Be Careful How you Build

Be Careful How you Build

1 Corinthians 3:9–17 (ESV)

9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 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. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 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.

14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

The Big Idea: Paul’s concern is singular; those currently giving leadership to the church in Corinth must take heed

because their present work will not stand the fiery test to come since they have shifted from the imperishable “stuff” of Jesus Christ and him crucified to their current brand of “wisdom.”

Review

The Corinthians used worldly wisdom to evaluate their leaders and teachers. They were more concerned about the presentation of the message than they were about its content.

They used their “wisdom” to divide the church and to promote themselves.

These people valued and took pride in the human “wisdom” of the world.

At the surface-level of daily conduct in Corinth, the “wisdom” appeared in terms of

church factions,

fornication,

lawsuits,

insistence upon “rights,”

personal prejudices imposed upon others,

self-display through speaking in tongues, and like eccentricities.

Paul presents the Cross of Christ as the Wisdom of God.

Paul is thinking about the problem of divisions in the church at Corinth.

In the first part of chapter 3, that single distinguishing characteristic of Christianity

he uses two metaphors.

The first is to diagnose the problem.

They are infants who ought to have matured but have remained immature. They ought to have been on solid food but can only receive milk.

So there’s the problem.

Their divisions have stunted their spiritual growth.

In verses 5 to 9, he changes the metaphor from a familial metaphor to an agricultural metaphor. The church is like a field. Paul and Apollos and other ministers are like farmhands working in the field, planting the seed of the Word, watering the seed of the Word, but God is the one who gives the growth.

If the Corinthians are to grow up, they ought not to look to men either to lionize or demonize their leaders but to look to God.

God is the one in whom their growth is uniquely sourced.

Introduction

Fix in your mind an image of a great construction site.

First of all, the foundation must be excavated and then carefully laid.

And then, each layer of the superstructure builds upon that foundation with equal care.

And there are, on that great construction site, different workers with different roles,

swarming all over the place about their tasks

– architects, project managers, structural engineers, electrical engineers, electricians plumbers and stone masons

and heavy machine operators, roofers and many others besides.

Each has a distinct, vital role and contribution.

And that, Paul is telling us, is a picture of the church, and

We are engaged in a significant construction project.

The Church Must Be Built with Care (3:10–15)

1 Corinthians 3:10–15 (ESV)

10 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. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 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. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

The Foundation

The Only Foundation That Will Work

It is the only foundation that will work, he says. You can’t lay any other. Try it, and your Christian life will begin to lean off-center. Cracks will start to appear.

You do not build to last unless you build on the foundation that is Jesus Christ.

The Washington Monument, you may know this, when it was first being built, almost ended in disaster. It was supposed to be, at the time at least, the tallest stone obelisk in the world – 600 feet tall; it was supposed to have a flat top with a statue of Washington riding a horse at its pinnacle. But the shaft, rested on a foundation of about eighty square feet, exerting 10,000 pounds per square inch of pressure on a bed of clay and sand.

what a foundation of clay and sand will do! And so of course, the Washington Monument began to lean, actually almost two inches off vertical, and cracks began to appear.

Then for twenty years, the project lay unfinished and neglected. Everyone thought the thing was doomed to failure

until a colonel in the Corps of Engineers managed to resolve the problem and completed the work with a simple pyramid at the pinnacle so that we have the monument that you know today.

But for twenty years there, the great monument to America’s founding father was an unfinished, cracked and listing, leaning tower that looked like it was about to fall over at any moment.

Paul is telling us here that whatever we’re building on if it is not the foundation of Jesus, cracks will start to appear eventually.

Only Jesus can take the weight – unmoving, solid, secure – until we come to the place where we are able to say truly from the heart,

“On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand”

until we come there, we will find our lives listing and leaning. You’re not built to bear the weight of your life.

The church, if not built on the rock of Jesus Christ, will crumble. Only Jesus can take that weight.

Are you resting on Him today?

Paul laid the foundation according to the grace given him.

Here it would refer especially to his apostolic task of founding churches. This is what makes him an apostle as far as the Corinthian church in particular is concerned, a point to which he feels compelled to return regularly (see 4:15–17; 9:1–2; 2 Cor. 3:1–3; 10:12–16; cf. Rom. 15:20). In either case, the specific notation of “grace given” continues the preceding emphasis (vv. 5–9) on

God is the primary ground of their existence.

Paul laid the foundation “as a wise builder.

” (Both architect and building engineer). This choice of words is directly related to the context and especially to what has immediately preceded (2:6–16).

By laying the foundation he did—Jesus Christ and him crucified—the apostle himself was the truly “wise” master-builder in contrast to the “wise” in Corinth.

The whole point of the analogy is to warn them of the consequences of persisting on their present course.[3]

The church must take care of how they build the superstructure and be reminded that there cannot be “any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

The foundation is not proper doctrine, the concern of a later period,

but the gospel itself, with its basic content of salvation through Jesus Christ.

He intends them to hear “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1:23; 2:2).

