1 Corinthians 3:15

To understand the picture which the apostle draws of the opposite result, we must undoubtedly suppose the workmen occupying the portion of the building which has been committed to them, and to which they are putting the last touch. In proportion as the fire, set to the building, consumes the combustible materials of which the bad workman has made use, the latter of course finds himself in danger of perishing along with his work; if he is saved, it can only be by escaping through the flames, and thanks to the solidity of the foundation.

The second future κατακαήσεται, shall be burned, is an ancient form (Homer, Hesiod) which had been replaced by the first future καυθήσομαι, and which reappears in the later Greek writers. By the perishable work of this labourer, Paul understands the Christian life without seriousness, humility, self-denial, personal communion with Christ, which has been produced among the members of the Church by the ministry of a preacher solely concerned to move sensibility, to charm the mind and please his audience.

The loss, ζημία, with which he is threatened, consists above all in the proved uselessness of his labour and in its destruction, which will take place under his own eyes. With what pain will he contemplate the merely external fruits of his brilliant or profound preaching passing away in smoke! Then he will see himself refused the reward of the faithful servant, the honourable position in Christ's kingdom, to which he imagined himself entitled: the payment of his cheque will be refused him.

But the apostle adds that this worker shall be saved. Chrysostom and the old Greek commentators understood the word save here in the sense of keep: “kept in Gehenna to suffer for ever.” But the pronoun αὐτός establishes an evident contrast between the reward lost and the person saved; then the verb σώζειν, to save, is always taken in a favourable sense; Paul would have required to say in the sense indicated τηρηθήσεται, shall be kept; finally, the διὰ πυρός, through fire, is not identical with ἐν πυρί, in fire. The apostle certainly means, that though this workman has put bad materials into the building, yet because he built on the foundation he will not be given over to condemnation. But if he reaches salvation, it will only be through the furnace, like one who is obliged, in order to save his life, to pass through the flames. This furnace comprehends all the terrors of this judgment: the shame of this revelation, the horror caused by the look of the offended Judge, the grief of seeing the work on which he congratulated himself reduced to nothingness, and the souls whom he thought he had built up incapable of undergoing the last trial, and lost partly through his fault...! “I have searched myself and I have found myself,” said a dying pastor; “this is all the punishment God reserves for me.” Were not these the first kindlings of the fire of which the apostle here speaks?

Some Catholic commentators have thought to find in the words, as through fire, a proof in favour of the doctrine of purgatory, and the Council of Florence, in 1439, based the dogma on this passage (Edwards). This is to forget, 1. that the fire is allegorical like the building; 2. that it is only teachers who are in question; 3. that the trial indicated is a means of valuation, not of purification; 4. that this fire is lighted at Christ's coming, and consequently does not yet burn in the interval between the death of Christians and that advent; 5. that the salvation of the worker, of which Paul speaks, takes place not by, but in spite of the fire.

There is something more serious than to build badly, and that is to do violence to what is already built. Such is the relation between the following passage, 1 Corinthians 3:16-20, and the preceding. Hofmann well states this transition: “Paul passes from those who took upon them, without serious reflection, to continue his work at Corinth, to those who did not fear to destroy the fruit of his labour.” Only it need not be said: of his labour; for he has not given himself out as one of the ἐποικοδομοῦντες, of those who have raised the building on the foundation laid. We must therefore speak of the work done, and successfully done, after Paul's ministry. To whom are we to ascribe such labour if not to Apollos, who had watered what the apostle had planted? As, then, it was impossible to apply to this teacher the figure of the bad workman in the previous picture, it is still more impossible to apply to him the figure of the destroyers in the following representation. And since the labour of demolition, about to be spoken of, is attributed to that same human wisdom spoken of in chap. 1, we find the opinion confirmed which we had expressed in explaining the chapter, viz. that it had no reference whatever to the ministry of Apollos.