FOUNDATION AND SUPERSTRUCTURE
By
D. M. PANTON, M. A.
There
is one Apostolic statement of the believer's coming arraignment before Christ
which is so simple, so clear, so incontrovertible that for forty years we have
never heard it challenged, for it is simply impossible of denial; and it
contains, in germ, the whole of God's handling of His servants hereafter.
Everybody appeals to it; everybody admits it; everybody acknowledges that this
decree of God's judgment assuredly falls on a [regenerate] believer:
therefore on this passage we have our feet on rock, and all that can be proved
within its limits must be accepted as indisputable certainty. And what
makes it wonderfully valuable is that it shows the crucial importance of the
doctrines we hold and teach, after conversion; it discloses exactly what is at
stake, and what the consequences of our creed are in the day to come; and it
reveals; the exact method by which we can make our teaching, our conscious and
unconscious influence, an investment beyond price.
TEACHERS
Paul
begins by pouring his soul into a warning on our post-conversion creed.
"According to the grace of God which was given
unto me" - the call to service, and the gifts which enabled him to
win souls - "as a wise master-builder I laid a
foundation" - God made the foundation, but Paul laid it in the souls he won, as every soul-winner
has done ever since - "and another buildeth
thereon" - another rises the edifice of an expanded creed: "BUT LET EACH TAKE HEED
HOW HE BUILDETH THEREON" (1 Cor. 3: 10). This superstructure erected upon
simple saving faith, while it is supremely the business of the Christian
ministry, also involves us all, for all teach - in class, or village, or
school, or home, or (far from the least) by the doctrines we are known to
hold and for which we stand. As a rule, the evangelist founds, and
the pastor or teacher builds; but since our life is simply the reproduction of
our creed, the passage embraces us all, and reveals the destiny of every
post-conversion doctrinal structure.
THE FOUNDATION
So first Paul unveils, briefly and graphically, the
massive, immovable, God-made foundation. "For other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid" - by God, and by
every evangelist who has ever won a soul for God since - "which is Jesus Christ"
- the personal Rock; or, that Jesus is the Christ, the doctrinal
rock. "Whosoever BELIEVETH THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST IS BEGOTTEN OF GOD"
(1 John 5: 1). No other foundation is
needed; no other foundation is possible; no other foundation is permitted; and
without it, all religious teaching is simply built upon nothing, the baseless
fabric of a dream. For every converted man, the foundation is finished
and can never be laid again.
THE SUPERSTRUCTURE
But
now upon this solitary and uniform foundation there rises a superstructure
piebald, variegated, diverse.* All unity centres
in the one foundation; no diversity exists in the solid Rock on which rest all
the saved forever: but the after-work of a myriad hands erects structures as
different as a hovel from a palace. "If any buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly
stones; wood, hay, stubble"; golden cornices, pillars and pedestals
of silver, marble stands and stairways; wooden frame-work, wattle-work, thatch.
(The
[*-
This passage thus provides us with the ideal and most essential balance between
Catholicity and Responsibility, each truth correcting the opposite danger. The enclosures around the
THE MATERIALS
For
next we see the force of the contrasted materials. Because fire appears.*
- It is not wrath, for the fire equally searches the gold; nor grace, for it
consumes the wood; it is analysis that searches the workmanship, whether
good or bad, through and through. "Each
(builder's) work shall be made manifest; for the day"
- the only day in Paul's vision - "shall
declare it" - declare it for what it is, not for what it was
thought to be - "because it is revealed in fire";
that is, every doctrine we hold in addition to the simple fundamentals -
as, in itself, not varying excellence, like silver, or gold; or of varying
inflammability, as wood or straw - is either good, and therefore
imperishable, or bad, and therefore only destructible. Nothing tests
durability like fire. Slabs of gold are more valuable than blocks of
granite, but both equally survive fire: thatch burns far quicker than the
harder woods, but both equally disappear in smoke. Wattled
huts are a poor shelter from fire. "THE FIRE
ITSELF SHALL PROVE EACH (BUILDER'S) WORK OF WHAT SORT IT IS." Here is a
very serious modification of an earlier verse (3: 8): that which is rewarded must not only be labour, but
labour WITH THE RIGHT MATERIALS: labour in propagating error -
however sincere, however self-denying - is lost labour. Moreover,
it is a fact of which we need to take the profoundest notice that the sincerity of the builder has no influence at all
on the destiny of the building, but solely the materials with which
he builds: not what we thought to be true, but what was true,
alone survives. Nothing spiritually rotten passes the Eyes of Fire.
[*
That the Fire is as figurative as the Building dispels the Purgatory the
Church of Rome builds mainly on this passage. This fire tries all
saints, and not the defective only; it does
not cleanse, but consumes, the hay; and it does not purge, but simply reveals,
the gold.]
