Lectionary Calendar
Friday, July 18th, 2025
the Week of Proper 10 / Ordinary 15
the Week of Proper 10 / Ordinary 15
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Bible Commentaries
Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary Preacher's Homiletical
Copyright Statement
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Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Bibliographical Information
Exell, Joseph S. "Commentary on 1 Corinthians 3". Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary. https://studylight.org/commentaries/eng/phc/1-corinthians-3.html. Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1892.
Exell, Joseph S. "Commentary on 1 Corinthians 3". Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary. https://studylight.org/
Whole Bible (50)New Testament (18)Gospels Only (1)Individual Books (15)
Verses 1-4
CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:1. And I.âQ.d. âAs any other âspiritualâ teacher would have to do.â So Ellicott; but perhaps laying undue stress upon the âand,â which, if more than merely a half-colloquial redundance, may rather be parallel with 1 Corinthians 2:1; q.d. âAccordingly I,â etc., i.e. in agreement with the broad lines of necessary procedure laid down in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Spiritual.âIn the precise and quasi-technical sense of chap. 2 [or inter alios, Galatians 6:1]. Carnal.âWe should have expected ânaturalâ (= âpsychical, animal-souledâ). But this would have denied to them any participation in the grace and awakening and renewal of the Spirit. They are Christians of a low type, but not so low as that. They are âin Christ,â but only as âbabes.â Note the reading: only appearing in the Received Text in 2 Corinthians 3:3, but now here also and in Romans 7:14; Hebrews 7:16. Some deny any distinction between the old form and the new, except of literary rank. Trench would (§ 72) distinguish as between âfleshlyâ (= the displaced reading) and âfleshyâ or âfleshen,â parallel to âwoodenâ (= the new reading, and in 2 Corinthians 3:3); as if distinguishing between men in whom âthe fleshâ was indeed predominant, but with many gracious checks and restraints, and men in whom the one apparent feature in life was so much the literal âfleshâ that they were ânot anti-spiritual, but un-spiritual, ⦠flesh and little more, when they might have been much more.â Yet he regards the word as conveying a less grave accusation than the ordinary word for âcarnalâ (âfleshlyâ) does. The varying judgments of the authorities show how slight at best is the distinction.
1 Corinthians 3:2.âCf. Hebrews 5:11 to Hebrews 6:4, where note that the doctrine of 1 Corinthians 15:0 is amongst the âelements,â the âmilkâ for babes. Also Paul âpreached the Resurrectionâ to the merely ânaturalâ men of Athens (Acts 17:18). Cf. âNew wine in old bottlesâ; ânew cloth on old garment.â So Christ only spoke plainly to the disciples about His death, when, e.g., Peterâs faith in His Godhead had first risen into a bold confession; and then also the announcement, so perplexing to a Jew, and so distressing to a friend like Peter, was followed up by a view of his Master in His true, native glory (Matthew 16:20-21). Cf. âNeither yet now are ye ableâ with âYe cannot bear them nowâ (John 16:12). Also cf. âearthly thingsâ and âheavenly thingsâ (John 3:12).
1 Corinthians 3:3.âHelps to a definition of âthe fleshâ; as does Galatians 5:19-20, by no means a catalogue of bodily sins alone. See life in the flesh plainly differentiated from life in the material body (Romans 8:9), âYe are not in the flesh.â Note the changes of translation in After the manner of men.âSo in 1 Corinthians 15:32. But the special colouring of the phrase, whether neutral or condemnatory, varies from instance to instance of its use.
1 Corinthians 3:4.âLess complete enumeration than in 1 Corinthians 1:12. Perhaps for the reason explained in 1 Corinthians 4:6. Also he and Apollos were more closely connected than any others with the origin and growth of the Corinthian Church.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.â1 Corinthians 3:1-4
âBabes in Christ.ââ(Read Critical Notes, on âcarnal.â)
I. The Creator has stamped His own unity upon His many-sectioned creation in the many homologies which link together part and part, and, above all, natural things and spiritual things, physical facts and the facts of the world of morals and religion. Just because Christ knew these links of idea and these correspondences most perfectly, He spake parables as never man spake. He saw Nature parabolic as never man saw it. He stood at the central point of Godâs Idea, and saw its radiating lines of expression touching, traversing, connecting, the concentric [and, as the geometer says, âsimilarâ] areas of diverse classes of facts. The physical history of the human body, the natural, morally neutral history of the development of the human mind, is a Parable in Nature, easily, early, always read. [1 John 2:12-14 is a good example of this way of reading. (a) There are the âlittle childrenâ who barely know more, but who do know this, that they âknow their Father,â and that because of forgiven sin there is nothing but love between them. Loving, happy, living childhood, content to be alive and know Him and His favour. (b) There are the âyoung men,â victorious over the Wicked One, with well-knit body, and the firm tread of vigorous early manhood, to which the indwelling Word is bread and life. (c) There are the âfathers,â of whom only one thing is saidââthey know Him that is from the beginning.â The strength, élan, enterprise, of manhood is perhaps gone; in a sense, the life has returned to its starting-pointâas âchildrenâ they âknew Himâ; but now with a deeper insight, with the experience of an intercourse of long yearsâ standing; as an adult, mature man who is a father, for the first time âknowsâ his father.] In St. Paul âbabesâ is never a word of praise. He hurries forward to, and hurries forward his converts to, âperfectionâ; the adult manhood, with its perfection; of harmonious development of every power and faculty and grace; of âknowledge of the worldâ of spiritual things with which for years the man âin Christâ has been conversant; of ripeness of character without any first touch of senile failure or weakness or decay. These are âbabesâ at Corinth.
II. Babes and carnal.â
1. âNaturalâ (chap. 2) would hardly have been too strong for the fact. âEnvying,â âstrife,â âschisms,â and these ruling and raging, are incompatible with the âspiritualâ manâs life. These are âworks of the flesh.â In fact, the discrepancy, as to area and included human contents, between the Ideal Church and its actual, historical, disciplinary expression and embodiment and enumeration, had already begun to appear. The Church, as its Lord reckons its census, may here and there overpass the bounds of the Church, as our humanly designed and most faithfully administered methods mark it off from âthe world.â But much oftener it shrinks far within the boundary-line of our survey, and leaves the Church, of any real, effective, sanctified life, a central area of occupation within a much larger one which is hardly more than in name and claim and ownership still Christâs. These men are still within the bound of the external organisation; the branch most utterly dormant, if not utterly dead, is still in mechanical connection with the Vine, as Paul cultivates and cares for it. He had not cut these off, as he bade them without pity or delay do with incestuous man (1 Corinthians 3:5). Indeed, in the hopefulness of charity, he goes further than logically would be possible, and speaks of these men over whom âsin hasâ such clear âdominionâ (Romans 6:14), as âin Christ,â though âbabes.â [Does he? Has he really given to those who had lapsed from any but the external, mechanical connection with Christ, the elementary lessons which, elementary as they are, belonged really to a stage in advance of them?] But it is at most the tender judgment which without any tampering with, or disloyalty to, the inevitable distinction between ânaturalâ and âspiritual,â is willing for the moment to look no deeper than the outward profession and the still maintained connection with the Church. None but a reckless hand will lightly disturb even the outward connection, if it has at one time meant life, and is not manifestly declared unreal by flagrant sin or long-continued indifference. So long as it continues, there is always the happy possibility that the branch may again fill and thrill and throb with life; it will not lightly be disturbed. The claim of the Church is paramount that it should be kept pure; the claim of the Head of the Church demands that all dead or unworthy membership be cut off; but the claim of the redeemed soul demands that the membership, once admitted, shall be tenderly dealt with, and rated at its most hopeful value. âEnvying, strifes, partisanship,â and the like; yet Paul will concede to them a place âin Christ,â if it be only as âbabes,â and will âspeak to themâ accordingly.
2. How many members never get beyond the stage of âbabes in Christ.ââThere is a beauty about infancy, in nature and in grace. Nothing more charming than the simple, unaffected, direct love of Godâs âlittle childrenâ towards Him and towards each other. Happy manhood, both in nature and grace, which never loses the affectionate, childlike heart; keeping it fresh under, and along with, all the manly gains in knowledge and experience. A beauty about the simple directness of a childâs trust in all that is told to it; it may be deceived and misled, but the faith of a little child is more beautiful and more receptive of grace than the cynical scepticism of the man who always begins by suspecting, and presumes the worst. A beauty about the loving obedience which belongs to at least the ideal of childhood, and is one of the first, most tender fruits of the Spiritâs new birth. What music in Godâs ear, and how delightful to a âperfect manâ in the life of God, the first, unschooled, open, spontaneous, unconventional utterances of their thoughts and experiences, from the lips of Godâs little children! But this beauty is no beauty when it becomes permanent. Fifteen, or fifty, with the face and mind and powers of five years of age, would be a calamity to the grown child, an agony to parents, a subject of mockery or of pity to outsiders. She sees of the travail of her soul and is satisfied,âthat mother into whose arms is laid the helpless babe, that does not yet know her, or know itself, but simply lives, and is perfectly formed and healthy. To Him who died that His people âmight have life,â that He might Himself âsee His seed,â life is better than death; life is full of all possibilities; death has no possibilities, no future, but corruption. It is some measure of reward for His âpangs,â some measure of âsatisfaction,â when His people begin to live, even as âbabes inâ Him. In a human home, in Christian lands at any rate, the child that grows weakling, puny, sickly, deformed, often calls out a love that seems intensified by the very need of love in the dependent creature; the tenderer the child, the tenderer the love. But the âsatisfactionâ is in the children who grow hearty and strong, who develop girlish beauty and youthful strength, until at last womanhood and manhood fill the parentsâ heart with satisfying joy. What a disappointment to Paul [may the same human word be attributed to Christ also?] that after these years, since he first went to Corinth, these members of the Church there, âenriched inâ everything for the sustenance and training of the new-born life (1 Corinthians 1:5-7), were still, at the most favourable estimate, only âbabes in Christâ! There was no beauty or satisfaction or honour in such a standstill life. There are such in every Church. Always learning to stand, to walk, to do; never accomplishing much at either; indeed, spiritually always learning to live. To them the Church is hardly yet a school; certainly not a workshop; more truly a nursery. Every pastor has many such, who must not only be âlooked afterâ incessantly, lest, like naughty or heedless children, they stray away into the world, but who must be nursed lest the feeble flicker of life be extinguished in death. How large a part of the work of the Churches, how large a part of the care of the ministry, must be absorbed in the working of keeping up to the level of even âbabes in Christ,â some who have been in outward membership for years! [The coincidence of our paragraph with Hebrews 5:11-14 is noteworthy.]
