The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Are there degrees of salvation? Can we be saved but only by the skin of our teeth, so to speak? And can the fruit of our salvation be consumed by fire as opposed to being of lasting value?

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. The Christians in Corinth were acting much like the culture in which they lived. They were acting as carnal Christians. And part of that worldliness involved choosing which minister they chose to follow.

Guest (Male): Stay with us now as Dr. Boice leads us through the Corinthian Christian state of mind and answers the question, are there really two kinds of Christians?

Dr. James Boice: In my Bible, which is the New International Version, there's a very appropriate section heading to First Corinthians 3. It's called on Divisions in the Church. It's against divisions, and yet it's a funny thing as I read this chapter, that the chapter which is probably the greatest statement in all the Bible against divisions in the church of Jesus Christ, is actually been the cause of at least two more of them.

I say that because there are two themes in this chapter that have divided Christians. One is this matter of the carnal Christian, or as this translation has it, the worldly Christian, in the first section of the chapter. And the other is this matter of being saved, yet so as by fire.

Both of those passages, there are significant divisions, and some have grown almost into orthodox or which may well be the case, heterodox theologies.

Now, the chapter as a whole is in four parts. There's this first part that deals with the worldliness of these Corinthian Christians and describes why they were worldly. We want to see what that means. There's a second section beginning in verse 5 that deals with the Christian ministry. That's very significant because that is really the context in which all of this occurs.

And there's a third section, verse 12 through 17, which has to do with the subject of being saved, yet so as by fire. And we want to see what that means. And then finally, verse 18 to the end, there's a conclusion, which is an important one, sort of a wrap-up of this section, and in a certain sense a wrap-up of everything we've looked at in the book so far.

Now, what is this problem with the carnal or the worldly Christian? The real issue is whether there are two types of Christians or not. We know that there's a big difference in the world between those who are not Christians and those who are. One are unregenerate. The others are born again.

In Christians, the life of God exists. The question arises, is it possible to speak properly within that second set of people, those who really are born again, of those who are going on with God and who are spiritual? And on the other hand, those who are not going on with God and are carnal.

Now, I say there are two theologies about this, and these are represented in two works among students. I suppose we might as well hit that head on and say what they are. I do, because some of the student workers have been talking to me about it this past week, knowing it was coming up. They were saying, I hope you're not going to take InterVarsity's side against Campus Crusade. And conversely, I hope you're not going to defend Campus Crusade and not stick by InterVarsity.

The point is that in Campus Crusade, the answer to my question is yes. They say there are two types of Christians. There are carnal Christians. And then there are spiritual Christians. And on InterVarsity's side, the emphasis is against that, and they say no, there are only Christians and then there are unbelievers.

Well, this is one of those issues where in my judgment, there's a lot more smoke than fire. And it's one of those subjects you just have to think through clearly. Often, in a division of this nature, people are talking across purposes. But each one is saying is true, but they're using language to say it that means something different in the other camp.

Now, let's look at it that way. First of all, what can you say on the side of Campus Crusade where you're talking about the carnal Christian? Well, one thing you can say quite positively is that language here in First Corinthians 3 certainly suggests it. And if a Crusade worker at that point would say, well, I'm just being biblical because look, verse 1, "Brothers," he's talking to Christians.

"Brothers, I couldn't address you as spiritual but as worldly. You're infants in Christ. Are you not acting like mere men?" We'd have to say, yes, you're certainly being biblical at that point. Paul certainly does use the word in that context. And moreover, we'd have to acknowledge that there's a certain neatness about that.

Because when we look at Christians, we say, well, certainly ones that don't seem to be going on with the Lord. It's kind of nice to be able to put them in a certain category. And say, well, they're carnal Christians. And what they need to do is get out of their worldliness and begin to get serious about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, I want to criticize what flows out of that position. What comes out of that position is this, a certain smugness, I think, unintentional perhaps. A kind of smugness on the one hand which says, well, you can live in a worldly way and still be a Christian, it's okay. After all, Paul speaks of carnal Christians.

And a smugness on the other hand which says, yes, they are carnal. And of course, if they're carnal, I'm not. I'm spiritual. And therefore I don't have to worry about worldliness in my life. That's what I think are the strength and the weaknesses of that position. Now you go over to the other side. Here's InterVarsity. InterVarsity says, no, you can't distinguish between Christians in that fashion because if you're born again, you must be going on with the Lord. You must acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christ is no savior if Christ is not the Lord.

And at that point I speak positively of InterVarsity. I say that is absolutely right. You're a Christian, you're regenerate. It's impossible to think of a regenerate person not going on with the Lord in some fashion, beginning to grow, beginning to hunger and thirst after righteousness. If those things aren't present in your life, you're not saved.

