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I like to encourage all believers to watch my video, called Are You A Saved Or An Unsaved Believer? and to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith.
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LOSING OUR REWARDSl
LOSING OUR REWARDS
Some Christians believe that if a saved person enters into a sinful lifestyle and fails to repent then he will still get to heaven but will lose rewards. Their proof text is 1 Cor. 3:13-15 which say, “his work will be shown for what it is … the fire will test the quality of each man's work ... If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames”. Notice that these verses are referring to the testing of a man's work, not sin. In this article I would like to show that, in context, these verses are not speaking about sin in the least but about how we work to build on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus.
Beginning with 1 Cor. 1:11-13 and 1 Cor. 3:1-8, these verses tell us that the Corinthians were fighting about whether they should follow Paul, Apollos or Cephas. Paul said that their focus should be on Jesus because men are mere servants with assigned tasks; one man plants, another waters and each man will be rewarded according to his own labour. Next, in 1 Cor. 3:9-11, he continues on to say that we are God's workers, His field and His building (His church) and that he, Paul, has laid a foundation as an expert builder and each of us must be careful how we build on that foundation, which is Jesus Christ.
Then 1 Cor. 3:12-15 talk about how we build the church and warn that fire will test the quality of each man's work. The verses say that we can -
a) Build with gold, silver or costly stones and receive our reward or
b) Build with wood, hay or straw and, although we will still be saved, our work will be burned up.
Building with gold, silver or costly stones represent good leadership and sound doctrine while wood, hay and straw represent poor leadership and unsound doctrine. Sin is not in question here.rewards
So far, Paul has spoken about building the church with either good or poor leadership and doctrine but now he continues on to speak about bad leadership and doctrine which destroys a church. 1 Cor. 3:16-17 say, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you [plural] are that temple”. The term “God's temple” is referring to the church, the body of Christ, and these verses say that God will destroy anyone who destroys His church (see 2 Pet. 2).
Then, from 1 Cor. 3:18, Paul continues on to further warn us not to follow men. In 1 Cor. 4:6 he sums up what he has said so far (from 1 Cor. 3:1) by saying that he has applied these things to himself and Apollos so that we could learn the meaning of the saying, “'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not take pride in one man over against another”. He is saying that the entire passage is to warn us not to follow men but to stay with what is written. In 1 Cor. 4:2 he said, “it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful”, and it is by not going beyond what is written that we remain faithful to that trust.
So we can see that this passage of scripture has nothing to do with sin. It is a warning for us not to follow men's wisdom but to use the written Word to build on the foundation of Jesus because our rewards will be according to the way we build.
If we build with sound biblical doctrine then we will be rewarded.I
f we build with poor doctrine then we will still be saved but lose our rewards.
If anyone destroys the church then he will be destroyed.
If we attempt to make sin the context of this passage then it will make no sense at all as words like build, labour and work don't relate to sin. Likewise, sin can't be related to building with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw unless we say that we will be rewarded for good sins and lose our reward for bad sins. The fact is, sin and its reward are not the subject of this passage. The reward for sin is dealt with elsewhere where we are told that the wages of sin is death, not a loss of heavenly rewards.
This article can be downloaded from:
http://www.christianissues.biz/pdf-bin/blogarticles/losingourrewards.pdf
Mick Alexander
I am and have been a Southern Baptist Minister for nearly 41 years now, and served full time for 35 years before I became disabled in 2006. I know that Baptist get the rape for ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED, but I am hard press to be convinced that a person that tastes the life of a TRUE CHRISTIAN will turn from the life and go back into a life of sin. I am more convinced that a person that turns back to sin was NEVER REALLY SAVED in the first place. Having tasted the life of living for Christ put a desire to work harder for Him, and I have NO DESIRE to live a worldly life of sin. I know that I do commit sin, but I daily ask Jesus to forgive my sins, and He does. There used to be song that came out years ago that said, "Just build me a Cabin in the Corner of Glory Land." I never like the message of that song because it is NOT Scriptural. Jesus has gone to Heaven to build we Christians Mansions and I don't think anyone will get there by the "the skin of our teeth," so to speak. I look forward to casting my crowns down at the feet of Jesus as Revelation says we will. To do any other way would scare me to death, because if I have sin in my life, and God CANNOT look on sin, I can't see how He could look at me. HE COULDN'T EVEN LOOK AT HIS OWN SON BECAUSE HE HAD THE SIN OF THE WORLD ON HIS SHOULDERS WHEN HE WAS ON THE CROSS. Sorry, Baptist or not I can't see it any other way. The main thing is that we know without a shadow of a doubt that we are saved in the first place. If we are, we won't live a sinful life style. That's the way I see it.
In Christ's Name,
Rev. Zack Martin Sr.
I'm sorry that I misspelled rap and put an e on the end it's Rap, not rape. Sorry.