There are three major responsibilities of a minister. One is a ministry of preaching and teaching. The second is a work of administration so that the organizational aspects of a church are taken care of. The third is a pastoral aspect that concerns things such as visitation. Every minister does some of everything, although it is obviously the case that no minister can do all three perfectly or comprehensively—especially in a church that is larger or that carries on a lot of programs. Consequently, ministers generally talk about these things together and divide up the work. And from there, you have other people in the church who use their gifts within a certain ministry and for the benefit of a smaller number of people. Imagine if all these different people had their own little following from among the congregation. That would be abhorrent to Christ. Instead of that we say, “Look, this is the work that God is doing. We rejoice when He brings in people of various talents and opportunities, and puts them to work here in what is not our vineyard, but which is the vineyard of the Lord.”
We come now to the third section, which is the second area in this chapter where people have been so divided. Here we are talking about people being saved, as the King James Bible says, “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 this passage has normally been taken. I want to suggest that this is a wrong interpretation of it, but let me first explain how most people seem to understand it.
I was in a discussion a year or so ago with the president of a major seminary out on the West Coast. We were talking about regeneration and what it ought to mean. I think we got into the discussion because we were talking about the lordship of Christ. I was saying that one cannot have Christ as Savior unless He is Lord. If you believe in a Christ who is not Lord, you are believing in a false Christ. You cannot have salvation without discipleship.
He was opposing that, because he was maintaining that this is salvation by works, believing that one is saved by what ones does. And in support of his position, namely, that one can be saved without showing any evidence of the grace of Christ in your life, just so long as one believes that Jesus is the Savior, he quoted this passage. He said, “Look, here is Paul talking about the Christian, and he does so in emphatic language. It is possible to spend a whole life building what amounts to a worldly building and have it all perish in the final judgment. You may not have a single thing to show for a lifetime of what you pretended was Christian service. You are 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.
I was appalled to hear anybody suggest that. I was appalled theologically because regeneration has to mean that you are different. It is true, of course, that we are justified by grace through faith; but nobody is justified who is not regenerate. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” If you are born again, there must be differences. The very fact that you are born again is a difference. Certain things have to flow from that new life in Christ. Even the thief on the cross—though he was saved at the last extremity—showed a difference in his life.
As I looked at this passage again in the light of how this seminary president had understood it, I thought, “Now, if that theology is right, what is Paul talking about when he speaks of a person building, in one case, on a foundation that is going to last—what he describes as gold, silver, and precious stones—and, in the other case, building on a foundation that is going to be burned up in the judgment—what he likens to wood, hay, and stubble?” When I read it carefully in the context of what Paul is saying, I discovered that Paul is not talking about personal salvation, and an individual’s presence or absence of good works. Paul is talking about the Christian ministry and how a minister carries out his work. He is writing about a man in the ministry who builds improperly in his responsibility for building the church of Jesus Christ, in other words, one who conducts his ministry on a worldly basis. What is going to be the result of that? The work is not going to last.
