3. Life is the property of the Church. "Or life." There are certain conditions in which we find men on this earth, in which they cannot be said to live. There are some chained in their cell, under the sentence of death; they have forfeited their life. There are others whose limbs are so paralyzed that they can neither speak nor move; life is not theirs. Morally, sinful man is as a criminal; he is under the sentence of death; he is dead in trespasses. But life is the Christian's; his sentence of death is removed; his moral infirmities are healed, and all his faculties and powers are alive unto God.
4. Death is the property of the Church. "Or death," What is death? Who shall define it? Who shall penetrate its meaning? The word has unfathomable depths of the wonderful and the terrible. But it is for the Christian; it is his. It delivers him from the imperfections of the present state; it frees him from all that is incompatible with his peace, his safety, and his advancement; it introduces him into the scenes, the services, the society, of a blessed immortality. It is his; it is the last step in the pilgrimage.
5. General events are the property of the Church. "Things present, or things to come"—an expression including all the circumstances of existence. "Things present," whatever their character, are ours. "Things to come:" what things are those? Now, if all these things are for the Church, why should any of its members give themselves up to any one particular ministry to the disparagement of others?
II. THE CHURCH IS FOR THE REDEEMER. "Ye are Christ's." There are two very different senses in which Christian men are Christ's. They are his:
1. By his relationship to them. He is the Creator of all. "By him were all things created." He is the Mediator of all.
2. By their pledge to him. They have pledged themselves to him as their moral Leader. They have vowed unqualified obedience to his teaching. If they have thus consecrated themselves to him as their great Teacher, how absurd to glory in subordinate and fallible teachers! Why live under the rays of the rushlight, when you can bask under the beams of the sun? Follow a Plato in philosophy, a Solon in law, a Demosthenes in eloquence, a Bacon in sciences, but no one but Christ in religion. Value the Calvins, the Luthers, the Wesleys, for what they are worth, but disclaim them as leaders.
III. THE REDEEMER IS FOR GOD. "And Christ is God's." Jesus, as a Mediator, is the Messenger and Servant of the Eternal.
1. Christ is God's Revealer. He is the Word of God, the Logos.
2. Christ is God's Servant. He came here to work out God's great plan of saving mercy.
Learn from this subject:
1. The infinite worth of Christianity. It gives all things to its true disciples. None of the "all things" specified here are possessed by those who are not his genuine disciples. The ministry is not theirs. If they attend preaching they are mere instruments in the hands of the preacher; they are carried away by the emotions of the hour. The world is not theirs, however large a portion of it they claim legally; the world uses them as its tools. Life is not theirs; it is forfeited to justice. They have no true enjoyment in it. Death is not theirs; they are its. "Through fear of death they are all their lifetime subject to bondage." "Things present and things to come" are not theirs; they are the mere creatures of circumstances. It is Christianity alone that makes all these things man's. It attunes the soul to the influences of God, as the AEolian harp is attuned to the winds; and every passing breeze in its history strikes out in music the anthem, "The Lord is my Portion, saith my soul."
2. The contemptibleness of religious sectarianism. How wretchedly mean and base does sectarianism appear in the light of this subject! The men who glory in their own theological peculiarities, ecclesiastical sect, and religious teachers, have never felt the grandeur contained in the text, that the universe is for the Church, the Church is for Christ, and that Christ is for God.
HOMILIES BY C. LIPSCOMB
1 Corinthians 3:1-4
Spiritual condition of these Corinthian partisans characterized.