3. Paul refers to their food: âMilk, not meat.ââNo humble child of Godâs family but acknowledges how often, in some of the lessons of Godâs school, he has never seemed to get beyond the A B C of teaching. The same discipline year after year, the same trials, because the one lesson has never been perfectly learned yet. To promote His scholar into the work of the next higher âform,â whilst yet the lessons of the lower have never been mastered, would only be to ensure bad work, to attempt to ârush upâ a building upon a badly laid foundation. The Jerusalem scoffers in Isaiahâs day cried half in scorn, half in anger, âWhom shall he [the prophet] teach knowledge?⦠weaned babes? Does he take us for such, with his precept upon precept, ⦠here a little, there a little?â (Isaiah 28:9-13). The words are read by some, and are as true, if they be seriously spoken, perhaps by the prophet himself. What they said in scorn was a simple, sad necessity. They were fit only for such lessons. There are truths which alone the children can take in. There are truths which are of âthe secret of the Lord,â only revealable to the grown men. There must not be on the part of the human teachersâfrom any mistaken policy, or from any fear of being misunderstood by their youngest pupilâany such keeping back of truth as makes what is taught all but falsehood. Economy, reserve, are not for man, for ecclesiastics, to practise. If the Spirit of God has only gradually (Hebrews 1:1) brought out the full round of truth, it has been from no desire to conceal anything; the disclosure has been conditioned by the receptiveness of the scholars, and by that only. To Nicodemus the Master Himself distinguished between âearthly thingsâ and âheavenly thingsâ (John 3:12), as being of different grades of comprehensibleness. Human teaching will adapt; it will not for the teacherâs sake reserve anything which is needful and can be communicated. The human difficulty is to teach elementary truth without so far distorting it that before anything more can be added, something must be unlearned; we must often pull down a little before we can âgraftâ the new work upon the old. The model should be the teaching of the Revealing Spirit; all absolutely true, so far as it goes; no need for unlearning in order to new learning; from milk to meat in His teaching is one orderly, harmonious progress and growth of truth. But how long He has to say, âYe were not able to bear it; neither yet now,â etc.
4. Note the special token of carnality, of infancy.âThey are children with their favourites, over whom they boast and wrangle and quarrel. No sign of âmanhood in Christ,â to be so devoted to one man, or one type of minister, as to appreciate and be helped by no other.
Verses 5-9
CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:5.âBetter reading âwhat?â not âwho?â Also âthrough.â Not, âAs the Lord gave to every man of you the type of teacher he neededâ; but, âAs the Lord allotted to each teacherâ the divided labour. Stanley suggests that Paul takes up, and with his own meaning adopts, their depreciatory distinction: âYes, you did but plant. It was Apollos who watered, and so brought your work to anything like what could be called a successful issue!â Note here, as in 2 Corinthians 6:4, they are working under Godâs orders, at Godâs work. [In Mark 16:20, âthe Lord (Christ) works with them.â] [Cf. the inscription on the University: âLouvain planted, Mechlin watered, Cæsar gave the increase.â]
1 Corinthians 3:8. One.âOur status, quâ the work, the increase, the Great Employer, is precisely the same. No parallel to John 10:30.
1 Corinthians 3:9.âNotice the Q.d. âAll of us together belong to God, the field, the building, the company of workers in the field, or on the building. The fellowship only between man and man, God being above them all.â But A.V. is supported by Romans 16:3; Romans 16:9; Romans 16:21; 2 Corinthians 1:24; 2 Corinthians 8:23, also 1 Corinthians 6:1 (but note the reading). âHusbandryâ speaks of growth from within; âbuildingâ of growth by additions from without.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.â1 Corinthians 3:5-9
Paul; Apollos; God.ââCo-workers,â Paul ventures to say (2 Corinthians 6:1). Not only are Paul who plants and Apollos who waters âoneâ (1 Corinthians 3:8), but these âthree agree in oneâ purpose and result.
I. Three ways of readingâthree heart-inflections of tone in readingâthis verse.â
1. âA Paul may plant, an Apollos may water; but God alone can give the increase!â The despondent, despairing tone of the physical and mental reaction of an earnest worker, after a day of effort and âfailureâ; said as if God gave charily and grudgingly the increase, and the chances were to be taken as against His giving. Or said by a worker who goes out mechanically, without much heart in his work, to discount apologetically beforehand the failure which he expects, and deserves; or his wonderfully wise âexplanationâ of his failure when the day is over: âAh! you see, a Paul may plant,â etc. Very pious, but dishonouring to God.
2. âPaul must, ⦠Apollos must, ⦠God must,â etc. The formal, sometimes useful, summation of the conditions of success. One of the âRulesâ hung up at the gate of the field, to be considered and complied with by every worker. On these conditions only can the work be done, on these only can success be claimed. Usually God will not do the work of Paul or Apollos, will do nothing without them. They must remember that they can effect nothing without His co-operation. Paul? Nothing! Apollos? Nothing! God? All in all! (1 Corinthians 3:7). Yet there is a better reading of the verse still.
3. âPaul planted, Apollos watered, God did give the increase.â The historical rendering and reading. Always, in invariable sequence, the history of any true labour for God. So certainly as the first two terms of the series are found, so certainly does the third follow to complete it. If Paul has done his part, if Apollos has done his part, God may be reckoned upon. God always does give the increase. The historical view is the healthy view, warranted by the history of the universal, working Church.
II. The human workers.âAre human. Macmillan (Bible Teachings in Nature, p. 101) points out that corn never grows spontaneously, is never self-sown, self-diffused; [this not true of Divine Truth, of the Bible, without limitation]; depends, as the seed of âlifeâ does ordinarily, upon being sown by manâs hand. [The Greatest of the workers was human; Who might say to His Church, âI have planted, ye have wateredâ; Who said, âOthers laboured, ye have entered into their labours.] With all human variety. Many and many-fashioned tools are needed to do the work of God. The material is many-fashioned. Each worker is made to be a specialist in some particular kind of material. Every kind of material, every type of mind and heart, is somebodyâs speciality. The worker and the work, the minister and the man he is made to help, are both to be found; if only they find each other, all is well. The Great Director of the work knows where to lay His hand on the Paul, where to find the Apollos, the very man to do the work which wants doing. With all human limitations. Paul need not be distressed because he cannot do the work of Apollos. Nobody need blame Apollos because he cannot pioneer and âplantâ like Paul. No man is made to do everything. Let a man frankly accept the limitation; let him consecrate to the Work and the Worker his ability thus bounded; then let him set himself to be at his own best for Christ. Paul is not to chafe against the fact that he is not an Apollos; still less is an Apollos to be thinking how much better he would have done the work, and how much more faithfully, than Paul, if only he had been set to Paulâs task with Paulâs talent. Depreciating criticism of others, disheartened views of oneself, are equally mischievous and needless. The work has always been done, and was intended to be done, by a division of work amongst workers, each of whom has a limitation of ability. Neither Paul nor Apollos was an âall-roundâ man, a monstrosity of all perfection. [It does not appear here; there was nothing in the facts of the case to suggest it, but ordinarily one must add, With all human infirmities. Ideally perfect work, even in a manâs own special âline,â never gets done. Nor does any most perfect plan ever get worked with ideal intelligence, or even with ideal faithfulness. âThe Best is the enemy of the Good,â says a German proverb. Practical wisdom in the Church will not indeed be supinely indifferent to any chance of improvement of workers or methods, yet it will accept, and make the very most of, the workers who are âto hand,â with all their humanity. No organisation, no reorganisation, will ever eliminate from the conditions under which Godâs work has to be done, the blameless, natural imperfections of the workers, or even their moral imperfections. See the men with whom God in Old Testament and New Testament alike did His work. We see the glorious results of the past; we see the best points of the conspicuous workers who contributed to them. But a nearer view, a more intimate acquaintance, would have shown them very human, most of them average, not only in ability, but in goodness; only a few of first rank in power and sainthood. But the glorious result is due to the great worker, God, who accomplished it by using the tools which were to His hand.]
