One Foundation, One Temple   2 Chron 7:1-16; Ps 26; 1 Cor 3:1-23; John 2:13-22 St Marks 2.10.16.

Introduction

This is the third in our series on 1 Corinthians and once again Paul is taking on problems amongst the church members. His approach to the scandalous state of affairs in the church is far from diplomatic, but by its brutal honesty presents a serious challenge to the mindset of the average congregation in Australia today, Anglican or otherwise. Frankly, I often think that most of us find what the scriptures teach about the identity of the Church to be unbelievable. There seems to be a serious disconnect between the state of the people of God as we know it and both the serious warnings in this passage and its prophetic message about the future. I am sure that when most believers read a part of the Bible like this one they unconsciously make a mental separation between how things were in the first century and how they are today. Whilst 1Corinthians 3 speaks of the Body of Christ in every place as the holy temple of God the typical congregation has miniaturised the estimation of its glorious identity. The root of this downsizing is not the fault of the folk who sit in the pews, but that most preachers have tried to grow the Church with the “wood, hay and straw” (1 Cor 3:12) of their own tiny thoughts rather than presenting the grandeur, to quote Paul, of “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” which is our destiny (Eph 4:13). This passage is clear in meaning and relevance, but its application will prove to be a huge challenge. It’s a passage which causes me much distress for reasons which will hopefully become clear.  

Exposition

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul”, and another, “I follow Apollos”, are you not being merely human?

These people who prided themselves in their spirituality are described by Paul as their true spiritual father as fleshly and infantile (1 Cor 4:15). As they heard this charge they no doubt began to rehearse in their own minds their spiritual achievements in the realm of wisdom, knowledge and gifts. Paul however would have none of it, the “jealousy and strife” in the Church was undeniable evidence of gross immaturity. In this church there was a “Paul fan club”, an “Apollos fan club” and so on. Any church that polarises over personalities is worldly and grieves the ministry Spirit of God in whom they boasted. Little changes over the centuries.

I once wrote an editorial titled, “Multiple personality disorder in the Church Today” lamenting how people identify themselves spiritually in terms of mere men; “Luther-ans…Calvin-ists…Wesley-ans…” or in more contemporary fashion following the charismatic personalities leading today’s megachurches, “I go to Pastor-so-and-so’s church”. A Church that thinks like this is infantile and powerless to confront society’s evils. What is missing? (….Jesus)

Not long ago I found myself in the midst of a heated exchange where the names of various Christians were being thrown around in a critical way. After a period I was constrained to say, “We have left someone out of this conversation.” The name of Jesus had not been used at all. Someone paused to pray, but it was too late, since Christ wasn’t the foundation of the conversation it had become hopelessly distorted around personalities. I used to encourage my students to apply a “Jesus test” to everything they heard in Church. This caused many of them a lot of distress because so little of contemporary Christianity is founded on Christ.

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labour. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

Paul proceeds to attack the status that the Corinthians had given to their leaders. Rather than spiritual supermen he compares himself and Apollos to mere servants on a farm or workers on a construction site. In their fleshly mindedness the Corinthian Christians failed to see that the power that was at work in their ministers was the power of God himself. “God…gave the growth…they are God’s fellow workers….the Church is God’s field, God’s building.” My experience of people, whether they are Christian scholars, politicians, multi millionaires or a leader of large churches is that they are all ordinary people. Ministries come and go but the Lord continues his work in his Church. Instead of elevating or cutting down leaders we should give all the glory to the Lord who bought the Church of God with his own blood (Acts 20:28). The Church belongs exclusively to Jesus and everything about it: attitudes, actions, structures and ministries should flow from this. When this doesn’t happen we are in deep trouble.

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

In describing his own ministry in Corinth Paul points to the grace of God that enabled him to be a “skilled master builder”, an expression which means something like both architect and chief engineer.  The terms used here appear in the Old Testament of the men filled with God’s Spirit to make the tabernacle where the glory of God was to dwell (Ex 35:31-32; 40:34-35). This is the true goal of all ministries; to make a place where the glory of God can dwell. As an apostle Paul has laid the one true foundation for the Church, which is Christ (Eph 2:20). Others have come along after him to continue the work of building up the body of Christ.

One layer of meaning here that especially applies to the situation in Corinth appears in the book of Proverbs.  Divine wisdom declares, “My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.” (Prov 8:19). Through Paul’s preaching the faith of the Corinthians had been founded on something more precious than any perishing worldly wisdom, it had been established on God’s wisdom in the message of Christ crucified.

The language of a building made with gold, silver, and precious stones is drawn from the descriptions of the splendour of Solomon’s Temple which was God’s glorious house (1 Ki 5:17; 6; 9:3; 1 Chron 22; 29 etc.). What is the one place in scripture that speaks with great intensity of precious metals and precious stones (Rev 21:18-21 cf. Isa 54:11-12) (…..Revelation) Since in Revelation the heavenly new Jerusalem is the Church it is obvious that Paul is not really interested in physical metals and gems but is expressing the sheer preciousness of the Church to God (Rev 21:1-12 cf. 1 Pet 1:18). As this passage will soon reveal, the glorious future of the universe should be made plain to see through the lens of the life of the Church in Corinth.

