'Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver,
precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: 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.'--1 COR. iii. 12, 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.