III. The work.âIs of many forms. âPlanting,â âwatering.â No âreapingâ is mentioned. A good case showing how such illustrative language does not bear insisting on beyond the one point of analogy which it is used to illustrate. Paulâs âplantingâ of a Church was a very real âreapingâ of individual souls. The illustration here used is valid thus farâthat many labourers, and many successive âlayersâ of faithful toil, contribute to the great Result. One man can in the deepest sense rarely claim to be the instrument (say) of a conversion. Ordinarily he has had the native ability, sanctified, to bring to a âheadâ what has been working in a soul pervasively, as the result of many a preceding labourerâs toil and prayers. How âplantingâ and âwateringâ are both needed to lead to full, ripe growth, is well seen in the case of the Master Himself. Any day of His three yearsâ ministry might be summarised in the sentence: âA Sower went forth (that morning) to sow.â He might have said, âI only planted.â The very parables of Matthew 13:0 illustrate His words. How few moments it occupies to read the Sower; how much time has been spent in expounding it. In how few words contained; how many myriads of words, how many acres of paper, spent in its enforcement. Rightly so. That morning He had gone out to sow; He was sowing from the boat that day seed truths, packed in small compass, but with living germs in them, which might be, and were meant to be, developed in many-branching expositions and applications of truth. His three yearsâ work was a seminal one, almost entirely; acts, works, Himself, in historical record,âthe seed of a Gospel. But the Spirit of Pentecost âwatered,â and, with a leap, that seed started into life and immediate blossom and fruitful harvest. âThese things understood not His disciples at the first, but,â etc., (John 12:16). Perhaps not too much to say that without the watering of the Spirit the words of Christ must still remain seeds only, undeveloped potentialities, to some who read and even expound them. [Peter at Pentecost has got hold of all essential Christian truth, yet there is a development in some small degree to be traced in the clearness with which he and others apprehended Divine truth, particularly in regard to the Personality of their Master.] The work is to bring men to âbelieve.â It aims at making and building up âbelievers.â This certainly is a seminal, germinant work. When a sinner is brought to saving faith in Christ, a work is begun, and only begun, which may fruitfully fill eternity. How happy the selection and the succession of Pastors and Ministers with which the Great Head of His Church has often provided both its Churches and individual souls! How constantly the very man who can âwaterâ is sent to follow up the man who can âplantâ! How one manâs appeal follows up another manâs sermon! Would it not be oftener so, if in simple faith the choice and order were left to Him?
III. The increase and success.ââAs the Lord gave to every man.â âSuccessâ is as complex a thing as the labour which leads up to it; as many-sided as the work and the men. Again (as in 1 Corinthians 1:1), let it be said that there is always a real and true âsuccessâ and âincreaseâ so surely as there has been the prayerful, faithful âplantingâ and âwatering.â [N.B.âIn the Sower (Matthew 13:0), if there are three causes of failure, there are also three degrees of success (in one case exceedingly abundant), as certainly as âa sower goes forth to sow.â] It may be a âsuccessâ whose full measure only begins to be seen at a second or third remove from the man whose work it really crowns. He is, e.g., a minister who only knows of the salvation of one man or one boy; but that boy becomes the evangelist who gathers in his sheaves by the hundred wherever he works. From heaven perhaps the original labourer sees for the first time his true success. Paulâs âsuccessâ and âincreaseâ were not least when his words saved Luther, and when Lutherâs comment on Paul saved John Wesley. [Eadie (Paul the Preacher, pp. 94, 95) gives a good case of germinant âincrease.â There lived in last century in England an obscure woman with an only son. When he was but seven years old she died. But her image and her prayers haunted him by land and sea, in the ports of Britain, on the beach of Africa, when shipping manacled negroes, or carousing on shore with a seamanâs zest. His heart was touched; he became a minister renowned for his impressive conversation and correspondence. His words reached Claudius Buchanan, and sent him to India. The recital of his labours so attracted Judson that it drew him to Burmah. The same gift to a motherâs prayers threw light on the soul of Scott, the commentator. It also strengthened Cowper, and gave birth to the Olney Hymns. Wilberforce was greatly indebted to the same source, and his Practical View brought the truth home to the mind of Legh Richmond. Thus John Newtonâs motherâs prayers gave birth to his preaching and correspondence, to two missionaries, a commentary, a Christian statesman, and a pastor. Yet her grave and her name are unknown.]
IV. The reward of the workers.âOver-subtle exegesis to say, âAccording to his labour, not according to his success.â Formally true, as a matter of lexical interpretation of âlabourâ; but too narrow for the thought of Paul, and for the fact. The Saviour has summarised the Divine Method of reward in the twin parables of the Pounds and the Talents [Luke 19:0; Matthew 25:0. As alike as twins, and as different. As alike as two faces, or twenty; built up on the same general plan, made up of the same basal facts (N.B. in the Pounds, however, two sets of facts are interwoven; there are subject-citizens who become rebels, as well as subject-servants); yet perfectly distinct and individual, in their occasion, in their construction, and in their teaching; each exactly congruous to its occasion and its audience; each, in even small details, internally harmonious and self-consistent.] In their contrast they exhibit complementary truths. Servants of Christ, with equal endowments [each of the ten a pound], may be in very diverse degree âsuccessful.â One may be tenfold more diligent or devoted than another; with opportunities fairly equal the issues of their lifeâs âlabourâ may vary in the widest degrees. Some barely bring âone poundâ of increase from their pound. Some of the same âpoundâ make ten. And the reward is proportionate. âHeavenâ is no indiscriminate prize to every servant of God. There are many heavens in Heaven; as many heavens as men. Happy the man of a âten citiesâ heaven. But on the other hand servants of God with widely different endowments may be equally faithful. It means as much for some to bring one âtalentâ for one, as for another to bring two talents where two were given. The man who adds five to five is no more âgood and faithful a servantâ than the man who should add one to one. The same words of praise, the same âjoy of the Lord,â await the âlabourâ of those whose fidelity in labour has been equal. Success and results are not overlooked. Only God can appraise them truly. His servants may carve out for themselves the measure of their reward, whilst it is all of grace that there is a reward at all. But He does not overlook faithfulness. A Paulâs âlabourâ and the spirit of it; the âlabourâ of an Apollos and the fruit of it,âall is noted, and noted for exactly just âreward.â
V. The Great Worker is God.ââMinisters by whom,â instrumentally, God brings men to faith. They are only efficient when in His hands. The strength, the wisdom, for labour come from Him. The wisest âlabourerâ works where, and for so long as, He appoints him in the field, the vineyard. âGod is all, in allâ the work and âin allâ the workers. That it is âGodâs husbandry,â not Paulâs; that the real Worker, the real Author, of the âincreaseâ is God, needs to be remembered by the human âco-workersâ on two occasions:
(1) when they seem to have âsucceededâ;
(2) and, more urgently, when they seem to have âfailed.â
Verses 10-15
CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:10.âWas given ⦠I laid, q.d. âwhen I was at Corinth.â âA foundation,â âwhich I subjectively laid in my teaching at Corinth, because God had already laid the same objectively in heavenâ (Evans). âLaid objectively for the whole Church in the Great Facts [by God], ⦠laid subjectively in the hearts of the Christians at Corinth as the firm ground of their personal hopes by Paulâ (Beet).
1 Corinthians 3:11-15.âSee Homiletic Analysis; also Appended Note. No valid analogy to warrant the application of this to the doctrine of Purgatory. This rests upon (a) the distinction drawn between venial and mortal sins with temporal and eternal penalties attached, and (b) the doctrine of merit. The temporal penalty of sins not âpaid offâ at the date of death must be âpaid upâ in Purgatory fire. The accumulated stock of merit, of Christ and the saintsâa surplus beyond their own requirementsâmay be drawn upon by an indulgence, and the amount be applied to reducing the purgatorial term.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.â1 Corinthians 3:10-15
Work tried by Fire.
I. The imagery employed.âAncient cities, and some modern ones (e.g. St. Petersburg), not so sharply divided into rich quarters and poor quarters as often the case with us. Houses of highest and humblest much more closely associated and intermingled. Palace and hovel might literally jostle. Buildings adorned with costly marbles [=âprecious stonesâ], perhaps made priceless by the lavished art of the sculptor, stood surrounded with (sometimes literal âlean-toâ) houses of stucco, of wood, or even of clay, thatched with hay and stubble, the houses of the artisan, the poor, the slave. St. Paul sees the work of a great fire, such as that which under Nero was made the occasion of a great persecution of the Christians, or that which a century before, on the capture of Corinth itself by Memmius, had laid the city in ruin. [Not to be made too precise, but may be conceived of thus:] The fire breaks out (say) at midnight, in some obscure dwelling, and quickly reduces to a heap of ashes the frail tenement of âwood, hay, stubble.â It catches adjoining houses; the winds fan and spread the flames, till a whole quarter of the city is wrapped in a conflagration which seems to Paul a fit emblem of the fires of âThe Dayâ of all days, Godâs Day of testing and doom. In the morning little knots of curious spectators and of sufferers wander about the ruins, discussing the work of the night. The slave is looking for his house of wood, hay, stubble. It stood there where that heap of ashes lies. He stirs them with his foot, and lays bare the stone foundations still unconsumed. The fire could not touch those. And, like many more, the homeless man recounts to any sympathetic listeners how his own life and that of his family are all they could save out of the wreck and loss of all. They were awakened, perhaps, and saved at the very last moment, âsaved through the fire.â Another little group gathers round the stronger-built and still-standing stone walls of a better class of house. Stucco, woodwork, ornament have perished; but the man who built it âhas his rewardâ for the money and pains spent over his substantial walls. There is something, more or less, to begin with, in restoring his ruined house. Close by stands a temple or a palace, as if almost contemptuous of its ruined neighbours, as it stands in the isolation of its survival. It has passed through the ordeal almost unscathed. Contents uninjured; cunning works of the goldsmith; spoils of conquered nations,âall untouched by the fire. Its costly marbles and statues within have not felt it. Its strong walls, besmirched with smoke indeed, have defied the flames. That builder, too, has his reward. He built with good material; it stands the fire.
