Saturday 2 July 2016

REFLECTIONS

“The test of fire”

1 Corinthians 3:13-15

“There is a time coming when a discovery will be made of what men have built on this foundation: Every man’s work shall be made manifest, shall be laid open to view, to his own view and that of others. Some may, in the simplicity of their hearts, build wood and stubble on the foundation, and know not what they have been doing; but in the day of the Lord their own conduct shall appear to them in its proper light.

“For the day shall declare it (that is, every man’s work), because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is, v. 13. The day shall make it manifest, the last day, the great day of trial.

“There is a day coming that will distinguish one man from another, and one man’s work from another’s, as the fire distinguishes gold from dross, or metal that will bear the fire from other materials that will be consumed in it.

“In that day some men’s works will withstand the trial—will be found standard. It will appear that they not only held the foundation, but that they built regularly and well upon it—that they laid on proper materials, and in due form and order.

“There are others whose works shall be burnt, v. 15, whose corrupt opinions and doctrines or vain inventions and usages in the worship of God, shall be discovered, disowned, and rejected, in that day—shall be first manifested to be corrupt, and then disapproved of God and rejected. A person’s weakness and corruption will be the lessening of his glory, though he may in the general have been an honest and upright Christian. He shall be saved, yet so as by fire, saved out of the fire. He himself shall be snatched out of the flame which will consume his work.”

-Matthew Henry  Expositor, Commentator, Minister  1662-1714

From, A Closer Walk with God; Daily Readings from Matthew Henry; compiled by Martin Manser; (Daybreak Books—Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids; 1987), Page 141.

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