When the bottom falls out

Fire tests and reveals the quality of one’s building.

Builders should build with high-quality, nonflammable materials (“gold, silver, precious stones”) rather than low-quality, flammable ones (“wood, hay, straw”).

The quality of the building materials must be consistent with the building’s foundation of a crucified Messiah.

Thus to build with perishable materials is to build a church with motives and methods that are not gospel-centered

but reflect the worldly wisdom of this age.[4]

“For the Day will disclose it.”

Unlike whatever human wisdom the Corinthians may find attractive, God’s wisdom has an eternal effect and will stand as judge over everyone and everything else.

A day of judgment is coming, and it will test each person’s “building.”

,” that is, how one has built, whether of perishable or imperishable materials.

The Test, with its results, will disclose the quality of the materials and will determine the reward.

what sort of work each one has done.”

At the final judgment, our lives will fall under the scrutiny, the white-hot combustible scrutiny of the Lord Himself.

All of our work for Jesus will be put to the test and the criterion is not how much we did. It’s not volume. It’s not busyness.

It is quality. “Let each one take care how he builds,” Paul says, verse 10. “The fire will test what sort of work each one has done,” verse 13. Not how much, simply how. Not what volume, but what sort of work. That’s the test!

Be Careful How You Build

1 Corinthians 3:15 (ESV)

15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Paul raises the possibility, it is a sobering possibility in verse 15, that all or most of our works might be burnt up on the Great Day. We will be saved, Paul says, but only as one escaping through the flames.

The image is of a house fire. You’re asleep in the home that you’ve built with your own hands but you had cut corners, truth be told, in the construction process.

You didn’t build it according to code,

you didn’t use the best materials.

The electrical wiring is dangerous.

The gas is unsafe.

And so as the flames engulf your handiwork, you jump from the window with the smoke still rising from your clothes and soot on your face. Everything is lost but you. That’s the picture; that’s the warning.

A child of God can’t be lost; the final inferno will not consume him, but the same can’t be said for his work. Be careful how you build. Be careful how you build.

The Results of Testing with Fire

The “destruction” soon to be mentioned (v.17) seems to imply the church has failed to function any longer as a viable alternative to Corinth, by manifesting the nature and fruit of the gospel within totally pagan surroundings.

The implication is that anyone persisting in their present course of “worldly wisdom” is in grave danger, and that they “will be pulled out of [their] rubble heap just in the nick of time.”

But also, as elsewhere, he expects the warnings to be taken seriously.

The word of warning and the word of hope are one. He wants them to desist from their current worldly wisdom; he wants them, with him, to be saved and to experience reward.

But their current behavior is so seriously aberrant that he must warn them yet once more (in vv. 16–17), this time in the strongest terms yet: those who persist in these activities and attitudes are in fact in eternal danger.

It is one of the most significant passages in the NT that warn—and encourage—those responsible for “building” the church of Christ.

In the final analysis, of course, this includes all believers, but it has particular relevance, following so closely as it does the preceding paragraph (vv. 5–9), to those with teaching/leadership responsibilities.

Eternal Rewards

You may rule yourself out. “You’re not famous, important; you’re not a preacher. You’ve not written any books; you’re no evangelist. You’re not a missionary; you’ve not been around the world serving the Lord Jesus. No one will remember me,” you tell yourself.

“What has my contribution been?” And so you think that you have been building with wood, hay, and straw, but when you sat nursing your aging parents, through tears till they crossed the finished line, in Jesus’ name, ministering to them so selflessly, you were building with gold, silver, and precious stones.

When day after day after day, for years and years you faithfully prayed for that loved one who did not love the Lord, and no one saw and no one knew, the Lord saw and the Lord knew and then you were building with gold, silver, and precious stones.

When you opened your mouth, risking reputation or worse in your workplace to speak for Jesus, then you were building with gold and silver and precious stones.

When the opportunity comes, will you step forward in humility to serve or will you be willing only to work when there is the possibility of praise?

That’s the difference between gold, silver, precious stone work and wood, hay, and straw work. How have you been building? Why have you been building?

It’s one of those uncomfortable passages we often overlook. It really is very important for us to understand, however. Verse 14, “If the work that anyone built on the foundation survives, he will have a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved but only as through fire.”

Now let’s be clear. The Scriptures teach and promise eternal rewards for work in this life that survives the coming test of our motives and our methods. That’s what Paul is teaching us here. I wonder if you have room in your thinking for this idea? This great doctrine of differing rewards according to works in the Christian life.

Warning to Those Who Would Destroy the Church, God’s Temple in Corinth (3:16–17)

16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

It is, unfortunately, possible for people to attempt to build the church out of every imaginable human system predicated on merely worldly wisdom, be it philosophy, “pop” psychology, managerial techniques, relational “good feelings,” or what have you.

· At the final judgment, all such “building” (and perhaps countless other forms, where systems have become more important than the gospel itself) will be shown for what it is:

something merely human, with no character of Christ or his gospel in it.

· The good news of the passage is that one does not need to build badly.

