How to Study the Bible (2) (28.8.1984) — Nigel Lee

Reading Philippians Through Repeated Key Words

I would say that there are hunks of Matthew where the word disciple, disciple, disciple comes in great clusters. It's fun working with a concordant sometimes on this because you can see that a particular key word gets mentioned again and again and again and again within the bounds of a few chapters and they're not taught.

And you may think that perhaps that's for a reason, that the writer was focusing on that term at that time for good purpose. The way you think as a Christian is obviously part of this, isn't it, and you've got certain examples.

Philippians Three and the Value of Knowing Christ

Let me move you on a bit. We haven't completed the exercise, I've just shown you some of the way in which batting ideas around is good. What do you think about chapter three? What on earth is all that about?

And how is it different from chapter two? What is chapter three about? Show me from the text. Does it divide up and if so, how? What will you entitle it? The value of knowing Christ. Yes? Now why should he suddenly start to talk about the value of knowing Christ at this point?

Why doesn't he talk about the second coming? That following the example of Christ in the early verses of chapter two is likely to cause you any problems. You can't live up to it. So one problem may be frustration.

This is another very interesting thing of it. You get Paul answering in the successive verses the kind of questions that what he's just said will produce. Now do you think chapter three does answer the frustration of...

It doesn't matter what motive you have. As long as you're preaching Christ.

That's in chapter one, I think, is it? Or am I mistaking? Verse 17?

He's talking about watching out for the dogs and those who are preaching.

Yes, watch out for the dogs and watch out for the concision and so on. We are the true circumcision. We'll come to that in a minute. The business about, well I'm just happy that people are proclaiming the gospel even if some of them are doing it for the wrong reasons.

That comes before in the gospel work chapter. So he's talked about gospel work and the hurly burly of it. Then he's gone on to talk about the mind of the worker, humbling himself, serving others, abating himself.

Are there any frustrations that that might cause apart from feeling you're not up to it? Gabby? What is one of the worst things that you have to bear with when you do what Christ did between verses five and eight?

Who, sorry? Saying to a degree you feel you don't keep up to the example. But I'm thinking of something else. What is the greatest difficulty about being a servant? Nobody appreciates you. I mean you decide to humble yourself, but then you have to live with it.

Anybody can humble himself if he gets praised the next day for having been so wonderfully humble. If the exaltation would come a little quicker, we'd prefer it. If God would only exalt me today because I humbled myself yesterday, well I could live with days like that.

That sort of feeling. Is this chapter psychologically going to help me with that problem? So let's give an example or maybe you want to give an example. You commit yourself to an extra bout of toilet cleaning or washing up or endlessly on your team there are certain little jobs that nobody ever seems to notice, but you always do, so you do them, but nobody appreciates you for doing them.

What's the difficulty about that? Going on doing it without appreciating it at a deep theological level, he says in fact the whole basis of your life has changed. It's not for outward public acclamation, what a great person you are.

You are from now on to learn tough lessons, but to learn to be motivated by another goal altogether. It is the secret of the servant of God. What is the goal? Yes, now preach that to me a little bit, sure.

How is that to come about? How does, well preach Paul's sermon for him. How does Paul, having laid aside the goal of public righteousness and being thought, you know, socially, spiritually so superior, what are you going to satisfy yourself with?

Will you read for us from verse 7 to verse 10 in a good strong voice? Now he's talking about two different things, isn't he? Putting aside the righteousness of the law, this is a matter of his legal salvation, if you like.

All my being a Benjaminite and being a Pharisee and learning the law and etc. etc. doesn't save me. I have a righteousness that comes by faith it's given to me. But I also want to go on, not just to be declared righteous, but to go on to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.

This is a tough thing for us as servants. That he suffers, often lonely, often nobody notices, misunderstood, just gets on with it. You must have found this in your months on the ship. Sometimes you have to do jobs and you just get presumed on and nobody cares.

They just do it. How are you going to survive such a thing? Any of us going to survive in a way when there's jobs to be done and precious little glory being offered. It isn't like the Olympics when they're going to put up national flags and you can mount the podium and you came third in the humility stakes and get a bronze medal.

It's simply a question of knowing Christ in his death. So we're back to the idea of chapter 2. This is how he died. He made a decision, he followed through with it, he humbled himself. Now I want to know Christ in his death.

I want the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed unto his death. I want the cross inexperienced as the means whereby I get to know him better. Is there anything else in the chapter, that chapter 3, that will indicate to me that my thinking is on the right line?

