We are not to suppose that one man builds only ’gold, silver, precious stones.’  There is none of us that does that.  And we are not to suppose that any man who is on the foundations has so little grasp of it, as that he builds only ‘wood, hay, stubble.’

There is none of us who has not intermingled his building, and there is none of us, if we are Christians at all, who has not sometimes laid a course of ‘precious stones.’  If your faith is doing nothing for you except bringing to you a belief that you are not going to hell when you die, then it is no faith at all.  ’Faith without works is dead.’  So there is a mingling in the best, and—­thank God!—­there is a mingling of good with evil, in the worst of real Christian people.

II.  Note here, the testing fire.

Paul points to two things, the day and the fire.

‘The day shall declare it,’ that is the day on which Jesus Christ comes to be the Judge; and it, that is ‘the day,’ ’shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall test every man’s work.’  Now, it is to be noticed that here we are moving altogether in the region of lofty symbolism, and that the metaphor of the testing fire is suggested by the previous enumeration of building materials, gold and silver being capable of being assayed by flame; and ‘wood, hay, stubble’ being combustible, and sure to be destroyed thereby.  The fire here is not an emblem of punishment; it is not an emblem of cleansing.  There is no reference to anything in the nature of what Roman Catholics call purgatorial fires.  The allusion is simply to some stringent and searching means of testing the quality of a man’s work, and of revealing that quality.

So then, we come just to this, that for people ‘on the foundation,’ there is a Day of revelation and testing of their life’s work.  It is a great misfortune that so-called Evangelical Christianity does not say as much as the New Testament says about the judgment that is to be passed on ‘the house of God.’  People seem to think that the great doctrine of salvation, ’not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy,’ is, somehow or other, interfered with when we proclaim, as Paul proclaims, speaking to Christian people, ’We must be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ,’ and declares that ’Every man will receive the things done in his body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.’  Paul saw no contradiction, and there is no contradiction.  But a great many professing Christians seem to think that the great blessing of their salvation by faith is, that they are exempt from that future revelation and testing and judgment of their acts.  That is not the New Testament teaching.  But, on the contrary, ’Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,’ was originally said to a church of Christian people.  And here we come full front against that solemn truth, that the Lord will ’gather together His saints, those that have made a covenant with Him