Christ's People Rest and Find Comfort in Christ, Not Any of Their Supposed Improvements

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

"it is observable, that when the Apostle adds, Now if any man build upon this foundation, wood, hay, stubble; he doth not mean, yea, he cannot be supposed to mean errors, either in life or doctrine, for Christ is still said to be the foundation, where this wood, and hay, and stubble are added. But the wood, and hay, and stubble, mean whatever is a man's own. And a vast deal of this rubbish is found, even in pure Churches, where Christ is made the only foundation. For if ministers, or people, for a moment look off Christ, as the whole of salvation, and at any time take comfort, and part confidence, in what they feel, or what they do; if, instead of deriving an unceasing firmness from what Christ is to his Church, and the Church is to Christ, either of them date their safety and happiness in a work supposed to be wrought in them, and the experience supposed to be found by them, seeking strength from a supposed grace in the soul, instead of sure grace in Christ for the soul; all these comforts are the wood, and hay, and stubble, and which, in the day when every man's works shall be made manifest, shall be burnt up. Reader! it is a blessed thing, rightly to estimate the Lord Jesus Christ. And, while making Him what God hath made him, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, for salvation to everyone that believeth : let Him that hath laid the foundation, carry on the whole superstructure, in the regenerated soul. And then, what God by the Prophet hath said, will be the sure consequence. He shall bring forth the head stone thereof with shoutings, crying, grace, grace unto it, Zechariah 4:7. But, it is a dangerous thing to the soul's comfort, to rest in anything but Jesus; for very sure it is, that all the child of God hath, whether grace, or strength, or comfort, from the Spirit's work in the heart, he hath all from Christ. And when the fiery trial comes, to try a man's work, though as the Apostle saith, because his foundation is in Christ, he himself shall be saved; yet, to have all his own things which gave him comfort, in the wood, and hay, and stubble of his supposed improvements burnt up, though he himself escapeth, yet so as by fire; will be a mortifying thing to the pride of the heart. Oh! it is blessed to live wholly upon Christ; to come daily, hourly, to Christ, and to be sensible of our momentary need of Christ, as when the Day-spring from on high first visited the soul. One of old found this in his own experience, and hath left it upon everlasting record, for all that come after to make Christ, as he did, the whole sum and substance of his happiness and joy; and not taking the least confidence in the best, and highest feelings of his own heart: I will go (said he) in the strength of the Lord God: I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only, Psalms 71:16."

- excerpt from Robert Hawker's Bible commentary on 1 Corinthians 3:3-15