This is an awful passage; one whose import no man to whom has been committed the care of souls can realise without trembling. But it has a lesson for all laity as well as clergy on whom God has laid responsibility of any kind. St. Paul was much troubled by an account which had reached him of the state of things at Corinth. He had laid the foundation of a flourishing church there, and God had greatly prospered His work; but dissensions had arisen. The Apostle's authority was decried. Rival teachers were set up; rival parties formed. There was already exhibited on a small scale the spirit of disunion and division by which the Church in these latter days has unhappily been distracted. St. Paul remonstrates with them on this state of things. It is an evidence, he tells them, of the imperfection of their Christian attainments.
I. We have here, first, the builders. These are primarily religious teachers, preachers of the Word, ministers. Such only seem to have been before the Apostle's mind. But in a secondary sense the passage has a lesson for private Christians also; forasmuch as every Christian has a building to build for God in his own soul, on the foundation first laid at his baptism. It may be in the souls of others also; and woe worth him, if through his negligence, either building be consumed in the day of trial.
II. Next we have the foundation. This the Apostle describes in one word Jesus Christ. On the cardinal truth of Christ's crucifixion the hopes of the Church, the hopes of every individual Christian, rest. Let us look to ourselves that we do not lose hold of it.
III. The superstructure which St. Paul supposes to be built on this foundation. This, speaking generally, is the complex result of each man's ministry of his doctrine and of his labour its result, as manifested in the lives and conversations of the converts whom he has won, or of the people who have been committed to his charge. The Apostle sets before us two distinct superstructures, the foundation being the same in both. Some builders he represents as raising a solid and substantial fabric, gold, silver, costly stones. Their doctrine and the result of it were in keeping with the great truth which himself had laid as the foundation; the doctrine uncorrupt the result, holiness of life and conversation on the part of those who received it, and what he may be thought to have had specially in view a spirit of charity and brotherly love, as opposed to the spirit of contention and division, which was so unhappily prevalent at Corinth, and which no doubt was in part what he meant by that "wood, hay, stubble," which others were building. I say, in part, not the whole; for, as appears from the Epistle, there were other evils, both doctrinal and practical, of which he had to complain, or rather over which he had to mourn; some of them, indeed, as incongruous with the original foundation as a heathen temple or a Mahometan mosque built upon the site of a Christian Church.
IV. Notice next the day of which the Apostle speaks the day which will declare, will make manifest, before men and angels, the character of each man's work. In many cases, no doubt, that character is only too apparent on the instant. The unsoundness and worthlessness of the building are open beforehand, going before to judgment. But in others they follow. After a specious show, conformity with the popular taste and the like gain them a wide acceptance, while true and honest work is depreciated and condemned. The day in which the Lord will come will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.
V. What is meant by the fire, of which it is said, "The day shall be revealed, and by which every man's work will be proved"? This some have understood of persecution, and no doubt persecution has many times served as a test, sifting the Church and separating the wheat from the chaff. But it is a test which has only partially been applied. Many workmen have never had their work subjected to it, and even where it has been applied, it has not always proved an infallible test; there have been confessors and martyrs to heresy as well as to the truth. But St. Paul is speaking of a trial to which every man's work shall be subjected, and of a test whose searching scrutiny no unsoundness or dishonesty in the work will escape. The fire of which the Apostle speaks is doubtless that searching scrutiny, repeatedly referred to elsewhere in Scripture, to which at the great and dreadful day of judgment every man's work will be subjected, when the great white throne shall be set, and the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, and the books shall be opened, and the dead shall be judged out of those things that are written in the books according to their works; and among these works, the work of each man's ministry, in the case of God's ministers, will hold, we may be sure, the very foremost place.
VI. The Apostle, when he speaks of the unskilful builder being saved, must of course be understood to do so on the presumption that the man himself has personally retained his hold on Christ, and that for Christ's sake the failure of his work whether owing to ignorance, infirmity, or any less pardonable cause is mercifully forgiven. Such a one, the Apostle says, shall lose his reward. He will appear before the Lord empty-handed, with no offering to present of souls won from Satan's kingdom or strengthened and confirmed in faith and holiness. He will be happy only in this, that while he takes with shame the lowest place and marvels, while he takes it, that such grace should be extended to him, that place is still within his Father's house.
C. Heurtley, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,Nov. 4th, 1880.