These men were in a low state of Christian development, their growth in grace having been arrested by the jealousy and strife dominant in their midst. Under such circumstances, personal progress and Church progress were impossible. Individual self assertion and arrogance could net but lead to the depreciation of others, nor could envious rivalries tolerate merit and worth in those whom it sought to crush. On the other hand, looking at the Church as an organic body, its virtue was a common stock, to be cherished, honoured, and diligently maintained by every one of its members. Its zeal was not a solitary flame burning on an isolated altar, but the combined warmth of many hearts. Diversity, too, is God's law, diversity reaching down into temperament, diversity in the highest realm of gifts, diversity of insight and experience, and this factious temper was fatal to diversity. Agreeably to the Divine method, diversity was preliminary to unity, and men were allowed free action of individuality, that the strongest and best elements of character, and especially its latent qualities, might be brought out and incorporated in the totality of the Church. A very miscellaneous world environed these Corinthians; the Christian community itself was made up of Jews, Greeks, and Romans; and the reasons were, therefore, exceptionally stringent that they should, as brethren, be very closely banded together in one mind, "the mind of Christ." Had they been a homogeneous people, circumstantial motives, which have a very important part to play in the scheme of providence, would not have been so imperative. But these dissensions involved their national peculiarities, and hence the antecedents of blood, the residuum of former bitterness, would surely come in to aggravate their animosities. They were "babes in Christ," and furthermore, they were "carnal;" and this infantile and carnal state, in which all growth had been stopped, was due solely to intestine discord. Had they considered what a grievous evil it was? Paul and Apollos, Tarsian and Alexandrian, had been put by no choice of theirs in a position very unenviable, nay, in despite of their earnest remonstrance. Leaders they were, leaders they must be, leaders of the Church; and on this very account, nothing could be more ill timed, nothing more abhorrent to their personal feelings, nothing so little like "the mind of Christ," as the attempt to make them heads of factions. Alas for such unwise friends, blocking up their way and multiplying the hazards, already enormous, of their ministry in Achaia! If this audacious effort continued, how could they withstand their enemies? The heart of St. Paul is stirred, and, in this chapter, it swells to the full compass of his apostleship. Intellectual heroism is needed now, and in that, as in the other qualities of an habitual hero, he is never wanting.—L.
1 Corinthians 3:5-10
St. Paul's view of the ministry.
After declaring to the Corinthians that they were carnal in their estimates of God's ministers, the apostle exposes their folly in this particular, by assuring them that he and Apollos were but ministers, or servants, whom God had commissioned to labour in their behalf. Halfway work he never did. To show their error, and prove that it was a worldly sentiment disguised under a fictitious admiration, he sets before them the true idea of the ministry, as an instrument through which the Divine agency of the Holy Ghost operated. No one enjoyed proper sympathy and affectionate regard more than St. Paul, whose heart overflowed into everything that offered a channel for its diffusion. There is nothing about him of Cato, whose virtue runs into the fanaticism of hatred; or of Coriolanus, who looks upon the people as "if he were a god to punish, and not a man of their infirmity." Nevertheless, he guards his tenderness against effeminacy, nor will he accept the slightest tribute to himself at the expense of truth. The hardest thing in our nature to organize is impulse; and yet this man, whose sensibilities were so quick and strong (1 Corinthians 4:14, 1 Corinthians 4:15; 2 Corinthians 2:13), could not tolerate the homage paid him by partisans. And in this spirit he asks, "Who then is Paul?" Only a medium used by the Spirit for their faith, and the medium itself valueless, except so far as the Spirit made it effective. Their very capacity to receive St. Paul's influence was the gift of God, and would they now turn the gift against the Giver? St. Paul's figures are not poetic, but practical, and his imagination is always the offspring of the reason; and hence the illustrative image—"I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase"—began and ended in a breath, with no delight in it beyond utility. Two conclusions follow: one, the entire dependence upon God for the increase; and the other, the coworking with him who is the only Source of the increase. Neither the sower nor the seed, however good, can secure the yield; this is from the great Husbandman, who apportions the result according to his sovereignty, and under conditions which St. Paul subsequently points out. The workman is rewarded for his labour; he does not create the reward, but receives it from God; nor could reward have any other basis than free and unmerited grace, seeing that we are coworkers with God. If this were not the law of nature and providence, it could not be a law of grace, nor could the figure of seed and sower have any logical force. But, at the same time, the workman under the gospel has a special relation to God, and, in a sense peculiar to the gospel, is a "coworker." This is one of St. Paul's favourite ideas (see 2 Corinthians 6:1). It is not working, but co-working, that evidences the spirituality of the work and gains the recompense. Among the sources of deception, not one is so insidious as our work. The old man, long a servant of God, looks back upon his labours; his eye is tranquil now; it has grown to be a very honest eye; and nothing in the past surprises him so much as the mixture of self with work that he once thought was