You're not saved just because you give mental assent to something. You're saved because you have the life of Christ within, and the life of Christ, because it is the life of Christ, hungers and thirsts after righteousness. And so there must be discipleship.

Yet I suppose there is a certain sense in which there can be smugness here too. And the smugness perhaps is along these lines. Here's somebody who makes profession of faith, but who is living in what is apparently a non-Christian way. We can be very superior at that point and say, well, they're just not saved.

But in point of fact, they may be. And what they need is Christian fellowship and help and nurture and so forth, that they might grow and perhaps enjoy the kind of spiritual advantages that we ourselves have. When you put that in the context of what Paul is saying, this is not all that difficult.

What Paul is saying is that these Christians in Corinth were acting like unbelievers. And I ask the question, don't you ever know of Christians who act like unbelievers? Of course you do. Well, they're worldly. They're acting in a carnal way. That doesn't mean that there's a second separate category of Christians. It's Christians acting the way they shouldn't be acting.

What they have to do is get out of that. They do have to change. And if they are really born again, they will change. And you say, well, in what way are they acting like unbelievers? Paul spells it out. He says different things that they're doing. They have shallow teaching. That is, they think the world's wisdom is great, and they don't know any of the deep things of God. And he says they have divisions in the church, which grew out of their own pride. And that's bad. And they're acting like the world in that respect. And they are very, very proud of what they know.

I would say that characterizes much of the modern church. You want to talk about the modern church, and I don't mean the modern liberal church, I mean the modern evangelical church. That characterizes much of the modern evangelical church. Shallow doctrinal teaching, divisions based on rivalries among men and parties, and pride in the world's wisdom.

And perhaps that's why the church is so weak. That's why the church has been failing to make a stronger impact upon the world. Isn't it proper to say that the evangelical church today is a worldly church in many, many ways? And yet it is a true church of Jesus Christ. And the kind of things that Paul says in the first chapter of First Corinthians can certainly be said about it.

It doesn't do any good, you see, to say, well, it's not a true church. What you have to say is, come on, those of you who are really believers, start acting like believers. And stop acting like the world. And of course, that's precisely what Paul is writing the letter to get them to do.

Now, he goes on in the second section to talk about the Christian ministry. The reason he talks about the ministry, and he's going to do it more in the next chapter, is that part of their worldliness has been seen in their dividing up of loyalties within their church in terms of whether they preferred Paul and his teaching and methods, or Apollos and his teaching and methods, or perhaps Peter, Cephas, for his teaching and his methods.

I guess if we looked at what these men taught so very clearly, we could say that there were certain differences among them. Paul himself acknowledges certain differences in saying that he came to lay a foundation and Apollos came to build on the foundation. That has something to do with the doctrines that are taught. Building foundations as opposed to foundational foundations.

But you see, the point Paul is making here when he talks about the Christian ministry is that the ministry is one. The first thing he says about ministers is that ministers are servants. Harry Ironside, in his discussion of this passage, says that that alone should rebuke the Corinthians and rebuke anybody today that divides up among loyalties to different teachers or pastors or leaders within the church.

He says, imagine a family, a large family that has a lot of servants. And the family is all divided because some of them prefer one servant, and others prefer another servant. He says that's just ludicrous. That's all backwards. And yet that's what happens in the church when men and women line up over against one teacher and in favor of another.

In the history of the church, there have been various approaches to this matter of ministers and their relationship to congregations. John Stott discusses that very carefully in one of his books called One People. He says, it's gone like this: there is an error on the one side that he terms clericalism. It's where the ministers run the show. It's their church, they do what they want.

That has historical roots. Probably grew out of a tendency in the early church to try and pattern the Christian ministry on the Old Testament priestly system. Certainly that's where the Roman Catholic Church got its ideas of the priesthood because in the Old Testament system, the priests alone had the right to offer the sacrifices. In Catholicism, it was assumed by a carryover that the priests alone had the right to offer the mass, conceived as a sacrifice.

And so, the priests took that to themselves, and because they could dispense the mass, they could dispense salvation, and a whole body of theology grew up to support this kind of clerical approach. Then, there have been reactions against that, and the reactions against that have been what John Stott calls anti-clericalism. That is, if the clergy are that bad or messing things up as they do when they try to take over in a way they shouldn't take over, then the proper thing to do is get rid of the clergy.

And so there have been movements in the church that have done that. They've said, we don't want to have ministers. That's not biblical. Ministers get in the way. Ministers are no good. All of us are ministers. Let's get rid of the clergy. And that isn't any good either because the Bible has established the clergy for certain roles.

Well, then people have come along and said, well, if we've got to have both, if we have to have clergy and laity, let's at least divide it up. Let's say, look, you've got your job here, and this is your defined role. And you've got your job here, and this is your defined role. You stay off my turf and I'll stay off your turf, and that's how we'll have harmony in the church of Jesus Christ. That's dualism.

