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I. UNDER WHAT VIEW JESUS CHRIST IS THE FOUNDATION.

1. It is not His person merely, nor any views of His person abstractly, that constitute the foundation of which Paul speaks.

2. In attending to the subject before us, it is important to inquire who was Jesus Christ? This inquiry the New Testament fully answers. Not because He is God, but because He is the Christ, Jesus is the foundation.

3. It may be asked, Are we then to build our faith and hope upon a mere man? By no means. As it is not as God, neither is it merely as man, that Jesus is the foundation; but as the Christ, the Divinely commissioned messenger of God.

4. That it is as the Christ, as a Divinely commissioned person, Jesus is the foundation, appears from the plain declarations of the New Testament (Matthew 16:13-18; Romans 10:9; 1 John 5:1).

5. Christians are to build on the foundation of what Jesus revealed and taught. We can build upon Jesus Christ, or upon tits mission, only so far as we build upon the truth and grace of God which came by Him.

6. But is not the death of Christ, as a satisfaction for sins, the true foundation? However important the death of Christ may be, it is not the foundation; for when Peter confessed the truth which Jesus declared to be the rock on which He would build His Church, He did not know that it would be necessary the Messiah should die.

II. HOW GOD HATH LAID THIS FOUNDATION.

1. God laid Him as the foundation in His eternal purpose and counsel.

2. God laid this foundation in His ancient promises and declarations.

3. God laid this foundation by actually raising up Jesus as a teacher and Saviour, by giving Him His Divine mission, and all the qualifications necessary to execute it.

4. This foundation was firmly established by the miracles which God wrought by and in behalf of His Son Jesus, and by the apostles in confirmation of their testimony concerning Him.

5. By raising Him from the dead and exalting Him to glory.

6. In the ministry of the apostles God placed Jesus Christ before Jews and Genthes, before the whole world, as the foundation on which mercy is built and salvation prepared before the face of all people, on which He will establish the habitation of holiness, that all the earth may be filled with His glory.

7. This foundation was fixed in its place by all the Divine perfections, and hath remained unmoved through all succeeding ages, though exposed to hosts of assailants who sought to remove it.

III. OF WHAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE FOUNDATION.

1. Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christian faith. What He taught, His disciples are required to receive; but nothing else ought to be made an article of faith.

2. He is the foundation of Christian privileges.

3. He is the foundation of Christian redemption. His gospel and resurrection are the only ground of an assured hope of redemption from death and the grave.

4. He is the foundation of evangelical righteousness. He hath furnished the principles and motives which will produce it: and no other principles but those contained in the gospel, nor any weaker motives, can produce true evangelical righteousness.

5. He is the foundation of our hope.

6. God hath laid in His Son Jesus the foundation of universal happiness.

IV. LET EVERY MAN TAKE HEED HOW HE BUILDETH UPON THIS FOUNDATION.

1. Take heed how and what doctrines you build upon Jesus Christ: that they be not contrary to reason; for to reason, He and His apostles appealed; that they be not inconsistent with the character and perfections of God as plainly revealed in the Scriptures; that they clash not with those plain facts and declarations of the New Testament which compel universal assent.

2. Take heed in what spirit you build upon Christ. You can neither build doctrines nor anything else aright upon Christ, any further than you do it in His disposition in a spirit of seriousness and piety, of meekness and humility, of purity and love.

3. Take heed what life and conduct you build upon this foundation; that it be such as becometh the gospel of Christ.

4. Take heed how you build upon this foundation, because your all is depending; consequences of the utmost moment are involved. A day of fiery trial will come. Try your own work of what sort it is.

(J. Wright.)

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KJV: For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

WEB: For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.