REWARD
Paul
now lays down, once for all, the doctrine of reward. "If any (builder's) work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive
reward" - that is, some
recompense (repayment) suited to the quality and amount of the truth with which
he has transfigured other hearts and lives. This is decisive of the
doctrine of reward. The reward is not for being on the foundation,
but solely for the afterlife; and it is so totally severable from the underlying
salvation that it can be totally lost with no damage of the basic life.
While a position on the Rock, with power [from
the Holy Spirit] to build, is purely of grace,
the building itself is judged solely on the contrasted principle of justice.* For we need to mark with extreme care that it
is valuable metal or worthless straw only
from the point of view of the fire:
as a matter of actual experience, on all hands the gold is now mistaken for stubble, and the stubble for gold:
only the day to come, with its searching flame, discloses the exact material as
it is. But today's gilded woodwork will survive judgment only when hay
survives fire. So everything that is of the nature of reward, everything
stated in its context to be conditional on service and suffering [for Christ], is
reward pure and simple, and is completely severable from [eternal]
salvation. It is glorious to observe that we have perfect control over
the materials; so that these hands, by the materials they select, are
erecting their own reward: therefore we can work in stuff which will outlast
all judgment fires, and be itself immortal.
[* Simple Indian Christians have a quaint
distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism.
Calvinism they call "cat-hold,"
and Arminianism "monkey-hold";
for the young monkey clings to its mother, while the cat grips her kitten by
the scull of the neck and carries it with no help from the kitten. The
Scripture truth is that the "cat-hold"
is for eternal salvation and the "monkey-hold"
is for reward.]
LOSS
For
now, since the consequences of error are appalling, so are its disastrous
losses. "If any (builder's) work shall be burned - (burnt up), he shall SUFFER LOSS";
the sprayed life, playing on his wattle-work, consumes it: "but he himself" - as contrasted with his
workmanship - "shall be saved; yet so as through fire" - that is,
escaping down a corridor of flame, and out from blazing ruins. This is a
perfect revelation that what we build after conversion and teach on the
foundation of Gospel truth - even so totally erroneous as to be totally
consumed - in no way jeopardizes our personal [eternal] salvation. For the fire, we observe, does not
search the standing of the believer; his foundation* comes into no manner of judgment: on the other
hand, nothing which is lesser and later than fundamental [initial] salvation
escapes an investigation so searching as to be compared to an incendiary fire,
a mass of flame deliberately kindled on the stone-work of a ground-floor. The Apostle assumes (in doubtless an extreme
case) an entire post-conversion edifice of doctrine razed to the ground by
flame, while the builder himself, since his foundation is in tact, succeeds in
barely escaping with his life through the ordeal by fire which the creed of
every one of us must undergo.** A
life-work consumed in an hour! All he hears at the Bema is the crash of
his life-structure! He loses the labour of a life-time; he looses all
that he built; he loses the recompense which others receive; he loses
everything in the nature of reward, and that
is named as reward in Scripture; and he loses the applause of his
fellow-builders and the commendation of the Great Architect. ***
[*
The foundation was searched at Calvary, when God "laid
in
**
It is obvious that the hitherto dominant view in prophetic circles - namely,
that for all believers the Advent means sudden glory and enthronement - is
irreconcilable with this, the elementary and introductory passage to all
revelation on reward, and a revelation admitted as applicable to the [regenerate] believer
alone by all students of prophecy.
***Even
if universal and immediate rapture were a fact, it would scarcely lessen the
solemnity of the truth; for rapture, while it escapes whatever follows on
earth, is merely removal to the Bema, and after his removal by rapture this man barely escapes with his
life. The supreme thing is not the moment of arrival - important though
that is - but what we receive when we arrive. Nevertheless it also solves
the problem of rapture; for the act of rapture, which is the resumption of miracle
on the grand scale, is the very first event of "the
Day," and therefore falls within
the Day of Fire; and so is itself not an act of grace, but the first
action of the discriminating, judging flame, sifting golden vigilance from
wooden sleep.]
So
then, as this is a dead certainty coming in the experience of us all, it stirs
the blood like a trumpet-blast. When the underground tunnelling shook
Westminster Abbey, the advice of the architects was: - "Underpin the structure with the same material with which the
foundations are built." Only slabs of the written Word can
match and dovetail into the massive underlying rock of the Personal Word. The Scriptures are the underground quarries
where all valuable and durable minerals and metals are to be found, but
found only if dug for; whereas wood, hay, and stubble are surface growths
found everywhere in "the field which is the world,"
and are to be had merely for the gathering, and by anybody. Gold, silver,
and marbles are always costly - they can cost reputation, employment, life;
but wood, hay, and stubble are the whole assembled
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