· That which has the character of the foundation, Jesus Christ crucified and risen, will not only survive any present hour of testing but will enter the final judgment as a glorious church,

and those responsible for such building will receive their due reward, which in itself is an expression of grace. [7]

· If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him.

For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” So now the building we see at last is the temple of God, holy to the Lord. That’s the church. He dwells there. He delights, therefore, in His dwelling place, that is His people. And Paul is still thinking about this problem of division.

And he is saying in effect,

“If you Corinthians insist on these worldly, divisive patterns of behavior, in the end, they will demonstrate that you are not building on the foundation at all. You’re not really a child of God.”

John 13:35, “By this shall the world know that you are my disciples: by your love for one another.” Love for one another is evidence that you are a follower of Christ and that you are building on the foundation.

If you are giving yourself in the pursuit of division and party spirit until you destroy the church of Jesus Christ, you show that you are not building on the foundation at all.

You are not a follower of Jesus Christ.

Your divisiveness,

your partisan attitude,

your commitment to one-upmanship,

all driven by pride, reveal a heart that does not know His saving touch.

And if you are the one who destroys the church, you will face the destruction of the Lord.

It’s a sobering warning and it is challenging for us in our day as we think so little of the church – we come at the church with a consumer attitude – to see how Paul thinks of the church, how God thinks of the church.

Paul carries the preceding imagery (vv.9b–15) a step further by specifying the kind of building that he and the others have been erecting, namely God’s temple in Corinth. With this imagery, he does two things: (1) he tries to help the Corinthians to see the nature and significance of their being God’s people in Corinth, and (2) by picking up the immediately preceding imagery of judgment (vv.13–15), he sternly warns those who are in the process of destroying the church by their divisions. Thus, he presents us with this remarkable imagery describing the nature of the local church and

The strongest warning in the NT against those who would take the church lightly and destroy it by merely worldly wisdom, accompanied by divisiveness.[8]

Paul is calling their attention to the fact that, since there is only one God, that one God can have only one templein Corinth, and they themselves, as a gathered community of believers, are that temple. They have become that new temple by the fact that (in “literal” English) “God’s Spirit dwells in you.”

That is, Paul is here reflecting on the church as the corporate place of God’s dwelling, who, when gathered in Jesus’ name, experienced the presence and power of the Lord Jesus in their midst (5:4–5).Again, as earlier (2:10–13; cf. 2:4–5), the Spirit is the key, the crucial reality, for life in the new era. The presence of the Spirit, and that alone, marks them off as God’s new people, God’s temple, when assembled in Christ’s name in Corinth.

The church was to be God’s alternative to Corinth, both its religions and vices. But the Corinthians, by their worldly wisdom, boasting, and divisions, were “banishing” the Spirit and thus about to destroy the only alternative God had in their city.

God is holy; his temple is therefore also holy, set apart for his purposes; and as God’s temple, the only temple the living God has in Corinth, you are by implication also to be holy. As this letter reveals, this is not one of their strong suits. So the threat, which is real, is at the same time turned into an invitation for them to become what in fact they are by the grace of God, “God’s holy temple in Corinth

this is one of the few texts in the NT both where we are exposed to an understanding of the nature of the local church (God’s temple indwelt by his Spirit) and where the concluding warning makes it clear how important the local church is to the one and only God.

Contemporary Application

One of the desperate needs of the church is to recapture this vision of what it is by grace and, therefore, what God intends it to be.

We tend to take the local church too lightly.

Seldom does one sense that it is, or can be, experienced as a community that the Spirit so powerfully indwells that it functions as a genuine alternative to the pagan world in which it is found.

It is perhaps not too strong to suggest that the recapturing of this vision of its being, in terms both of its being powerfully indwelt by the Spirit and of its thereby serving as a genuine alternative (“holy” in the most holistic sense) to the world, is its single most significant need. [9]

Paul says to

1. Be sure you have the right foundation, that you’ve laid the correct foundation. Only one can bear the weight of your life for time and eternity – the foundation that is Jesus Christ.

Are you resting on Him? Are you resting on Him? Then he says

2. Be careful how you build on that foundation. There’s only one life twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last. And then he says let’s

3. Be careful not to destroy the unity of the church. Those who do show they’re not building on the right foundation at all. And those who destroy God’s temple, God Himself will destroy.

May the Lord give us grace, as we search our hearts in light of His Word, to be sure we are resting on the one, true foundation,

building in such a way that our labors will last to the glory of God and that we avoid any possibility of destroying God’s temple.

Let’s pray together!

[1]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 147). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [2]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 148). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. vv. verse (verses) [3]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 149). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [4]Naselli, A. D. (2020). 1 Corinthians. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Romans–Galatians: Vol. X (p. 244). Crossway. [5]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 152). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [6]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 152). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. v. verse (verses) vv. verse (verses) [7]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, pp. 156–157). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [8]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, pp. 157–158). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. cf. confer, compare NT New Testament [9]Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; Revised Edition, p. 162). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.