I'm beginning to see how in chapter 3 Paul is dealing with the psychological problems aroused by his teaching in chapter 2, vast paradox. Can anybody explain why he puts verses 17 to 21 in at the end of chapter 3 and not in the middle of chapter 2?

The particular thing that grieves him in those verses is what some people are doing. And it isn't that they're enemies of God. They haven't become atheists. It isn't that they're enemies of the church.

They haven't become persecutors. What are they enemies of? Verse 18, enemies of the cross. What they do not like is God's way of spiritual progress. It is the cross that they object. They do not want to know Christ in the fellowship of his sufferings.

They don't want the road that he took. God wants to reveal himself to you. God wants you to know him. But that road involves crucifixion. Paul says I've put away external glory as a thing I'm going to really go for.

Instead I want to know Christ. That he is a Christ who humbled himself. A Christ who kept silent like a lamb before its shearers is done. And I want to know Christ the road of the cross. And I tell you brethren he says.

I tell you of many who, and I've got tears in my eyes while I tell you. They have become enemies of the cross. Perhaps they started out well as Christians. Brethren be ye imitators together of me and mark those which so walk even as you have us for an example for many walk of whom I told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

Perhaps they seemed to set out as believers. But they were enemies of the cross. Their heart never really changed. Their end is perdition. Their God is the belly. They gloried in shame. They mined earthly things.

Our citizenship is a heaven. This is revolution isn't it? This kind of stuff will get a servant to keep serving. Because let's be frank. It's not always easy to serve people. To serve the Lord and to know the Lord in that service will psychologically strengthen you to serve people who don't appreciate you always, who take you for granted, who despise you as a servant, who treat you like a servant.

Sometimes we want, you know, we try to serve, we don't want to be treated like a servant. But to know God in that. The one who became a servant, who took upon himself the form of a servant and went as far as death.

Do you see how the ideas of chapter three are built up on what he's been saying in chapter two? Are you with me? So the idea crucial to Bible study, which I try to get across to you, is that you should in your approach to these books expect the thing to be packed together in a sensible order.

It doesn't just sit and think, you know, what shall I write them a chapter on next? Flick through his notes. Oh here's a good one. I wrote something I missed in Ephesians last week. Let me preach that to them for a bit.

You look very, very puzzled. Please do. I'm a great believer in the value of heresy. You're one of those products of a Christian upbringing, Andrew, that has somehow accepted into your subconscious the majesty and the glory of Christ.

You don't mind Christ being up on the pedestal perfect. It's frustrating when you see the odd human being getting up near there as well. Now do you find anything here, I'll be very honest with this, about a psychological problem that you have?

And I think actually one or two people have to say it. Do you find anything in the book that helps you through that psychological problem? Yeah, in verse twelve. Not that I'm already Immediately, wonderful.

The very moment the problem is arising as a result of those earlier powerful verses nine and ten. Paul knows exactly everything. Don't worry chaps, I'm not up there. Well done. I count myself not to have apprehended.

This is psychologically brilliant, isn't it? Yes, I keep backing on. Every day I try again. And I press on towards the goal. And it's psychologically right too, isn't it? This is why messages sometimes, as I've heard in O .M. conferences after you've had perhaps almost more challenge than you can take, messages on what a wretched failure I am, 23 reasons why I'm about to resign from the movement, are enormously helpful for a certain kind of person, aren't they?

And probably for more of us than we realise we need. Yes. So I hope what we've done thus far, in just looking at the broad structure of the thing, is to show that it's psychologically going in the order it should.

Philippians Four and the Mind of the Christian Worker

What about chapter four? You'll be able to help me here. Don't be too discouraged. I find problems with the last chapters of Paul's epistles. Because they always seem to be a sort of, they don't seem to fit into my theory.

They're much more like a bunch of scattered thoughts. Can you pick out from chapter four things that do follow on from what we've been seeing so far? Talking about the mind of the Christian worker. God's work in your heart at the same time as your outward work.

How you cope with the problems of being a servant who's trying to walk in the footsteps. What happens to you if you don't? Now what? What's all chapter four about? Yes, we may find that the whole chapter is about different ways of thinking.

A whole bunch of extra things that he's packed in on top of a shopping bag. What were you going to say? So you see it as sort of like a musical epilogue, yes, just picking up some of the themes that have been running and just playing the tune together for the last time.

