1 Corinthians 3:15 — If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

O.K., the reference to “Fireproof” was just a hook to get you to read! But it is sort of on topic …
Our wonderful Pastor is off with his family for a short break after the hectic Christmas season (if anyone deserves a break just now, it must be pastors!) So we had a very able substitute. I should confess, perhaps, that I found him a bit hard to listen too — my weakness, I’m sure, as he had some new insights into the story if Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace.
I don’t want to rehash the message, but one thing he said was that when the three young men came out of the furnace there was not even the smell of the fire on them — though they were not wearing fire-retardant clothing. That got me to thinking …
It’s not so much about having fire-retardant clothes as about having a fire-retardant spirit. As we get to the end of the year, the Revelation is featuring in our morning readings. Fire makes all manner of appearances, most frightful of which might be in chapter 20, “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” I’m reminded too of Jesus’s interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the tares: “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:41-32)
Daniel’s friends were fire-retardant. Then there’s those that will end in the lake of fire. Then there’s us. How do we stand?
I think Paul was talking about most of us when he said “but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” Alexander McClaren describes wonderfully what Paul meant in talking in 1 Corinthians about a man whose work gets burned: “‘He shall be saved, yet so as’ (not ‘by’ but ‘through’) fire — the picture being that of a man surrounded by a conflagration, and making a rush through the flames to get to a place of safety. Paul says that he will get through, because down below all inconsistency and worldliness, there was a little of that which ought to have been above all the inconsistency and the worldliness—a true faith in Jesus Christ. But because it was so imperfect, so feeble, so little operative in his life as that it could not keep him from piling up inconsistencies into his wall, therefore his salvation is so as through the fire.”
The three holy children had no spot of inconsistency in them. They were fire resistant! The wicked are destined to be fuel for the fire. The rest of us are often inconsistent in our faith, and we might be going to smell a little smoky for a while — but never fear, we shall have new bodies, and new robes!