And that's not the biblical pattern either. What is the biblical pattern? Well, Paul says it, verse 5. "What after all is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe." That's his emphasis. The ministers in the church of Jesus Christ are servants. And the role that we sustain one another is that of servant, even as Jesus Christ himself, who came not to be ministered unto but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Now, the second thing he says about the ministry is its unity. It's what I mentioned a moment ago. Servants, yes, but servants for the same end. Here he brings in two interesting images. One is an image of farming. He uses it elsewhere. He says, look, it's true that there are different functions in the ministry. Some are called to do one thing and some another. Some come and plant.

I suppose if he had elaborated it, he could have said some come and break up the soil before the planting even is done. Some do those jobs. And then once the planting takes place, there are others who come along and they reap. And some who come along and water, which is what Apollos did. But he says, who is it that makes it grow? Is it Paul who makes the seed grow? No. Is it Apollos who makes the seed grow? No. Apollos can't make it grow any more than I can. Who makes the seed grow? God makes it grow.

And so, not only are we servants of the church, we are servants of God, and we serve the same purpose, namely to see a harvest. And we all bring whatever gifts God has given us and whatever assignments that he has assigned to us in order that that might happen. The second image he uses is the image of building.

He gets into it briefly in verse 9, sort of a carryover, one image spilling over on another. "We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field." He says, "God's building." And now he goes on to talk about the building because his mind is often in that direction. He says, you know, when you put up a building, there are architects, there are people who lay foundations, and there are those who build upon that.

And he says, well, that's all it is. That's all that happens in the church. Those whom God gives as servants of the church in the ministry simply take those different parts.

Now I come to the third section. And this is the second area in this chapter where people have been so divided. Here we're talking about people being saved, and as the old King James Bible said, "saved though as by fire." And the question is, can anybody be saved that way? That is without any good works whatsoever.

This is the way that passage has normally been taken. I want to suggest that that's a wrong interpretation of it, but let me explain how it is taken because many people approach it that way. I was in a discussion a year or so ago with the president of a major seminary out on the West Coast. The president of the seminary on the West Coast, and we were talking about regeneration and what it ought to mean.

And I think we got into the discussion because we were talking about the Lordship of Christ. And I was saying, you can't have Christ as savior unless he's Lord. If you believe in a Christ who is not Lord, you're believing in a false Christ. You can't have salvation without discipleship. And he was opposing that. He was saying that that is salvation by works. You're saying that you're saved by what you do.

And in support of his position, namely that you could be saved without showing any smidgen whatsoever of the evidence of the grace of Christ in your life, merely by believing that Jesus is the savior, he quoted this passage. He said, look, here is Paul talking about the Christian, and he's saying, he does so in emphatic language, that it's possible to spend a whole life building a worldly building and have it all perish in the final judgment.

So you don't have a single thing to show for a lifetime of what you pretended was Christian service. "You're saved, but so as by fire." You get into heaven by even less than the skin of your teeth. You get in there leaving absolutely everything behind. And I was appalled to have anybody suggest that. I was appalled theologically, because regeneration has to mean that you're different.

You know, it's true we're justified by grace through faith, but nobody is justified who is not regenerate. Jesus said you must be born again. If you're born again, there must be differences. The very fact that you're born again is a difference, and certain things have to flow from that new life of Christ. Even the thief on the cross, though he was saved at the last extremity, showed a difference in his life. It would be interesting to study what that thief said and point to the evidences of the grace, the fruit of the spirit there in his life, even in the last few minutes before he died.

But I looked at this again, and I said, now, if that theology is right, what is Paul talking about when he talks about a person building on this foundation? In the one case, building something of gold, silver, and precious stones that's going to last. And the other case, building wood, hay, and stubble, all of which is going to be burned up in the judgment.

And then I read it carefully. And I read it in the context of what Paul is saying, and I discovered that Paul is not talking about personal salvation. He's not talking about an individual in good works and all of that. Paul is talking about the Christian ministry. He's not talking about a minister who for the sake of argument shows absolutely no evidence of the grace of God in his life. Nobody is saved who doesn't have evidence of the grace of God in his life. He's not talking about that at all.

He's talking about a man in the ministry who builds improperly in his responsibility for building the church of Jesus Christ. In other words, who conducts his ministry on a worldly basis. And what's going to be the result of that? The work is not going to last. I say, you know anybody who builds like that? I don't want to name names, but I can think of many people who do that.

They look at the task of ministering the word within the context of a particular church, and they say, oh, this isn't moving fast enough for me. They look at the world that puts such a premium on success and growth, and they say, oh, we've got to see better results than this, faster results than this. So they say, what can we do to get the people in?