II. Paulâs use of the imagery.â
1. In the course of a somewhat lengthy stay in the city, Paul had founded the Church of Corinth. No man could pretend to dispute or share with him the honour of being the âmaster-builder,â the first to preach Christ in the city. Some little time after his departure, he sent over from Ephesus his friend Apollos to carry on the work. Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, worked in perfect harmony of heart and aim after Paul; but perhaps felt himself more free than Paul had done to use the Alexandrian rhetoric and human learning in setting forth the Gospel. Every Greek was a born âpolitician,â or at least a born party man; the Corinthian Church early showed the effects of this partisan spirit within its membership. Parties sprang up with menâs names for their badges. [Little âschismsâ Paul calls them, dissidences within the body, not yet grown to separations from it.] Whether we have the exact names 1 Corinthians 4:6 perhaps makes a little doubtful, nor is it clear that Paulâs list is exhaustive. Yet the characteristics and tendencies of the parties may be easily gathered.
2. There was an âApollosâ party. They liked such rhetoric as Apollos gave them, and chose to think their intelligence flattered by what of philosophy he may have employed in the shaping of the truth. Their danger was perhaps (e.g. in 1 Corinthians 15:0) to exalt reason at the expense of faith; we may not unreasonably think that in trying to be philosophical Christians they were denying or refining away the facts and doctrines of the Gospel, frittering away their power, or rejecting them as contrary to reason. It might not to be an unwarrantable borrowing of a modern name to call them the ârationalisingâ party at Corinth.
3. There was a âCephasâ party, belonging to that âwingâ of the Christian Church who had been Jews, and whom at this period of Paulâs life we everywhere find dogging his footsteps, denying his Apostolic standing, often defaming his character. These at Corinth glorified Peter,âno, âCephas.â âCall him by his honest Hebrew name!â Old school men, who could not so rapidly or readily unlearn as Paul had done the habits and training and teaching of years; who mistrusted him as âsadly radicalâ; who, though Christians, sought to enforce upon the Gentiles the worn-out ritual of Mosesâ law and the now meaningless circumcision. Old style, conservative men, with a leaning to ceremonialism. The âritualâ party.
4. âNo,â said another party. âWe stand by Paul. He will have none of your Law for Christians. We will have none of it. He is a âlibertyâ man. We are âlibertyâ men too.â Only, where he meant the formal law of Moses, they meant the very principle of law itself. When he taught âliberty,â they interpreted âlicence,â and some lived âlicentiousness.â The Christian Church from the beginning has always had some too âliberalâ in thought and in practice.
5. Yet one party more. They owned no human teacher, indeed. They had climbed to a sublime, serene height far above where their poor, misguided brethren were rallying round, and fighting over, this man or that, Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. Possibly hyper-conservatives, fresh from the Lordâs brother, James, in Jerusalem; at all events, they said, âWe are of Christ!â A beautiful party-cry; very attractive to the unwary and simple-hearted. But when it means âChrist as we understand Himâ it is not quite so beautiful.
6. So, then, to the Church at Corinth had happened on a small scale what has been happening in the Church of Christ ever since. These were all Christians as yet. The differences between them and their heathen or Jewish neighbours were far greater than those which distinguished them from each other. All acknowledged one Divine Head, and had some great doctrines connected with Him as a bond of union. But some of them were building up the Church [and Christian lives] with doctrine and practice which Paul regarded as âwood, hay, stubbleâ; useless at best, and sure to perish in âThe Day,â when Godâs judgment should âtry every manâs work, of what sort it is.â Some there were, he knew, who happily were building after his own heart and judgment, âgold, silver, precious stone.â Great should be their reward! Some also there were whose work gave him only mingled satisfaction. âEvery man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour,â partly according to how much he has done, but still more according to what kind of work he has done. Of those for whom he feared that they should find the labour of their life wasted, yet he hoped they should at least âsave themselves,â if even like men snatched out of the flames which left them nothing but âtheir foundationâ and âtheir lives.â [The opening words of the paragraph suggest:] âWoe to any builders whose work should really be a disturbing of the very Foundation itself, other than which none may lay a basis for faith, or life, or hope.â
7. These Church parties at Corinth were our modern âChurchesâ and âsectsâ in miniature. The causes at work at Corinth have never ceased to work wherever we have Christian men, until we have a Christianity not even outwardly at one. Yet we need to give Paulâs recognition that they are nearer to each other than to the world outside. Their unity is a more striking and deep thing than their diversities. They are one Church still. The broadest and deepest diversities at Corinth were still within the Church, insomuch as they were only surface cleavages; they did not run down into the foundation. That was one. Men weep because there is not external unity of all the Churches in one communion. As well weep that the sapling, which a thousand years ago was one simple undivided stem, has branched out into the oak with its hundred arms, many of them really big trees themselves. The branching is an inevitable consequence of life. And the tree is one at stock and root. Minds will always differ in cast and capacity. Training is of endless diversity. Race will make a difference. No one man ever sees the whole round of a truth; hardly any one Church or age does; no two ever see the same phase of presentation of it. There will always be men liable to pay too great honour to Reason; always some too ready to insist upon and overvalue Ceremonial. Reasons convincing to one do not appeal to another. An order of service not to the taste of one suits another and helps him. And so on, in endless diversity. What then? Recognise the fact that the diversity is a necessity. It has often become an evil; it need not be, and will not be, when men become broad as Paul, and recognise other patterns of doctrine and life and church order as all fairly to be included in the One Church. 8. It were a good thing for some to be as narrow as Paul about the âOne Foundation.â It is unreal âliberalityâ to attempt to include within the âChristianâ Church both those whose Christ is God-man, the Fatherâs equal and manâs fellow, Messiah of the Jews, Mediator for the Race, and, on the other side, those whose Jesus is at the highest a creature whom His Creator could annihilate, and who was perhaps a mere man, who might or even did make mistakes, a man not superior to Paul, and to whom Christianity owes not more than it does to Paul. Their status and acceptance before God depend on other considerations, but they are not on the Foundation in Paulâs sense. The lesson of the paragraph is not indifference to what a man believes, or what his neighbour believes, or how he works or worships. Each should be honest and earnest in accepting and living and defending that special aspect or portion of The Truth, which he or his Church sees. Experience shows that, as a rule, they do most for the broad work of Christ who work with a fixed creed and with a definite Church attachment. Each should give and claim equal recognition. The paragraph teaches charity, since experience also teaches that perfectly honest church-and creed-builders have built in what others saw clearly was âwood, hay, stubble,â and have rejected what some saw was âprecious stone,â if not âgoldâ or âsilver,â of system and doctrine. Probably no uninspired teacher ever built upon the One Foundation nothing but what would endure the fire.
III. A personal application of the words lies not far from this.â
1. If a man is to be saved in âThe Dayâ of Godâs judgment, Christ must be the foundation of his life. âSavedâ and âperishingâ (2 Corinthians 2:15) mingle together it the closest intercourse of life, with closest similarity of outward course and bearing. Indeed, sometimes the balance of amiability or of strict probity seems to be on the side of the âperishing.â What is there to make Paulâs classification so sharply definite?
2. Dig down to the foundations of the two lives.âIn the man really âbeing savedâ this is the starting-point: Time was when he felt himself a sinner, guilty before God, and his heart full of sin. He cast himself on Godâs mercy in Christ; he was forgiven; ever since, the Spirit has dwelt in him, doing something towards cleansing the heart, and putting there a new motive for all he does and feelsâlove to God who gave him Christ. If not, he is not a Christian. Others are âperishing,â because, go back far as we will, dig down deeply as we may, we cannot find that. There never was the fundamental experience of âsinâ and of âfaith in Christâ as the âspiritual manâ understands them. Reform may only be throwing the arch of a culvert over the sin of the past and the sin of the heart; the man covered up his past and began to build the new life over it. But there, lowest of all, are the past and the sin, not Christ and His atonement. The other foundation and beginning of all life-building is Rock! [Turning over a new leaf is a good thing if it do not mean simply fastening down the old, without having first the record âblotted out.â] The superstructure of Eddystone Lighthouse was good enough when it was removed a few years ago; but the sea was undermining the foundation. A good superstructure upon a good foundation: lesson the first.
3. Then build something upon the foundation.âSee in the suburbs of growing towns unfinished property. Walls of a certain height, but left unfinished; perhaps hardly more than the foundations got in when the money failed. Ground lies waste; weeds grow, rubbish accumulates, till it becomes difficult to see without some search whether there are any foundations at all. Like some lives. The true foundation was made right some years ago, but scarcely anything has been put upon it since. The accumulations of a worldly life have gathered, until an observerâand perhaps the man himselfâhardly knows whether the foundations are still there. Rear a Christian character; build a superstructure of work for Christ. No better evidence that the foundation is there, and is sound, than the growing, fair superstructure. Build something. Some builders never get very far. What they build is goodâstone, if not gold or silver, but it never amounts to much. A dayâs unfaithfulness pulls down a weekâs building. âSinning and repenting.â âEver learning, never coming to the knowledge of the truth.â
4. Build something every day.ââHow did Michael Angelo accomplish so much?â âNulla dies sine linea!â he replied. No day without something which will endure the testing fire: this will be the secret of some very unobtrusive, little-noticed lives which by-and-by are crowned with large reward when the reward is according to the workâin amount as well as quality (cf. supra).