Okay. Well, that's the sort of way I tend to approach last chapter's puzzle, me. He seems to sort of throw up a number of things, often very personal. Yes, let's go back to the beginning then. This is now about the third time we've gone back to the beginning.

You've got some idea of the difference between this epistle and, say, Colossians. You've seen how it breaks down into certain sections that seem to hang together. You've seen a little bit of the way the thought flow runs through it.

As we work from the large to the small, we now want to see if some more of the details fit our overall sense of patterns. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, or bond servants, or doulosses. Anything strange about that?

You look in the bedroom, you look everywhere, and you finally discover the thing hanging in the door lock. The next time you go out, the key to the house is still stuck in the door. It often happens, I find, that I would tell you that the key to some of Paul's epistles is ticked right in at the beginning.

You don't see it there until you've read the thing through a few times. But he very often starts his epistles by calling himself an apostle, doesn't he? A great note of authority. Just a few, he doesn't.

He calls himself a bond servant, a doulos. That is a pretty low term, you know. A doulos was the absolute possession of another person. You see, if I was Mike's servant, Mike was the lord of the manor here, and I came into the office in the morning for instructions, and he'd say, oh, I'm going down to the market today, buy me a new pair of sandals, a couple of bullocks, a toga, and three servants.

Three doulosses. They were the sort of thing that were on sale in the market. As you went up and down Sainsbury's, you'd come to the doulos section, and you'd bought your cheeses, and you'd bought your bread, and you could buy a couple of servants if you wanted.

And they had no more worth and value than anything else that you could buy in the market. You could buy bullocks and servants for the same money in the same way. A doulos has no rights over his future, he has no choices that can be made, he simply is the possession of the boss.

And Paul is starting this one calling himself a doulos. It is remarkable, writing to Greeks with their centuries-old traditions of valuing freedom, independence of choice, dignity, and he says, here I have two lots, one servant to Jesus Christ.

And then he writes to the bishops and deacons. Why? He doesn't very often address the bishops and deacons directly by mentioning them at the start of an epistle. Here he's picked them out. Maybe because this lack of service thing was coming from them a little bit.

They are to be reminded that the role of leadership in the Christian church is to serve, isn't it? Do you remember in Acts chapter 6, the apostles, loaded with practical problems, and so they were to elect deacons who would serve tables, while we, they said in verse 4, serve literally.

The word of God. Elders and deacons, bishops and deacons are to serve. Some serve tables, others serve prescriptives. He picks that out at the beginning, and then starts his prayer. I just want to say one other thing before we break for a quick drink, and then we'll start looking at some more of these things in detail.

I picked this out of William Barclay. Now there's a heretical commentator for you. I'm going to make a confession, please forgive me. He's one of my favourites. His doctrine is on occasions off the wall, but for his knowledge of the Greek world, and for his insights into what particular phrases in the New Testament may mean in context, tremendous.

I remember noticing that he picked out nine occasions in which Paul speaks of joy in this epistle. Nine-fold joy. Chapter 1, verse 4, he talks about his joy in prayer. He enjoys praying for the Philippians.

Verse 18, his joy in evangelism. Verse 5, the sheer joy in believing. Do you get that ever? Please reassure me that you do, now and again. I feel rather glad that you're a believer. In chapter 2, verse 2, he refers to the joy of watching other believers grow.

That's great. To see someone converted, beginning to grow, come on a whim, go out, work somewhere, join one of the ships or something, that is a thrill. And Paul knew that joy too. He speaks in verse 17 of the joy that comes from suffering for others.

Chapter 2, verse 17. Yea, if I am offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I join and rejoice with you all. That's getting a bit beyond me. That's not so easy, is it? To rejoice being crucified for the sake of other people.

Chapter 2, verse 28, joy in returning workers, coming back from the mission field, or from being out on time of service. Joy. It's great frustration to me when folks come back from the summer campaign, and maybe I recruited a bunch of them, and talked to them a little bit, seen them go out, and when they come back, you know, you've only got an hour or two before they have to return home to England.

But to hear some of the stories, it is a thrill to see folks coming back from the field, to hear of God's provision. It's great. He talks in verse 29, chapter 2, of joy in hospitality. In chapter 4, verse 1, joy over our spiritual children.

In chapter 4, between verses 10 and 19, joy in receiving a gift. Again, a lot of happiness in the epistle. But we can spell out different things that he is particularly pleased about. Now let's pray. Do you need more than we had?