And so they begin to think of the world's ways of doing it. They say, well, you know, people are interested in concerts today, rock music and such. Let's have concerts in the church. So they give Sunday night over to the concerts. And then they get people for a while that come for concerts and fade away. And then they say, well, that isn't quick enough. Let's do something else.

And so they look out to the world and they say, well, let's try this, that seems to work. And so they put on a big show. And it works for a while. But you know it doesn't last. I've observed churches go downhill that way. Sometimes churches that have been hallmarks of godliness and pillars of theological and spiritual strength in past years. They get somebody in who, well, I would say doesn't quite have it, at least not the way the men that preceded him did.

He doesn't know the word well enough to preach it well, and he doesn't know the theology well enough to really communicate it to his people. And so he goes after these other things, the world's methods. And oh, he maintains a certain level of excitement in this way, but the spiritual content and strength of the church shifts, and the godly fade away, and others come in to take their places. And then pretty soon he goes, and the thing falls off. And they bring somebody else in at a lower level. And within two or three generations of ministers, the church is gone. It doesn't have anything anymore.

He's built, he's built with wood, hay, and stubble, but it's all been burnt up, you see, in the world. That's what Paul's talking about. And he's saying, look, if you have any responsibility as a minister, as a teacher, as a parent, be careful to build well. You don't have to build in a flashy manner, but you do have to build with solid material.

And you have to take time to do it. A person can throw up a straw building in a hurry. There it is. Then the big bad wolf comes along, and he huffs and puffs and it all blows down. It takes much more time to lay bricks and to do it well. But Paul says that's what you ought to do. You ought to realize that you're not building for one year, two years, six months, or even ten years. You're building for eternity.

What you're trying to do is build the theology of the word of God, the dynamic of the gospel into individuals who are eternal souls. So you don't have to see it right away. You just build it right. You take your time. You teach it carefully. You share it. You lay that brick by brick. Then you allow God to bring the increase in his own time. And God will do that.

This is the way I'm convinced that churches have to be built. What's important is not how fast we do it, but whether we do it right. And if we do it right, God does bless it. Over the years, there's growth, and it's solid growth. And the people who are trained and grow within that context go out to influence people far beyond any expectation that you might have had.

That's what Paul's talking about, and that's what we want to do. Well, I come to the very end. And this is the conclusion. And Paul brings it back to this matter of divisions again, and to the world's wisdom, and to the unity of the church. It's all wrapped up here in what is really a very brilliant paragraph.

And he's saying, look, I leave you with this. Think how foolish these divisions are. First of all, they're based upon the world's way of doing things, and the world's way of doing things is folly in the sight of God. You don't want to be like that, he says. He says, you want to follow after God. Look, God catches the wise in their craftiness. He turns the wisdom of the world to self-evident foolishness before everybody.

And so these divisions are part of that. He says, you don't want to be part of that. And then he says, secondly, "When you choose in the church between one man and another man, or one thing and another thing." He says, what you're really doing is opting for a part rather than for the whole.

Because if Paul is a true minister of Jesus Christ, and if Apollos is a true minister of Jesus Christ, and Peter, and whoever else it may be, is ministering at that particular time, then they are all yours. The gifts God has given are all yours. And you're richer by having all of them and poorer by merely choosing one.

And then lest we look at that merely on the human, earthly level, he wraps it all up in the Godhead. Saying, look then, don't boast about men. Why? Because "everything is yours. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present, or the future, all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God."

There are no greater riches than that, or no greater destiny than that. And there's no greater cure for the kind of divisions that harm our church and discredit our ministry.

Dr. James Boice: Let us pray.

Dr. James Boice: Our Father, we thank you for this teaching about the necessary unity we need within the body of Christ. Our Father, grant that it might not be true of us that we divide over one thing or another, and so fail to see the gifts that have been given to various ones of your ministers.

But rather, our Father, grant that we might grow, each part supplying that which it has been sent by you to supply. And that together we might see the grain ripen in the field and come to a great harvest. And together we might see the building grow, a great temple in which Jesus Christ is worshiped and honored.

And so exist here on earth, even in our imperfect state, as a testimony to your great grace. For we pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. Fellowship is related to what we do in common, sharing our experiences with one another. And we must work together to establish that kind of unity among believers. Learn more with this week's CD offer entitled, The Fifth Mark of the Church: Unity. We're offering this free CD as our way of saying thanks for listening.

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Guest (Male): I'm Mark Daniels. The Apostle Paul called himself the servant of Christ, but in his day there really were no servants, only slaves. The Greek word Paul used is better translated as underrower. That's the slave who occupied the lowest position in the galley of a ship powered by the sweat of men. Join Dr. James Boice as he examines Paul's evaluation of himself as a minister of Christ. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.