5. Test all employments by this.ââWill they stand âthe fireâ? Do they now help towards an abiding, thorough Christian character? Or are the things I have done to-day mere âwood, hay, stubble,â sure to perish?â
6. Build something to-day; at least, find the foundation to-day.âIf to lay the one and only foundation [so far as we can be said to lay it at all] were the last act of a wasted life, the builder should escape âsaved as by fire.â But it would be a very unworthy use to make of Christ and His salvation. âTo-day.â
Verses 16-20
CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:16.âA temple (R.V.) misses, or denies, the typology binding Old Testament and New Testament together here. A case where, as often (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:20), one of the great leading facts of the Old Covenant is divested of its temporary, local robing and embodiment, and brought forward into the new world of the New Testament, to find a new embodiment in the Church. The old building has gone; the new shrine where God dwells on earth is growing, rising, every day. A local Church, and still more the aggregate Church, is the New Testament form of the old Temple idea. It is the Temple to-day. This a collective Temple; in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 an individual application of the same idea is found. The word here is that which signifies, not the whole structure inclusive of the surrounding courtyard, but only the actual Temple building itself. âInâ is here practically âamongâ; as distinguished from the indwelling in the man, 1 Corinthians 6:19 (see Appended Note from Evans).
1 Corinthians 3:17.âDefile and destroy, same word; combining âimpair,â âmar,â âruin,â âdestroy.â
1 Corinthians 3:18.âCf. 1 Corinthians 15:33 for the thought (not for the word); men seem to persuade themselves that they shall somehow evade the penalty of sin, although others do not escape. Thinks.âAs 1 Corinthians 8:2; not with any hesitation, but with much confidence. Among you.âAnd yet taking his place, and holding his own, as a wise man of the world âin the world.â âCanât be done! Incompatible things altogether!â The connection between inflated self-esteem and a slavish submission to party leaders is exposed in 1 Corinthians 6:6. Surely no implied caution to, or censure on, Apollos!
1 Corinthians 3:19.âNote the small change of translation. Quotation of words of Eliphaz, from Job 5:13. [On the general principle of such a quotation being taken as part of what âis written,â see Homily on xv. 33, § 1.]
1 Corinthians 3:20.âPsalms 94:11. âReasoningsâ (R.V.).
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.â1 Corinthians 3:16-20
The Temple of God.âVery little in this paragraph which is not dealt with elsewhere. For 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 6:18-20; for 1 Corinthians 3:18-20 see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 1:18 sqq. Note, however, that the Temple is here collective, the whole Church; in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 it is individualâindeed, the very body of the Christian man.
I. Note how, from paragraph to paragraph, the illustrations change.âIn 1â4 Paul is the ânursing fatherâ (Isaiah 49:23); the Church is the house where âthe holy seedâ is growing up, or ought to be, into strength and ripeness of godliness. In 1 Corinthians 3:5 figure is dropped, unless âministersâ be a figure. Paul and his friend and successor Apollos are employés of God, enrolled in His service, to bring men to Christ and to faith in Him; John Baptist-like, to bring Bridegroom and Bride together. There has been âa division of labour,â and the thought is made pictorial in 1 Corinthians 3:6. Paul and his fellow-worker are seen toiling each at his task in Godâs field or in Godâs vineyardââlabourers in the vineyard,â each of whom is to receive âwhatsoever is rightâ according to his work. [There is more in the Scripture than was in the Scribe. The mind of the Spirit is often fuller than any thought in the mind of the human writer. Yet the use of the illustration goes so little beyond the division of tasks amongst the qualified workers, and the payment according to results and fidelity, that an expositor may hesitate to fill out these two hints with the typology of the Vine and the Vineyard of God, found, e.g., in Psalms 80:0; Isaiah 5:2; Ezekiel 15:0; Ezekiel 17:0; Matthew 21:28; Matthew 21:33, sqq.; Luke 13:6 (where the two figures for Israel are conjoined); and, with most profound significance, John 15:1, and Matthew 26:20 (adding, perhaps, 1 Corinthians 9:7).] Then again the picture changes; as the âdissolving-view pictureâ fades out when another is superposed upon it, so the busy âlabourersâ at their âhusbandryâ have scarcely been shown to us before the field has faded and a âbuildingâ is rising as we watch. There is no doubt who is the Architect; whose is the great, leading, essential Idea of such a house. It is a busy scene. Not Paul or Apollos only are âworkers together with Godâ this time. Every Corinthian teacher, every Corinthian believer, is a co-worker too. Paul has done his part of the work; âwell and truly laidâ does this Master-mason declare his foundation to be. Yet more truly the âfoundationâ is bed-rock; of Godâs âlaying,â in the prehistoric ages of a wider than earthly history (Revelation 13:8; 1 Peter 1:20).
âThe Churchâs one Foundation
Is Jesus Christ the Lord.â
What Paul or Cephas may lay is rather the lowest courses of the masonry, which, in their turn, rest upon this âRock of Agesâ (Isaiah 26:4, margin). It is mercy and blessing to man that he is permitted, privileged, to be a worker âtogether with Godâ; but we touch the fringe of The Great Problem in all human thinkingâthe problem of Evilâwhen we see how this has entailed the invariable consequence that the design of the Great Architect never gets fairly carried out. Nor is it only that the workers blunder or are innocently incompetent; the deviation from the design of the Great Builder has a moral character. The material is bad; the building is careless; the work will be fit for nothing but the fireâvery much of it. In our paragraph the building is specialised in its character. What we saw as a great house rising is now the Temple of God. And then the figure drops once more. Upon the screen are portraits; Corinthians strutting themselves in their fancied âwisdomâ; He who knoweth men pronouncing His verdict: âFools! You are only setting a trap for your own feet!â And the chapter leads up to the last solemn sentences in which is recited Godâs âgrantâ of all men, all things, to His Church, to the individual Christian. A party said at Corinth, âWe are of Christ.â The truth is far wider than that. They all âare Christâsâ; He is not âdividedâ (1 Corinthians 1:13); He belongs to no one party; all the parties belong to Him; as yet, all the âschismsâ at Corinth have not cut off any of them from Him. The seemingly so humble âWe are of Christâ too easily passes over into the miserably exclusive âWe are of Christ.â âYe are all Christâs; all that is His is yours; all things are yours.â
II. The Church is the Temple of God.â[N.B. the, not a.] Fulfilling the age-long truth that God loves to dwell amongst men. âGod with usâ is the keynote in which, if Sin had not put all things out of tune, the story of the relations of God and man would have run on in one lovely strain of most perfect music. He planted His Tent in the midst of the tents of Israel in the wilderness; He accepted the Royal Palace built for Him in His capital, Jerusalem, by His viceroy Solomon. Men looked from their housetops in the city across to the Temple; they hushed their thought as they passed beneath the boundary walls of its outer courtââThe King, Jehovah, is within there!â And when their sin had cost them the presence of the occupying Shekinah-cloud, the Palace stood still, a witness to the desire of the heart of God to dwell amongst men. [All this is carried out in chap, 6, where see.] The word used is that for the actual Temple building, the Naos or Shrine. Around this lay broad outer courts, the outermost and largest being open to the world, the Court of (even) the Gentiles. It was an ill day for the Church when it added a great outer court, the Court of the World. In a true sense, perhaps, like the Court of the Gentiles, it may be included in the Hieron. The outer Court of the World does stand in a true relation to God. But the ill-day is when the court of the baptized, or unbaptized, world is counted part of the Naos; when the sacred name which belongs to the Shrine only is extended to the outer court, to the great confusion of thought and discipline and practice. âYe are the Naos.â The Church with the âindwellingâ of the âSpirit of Godâ is the present-day embodiment and exhibition of Godâs Thought. [Not the last; the last but one. The last and most perfect is in Revelation 21:3. And in heaven to-day is another, concurrent, exhibition of it, where He sits who is, and will eternally be, the God-man. (The two are one: Ephesians 1:23).] The individual and the collective modifications of Paulâs illustrations are combined in 1 Peter 2:5. The whole building is instinct with Life, because every single stone is âliving.â Peterâs figure hardly bears, even in a readerâs mind, to be put into visible shape. The truth is clear. The Temple is built up of temples. Men whose body is a temple, and they alone, build up the Temple of God. But there is a presence of God which specially belongs to the Church as such.
III. âDefileâ and âdestroyâ are the same word.âA vox media, for which Evans suggests âmar.â Sin, as so often is repaid in kind. It shapes, as well as earns, its own punishment. [In part, a sinner makes his own kind of hell.] The man who does anything in the corporate life of the Church, which is a âgriefâ and an offence to the Divine Tenant of the Temple of to-day, shall find that he has grieved the Spirit of his personal life. It is the One Spirit of Holiness who everywhere, in church or soul, makes its most grievous penalty His own withdrawal. Let the life of the body depart, and from that moment it begins to be âmarredâ and âdestroyedâ by disintegrating moral corruption. In this particular instance the âdefilingâ is done by the introduction of party spirit, and by the introduction of the âwood, hay, stubbleâ into the structure, whether of Church order or Christian doctrine, or personal character and life; not to add by the envying and strife which proved the Corinthians âyet carnal.â Let every man in Corinth watch not only lest he offend against the holiness of his personal Christian life, but be jealous of anything which might impinge upon the corporate holiness of The Church of Christ. Let every Corinthian enrol himself in the honourable Guild of the Temple-guardians [lit. âTemple-sweepers,â Acts 19:35] of the shrine of the great God and His Spirit.
