1 Corinthians 3:14 Commentary and Bible Study

This is a warning to all preachers, but also to all of us. ‘He shall receive a reward.’ What is that? ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’, and the joy of seeing all the people in his church. Many have come to the Lord maybe through his striving and struggling and praying for them. They are safe in glory. That is a reward. But verse 15 is about the truly saved person who has been foolish as a preacher, and he has gone astray, and has let in the bands and the world and everything else, though he is saved. He has diverted the gospel and he has gone the way of these mega-churches, and made it all so easy, and yet nobody is truly saved. His church is full of nominal believers. ‘If any man's work shall be burned’ – the truly saved but mistaken preacher – ‘he shall suffer loss.’ It will be terrible in the last day to realise that your church was phoney, that the people were not saved, ‘but he himself shall be saved.’ Just him, yet so as by fire. That blazing light of the presence of God and of Christ, that blazing light will purge him, and before he is admitted into glory where there is no heartache and no sadness, he will repent of all he ever did which was wrong. He will be purged and he will be glad and saved throughout all eternity, because he was a believer, but his work cannot go with him.