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In this first issue of a new year I am pleased to include an article by Graeme Abbott from New Zealand (whose uncle has written next month's booklet). Graeme, who last ‘appeared' in Search in 1993, shares some thoughts on the building materials of 1 Corinthians 3 and, as I often find when reading a new slant on a well-known passage, new light leads to new perspectives on other parts of Scripture. For instance, building with gold, silver and precious stones (although metaphorical in 1 Corinthians 3), is the very best that we can do and yet, costly though these materials are, when it comes to what was required for our redemption, silver and gold are seen as totally inadequate. Peter says they are “corruptible things” compared with “the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18,19). Such was our desperate situation; so bad in fact that our finest righteousness, seen by God as “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), requires to be covered by the righteousness of Christ Himself before we can be looked upon by a holy God.
Another trend of thought that we could develop might centre on the ‘Builders of the Bible', for example Cain (the one whom Eve thought was the promised Man, “the Lord”). He built the first recorded city, naming it after his own son. The last city named in Scripture had as its “builder and maker” the Lord God Himself and is called New Jerusalem, Jerusalem being the city “which the Lord did choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there” (1 Kings 14:21). And so we could go on, looking at Noah, who built an ark to save his family and then an altar to sacrifice an offering, and at David who was a ‘wannabe' builder (the Temple), the contract going to his son. The Bible abounds with builders who constructed houses, towers, forts, walls etc. But, as Graeme Abbott encourages us, we can all be builders, not least in the building up of one another, for we are all to be “rooted and built up” in Christ (Colossians 2:7), and the building up is accomplished by fellowship one with another and through the mutual encouragement we can give each other.
Continuing in a personal vein, let me express my thanks to all who helped ‘build' me up, or encourage me, over the Christmas period with cards and good wishes sent to the office and also by other feedback, including answers to the ‘Books of the Bible' puzzle. The winner in the U.K. category was Jim Dennison from Northern Ireland, so congratulations to him.
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