Such is the ministry. Chap. 4. brings before us the minister. The ministry imparted its own character to the vessel; it formed him, so to speak. He did not faint (though there was much to cause him to do so), being energized and sustained by the glory of Christ. “Strengthened with all might according to the power of His glory.” He was guileless, walking transparently without a veil. How could he preach such a gospel and be otherwise? He eschewed the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in darkness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully. He gave the truth forth in all its purity. It received no adulteration in passing through such a vessel. The God who once commanded the light to shine out of darkness, had Himself shined in Paul's heart, for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The apostle was thus a vessel of heavenly light, set here to shed a holy radiance around. Are we this practically? It is not merely that Paul set forth in his teachings the doctrines of these things. Assuredly he did so. But the words mean more than this. He was all this in himself, as well as in his teaching.
He was a vessel of heavenly light. The treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power might be manifestly of God and not of man. Who but God could have accomplished all that Paul carried out in the face of habitual and serious opposition, with the added difficulty of a thorn in the flesh? But the vessel must be broken, in order to the effectual shining forth of the heavenly testimony. The allusion is doubtless to Gideon's lamps and pitchers. The lamps were placed within the pitchers, and the pitchers had to be smashed (Judg. 8). Thus did God bring power out of weakness. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men: and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:2525Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:25)).
The breaking process is touchingly described. “Troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” Precious servant of Christ! Treading with scarce a falter, a path of unparalleled trial and suffering for the sake of Christ; filling up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body's sake, the church; meeting nothing but reproach and loss on every hand. Yet some were heartless at Corinth, in Galatia, etc., to call in question such a minister and ministry! So infatuated had some become with that which puts honor on flesh and gives it sanction, that they had lost their appreciation of the heavenly testimony and ways of the apostle Paul. Well, the Lord valued it all, if men did not; He estimated all things duly, if erring saints failed to do so. What comfort for the heart!
What wonders grace accomplishes! Here was one, who glorified formerly in fleshly advantages and legal attainments, and who hated and persecuted to the death those who believed in Jesus, now content to let all things go for His Name, to carry daily the sentence of death in his person, and to shed his last drop of blood in the service of Christ and the church. The life of Christ operated so powerfully in him, and heavenly things were so absorbing, that life as regards the body might be yielded up, and afflictions seemed light and momentary. If his path ended at last in death, he rested in the assurance that He Who raised up the Lord Jesus would raise him up also through Jesus, and present him in the glory with the saints he had borne so well and so constantly on his heart in his service below. This is a ministry indeed. Yet this is not the perfect Servant. But comparing ourselves even with Paul, how deeply, beloved brethren, do we come short? Is there not a tendency with us to seek our own, and not the things of Jesus Christ? Are we not prone to seek a comfortable pathway in our service, and to shun reproach and suffering? Is there not a danger of flesh and the world proving a snare to our hearts? Let us search ourselves closely in the light of the Divine Presence.
In chap. 5. we get the motives of the minister. There are three, the coming glory, the judgment seat, and the love of Christ. As to the bright future, the apostle was full of holy confidence. We know that if the earthly tabernacle be destroyed we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. If life has to be laid down, we are confident that we shall be clothed at the appointed moment, and shall be like the Son. But we do not look for dissolution, but for Christ's coming, that the power of life in Christ may swallow up mortality. We anticipate a glorious change at the fulfillment of the blessed hope. Let it be distinctly understood that the apostle himself looked for this. By no means did he relegate the Lord's coming to a distant day. It is a mark of the evil servant so to do, and such was not Paul. True, when he wrote the Second Epistle to Timothy, he spoke differently; but the Lord had then made known to him that he must go into death for His sake, and be amongst the sleepers at His coming. Peter was similarly acquainted by the Lord.
God path wrought us for the glory. His purpose, when first He began in our souls, was to have us ultimately like His Son. He has predestinated us to be “conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the First-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8:2929For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8:29)). Meanwhile He has given us the Spirit as earnest. Thus are we filled with confidence. If we fall asleep, it is but absence from the body, to be at home with the Lord. All this with the apostle became a motive for service. “Wherefore we labor that whether present or absent, we may be acceptable to Him” (2 Cor. 5:99Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. (2 Corinthians 5:9)). How could he help laboring for such a Lord? To have been marked out for glory, to be assured of the presence of the Spirit meanwhile, so filled the apostle with adoring gratitude that he was very gladly willing to spend and be spent for Him.
Then comes the judgment seat. “We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ.” This includes saints as well as sinners. Not that all will stand before the Lord together, nor with the same issues. Those who believe in Jesus, and are at peace with God, through His work, are in the possession of eternal life in His Son, and thus beyond judgment. Christ cannot judge His own handiwork. But all must be told out, that we may know the real truth as to H is grace and as to ourselves; and that any rewards that are due for faithful service may be dealt out by the Lord. But how solemn it will be for some to stand before Christ! What confusion of face; what eternal ruin! In all the nakedness of nature, without a rag in which to appear, without a single plea; only to be righteously expelled from Him into eternal woe!
The thought of it quickened the apostle, and became a second motive for service and ministry. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men.” Does it act thus with us, beloved brethren? Satan seems determined in our day to remove this motive for service altogether. Never were the terrors of the judgment to come so softened, not to say openly denied. But this is to act falsely with men, and to become tools of the enemy. Paul had the future, with its tremendous and appalling issues fully before his eyes; and it had the effect of making him even more zealous in his labor for Christ among men.
The third motive is by no means the least, but rather the spring of all. “The love of Christ constraineth us.” He thought of Him coming down to where men were, walking here in an attitude of reconciliation toward men, then going into death, that He might close the history of the first man and lay a righteous ground of reconciliation, and for the new creation. This wondrous love filled the heart of the apostle, and was a constraining power. It caused him to go forth throughout the Gentile world, as an ambassador of the absent Christ, with this blessed ministry of reconciliation, beseeching men, as it were, on God's part to be reconciled to God. Service is of but little worth, if love is not the spring. “Servile work” can never satisfy Christ. But what will not love endure? What will not it accomplish for its object?
Now we come to the moral traits of the minister (chap. 6.). The apostle and his fellow-workers besought the Corinthians not to receive the grace of God in vain. He speaks of beseeching sinners in ch. 5:20; now he beseeches saints. If they turned out badly, the ministry was blamed, and thus the Lord was dishonored. John presents the matter similarly in his Epistles (1 John 2:2828And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. (1 John 2:28), 2 John 88Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. (2 John 8)). As for Paul, how did he behave? “In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.” He was most anxious to be without reproach, and to preserve a true character as God's minister, in whom the divine glory was in measure bound up. Faithful man! He not only set forth the truth by word of mouth, but exemplified it in all his ways. Our teaching has only the weight which our lives give to it.
The first moral trait is “much patience.” This is found in the front rank in chap. 12. also. In Paul it was proved “in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses.” None endured what he did in the service of Christ. But is there no place for it now, because persecution has ceased? Assuredly there is. Latter-day service in the assembly of God is not unfrequently of a distressing and discouraging character. With declining love on every hand, the world coming into the hallowed circle, and growing indifference to the claims of Christ, the spiritual laborer needs “much patience.” I refrain from going further into detail at this time. Let the whole chapter be examined with all its features, and may the Holy Spirit of God produce these things in us all for Christ's glory.
W. W. F.
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