Have you ever watched a toddler building a tower of bricks, and seen their dismay (or delight!) as the tower crashes over? Gradually they learn that the firmer the base of the tower, the more stable the whole structure is. In these verses, Paul tells the Corinthians that there is no point in building amazing showy structures, unless the foundations are correct (v 10).  

Our lives are like buildings to display God’s glory, so first we need to ensure that we are building on a firm foundation – and the only fail-safe foundation is Jesus. Job’s troubles revealed that his foundations were secure – how about us?

Having secured the right foundation, Paul explains that it matters how we build. We are God’s temple, and God’s temple is sacred. Do our lifestyle, our choices, our service, our study contribute to the development of a costly durable structure, honouring God, or are we filling our lives with worthless stuff that could be burned away (vs 12,13)?

‘The church’s one foundation / is Jesus Christ her Lord … / with his own blood he bought her / and for her life he died.’¹ 

Paul grieves for the Christian community in Corinth, which he had founded personally but which has now split into rival factions, hiding behind loyalty to the names of evangelists who had come to Corinth after Paul. At no time does Paul criticise his colleagues, Peter and Apollos, but he points out that there can only be one foundation, Jesus Christ, whose death brought the church into being.² If that foundation has been laid, no genuine Christian missionary can lay a different foundation. As Paul proclaims elsewhere, there is ‘one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God’.³

Expanding the building metaphor, Paul warns all church leaders who would build on the foundation already laid. They must build the church into something of eternal value which will survive the scrutiny of the coming judgement. Nothing can finally be hidden. The errors cannot be plastered over. In Paul’s metaphor, the church can be ‘gold’, worthwhile and enduring, or the church can be ‘straw’, weak and short-lived (v 12). For those of us who are church leaders, this is serious. Paul declares that God’s judgement will fall upon the builders. I should write these notes with trembling hand.

Paul carefully uses the plural (v 16). Together, we are God’s temple, the longed-for spiritual house of God which the prophets foretold: ‘My dwelling-place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.’⁴ Church leaders have a very serious calling, and are responsible for the care of the people among whom God dwells. They can ‘go for gold’, building the people into Christian maturity and the likeness of Christ. Or they can choose straw, finally leaving people weak, without substance, without qualities that last.

‘Lord, teach me to serve you as you deserve … to labour and not to ask for any reward except to know that I am doing your will.’⁵

¹ Samuel Stone, 1839–1900  ² Acts 20:28  ³ Eph 4:4–6  ⁴ Ezek 37:27  ⁵ Attributed to Ignatius of Loyola, 1491–1556