etc. but God showed him none of his works would pass through the fire because he did those things to soothe his own conscience and they were not born out of love.
http://www.freechristianteaching.org...#axzz2qJFbbs4h