1 Corinthians 3:9 For we are laborers together with God: you are God's husbandry, you are God's building. I. A GOOD PLAN. 1. What is a good plan? (1) A plan adapted to its purpose. If the edifice is intended for study, worship, business, recreation, or residence, the plan, to be good, must be fitted for its purpose. (2) A plan aesthetically pleasing. Nature provides for the aesthetic instinct in boundless varieties of forms and hues. A plan that does not embrace all those lines, and curves, and proportions, and blended shades, that charm the aesthetic instinct, cannot be considered truly good. 2. What is the plan on which moral masonry should proceed? The character of Christ. This ideal has the two grand attributes of architectural excellence, fitness, and beauty. All history shows that such an ideal is to be found nowhere else. Men, alas, are everywhere building character on other plans: some by the plan of sensual pleasure, others by the plan of commercial greed, others by the plan of worldly vanity and ambition. But they are all unsuitable and unlovely. In them the soul is neither happy nor beautiful. II. GOOD MATERIALS. However fitted and beautiful the plan, if the materials are poor, the stones crumbling, the tiles leaking, the timber rotten, the edifice will be anything but perfect. What are the materials with which we are to build up a good character? They are actions. If these are corrupt, the materials are bad; but if good, then the character is all right. Good actions are actions that spring from a supreme sympathy with the supremely good. Such actions are the gold and the silver and the precious stones that will bear the fires at the last day. III. A GOOD FOUNDATION. What is the good foundation of a character? Not conventional mortality, not religious observances, not orthodox creeds; but Christ and Him only. See in Matthew 7., the destinies of the wise man who built his house on a rock, and the foolish man who built on the sand. The one endured through the storm, but the other was swept away in utter ruin. (D. Thomas, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.WEB: For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's farming, God's building. |
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