Verses 21-23
CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:21-23.âSee Homiletic Analysis. Note the unexpected turn of phrase; not âChrist is yours.â âRise to the plane of His life and your relations to Him, then you are a possession, not owners. You are feudal holders of your estate, but the baron himself was the âkingâs man.â â
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.â1 Corinthians 3:21-23
Our Estate and our Title: âAll things yours.â
I. Incidental illustration of this in the occasion of the paragraph.â
1. âAll things work together for good to them that love God.â Corinthian Church a saddening spectacle to an observer, especially to one having Paulâs close personal interest in its welfare. Sad even at this distance of time to see the state of things in a Church hardly more than two or three years old, and endowed with giftsâmany of them miraculousâbeyond any other of that age. Members split into factions, party spirit running high. Some living in immorality ânot even named amongst the heathenâ around them (1 Corinthians 3:1); some defending such sin; others suffering ârationalisingâ scepticism to sap the foundations of their faith, and, which always follows, to eat away the vitality of their Christian life. One is sick at heart at the meanness and virulence of their personal feeling against Paul, the man to whom they owed their Church existence, who had âspent himselfâ for them, only to find that âthe more he loved them the less he was lovedâ (2 Corinthians 12:15). Yet to this condition of things we owe these two letters to Corinth; of all his longer Epistles the most human in their interest, and coming nearest to the every-day life of house, market, citizen, church. 2. Especially do we owe to this the many passages, of which this is a specimen, of greatest weight and importance. How again and again, in the midst of passages of rebuke or direction concerning the temporary and sometimes trivial points submitted by the Corinthians to Paul for his decision, do we find his pen guided to such passages of solemn or glorious truth as, e.g., 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, or as this paragraph. As the casual blow of the pick of the lucky miner strikes upon the precious nugget embedded in the rock of quartz, or as many a fair flower grows so strong and so fair out of, and because of, the very corruption with which its roots are fed; so out of the foolish and wicked party spirit of the Corinthian Church grows this glorious title-deed to the Universe and its contents, the estate of the Christian. The very parties in Corinth are âoursâ! [How is the preacher to put all the estate, âall things,â into one homily? He and his people can but walk over a part of it, noting the things which lie next the path on either hand, or can be seen afar off in large outline. No matter in what direction they strike out together a path over such an extent of possession, new âviewsâ open on this side and that, new âfindsâ of pleasure and profit lie close to their way! Before starting across in even one direction, let them look over their Title. âAll is Godâs; all is Christâs, His Son; all He has is yours, His brethren.â]
II. The title by which the estate is held by the Church and the Christian.âAt each link in the above chain of successive âconveyance,â from God to Christ, from Christ to His people, the ground of possession, the nature of the ownership, varies.
1. âOf, through, unto, God are all thingsâ (Romans 11:36). They have being because He willed it; they are what they are, and as they are, and they continue, at His will. All the creatures, and pre-eminently Man, find in His glory the aim and end of their being. Sin would destroy this order. The germ, not only of heathenism but of all sin, is that âthey worshipped and served the creature more than the Creatorâ (Romans 1:25). The members of the Church have come again into harmony with the Creatorâs design, and glory with David as he stood amidst his peopleâs offerings to Godâs Temple on earth, bowing at our Creatorâs feet with the homage, âAll that is in the heaven,â etc. (1 Chronicles 29:11). All the voices of the universe were meant to be and ought to be in harmony with the cry of the four âliving onesâ and the four-and-twenty elders who, self-discrowned, bow before the Lord God Almighty in the temple of heaven, saying, âThou hast created,â etc. (Revelation 4:11). He is Lawgiver to His universe. The âlawsâ which we laboriously make out, are nothing but expressions of His will, the ordinary, orderly methods according to which He is pleased to govern His great Kingdom. All is His, in virtue of His Creatorship; all is subject to Him; all at His disposal.
2. But there comes in between Him and His Created Universe His Son; between, not as a separation, but as a link; as a Mediator, not only between God and man in Redemption, but as between Creator and Creature in Creation and in Providence (John 1:1; Colossians 1:16). Even in the days of His veiled glory He once said: âAll things that the Father hath are Mineâ; and the writer of the Hebrews (1 Corinthians 1:1-3) allows us to see this âSon appointed Heir of all things, ⦠sitting down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.â And âall thingsâ are His, subject to His power and at His disposal.
3. Then comes in the astounding revelation that He is all this, and has all this, for the sake of the redeemed race of man. [Note the force of Hebrews 1:3-4, âBeing the brightness, etc., ⦠sat down ⦠when He, who was all the while this, had by Himself purged our sins.â The âpurgingâ of our sins and the after-session âon the right hand,â etc., are âprojected,â as it were, on the background of His abiding, continuous dignity as âthe Brightnessâ and âthe Image.â] Whilst He thus has all things for Himself, He has linked Himself with man, has taken flesh and come down to us, that He might lift us up with Himself to God, and join us with Himself in a possession as wide as His own ownership. The very heart of the argument of Hebrews 2:0 is here. Yonder sits One Man in whom all the dominion of Psalms 8:4-6, ascribed to man, is actually fulfilled; the only one wearing our nature in whom that dominion is as yet realised. But His enthronement and dominion carry the principle of Manâs restored dominion. His royalty is representative as well as personal. His people are so âpartakers with Himâ that they already enter into a life of rule rather than of subjection, and their ultimate and complete glory is sure. âYe are Christâsâ carries with it an answer to the old question, âWhat is man?â such as was never dreamed of by him who asked it. The creature physically lost in the vastness of the universe, dwarfed into a point by the heavens, the work of Godâs fingers, doomed to suffering and to death, in bondage all his life to the fear of death, and in that respect lower than the âcattleâ and the humbler animated creation (Psalms 8:0), is already beginning, so our paragraph says, to realise that along with and like the Representative Man âhe is crowned with glory and honourâ; all things are put under his feet, and serve him; he is to become conqueror of death; angels are his servitors. Indeed, there is nothing, there is no being, in the whole contents of Godâs creation-realm, that is not at His orders to serve the interests, and advance to its perfection the life, of those whom Christ has made His clients and His brethren. âHe is head over all things to His Churchâ (Ephesians 1:22 [a paragraph thoroughly parallel to the thought of our present section]). Each member of His bodyâof His very Selfâmay say, âAll things that the Son hath are mine.â The Lord of all that is or that begins to be, of all that happens in the unfolding of events, of all the forces and contents of the universe in all their capabilities and combinations, is making all ceaselessly contribute to and converge upon the interests of His people and of each single individual of their number. [May illustrate in homely fashion thus: The mere caller at a house is shown into one room; there stays, and only stays; takes nothing, uses nothing, of what is in it. The visitor in the family has the use, the ârun,â of all in common use by the family, and of those set apart specially for him; but he feels that many are closed against him. In a very restricted way does he feel free to use what is at his disposal and service. But the child of the house has the free ârunâ of the house. Nothing is shut against him; in submission to his fatherâs wishes, all it contains may be called into requisition for his use and comfort and welfare.] The home belongs to the brethren of Christ. The estate is His; but, we may almost venture to say, not its smallest value to Him is that He can make His brethren sharers with Him in its possibilities of blessing.
III. The estate and its contents of good.âIn a word, âeverything.â There is nothing in the physical or the spiritual world; in the present, in the future; persons, circumstances, changes of condition,ânothing of which the Christian is not master instead of servant, and which cannot be made to issue in and contribute to the service and advancement of all his best interests.
1. The matter immediately in hand is the ministers and order of the Church: âPaul, Apollos, Cephas.â With fervid, slavish, personal devotion the Corinthians were ranging themselves very obediently as the adherents of this man and that. Indeed, they were fiercely contending for their favourite, under whose yoke they were eager to put the neck of their judgment and will and heart, almost as if their party-head had been crucified for them, or they had been baptized into his name and not Christâs. No man contended more stoutly than did Paul (e.g. chap, 9) for his Apostolic rights and all due recognition of his status. But the place which some at Corinth would have given to him or to other apostles, was one which belonged to Christ (1 Corinthians 1:13). Such exaltation of an apostle into lordship over their own head and heart, was an inversion of the true order. As he looks at the humblest man in Corinth, ennobled by his brotherhood to Christ, he says: âRemember, the apostle is for your sake, not for his own glorification. The Church; its arrangements; its officers and their qualifications, exist for your salvation and sanctification, and not at all for their own advancement or glory. You are not theirs, not mine. Paul, Apollos, Cephas, we are yours!â There is no one pattern of âexcellenceâ in the ministry, as there is no one pattern of need or character in the people. Every man is the âexcellentâ minister to somebody! The expositor of the Word, or the declaimer of theses on the topics of the day; the man who excels in pathos, or in historical word-painting, or in satire and shrewd analysis of character and its foibles; the man who âcannot preach,â and the man who can preach but who cannot organise; the man who is at his best in a sick-room, or that other who is a born ruler of men;âthrough all their infinite variety of gifts, there is no faithful minister of Christ who is not and has not something which somebody wants, or at some time will want. Each man will have his own aspect of truth to present and teach, the aspect which he sees most clearly, into which he enters most fully; and all are wanted, Paul and James, Cephas and John, Jude and Apollos, to give the whole round of truth. A many-sided, many-gifted ministry is not the smallest part of the wealth and rich heritage of the Church. Let the Christian man see what he can find for himself in each type of man. There is something. Let him not be so wedded to any one type, that he cannot enjoy, or find help from, or even think kindly of, a man who is not after the pattern of his own âbest,â the style of minister who most helps him. And, similarly, first stands the interest of the individual soul, and next the form of Church organisation and administration. No form is worth anything which never was, or is no longer, of use towards helping those who belong to Christ. Any form, as any man, who does this, is to be recognised and to be utilised as part of the endowment of the people of God.