Good. And if some have to go to do duties, I don't mind, I understand. So I just tipped her out, and as one brother has said to me, I won't assume that it's because I've said something heretical. Any questions or problems so far?

Anything that you want to throw back at me? Anna had her hand up first, yes? The question is, was there any Jewish influence on the Philippians? Often you do find this cropping up in different churches.

Jewish Influence, Circumcision, and the True People of God

It's obviously clearest in the Galatian epistle. Was there any Jewish influence on the Philippians? You've pointed to chapter 3. Difficulty with Jewish influence is that in some ways it is exactly like any other human religious system.

The way the Jews were living, it had become that way. And so there are common features between all the world religions in that they tend to concentrate on externals, on righteousness measured by human standards.

And Paul is revealing the radically revolutionary way of Christ and knowing Christ and the value of that. Now there is likely to be less strong Jewish influence in this particular Roman colony. I've no doubt that there were Jews around, I mean they were all over the Middle East.

But it doesn't seem to me to be addressing that primarily. The circumcision, the dogs, but that's about all that we get in it, isn't it? Let me come back to you with a question. What is circumcision all about?

The sign of a covenant that they have with God is one suggested answer. Are you happy with that? People remarked, yes, I think those two answers have a good deal in common. It is indelible. You can't do away with circumcision once it has taken place.

And it would be a constant reminder, particularly among uncircumcised people, that you were different. You were different because God has made a covenant with you. That's obviously part of it. Yes, Kathy?

Setting apart of the circumcised nation. Yes, Pradeep? And God made the covenant with Abraham and his descendants. Yes. Let us just remind ourselves historically of the origins of circumcision. Run through the life of Abraham very, very quickly.

Abraham, the Covenant, and the Judgment of the Flesh

God, you remember, one day in chapter 12 of Genesis, proposed marriage to Abraham. Marvellous day. Abraham? I don't know, I mean, how did you propose marriage, Mike? She had a grant with me in Canada.

Really? Where was she at the time? This was in India, was it? In the officer's mess on the Lobbos. In the officer's mess on the Lobbos, you suggested that the pair of you go away to Canada and live together.

Yes, absolutely. Chris Sherwood married me in Canada and she took it that way. So you offered her a new place to live, the only condition being that she would have to allow you to marry her. Chris was very well.

And this young lady, she agreed to this deal. New country, new name, new family. That is actually what God does in chapter 12. He says Abraham, I will, I will make you great. I will protect you. You will have children.

Do you want us to read it? Genesis chapter 12, listen to God proposing. The Lord said unto Abraham, now I want you to leave your country and come away with me. And I want you to leave your family too.

Join my family. Come out from your father's house to the land that I will show thee. Canada in this case. And I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name different. Great.

You'll take my name. I will even make you a blessing to other people. And I will protect you. Oh boy, I'll bless the one that blesses you and the one that curses you better watch out. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

The beginnings of the bride of Christ, there's God proposing marriage. Change your name, change your place, change your family, change everything, look after you, protect you, love you, care for you and so on.

Now the story of Abraham's life divides into three, each section beginning with problems that Abraham had with his wife. You get problems in chapter 12, you get them again in chapter 16, you get them again in chapter 20.

I mean I haven't got time to even get you half-way excited about this. But what God is doing is giving Abraham a vision of marriage at one level and then asking him to work out the implications of that spiritual vision at the level of his own marriage.

Now actually he tells lies about Sarah on occasions. He allows her to be taken off into Pharaoh's palace. He puts her aside and takes another girl instead. And he tells another bunch of lies about her.

And sometimes it's a problem of insecurity, sometimes it's just the impetuosity of his own flesh, sometimes he just wants to get a bit wealthy. Frankly in chapter 12 he prostitutes his own wife. Now each time that you get a crisis in Abraham's marriage at this earthly level, it reveals a problem.

Because Abraham isn't just on a physical journey around the Middle East, he's also on that spiritual journey that Christ describes in the Gospels. Comes from the middle of the central section. Abraham, looking at his wife over the cornflakes in the morning, becomes very aware that the dear old girl, I mean she's well into her nineties, still no baby.

Been waiting long time. God gave all kinds of promises. But I mean, well, ninety. So he takes Hagar. In the flesh he does it. Actually Sarah cooperates. And they produce Ishmael. Now the Bible doesn't say an awful lot about Ishmael, but it describes him in Genesis chapter 16 as a wild ass of a young man.

