Be A Very Very Careful Builder

"Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.

Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.

Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple." 1 Corinthians 3:10-17 NLT

This passage is taken from the first letter of Paul he wrote to the church in Corinth.

This particular passage have always intrigued me enough, I gravitate back to it, from time to time.

Now until this day, I imagine about what the actual condition of the Corinthian church was to precipitate this kind of correspondence.

The first part of this passage gives us a big clue, in that Paul said he laid the foundation for this church, and that foundation is Jesus. That is crystal and should be the case in any real Christian church. Of course, 2,000 years later, this is not the case anymore, but it sure is intriguing to see that it was already the case from the beginning of the church.

Then Paul says others are building on top of this cornerstone (the foundation of the church). Well, I think these could be the past or the current church leaders and/or it could be very well be all or any member of this church.

Now, we know from other passages from the Corinthian letters that there was factionalism in this church and these factions could be the reason (the cause) or the result (the consequence) of builders building in error, and this could either be by design or just honest mistakes in their part. These things we do not know -- although to me all churches make these same mistakes.

So regardless which case it was, factions within any church is not a good sign as we see how Paul was addressing this in his letters. From Scriptures, we know that Jesus is the way, the truth, the light and He is love, real love.

All these should always be present in any real church. And all true believers should have one Savior, one faith, one baptism and one spirit. Factionalism is then not from the Lord and those things that cause factions are in the same way not from Him who saved us all by His ultimate sacrifice and our heavenly Father's grace.

Now when factionalism do exist, then members and leaders alike should ask for wisdom and receive and accept instructions and/or correction from Scriptures and the Holy Spirit who both always lead us to the Way, the Truth and the Light in love. And when we accept and receive it, repent and pass on and give out these corrections to others, with the same love.

If we do not, then the last part of this passage should be a reason enough. Judgment Day will be D Day -- the only question being which side of the beach will we be on.

Let us not let all the good work we do for the Lord be burned up and we barely making it into eternity with our Savior. Let us aim for the reward and not because we want one but because we will totally be empty handed when we finally stand face to face with Jesus on D Day, and that is very very sad to think about, if not heart breaking.

It could be worse than the story about the one servant who was given money by his master before he went on a journey, buried and hid the money and did nothing else. Why? Because when his master came back, at least he was still able to dig the money out from the ground and present it back to his master.

In this case, when all our work was wood and worse if it was hay or straw, we would have wasted all that time in doing all that work, because in an instant it will all just be burned up and we will have totally nothing to show for and in the end, it would be as if we did nothing at all.

Pretty hard to imagine...

So at the very beginning, I cautioned on being a very, very careful builder. For it is not what we build that matters but why and how we build and for whom we really build it for. It is not an issue of what the visible will be like, but it is all an issue of the invisible -- the issue of the heart (and how the Lord has so changed it) and it's invisible and unseen motivations of why and how and to whom, we do the things that we do.

To whoever who has ears... take heed...