2. Then Paulâs view widens. His words grow broad in their range, even to indefiniteness. âWorld yours! Life yours! Death yours!â Then âthe worldââand its predominantly ethical and evil significance need not be excluded from itâis no mere necessary evil, which must be endured and perhaps survived. There is no âmust beâ which ordains that life, with its business, its sorrows, its trials and conflicts, its unfriendly or uncongenial men and women, its strange perplexities and obstacles of circumstance, shall be of necessity a hindrance to growth in grace; putting the break on, even if it cannot quite stop all progress, as if a Christian could not hope to be thorough in service or enjoyment so long as life in âthe worldâ lasts, and as if the one thing most to be desired was to âshuffle off this mortal coilâ and be done with it all. Paulâs words in our paragraph say rather: âYou are not to succumb beneath lifeâs burdens like that. You are not to acquiesce in a low type of spiritual life, because your circumstances and whole location in the world are not favourable to growth. The world is not to be master like that. Evil as it is, its evil is under the rule of your Christ. âGod shall bruise Satan under your feet shortlyâ (Romans 16:20), and you may begin to enter into your victory and have your foot even now upon the power of evil; and then all the good there is in life and in the world may be set in motion and utilised for your enjoyment and help. The trials, the difficulties, the very temptations, are not to be met simply as the bulrush bows its head before the storm, praying that the storm may soon be over, and that you may not be uprooted utterly by its passing violence. Rather, like your Master, ride the storm, in His strength. Every hurricane obeys lawsâHis lawsâand blows as He listeth, towards His goal and for His purpose towards you. The water outside will carry the well-found ship; admitted within, it will sink it. Keep the world outside your heart, and the world is yours, to use and rule and lay under contribution to your growth in grace.â Trials may teach. Crosses may lift nearer. [âEven so,â and in no other way, âmustâ every âson of man be lifted up!â] The very necessity of the strife and of unremitting watchfulness against evil will drive a man so often and so near to Christ his Source of strength, that he emerges from every specially severe testing-time with new knowledge and a new power in prayer. The very weight of lifeâs burdens will have forced him to find a Friend in Christ, whose strength and faithfulness the world has forced him to test and experience, as he would never otherwise have had occasion to do. He is a fine specimen of manhood, who has taken his place in the world, and felt its storm, and fought it when it assailed him, and after all is not hardened or âsecularisedâ or soured, but is trained to patience and sympathy with others, and to a more perfect reliance upon his God. The fire will brighten and purify what it cannot burn. In âthe worldâ it is true that the soldier is in an unfriendly country; but even the enemyâs country can be requisitioned for what will enable him to carry on the campaign. [The darkest days of life have often been the most fruitful in permanent advancement to the soul. The cross has had a jewel hidden beneath it which has repaid for lifting the cross. A true parable in a German Legend: A famous egg of iron was given by a prince to his bride, who flung down in displeasure so unworthy a gift. The concussion started a spring in the iron case, and revealed a silver âwhiteâ to the egg. Curiosity examined this, and found again within a âyolkâ of gold. In this lay hidden a tiny ruby-set crown, whose circlet concealed a marriage-ring for the union of bridegroom and bride! So, at the very heart of the most forbidding experiences of âthe worldâ and âlife,â the soul has many a time found the pledge of new love and a closer union with the Christ who rules âthe worldâ and âlife,â and who gave the painful and hard experience, etc.]
3. Nothing seems more utterly master than âDeath.â The natural heart often stoically looked life in the face and defied it; or sometimes sullenly, doggedly, went onward to meet its changing fortunes and crushing sorrows as the Inevitable. But reckon death a possession, part of oneâs wealth? No; it must be submitted to! In all literature, except what is Christian, or at least Christianised, Death is the great Conqueror; knocking impartially at the door of palace and hovel, calling as imperiously the king from his throne as the beggar from his rags and wretchedness, and calling them at his own caprice; playing havoc with all menâs plans and work, breaking these off at most unlooked-for and unfortunate times; mocking the tears of affection over sundered bonds; defying all efforts to arrest his progress or stay his hand. On the contrary, they who are Christâs see that He has conquered death, and they share in His victory. They already âhave everlasting life.â Death has become dying only, simply an incidentâno moreâin the course of an âeternal lifeâ which began when faith united to Christ, and which stretches on in victorious continuity through the important, but still accidental, change of surroundings and abode and conditions which dissolution occasions. They do not tremble at any capricious shooting of His arrows. The Lord of Life makes every arrow of Death to carry His message attached to it. He âhas the keys of Hell and of Deathâ (Revelation 1:17). The realm of the âdepartedâ is part of His dominion. His people enter it as possessors, not as prisoners. They are only advancing into another section of a life which is all theirs. Its doors are opened by Death when He wills, and at His bidding. And so far from putting an abrupt and inopportune end to the execution of their lifeâs purposes, or thwarting them, they are only by death advanced a stage nearer to their completion. Salvation is put out of peril; for the first time do the majority of His people then see their Lord. To wake up into the blessedness of that first moment, when their eyes at last see the Christ they have heard of, and trusted, and loved, and have tried to serveâDeath which brings that is no dread, no enemy; it is a hope, it is their own.
4. Nor does anything seem less their own than the future. âThings to comeâ may unfold in such terrible possibilities, and may involve such unforeseen contingencies, as may set at nought all their wisest planning and blight all their brightest prospects. No dawn so clear but the noonday may be shadowed over with clouds which never lift again long as lifeâs day lasts. Men seem working lifeâs problem with a quantity unknown, incommensurable, when they must needs take the future into their reckoning. Masters of the future? No, not even its prophets! Rather its sport! âThings to come are yours.â What these shall be, He is deciding. They lie within the domain which is being ruled by the Son, and ruled by Him for His Church and for the individual Christian man. Even here He used to speak of the unseen world and its facts as one to whose foot the other side of the veil was as familiar ground as this side is to us. In like manner the future lies mapped out to His eye as clearly as, more clearly than, the past is to ours. For instance, some man will one day cross my path who will materially affect my whole after-life. Christ, the Ruler of the future, has His eye upon the point of convergence; and upon the path which that man, perhaps as yet altogether unknown to me, or far from me, in perhaps another hemisphere, is traversing, and which will bring him to the meeting-point by-and-by. When the moment arrives there is the man, just when, and just such as, my life needs. The present is being so guided into the future, and the future is being so fitted on to the present, as that the life of a man who is Christâs, is in its whole stretch and extent one perfect harmonious whole (see Homily on 2 Corinthians 1:10). Somewhere in the whole round of His universal possession there is the very help and deliverance he will someday want; it will be brought out and forthcoming at the proper time, âin His timesâ (cf. 1 Timothy 6:15). As each stage of the earthly series of âthings to comeâ is reached, relays of help [like the relays of fresh horses awaiting the travellers at each successive posting-station in the old âpostingâ days] will always be awaiting him. âMy times are inâ Christâs âhand.â
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS FOR A COURSE ON 1 Corinthians 3:22
The World is Yours.
I. To lodge in.
II. To study.
III. To use.
IV. To enjoy.
V. To conquer.â[J. L.]
Life is Yours.
I. As a daily gift of God.
II. As a period of discipline and instruction.
III. As a season of enjoyment.
IV. As an earnest of a more glorious life.â[J. L.]
Death is Yours.
I. To consider.
II. To terminate your sorrows.
III. To effect an important change.
IV. To unfold the mysteries of eternity.
V. To introduce you to eternal happiness.â[J. L.]
Things Present are Yours.
I. The dispensations of providence.
II. The provisions and arrangements of the Gospel.
III. All the supplies, agencies, and experiences of time.â[J. L.]
Things to Come are Yours.
I. The future of time.
II. The coming of Christ.
III. The resurrection of the body.
IV. The day of judgment.
V. Heaven.
VI. Everlasting life.
VII. God, who was, and is, and is to come.â[J. L.]
APPENDED NOTES
1 Corinthians 3:11 sqq. Since it was by preaching and teaching that Paul laid the foundation of the Church of Corinth, the builders must be different kinds of teachers. Since the matter taught is the material the teacher uses, this must be the gold, silver, wood, straw, etc. The results produced by the teacher in the hearts and lives of his hearer are the building he erects. He may produce good results which will last for ever and be to him an eternal joy and glory. Since these results are altogether the work of God, and are revealed in their grandeur only in the great day, they are a ârewardâ given by God in that day for work done on earth. But a teacher may produce results which now appear great and substantial, but which will then be found utterly worthless. He may gather round him a large number of hearers, may interest them, and teach them much that is elegant and for this life useful, and yet fail to produce in or through them results which will abide for ever. If so, the great day will destroy his work and proclaim its worthlessness. But he may be said to build upon the one foundation, Jesus Christ. For he is a professed Christian teacher, and people go to hear him as such. He may be a sincere, though mistaken Christian believer, and therefore be himself saved. But his work, as a teacher, is a failure. Now the permanence of a teacherâs work depends upon the matter taught. The soul-saving truths of the Gospel enter into menâs hearts and lives, and produce abiding results. All other teaching will produce only temporary results. We understand, therefore, by the wood and straw whatever teaching does not impart or nourish spiritual life. The three terms suggest the various kinds of such teaching. It may be clever or foolish, new or old, true or false; but not subversive of the âfoundation,â or it would come under the severer censure of 1 Corinthians 3:16 sq.⦠We have Christian examples in many of the trifling and speculative discussions which have been frequent in all ages. We also learn that even of the teaching which produces abiding results there are different degrees of worth; in proportion, no doubt, to the fulness and purity with which the teaching of Christ is reproduced. In both cases the results are the results, lasting or transitory, produced in the hearersâ hearts by the use of these materials; results which are in some sense a standing embodiment of the teaching.âDr. Beet.