unselfish. Early manhood and middle life, if not absolutely incompetent to form a perfect idea of disinterestedness, are yet very prone to fall into a mistake on this subject. No doubt St. John imagined that he was doing Christ's work when he forbade the man casting out devils in Christ's Name; and, likely enough, St. Peter put a special value on his courage in the garden, when he drew his sword for the Lord's defence. If our tastes and self will can be gratified, we are often ready to be enthusiastic workers for what we suppose is the cause of Christ. But God's rule is unyielding. You must labour according to his will, or the work will be rejected. And just here, his thought in transition to another aspect of the great topic, St. Paul brings into view the co-relationship of ministers and people, God being all in all. "We" and "ye"—"we" are co-labourers with God, and "ye" are not our husbandry and building, but God's. What claims he for himself? He is a builder, a master builder, a wise one too; and he is free to assert it, because it is the utterance of humility, and humility is under obligation to speak the exact truth about itself, under valuation being wrong, as well as over valuation. The preface attests the spiritual purity of the avowal: "According to the grace of God which is given unto me," while the elaboration of the figure, taken from architecture, indicates more of the Grecian mode of illustration than the Jewish.—L.
1 Corinthians 3:11-15
Workmen and their works.
St. Paul affirms that he had laid just such a foundation in Corinth as became a wise master builder. Like a good architect, he had made sure of a solid basis, but had the edifice in process of erection been true to the cornerstone? There was but one Foundation—Jesus Christ—and a man might build rightly or wrongly on it in the materials used. The range of substances which might be employed in the superstructure was large. Large it must needs be, for, it' the builders are many, the material must be manifold. Individuality in workmen must be respected, and, though the risks are numerous and great, yet Christianity can only adhere to its fundamental principle of each man as a man in himself. Brutus sacrificed his instincts to what he deemed patriotism in the murder of Caesar; Rome taught her best men to have no conscience except what she dictated; but Christianity laid a stress on personality in the human will in order to secure the full activity of individual responsibility. Providence ordains our home and life in a very ample world. The amplitude is seen, not in its size nor in the mere variety of its objects, but in the endless adaptability to human tastes and dispositions. Despite the curse, this earth is a grand historic memorial of the original idea of humanity, and a prophecy likewise of a glory be recovered. "The field is the world;" and this is true of every man in it, so true indeed that our connections with the great world are far more vital and operative on our destiny than we imagine. This, furthermore, is our discipline. We have a world from which to choose our resources, means, and opportunities, and hence the wonder of experience is the multitudinous additions ever making to the world we inhabit as our own world. Now, to each Christian, "the field is the world;" and therein he finds a vast miscellany—"gold, silver, precious stones," and they are side by side with "wood, hay, stubble." Redeemed man is treated by Providence and the Holy Ghost, not on the bare idea of what he is in an earthly condition, but also and mainly on the ideal of his capacity in Christ. And consequently, when St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:21), "All things are yours," he has only formally wrought out the truth involved in the workman's command of his diversified materials. Just because the worker is in such a vast and heterogeneous world, he must "take heed." Nothing short of spiritual discernment can protect him against woeful blunders. A hard worker he may be, a sincere and enthusiastic worker, but he must have Divine insight, and show himself" a workman that needeth not to be ashamed," and the work must be true and acceptable work, or his labour will inevitably perish. St. James is often referred to as the supporter and defender of the doctrine of work. From his point of view Christianity was the final outgrowth of Judaism, its culmination and crown, and, quite in accord with his instincts, he presents the work side of religion with a very vigorous emphasis. St. Paul, however, confines himself in the text to the kind of work, and puts forth his strength on a single line of thought. What is uppermost in his mind is the absolute need of spiritual insight. The practical man is in the eye of St. James, and he writes of "religion pure and undefiled" as its spectator and analyst among the actualities of the world. Caesar, in the 'Commentaries,' is not more terse and compact, nor does he observe more rigidly the requirements of intensiveness as a mental law than St. James in his great monograph. Be it noticed, however, that St. Paul is viewing this matter as a branch or offshoot of a topic engrossing at the time his sympathies, and, consequently, he limits himself to the difference between work which shall be found worthy of reward and work undeserving of recompense. Two cases are before him—in the one the man is saved and his work rewarded; in the other, the man is saved and his work disallowed and destroyed. The latter suffers loss, but not the loss of his soul, and, though the ordeal be severe, the man is "saved, yet so as by fire." Now, this view of work, truthful in itself, was specially suited to these noisy, impulsive, erratic Corinthians. And may we not reasonably conjecture that he had the products of partisanship in his eye while writing of the fiery test? Looking at the world's history, we can scarcely fail to see that the fruits of factions are the most perishable things in civilization, and, in Church history, the fact is still more obvious. But the apostle has something further to say.—L.