Now follows a sober warning directed to the ministries which came after Paul. The Day of Judgement will reveal whether the Church has been built on the resources of Christ or with “wood, hay, straw”, the rubbish of worldly wisdom. I was shocked when visiting a pastor’s office to notice prominently placed at the top of a pile of magazines next to his desk The Harvard Business Review. Suddenly I understood why he functioned more like the CEO of an organisation than the shepherd of a flock. It is impossible to build something eternal out of something temporal. Ministries like this will not survive the fiery storm winds of the Last Judgement; ““For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” (Mal 4:1). Anyone whose work is burned up will be saved, “but only as through fire”. (This has nothing to do with purgatory, because what gets burned up isn’t the person but their works.) These words are however a sober warning; much of what appears be God’s building may not be at all but is headed for destruction. Some who have been led to think of themselves as God’s people will be shocked to find at the Last Judgement that they weren’t really following the real Jesus at all. More positively, if anyone’s work survives the judgement “he/she will receive a reward”; and the reward that faithful pastors seek is not personal benefit but that their flock pass through the Day of Judgement with them. As we go on Paul’s language becomes even more intense.

16 Do you not know that you (plural) are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple

There were lots of temples in Corinth, and the devotees believed these were houses of the gods. In speaking of the Church as a temple Paul uses a word (naos) that focuses on the innermost shrine/holy place where a deity was understood to dwell. The Corinthians should have known they as a community were the dwelling place of God’s Spirit and as such they were holy (Eph 2:23). They needed to be reminded they were the one true temple in the city and were called to live lives that distinguished the character of the one true God from that of its many idols. The rivalry and competition in the Corinthian Church however was threatening to profane the sanctuary of God making it unholy. This was totally unacceptable. The strong warning, “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.” is a grim prophetic threat which needed to be heeded in both its temporal and eternal dimensions. Those who would divide the Church open themselves up to the sort of judgement Paul describes later in this letter to do with disregard for other Christians at the Lord’s Supper, “For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honouring the body of Christ,you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself.³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died. (1 Cor 11:29-30). A friend of mine says if God judged the Church today like he did in New Testament times there’d be bodies all over the place (e.g. Acts 5:1-11; Rev 2:22-23). I actually believe he is wrong and that there are bodies all over the place. Sitting next to a brother from Bhutan last month he was describing the healing miracles through which people are coming to Christ there; but why do we rarely see such things happening here? Paul now takes up again the prominent theme of the first two chapters of this letter.

18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness”, 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

The Corinthians were self-deceived people fooling themselves because their thinking was trapped in “this age” rather than seeing things from the perspective of the “age to come” (1 Cor 2:6). Paul is trying to teach this church not only that worldy wisdom is stupidity in God’s eyes but that the Lord traps the wise in their own cunning. The worse thing that can happen to us is to think that own understanding is all we need and that we don’t need the wisdom of God (1 Cor 10:12). This is the lie of our culture and it is far too common in the church.

21 So let no one boast in men. They were glorying in the abilities of men instead of boasting of the Christ-like weakness of their ministers the Corinthians were trusting in their leaders more than they were trusting in Jesus. This common idol is a source of terrible disorder in the Church.

In concluding this passage Paul suddenly opens up a grand cosmic vision of what it means for the local Church to be the temple of God. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Why boast of mere menwhen “all things” i.e. “everything”, “the world…life…death…present…future” belongs to the people of God as we share the future inheritance of Christ (Rom 8:17). The implications of this insight are enormous, the little church in Corinth is a holy temple in Christ which is called to be a likeness of the destiny of the whole universe (Eph 1:10; Col 1:16). When the residents of Corinth visited this church they should have received an insight into the presence of God in his people which in the End will fill the whole universe (Eph 1:22-23). To reveal such things is an essential part of the call of every local church in every city everywhere. The people of Bassendean and beyond who visit us should be able to see through our holy and loving lives that we are a colony of heaven, and seeing this want to come with us to live with Jesus there forever; this is central to the reason why we as a congregation have been called into existence (Phil 3:20-21).

Conclusion

The Lord is calling his Church to recapture a vision of what it means to be a holy temple “building upon” the one foundation of Jesus Christ (3:10, 12, 14). There is in God’s strategy to build his temple no place for marketing, pop psychology, or ministries, to quote Dale from 20+ years ago, designed to make people “feel good about themselves”. As the little church in Corinth was called to be so powerfully indwelt by the Spirit and wisdom of Christ as to function as a genuine alternative to the pagan world surrounding them so are we. The unity of our relationships in the Church is to be of such an order that it images the glory of Christ living in us who in the End rule over all things in heaven and earth (Col 1:27; Eph 1:10). By God’s grace we are to be filled with the glorious light of a city whose streets are paved with gold and whose foundations are precious stones (cf. Matt 5:16). Every true Christian minister, the sort of pastor we should all be praying for as we wait for the successor to Alison, wants to present to Christ a building made up of people who in their Lord’s eyes glitter like gold, shine like silver and radiate the beauty of precious stones. A true minister of Christ will do anything to work with God to construct a sanctuary fitting for the holy Lord to indwell. For such a majestic vision to be realised we must not be most like most Christians in most congregations waiting passively to see which of our works will survive the Day of Judgement and which will be burnt up. The Lord speaks to us clearly, “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord,” (Jer 23:29) and of the ministry of Jesus, ““He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”” (Matt 3:11). Let us implore the Lord for the fire of his Word and Spirit to burn up all the “wood, hay and straw” of our worldly wisdom NOW. This is the unparalleled wisdom of the Christ crucified. [Note to reader: what Jesus himself endured on our behalf in the cross to become the Temple in which we become the holy temple of the Lord.]