I Corinthians 3:11-15. Do you deny the judgment of God?
AMEN!
From NYer: “I Corinthians 3:11-15. Do you deny the judgment of God?”
Here is what Corinthians 3 actually says - with NOTHING about Purgatory:
“After all, who is Apollos? And who is Paul? We are simply God’s servants, by whom you were led to believe. Each one of us does the work which the Lord gave him to do: I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plant, but it was God who made the plant grow. The one who plants and the one who waters really do not matter. It is God who matters, because he makes the plant grow. There is no difference between the one who plants and the one who waters; God will reward each one according to the work each has done. For we are partners working together for God, and you are God’s field.
You are also God’s building. Using the gift that God gave me, I did the work of an expert builder and laid the foundation, and someone else is building on it. But each of you must be careful how you build. For God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid. Some will use gold or silver or precious stones in building on the foundation; others will use wood or grass or straw. And the quality of each person’s work will be seen when the Day of Christ exposes it. For on that Day fire will reveal everyone’s work; the fire will test it and show its real quality. If what was built on the foundation survives the fire, the builder will receive a reward. But if your work is burnt up, then you will lose it; but you yourself will be saved, as if you had escaped through the fire.”
In context, Paul is obviously saying workers who are building up the church - “For we are partners working together for God, and you are God’s field. You are also God’s building.” - need to be careful how they build. If they do so in God’s way, building with stone or metal, their work will last and be approved by God.
If they build using their own natural strength, building with wood or straw, then it will not last. Their futile man-powered efforts will be judged, and destroyed.
“And the quality of each person’s work will be seen when the Day of Christ exposes it. For on that Day fire will reveal everyone’s work; the fire will test it and show its real quality. If what was built on the foundation survives the fire, the builder will receive a reward.”
Those who have built well will receive a reward. But those who built in manners not approved by God will have “its real quality” revealed - as having been dross.
“each man s work will become evident” - NASB, 1 Cor 3.12. Evident: “plain or clear to the sight or understanding”. We judge now in a worldly way, but God’s judgment will make plain to all who built according to His will.
And then the man who built badly...will suffer torment? No, not hardly - yet there will be loss:
“It is the tragedy of a fruitless life, of a minister who built so poorly on the true foundation that his work went up in smoke. His sermons were empty froth or windy words without edifying or building power. They left no mark in the lives of the hearers. It is the picture of a wasted life. The one who enters heaven by grace, as we all do who are saved, yet who brings no sheaves with him. There is no garnered grain the result of his labours in the harvest field. There are no souls in heaven as the result of his toil for Christ, no enrichment of character, no growth in grace.”
http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/rwp/view.cgi?bk=45&ch=3
But there is NOTHING in here about incomplete punishment for sin, nor is sin being addressed at all. The worker is still saved. He still enters the Kingdom - but he does so empty handed. But there is not a whiff of “a place or condition of punishment for those who “...have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions...”
NOTHING in 1 Corinthians 3 suggests ANY man who believes has been imperfectly saved, or that the Blood of the Lamb was insufficient sacrifice.
Thank God!
This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart,
And on their mind I will write them,
He then says,
And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.
Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. - Heb 10
“I will remember no more”. It doesn’t get any better than that! God has forgotten my sin, because of what Jesus Christ has DONE.
You couldn't find a purgatory in those verses even if you recruited Sherlock Holmes to help you...
Those verses speak NOTHING of a man getting burned...Not even sun burn...No judgment whatsoever on the man...
Not only is there no punishment, the bad works that you guys want Jesus to judge you by are gone...They have disappeared in the smoke...They got burned up...
Twisting those plain, clear scriptures to mean a Catholic purgatory falls under one catagory...
2Co_2:17 For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.
Gal 1:7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Gal 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.