Deuteronomy 30 - Even if you fall into error and endure the curses, there is always restoration: “[I]f you return to Yahweh. . .if you obey his voice with all your heart and soul in everything I enjoin on you. . .then Yahweh will bring back your captives, he will have pity on you and gather you once again. . .” (JB 30:2-3)  Every translation of these words is good, but I particularly like the Schocken version here: “Yahweh your God will “circumcise your heart [not a NT idea after all] and the heart of your seed, to love Yahweh with all your heart and with all your being, in order that you may live” (30:6). “You, however, must again heed the Lord’s voice [repeated three times in this chapter] and carry out all his commandments which I now enjoin on you” (NAB 30:8). [Again the IF hangs over the success of the redemption project; our freedom is not peripheral—it is at the heart of the project’s progress]

“For this Law. . .is not beyond your strength or beyond your reach.  It is not in heaven, so that you need to wonder, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and bring it down to us, so that we may hear it and keep it.’ No the Word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance” (JB 30:11-14). Then comes the great speech on Life and Death and choosing life: “Here, then, I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.  If you obey the commandments, statues and decrees, you will live and grow numerous. . . If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish. . .I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him” (30:15-20).

1 Corinthians 3 – Paul admits his evangelization approach was not one that took a completely spiritual approach, for he did not and does not see them ready for such an approach. “I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it” (3:2). The rivalry among followers of the various teachers must stop.  Paul said he laid the foundation – And the foundation is Jesus Christ. Then other teachers came and threw the people into confusion about exactly what the gospel message was about.  The work of each teacher must build on the foundation. He says some will “build in gold, silver and jewels”; others will build in “wood, grass and straw” and the buildings constructed will be tested by fire “in the end”. How each holds us will reveal the “quality of each man’s work” (3:13-15).  Is this a way of predicting that some would build in a worldy way and others in a simpler way; or is he saying the building of some will be of great value and others of cheap materials. I think maybe it is the latter. But what really is “of value” in the spiritual realm – fancy outward things or simple, solid things? We believers are “God’s temple” (3:16), the home of the Spirit of God in our world.

It’s interesting that the words of verses 3:14-15 apparently form the basis of the Catholic Church’s teaching on purgatory. Paul says when we are tested on “the Day” of the Lord, the fact that some do not pass muster does not necessarily mean that they will not be saved, but they will be saved “as through fire.”