1 Corinthians 3:16-23
Believers as the temple of God.
Previously St. Paul had said, "Ye are God's building;" and now he adds, "Ye are the temple of God." Along with this comes the idea of sanctity: "The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." If, then, these Corinthians were the temple of God, and if the Spirit of God dwelt in them, no stronger motive could bear upon them than the need of holiness; and this holiness is a personal matter. "If any man"—whoever he be and whatever his gifts—"if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." The man's duties to the Church are duties to the Spirit of God in the Church; and the purity of principle and affection, purity of motive and aim, purity of life, which he is bound to maintain,—in brief, his spiritual character, grows out of his relation to the Holy Ghost. "Know ye not" this fact—that the Church is much more than a society for mutual helpfulness, much more than a human institution, and most truly human when most Divine? To violate this relation in such a way as to "defile the temple of God" is to incur a fearful punishment: "Him shall God destroy." Hitherto in the argument no such language had been used. Did the thought of the gross sin—the son taking the father's wife—cross his mind at the instant, and leave its darkness in his memory? Whether so or not, St. Paul knew of moral corruption in the Church as well as religious defection, and he reminded the Corinthians of their peril. Observe the change; a man's work, if rejected, shall be burned, but he shall be "saved, yet so as by fire." Amid the danger, God will rescue him. But if a "man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." And now the exhortations: "Let no man deceive himself." And wherein lies the danger of deception? It is in the "wisdom of this world." Intellect exposes us to dangers because it is the great organ of receptivity, by means of which the outer world finds unceasing access to our souls. Through the open avenues of the senses, myriad influences gain an entrance within and distribute themselves over every portion of our nature. Very many of them are unchallenged. Few men criticize their senses and hold them accountable for truth and fidelity in their momentous functions. What habits come from this facile power of sensuousness over the mind, we all understand, alas! too well. The natural man (animal man) has the world of sensation on his side. Instead of the body growing more and more into harmony with spirit and participating in its elevation, the opposite more commonly occurs, so that men become in large measure the creatures of the senses. St. Paul had a very clear insight into this fact. No man makes so many references, direct and indirect, to the physiological connections of sin. As a writer of Scripture, the terrible truth of the "fleshly mind" is often before him, and from him we learn the supreme necessity of keeping the body under, lest we become castaways. "Castaways" are far more numerous than we take knowledge of. Short of downright materialism and its counterpart in sensual degeneration, we have innumerable evidences of the wreck of the spiritual nature. These nerves of ours—delicate threads that interlace the whole body and are frequently too fine for the eye—what a machinery for the hand of Satan, skilled by the practice of centuries, to play upon! We err when we confine our view of materialism to its professed advocates. We err also when we measure the sensualism of the age by its grosser forms. Far greater, far more harmful, and far more widespread, are the deleterious effects, often unrecognized, that work havoc among our spiritual sensibilities. It is this deadening of the intellect by the sensuousness that keeps itself aloof from overt sensualism which St. Paul so earnestly assails as "the wisdom of this world." Not seldom it beasts of morality, cultivates beauty, patronizes aesthetics, and abounds in animalized poetry and eloquence and science. Meantime it lends all its aid, acting through an army of auxiliaries, to encourage men in a bloated sense of self sufficiency, until there is no felt need of God and still less of Christ. Most of all, this state of mind is inimical to the agency of the Holy Ghost upon the human heart, and consequently we find in our times a much more wilful and violent rejection of the Holy Ghost and a contempt for his gracious offices than hostility to the Father and the Son. Against this most evil and fatal habit St. Paul lifts a vehement remonstrance. And he was the