âBy Fire.ââ
1. It may be homiletically useful to cast into orderly shape the Bible use of âFire.â Needless to say that the Bible is not pledged to any such unscientific piece of obsolete antiquity as that Fire is an Elementâone of four. It is content to take the visible fact, and its palpable effects, as a serviceable illustration, apprehended readily by the child or the heathen, and perfectly good as an illustration, whatever be the scientific revision of our knowledge of the state of the case. For teaching purposes Fire is Heat and, still more, Flame. Flame is now understood to be gas so highly heated as to become in some degree luminous, and generally made more luminous by being loaded with incandescent particles, whether of carbon or other matter. That is nothing new to the Divine Author of Scripture and of Nature; nor was it unworthy of Him, or untrue, that what was to be the popularly apprehensible phenomenon should in the original planning of Nature be so adjusted and adapted as to lend itself well to teach moral truth. Indeed, the devout students of Nature find that both the superficial, phenomenal facts and the deep scientific âlawsâ are alike parabolic and didactic Nature is full of man, and of truth which man wants. Creation is didactic. âCreation is redemptive.â
2. A convenient starting-point is Hebrews 12:29 : âOur God is a consuming fire.â Closely connected with âGod is Light.â The difference is here: Light is what God is in Himself; fire what He is in relation to (sinful) mankind. Hence frequently the chosen symbol of His self-manifestation,: the Bush, Exodus 3:2; the Pillar, Exodus 40:38; Tongues of Pentecost, Acts 2:3; Sinai, Exodus 19:8; Exodus 24:17; Deuteronomy 4:36; Vision of Godâs glory, Ezekiel 1:4; Exodus 24:9-11 (N.B. Nadab and Abihu), Daniel 7:9; Revelation 4:2. In Isaiah 4:5 we have three manifesting symbols of God combinedâlight, radiant splendour, burning fire. Still more frequently the accompaniment of His self-manifestation: e.g. âAfter the earthquake a fire,â 1 Kings 19:12; âfire goeth before Him,â Psalms 97:8. Loosely connected with all this are the fiery Chariot and Horses sent for Elijah, 2 Kings 2:11; fiery Chariots round about Elisha, 2 Kings 6:17. This last and the Pillar over Israel, or the Shekinah in its midst, are gathered up in Zechariah 2:5.
3. Hence when He accepted, âtook,â âate,â appropriated, a sacrifice, it was by a fiery manifestation. E.g. at the Ordination of Aaron and the Inauguration of the priestly system and ritual, Leviticus 9:24. So at the Dedication of Solomonâs Temple, 2 Chronicles 7:1-3. And in less important instances: Carmel, 1 Kings 18:0; on Araunahâs threshing floor, 1 Chronicles 21:26; Gideonâs sacrifice, Judges 6:21. The Burnt Offering, as distinguished from the Sin and Peace Offerings, and as symbol of an entire surrender on manâs part and an entire appropriation on Godâs part, was (as its name says) burnt with fire. And this links on the foregoing to the twofold employment of the symbol as exhibiting the active relation of a Holy God to sinful man.
4. All that could, so to say, be volatilised went up purified and in perfect acceptance; all that was gross and earthly was left behind, to be cast out. Hence, âBaptized with ⦠fire,â Matthew 3:11; Malachi 3:2 brings out the action of the refinerâs fire upon metals. So Isaiah 4:4, âPurged Jerusalem by the Spirit of Judgment and the Spirit of Burningâ; âin that day,â primarily the return of a purified remnant from Babylon, then the setting up of a Christian Zion, perhaps, by-and-by, a restored and purified Israel once more. Isaiah 30:23, and more remotely still Isaiah 29:6, perhaps may better come in later on. The same Holiness which is purifying to the man who desires to be purified, burns as a consuming fire against sin and the sinner who will not be parted from his sin. Hence fire frequently sets forth the holy, active antagonism to evil and evil men, in defence of His people. Isaiah 30:27, âHis tongue a devouring fire; lips full of indignation.â âFury like a fire,â Jeremiah 4:4 (against unfaithful Judah and Jerusalem), Jeremiah 21:2. So it proved, Lamentations 3:3. So against the heathen and Idumæa, Ezekiel 36:5; against Gog, Ezekiel 38:18-19. [Psalms 83:14; Psalms 140:10; Ezekiel 24:9; Amos 5:6.] God and His people are so identified that they become a fire too, Obadiah 1:18; Zechariah 12:6. So in Isaiah 30:27-33 we have it again. Fire purging the faithful from the unfaithful, sifting the nations, then burning up the pile of Tophet. [But âthe Kingâ may (as Talmud) be the Eternal King, and Tophet the burning-place outside the purified, ideal Jerusalem, where all the refuse is to be cast (Matthew 13:50).] Certainly the twofold action is seen in Isaiah 31:9, âFire in Zion; furnace in Jerusalemâ; Isaiah 33:14. As the Assyrian invasion approached, and the denunciations of holy wrath against sinners in and enemies of Zion, âsinners in Zion are afraid.â âWho can dwell with devouring fire?â cry they, â⦠with everlasting burnings?â i.e. with a God whose holy antagonism to sin never relaxes, never spares, never ends. 1 Corinthians 3:15 is the answer. But the principle is here which has occasioned and justified a very frequent use made of this text. Godâs fierce, fiery antagonism to sin cannot cease unless sin ceaseâmust last everlastingly if sinners live on everlastingly sinners still. Same connection appears in Nahum 1:6. Indeed, the whole cycle of events connected with the Assyrian invasion seems the foundation of much Bible language concerning the punishment of wicked. Not only such as Psalms 46:9 (usually [not in Speaker] connected with these events), but Isaiah 9:5, bring up the fires with which the dead bodies and the wreck of the host were cleared away (1 Corinthians 9:5 = no fighting, no blood, but simply burning of the litter and refuse and the dead), with, by the usual analogy, a future fulfilment.Isaiah 66:24; Isaiah 66:24 (foundation of Mark 9:44-46 [cf. Stier, Words of L. J., i. 156]; rather the figure of a holy Jerusalem with its Gehenna, its burning-place for all the refuse of the city [Matthew 13:50]); here also the fires on the battle-field after Sennacheribâs defeat are evidently in the mind of the writer. The battle-field is one vast Gehinnom outside the city walls.
5. Many actual examples of Godâs vengeance in which fire is the agent of punishment. N.B. these are all examples of sins very directly against His holiness and unique position and claims. Nadab and Abihu, Leviticus 10:2; Taberah, Numbers 11:2; Achan, Joshua 7:25; Korah, Numbers 16:35; Elijah and the captains, 2 Kings 1:10 (unless, indeed, this be, first and chiefly, Godâs manifestation of Himself, appealing both to Elijah and to the witnesses and hearers of the event). Above all Sodom, Genesis 19:24; referred to in Luke 17:29; and at least shaping the language of Psalms 11:6; Ezekiel 38:22; Revelation 21:18. [Imagery of Malachi 4:1-2 is anticipated by Genesis 19:24; Genesis 19:23.]
6. So, coming to the New Testament, we find three great cycles of type: (a) Sodom, (b) Gehinnom, (c) Assyrian invasion.
NEW TESTAMENT
1. General.âGodâs vengeance against sin is fiery, Matthew 3:10 (? primarily the Jewish nation), âTree hewn down and cast into the fireâ; Hebrews 6:8, the doom of the persistently barren ground. Also of individuals, Matthew 7:19; Luke 3:9; Hebrews 10:27, âJudgment and fiery indignation; 2 These. 1 Corinthians 1:8, âIn flaming fire taking vengeance.â
2. Godâs holiness is testing.â1 Corinthians 3:13 [though there is here very little of all this typology; hardly more than the commonly observed action of fire]; 2 Peter 3:7 (Luke 12:49-52 is connected).
3. Sodom.âJude 1:7, âSuffering the vengeance of eternal fire.â Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10, âLake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and the False Prophet areâ [Revelation 18:9, Babylon; cf. Abraham beholding the ascending smoke of Sodom]; the Devil; Gog and Magog deceived by him (obvious ref. to Ezekiel 38:22); who-soever ânot found written in the book of life.â Revelation 14:10, worshippers of the beast and his image, who have received his mark.
4. Gehenna.âMatthew 18:9, âWorm dieth not,â etc.; Mark 9:44-46, referring to Isaiah 66:0. âFurnace of fire,â Matthew 13:42; Matthew 13:50, where the latter verse, having nothing in the parable connected with it to suggest itâthe fish are cast into the waterâshows that the phrase had become, or was now first made by Christ, a customary equivalent for the doom of the wicked.
5. The battle-field.âLinked with Mark 9:0, as above, but originating the phrase âeverlasting burnings.â In Matthew 25:41; figure (almost?) lost. So completely the revelation of the future that we must say: âWhatever be the nature of the punishment of a lost, embodied spirit, if we might ask him what he suffered, he would say, âFire,â as the only earthly analogy available.â
6. Mark 9:47. A difficult verse. Every man shallâmustâcome into contact with the holiness of God. Will a man let it (Him) burn away all impurity, and himself thus become a sacrifice salted with grace, and so accepted? Or, refusing this, will he simply meet and feel the fire which never burns itself out?
1 Corinthians 3:16-17. There were Hebrew converts in Corinth, and such would easily catch St. Paulâs allusion ⦠to the national Temple. This national Temple in the Apostleâs mind clearly enlarges and transfigures itself into a Temple spiritual. This living Temple of the Catholic Church is one Temple; it is one, yet elastic; it grows and expands, associating to itself and assimilating, so to speak, many lateral chapels. It is, in fact, an organic unity of several organs, each it itself a unity; it is, in brief, a unity of many contained unities. Each several Church, therefore, of the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church in miniature, so that of the whole all the several parts are themselves wholes; each branch of the Tree is a tree planted in Christ.âEvans, in âSpeaker.â