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.'