only man of his day competent to this task. No rude Galilean was he; no obscure and unlettered person; but a cultured soul, whose endowments had been signalized before he went forth to convert an empire to Christ. "Become a fool"—a fool in the world's estimation—"that ye may be wise." It is "craftiness," argues the man who had experimentally known it all, and, furthermore, it ensnares itself in its own net. And hence glory not in man; there is no wisdom in it, no plea and no excuse for it, since "all things are yours." Party spirit shuts us up in narrow limits; Christianity gives the freedom of the world. Party spirit makes us the disciples of men; Christianity declares that we do not belong to Paul, Apollos, Peter, but that they belong to us, and all Divine in them ministers to the Divine in ourselves, so that our life superabounds by means of theirs. Nor is this all. The vast inventory embraces things as well as men: "The world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours." No room for pride here, since it is a common possession; no opportunity to thank God like the Pharisee that we are not as others are, for God's grace humbles the natural man, that it may endow and then exalt the Christian. If we undertake to be Christians of a particular sort, it is certain that we shall be cast in a very dwarfing mould, and get our colouring from a very earthly pigment. To be a true Christian is not to adopt the Name of Christ as the watchword of a sect or party, but to accept and venerate it as the watchword of humanity redeemed in the Son of man. Any other use of Christ's Name is essentially schismatic. All things are ours only so far as we are Christ's. And it is the Christ of God, the Son of God, the anointed Messiah, who was filled with the unction of the Spirit, and who said, "I do nothing of myself,"—it is this Christ who is ours. Seen in hint, life redeems itself from everything low, groveling, and merely sensuous; and even the human body, whose wants and demands are the unmanageable factor in all civilization, and whose warfare against the Spirit is the most fearful hazard in moral probation, becomes, through Christ, the temple of the Holy Ghost. Spiritualize in this sense the human body; sanctify its large and. beautiful capacity for a true sensuousness; organize its habits until it becomes almost the automaton of the Spirit, and self denial, prayer, and praise, by virtue of the automatic and semi automatic laws of the physical system, are well nigh incorporated in the nervous functions. Ask art, science, philosophy, to attempt such a task, and would they set themselves to it? Political economy, physiology, hygiene, sanitary: science, concern themselves much with the human body, and are entitled to honour for their interest in its welfare—welfare only, however, stopping very far short of genuine well being. Let no word of ours be understood as depreciating these invaluable services. But, nevertheless, their field lies in a department of life comparatively humble—life as existence, as organic and vegetative, life as intellectual and moral, not in life as spiritual. Now, at this very point, the incomparable glory of Christianity demonstrates itself by a profound interest in the human body as a religious question, and, first and last, its words are, "temple of God." No wonder that St. Paul rises to the height of exultation. The eagle wing smites the upper air in its buoyant strength, and the eagle eye, catching a radiance unknown in the thick atmosphere of earth, commands the scope of a vast horizon. One of his grand powers was this instinct—shall we call it?—of exultation, always held in check till the Divine fulness of Christ and the sublimity of humanity in Christ kindled it into rapture. Nor is he ever more like himself nor ever nearer to us than in these moments—"such high hour of visitation from the living God."—L.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
1 Corinthians 3:6-8
Spiritual husbandry and growth.
A man, looking upon the world, sees according to his power of vision; i.e. not simply according to what he finds in it, but to what he brings to it. To the eye of the Apostle Paul, the world was a wilderness which might be made a garden. There was, he saw, rude, worthless growth to be extirpated, rich soil to be tilled, plants of worth and renown to replace the weeds. His prophetic eye beheld the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. And to his mind Christians were plants, and Christian ministers were gardeners and husbandmen.
I. SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION NEEDS HUMAN INDUSTRY. There is need, in order to the progress and perfection of the work of God, of:
1. Intelligent and willing labourers. Men are employed by Divine wisdom to labour among their fellow men. Saved, renewed, and consecrated labourers have ever been blessed in the work of securing a spiritual harvest. The olive yard, and the vineyard cannot flourish and prosper without unstinted toil, vigilance, skill, and care; so is it with the garden of the Lord.
2. Divinely commissioned labourers. They work best for Jesus who have heard his voice saying, "Go, work today in my vineyard;" whom the authoritative Lord has addressed in his own commanding language, "Unto men I now send thee."
II. SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION DEMANDS A VARIETY OF CHARACTER AND ABILITY IN THE TOILERS.
1. One class of labourers are especially adapted to the work of planting. There are Christian missionaries and evangelists who have the gift of awakening attention, arousing concern, eliciting inquiry, calling forth repentance, founding Churches even among the ignorant and degraded heathen.
2. Another class possess the grace of watering the plants already placed in the spiritual soil. These, as pastors and bishops, impart instruction, administer consolation, exercise guidance and control. Catechists and teachers carry on the work which missionaries have begun.
3. All classes co operate towards the one great end in view. All true labourers are one in motive and in aim, in spirit, in mutual confidence and love. None may say to the other, "I have no need of thee." Each has his service, and none is more indispensable than another.
4. All are individually noticed, appreciated, and rewarded. "Then shall every one have praise of God;" "I will give unto every one of you according to your works;" "My reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be."
III. SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION DEPENDS FOR ITS EFFICIENCY AND SUCCESS ENTIRELY UPON THE BLESSING OF THE LORD.
1. From God comes the vitality of the spiritual plant; his is the gospel and his the Spirit, by whose co-operation the result is brought about.
2. From God comes the preparation of the labourer; whose intellectual gifts, whose emotional sympathy, and whose spiritual power are all alike of heavenly origin.
3. From God comes the living energy to which is owing the progress and increase of that which man plants and waters. Thus the excellency of the power is seen to be of God, and not of us.—T.
1 Corinthians 3:9
"God's fellow workers."
God is ever working. Let this thought shame those foolish, worthless persons who deem it derogatory to labour. Not only when he fashioned this world and made it fit for our dwelling place, not only when he created man, but always and everywhere is God working. The laws of nature are the operations of the Almighty, and he is working as well in the spiritual sphere as in the physical.
I. TRUE CHRISTIANS ARE SPIRITUAL LABOURERS. Christian evangelism and pastors, teachers and bishops, are all working in prominent positions in the harvest field of spiritual toil. Bat spiritual labour is the natural outcome of the spiritual life. Every sincere follower of Christ is seeking an end outside of himself—the promotion of the kingdom of righteousness and the glory of the Divine Master. Our hearts may rest in the Lord, but our hands work for him.
II. CHRISTIANS ARE FELLOW LABOURERS ONE WITH ANOTHER.
1. There is difference in natural powers, in spiritual gifts, in ecclesiastical position, in length of service.
2. But there is unity in aim, in hope, in the relation all sustain to him by whose authority and for whose glory they toil.
3. And there is sympathy, mutual good will, and helpfulness. If there is defect here, it is a discredit to the common profession, a hindrance to the general usefulness, a grief to the one Lord.
III. CHRISTIANS ARE FELLOW LABOURERS WITH GOD AS THEIR MASTER.
1. All are alike called by him who scuds forth labourers into his harvest. He is independent of us, and it is to his grace we owe it that we are permitted to labour for him.
2. All are alike directed to labour for the one great end—the universal and immortal reign of truth and righteousness, holiness and love.
3. All are alike instructed by him as to the special means by which the one end is to be secured. He gives to every one the appropriate implement for his toil, the weapon adapted to his warfare.
4. All alike receive the needed strength and guidance from him, the spiritual impulse and power which gives efficacy to their service.