Unbelievable character. I sometimes think we have a few Ishmaels in this movement. He was... I mean he used to let down the tents at night. He used to put sand in the sleeping bags. He put cactuses under the saddles of the camels.

He chased the goats off in the desert. He was... And there's no record of God speaking to Abraham for thirteen years. No record. Can you imagine? Poor old Abraham, with the results of the flesh, growing up in his own family.

This twit, this bonehead. Oh how many times he wished he'd never done it. Nothing but trouble this Ishmael. And then God speaks to him in chapter 17. Genesis chapter 17. Abraham was now 99. I am God Almighty.

Walk before me and be perfect. I will make a covenant with you. What's this covenant all about? Well I will make kings out of you. I will establish my covenant with you. You will have children. Your children will enjoy the land of Canaan and so on and so on.

And the sign of the covenant is that you are to be circumcised. Abraham, are you willing to judge the flesh? To agree with me in my judgments of the flesh. The flesh in the long run produces only irritation, disaster, annoyance, frustration, endless trouble in the future.

Are you willing to be circumcised as a sign that you put no trust in the flesh anymore, Abraham, to accomplish my purposes? Abraham then says, very significantly in verse 18, oh God, that Ishmael might live before you.

Live meaning, inherit the blessing. May Ishmael be the one. Nope, just God, under no circumstances. Sarah shall have the child. And then he agreed to be circumcised. He was finally willing to agree with God's evaluation of what his flesh had produced.

And say, in circumcision, my flesh, what I achieve, going my way, it's nothing. It produces only rubbish in the long run. Circumcision was a mark to every successive generation of Jew that their flesh could not save them.

That going their own way produced only frustration. What the Jews did over the following centuries was to make circumcision perhaps the greatest mark of pride in the flesh that the race possessed. They turned the whole thing on its head, you see, as a mark of not trusting the flesh as it was for Abraham.

That God was going to have to give a child by promise. God was going to save his people only by what he had said and by doing a miracle. Instead they turned circumcision into something that they were proud of.

And they would speak disparagingly of the uncircumcised Philistines. Do you see how they reversed the thing? Now says Paul here in Philippians chapter 3, we believers, we are the true circumcision, let me turn back to the page, we are the circumcision who do three things.

We worship by the spirit of God. God has put his spirit in us as believers. We glory in Christ Jesus, this one who was executed, crucified, spat at by the Romans, despised by our own Sanhedrin. We glory in him.

This must have been a living crucifixion for a man like Paul to go around preaching a crucified Jew as the saviour of the world. And we have no confidence in the flesh. We are the true circumcision. Believers here, I don't care whether you're circumcised or not physically, it doesn't matter, anything.

But we are circumcised in heart when we have said to God, I need your total rescue because I cannot save myself. That, by the way, if I can just bring out another general principle, shows you how increasingly as you go on in Bible study, certain bits of scripture, you feel you've got somewhere, you've understood what's going on.

And they will then illuminate other bits. The Bible is like a rabbit warren. You may jump in through Philippians, but once you get inside the warren, you find that you're led off into 1 Kings 3, Samuel 8, Hezekiah, Exodus, bits and pieces all over here and there, you see.

Well, don't be afraid to follow the news. If it says a little bit about circumcision and you're not quite sure what circumcision is all about, trace it back to the beginning. See what he's talking about.

The New Testament, particularly Paul's letters, will lead you again and again and again into certain passages of the Old Testament. Actually, there's a passage that the end of chapter 3 brings to mind.

Do you remember that character Edlon, the materialistically best off bit? And the people of Israel were oppressed by the Moabites. And there was that unusual character. He was a Benjaminite. Interestingly enough, Paul has just described himself as a Benjaminite.

What was his name? Ehud. He was a left-handed character. And most of the Benjaminites seem to have been left-handed. Can you think of any more Benjaminites in scripture? Saul was a Benjaminite. And this particular Benjaminite came to visit Edlon.

And he had conducted a sort of diplomatic encounter with him. And then, as he was going away, he said, I've just got one final message I want to give. A message I must give it privately. Send all the servants out.

Shut the door. And right through the belly, I have a message for you. The sword. And then he locked the doors behind him and tiptoed off out. The servants presumed that Edlon didn't disturb him for a while.

And eventually discovered that the sword right through the belly of their king. You can ponder that little passage when we read about those whose God is the belly, who mind earthly things, who reject the cross, and contrast it with us, our citizenship is something that God has in hand, is in heaven.