5. All rejoice that, whether they plant or water, the same Lord "gives the increase."
IV. CHRISTIANS ARE LABOURERS WITH GOD AS THEIR FELLOW WORKER. This interpretation, whether justifiable or not grammatically, does not seem liable to a charge of irreverence.
1. In Christ Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme Exemplar of spiritual labour. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Jesus calls us to do what he himself is doing. What power there is in his appeal, "Work, not only for me, but with me!"
2. The agency of the Divine Spirit is never withheld. The husbandman can only work effectually when God works with him by the agencies of nature; the mechanist, only when physical forces can be employed under his control, the physician, only when his treatment is in harmony with physiological laws. So the Christian labourer is successful, not through independence, but just because he avails himself of the co-operation of the Lord and Giver of life; because, in all devotion and diligence and humility, he endeavours to live and to toil as a fellow worker with God!—T.
1 Corinthians 3:11
The one Foundation.
There was a tendency on the part of the Corinthians to exalt their favourite teachers and leaders. Such exaltation could not but be at the expense of the Lord Jesus himself. In dissuasion from such a course of Church thought and practice, the inspired Apostle Paul puts in a just and clear light the relative positions of the teachers, the taught, and the great theme of all Christian instruction. He makes use of a familiar figure of speech, based upon the common craft of masonry. Christ is the Foundation; the people of Christ are the stones of the structure reared thereon; and the apostles and other teachers are builders of the spiritual edifice. It is of the Foundation that the text especially treats.
I. JESUS CHRIST IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE SPIRITUAL TEMPLE.
1. The temple is composed of human souls, fashioned into a Divine unity and endowed with a Divine life.
2. The temple is inhabited and inspired by the Holy Ghost consecrating and honouring it.
3. This temple has actually and historically been called into existence by the ministry and mediation of Jesus Christ, who has thus constituted himself its Foundation. As Son of God and Son of man, as the accepted Mediator, as the authoritative Teacher and rightful Lord, he is the Author and the Basis of the true Church.
II. THE PERFECT SUFFICIENCY OF THIS FOUNDATION.
1. Christ is a Foundation deep and strong enough to support the fabric reared upon him. No fear need be entertained as to the permanence of Christ's Church. It may be assailed by the storms of persecution, it may be threatened by the decaying force of time; but "the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." It rests on Christ, and the Foundation standeth sure.
2. Christ is a Foundation broad and comprehensive enough to underlie the widest, stateliest structure. None who is conversant with the character, the designs, the promises of Jesus Christ, can question this. In our day, all systems that are narrow are doomed to contempt and destruction. This fate Christianity need not fear; it has only to be true to the Divine Head and Lord, and nought can overturn it or even injure it.
III. THE EXCLUSIVENESS OF THIS FOUNDATION. Upon this the text lays an especial stress.
1. No other is permitted by God. It would be dishonouring to the Father to suppose that his Son can be replaced or supplemented by any other; the sufficiency of the Divine provision does not admit of question.
2. No other is needed by man.
3. No other is possible. Any other than the Divine Foundation must be of man's appointment, must be indeed merely human. The apostle teaches that he and Apollos were only builders upon the Foundation, and could not therefore be the Foundation itself.
IV. THE RELATIONS MEN SUSTAIN TO THIS FOUNDATION.
1. All Christians are represented as living stones built upon Christ. Each has his own place and his own use; but all are alike in this fact—they support themselves upon the strong foundation laid in Jesus.
2. All Christian pastors and teachers are building upon Christ. The question for them to ask is this: Are we building into the walls of the temple such material as will endure the test of trial and the test of time?—T.
1 Corinthians 3:13
The test of fire.
"Fire is a good servant, but a bad master." The element is symbolical of proof and testing; for where it has its liberty and may do its work unchecked, there is little that can withstand its assaults and outlast its ravages. How many a city, like this Corinth itself, has been burnt, and laid for the most part in ashes, so that only the most substantial buildings have survived the conflagration! So shall all spiritual work, sooner or later, be tested and put to the proof. The means may seem severe, but the result shall be decisive.
I. THE WORK.