Anyway, don't worry about that. Let's go back to the beginning. We're starting with Paul's prayer. I want to try and proceed through now as much of chapter one as we can in the next half an hour or so in some detail.

You've looked at Paul and Timothy, the servants of Christ Jesus. He mentions particularly the bishops and deacons. They are to be the servants in the church. Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Then Paul's prayer from verses three down to eleven. He starts off by being thankful for the past. I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always in every supplication of mine, on behalf of you all, making my supplication with joy for your fellowship in furtherance of the gospel from the first day right up until now.

That real unity born out of working together that we were thinking of earlier. He speaks in verse four of his joy in the present, and in verse six he speaks of his confidence in the future. I look back with thanks, I enjoy praying for you, I'm confident as I look ahead.

My confidence as I look ahead is not anything to do with your work in the past. My confidence in the future depends entirely on God's work in you. Verse six, that he which started the whole thing will perfect it right up through until the day of Jesus Christ.

God started the work there didn't he? He gave Paul the vision. He took him over to Philippi. God it was who allowed him to be imprisoned. God it was who then controlled the events, the earthquake that smashed the prison that then caused the Philippian jailer to cry out in need.

Will be examined on the day of Jesus Christ. The day when Christ returns. What does it mean for us? Anything? Oh dear you make me frightened. What do you mean by judgement? I thought there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.

Examination of what? Our faith, our works. I mean we might fail. The past mark, tell me the past mark. I'm supposing I haven't. I mean all this talk about judgement and examination, tell me quickly am I to look forward to this or be terrified of it?

Look forward to it. I never look forward to an exam in my life. Reward, now you're on to a very interesting idea. You say you His glory as what? Our Redeemer, what will he have done by then? According to this verse.

Colin, do you think there'll be a lot still to be done? You've got his problem. So we can sort of puzzle along for a bit and then, oh phew, perfect. Now theology at this point is very interesting isn't it?

And there's a lot of I suppose or maybes or perhapses coming in here. He's talking about a wedding day. He's talking about examination day. And you're talking about what? Yes indeed. How can we begin to get something encouraging out of all these different ideas?

I've been redeemed. Not by my works but by the blood of the Lamb. I'm doing my best to do a bit of service for the Lord. I've become a servant. Bad, but anyway, appointed. As a servant is my work ever going to be evaluated?

Well sure. I will be judged one day as a servant. I was judged as a sinner already at Calvary. I will be judged as a servant at the judgment seat of Christ. But in addition to the judgment of me, is there going to be any evaluation of what Christ has done?

And is that going to be evaluated? His work will be evaluated? Interesting. So although I look forward to the judgment day, not as something to be terrified of, it will be a sober occasion, but it will be an opportunity for there to be a public evaluation of God's work in me and the degree to which I have cooperated with that.

Are you happy with that? You look very unhappy. I think I can honestly say that it doesn't cause me any sense of... There are various passages that speak clearly about the evaluation of the service of the believer.

And yet we're reminded, even here in Philippians, that although we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, it is God who works in you. Don't imagine that you're sort of left to run on your own.

God is working in you. Christ has started a good work in you and will bring it through to perfection. So there is one sense in which Christ's own work in the believers is going to be evaluated and be shown to be perfect.

How can he do less than that which is perfect? But I am also going to be evaluated as a servant of God. 1 Corinthians 3, from verse 10 onwards, Paul is speaking there of building on the foundation which is laid, your work in a church.

Paul says, I laid the foundation there in Corinth. No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. But if you come along into the church, well, you're going to build on the foundation I laid.

Some of you may build gold, silver, precious stones. Others of you may build wood, hay, stubble. The whole lot will be put into God's incinerator and some of it will disappear. It will prove to have been not eternal.

It will prove to have been worthless. The man himself will be saved, verse 15, but as through fire. It isn't that you're going to lose your salvation. This is not what that passage is talking about. But it is talking about the evaluation of your work as a Christian.

And to 1 Corinthians 5 talks about the same thing. Romans 14 talks about the same thing. So it's a time for, let me put it this way, for there to be an opportunity for the approval of what the Holy Spirit, what Christ has done in us and through us.

How do you think Paul lived with the knowledge that he had presided over the first Christian martyrdom? He had led a Jewish death squad the length and breadth of those provinces, trying to separate Christian families from each other.

Do you think that Christ only died for your sins up to the point of conversion and from then on you're left to do the best you can on your own? Or do you think that Christ died for your sins after conversion as well?