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“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the
faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which
the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.” (2
Timothy 4:7-8)
Yet Paul “finished the race”, not only as a believer, but also as a
Christian minister. It is clear that he expects the true minister of the
gospel to do the same. What was his secret?
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The answer is provided in another of Paul's letters: His second letter to
the Corinthians. In chapter 4 verse 1 he says “We do not lose heart.”
We need to note that he is not talking about the Christian life, but
about the ministry. The whole context, starting from 2:12, deals with
the issue of “ministers of the New Covenant”. Paul is therefore saying:
“As ministers of the New Covenant, i.e. as Christian ministers, we do
not lose heart, we do not give up.”
Is there a reason behind this statement? Does Paul give us some kind
of underlying motive why he makes such a bold statement? Can we
learn something from him here that we can apply practically as
ministers of the New Covenant so that we, too, shall not lose heart?
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1. The Nature of the Ministry
The analogy can hardly be clearer. We, like Moses, have been
somewhere. We have seen something, and we are affected. The glory
of that which we have seen has rubbed off on us, and we are now
returning to the camp as ministers of the covenant in all its glory.
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procession in Christ”, led by God, who through us “spreads everywhere
the fragrance of the knowledge of him”. The picture that comes to
mind is that of the priest carrying a censer and spreading the
fragrance of the incense. Once again, the minister is depicted as a
mere carrier of something extraordinary, not as one extraordinary in
and of himself.
Yet Paul does not stop with the nature of the ministry. He goes on to
point to the source of the ministry. It is as though he anticipates the
obvious question: “If this ministry is so glorious, where can I get hold of
it? Where does it come from?”
His answer is clear: We have this ministry “through God's mercy”. It is,
in other words, not something that we have fabricated, or something
that originated because of anything we have done. We have no part in
its creation or in the fact that it has been entrusted to us. It is given to
us solely by the mercy and grace of God.
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This is a very important principle, and it is is emphasised throughout
the first few chapters of 2 Corinthians. Note the following verses which
all underline our total reliance on God as ministers of the New
Covenant, and the fact that the New Covenant ministry in all its glory is
solely “from God”:
Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.
1:21
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are
being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory,
which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 3:18
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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his
light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Christ. 4:6
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-
surpassing power is from God and not from us. 4:7
It can hardly be clearer. The acting party in each and every case is
none other than God Himself. Understanding the source of the New
Covenant ministry is essential to understanding the nature of it. It is a
ministry of reflecting the glory of God, and it is ministry designed,
sustained and given by Him and Him alone. In short, it is His ministry!
One may think that nothing remains to be said after these two very
important points have been brought to our attention. Yet Paul is not
finished. He uses the rest of chapter 4 to expound the implications of
having received this glorious ministry in the way just described.
The first implication for us, as ministers of the New Covenant, has to do
with the practical way in which we minister to other people. Our
methodology is changed once we understand the nature and the
source of the glorious ministry entrusted to us, and it can never be the
same again.
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In verse 2 Paul goes on to describe exactly how the methods of our
ministry are affected. He says that instead of losing heart, “we have
renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do
we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth
plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God.”
The message can hardly be clearer. No human being can ever imitate
what happened on Sinai, let alone add to the glory of the New
Covenant. If this is the case, then it is a futile exercise to try and do so.
There is no requirement for us to try and increase the glory or make it
more appealing. We do not have to use deceptive strategies to entice
people into the Kingdom of God. We do not have to distort the word of
God to try and make it more comprehensible. “On the contrary”, Paul
says, we set “forth the truth plainly”. Is that not what a mirror does? It
is a mere reflector of reality, and nothing more. Likewise, we are called
to merely testify to the surpassing glory. We point to it, but we do not
interfere with it. The glory is great enough to make its own impression.
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has lost the ability to listen to his conscience, then he has lost the
ability to listen to the Spirit of God. The world, however, does not
speak to the conscience of a person. Scripture makes it abundantly
clear that the love of the world is to be identified with the lusts of the
eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16).
The world appeals to that which a man can see and feel, and to that
which boosts his ego, in other words. These three components of man
constitute what we call the sinful nature. The first sin committed in
Eden, which is a prototype of all sins that were to follow, teaches us
the same lesson. Eve “saw” that the tree was good for food and
pleasing to the eye, and also “desirable” for gaining wisdom. Behind
the lusts of her eyes and her flesh, as we all know, was the boastful
pride of life: She wanted to be like God, as the serpent said she could
be.
This is how the enemy operates still to this day, and it is how he gets
to the will of a person. God never uses such shameful tactics, and
neither does he allow his servants to do so. Like God, we are called to
address the conscience of those we speak to. A sincere conscience will
detect the voice of God, whereas a hardened conscience cannot do so.
We are not called to compensate for the spiritual deafness of those we
speak to.
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done in a secret and shameful manner. The temptation to preach the
gospel according to the manipulative communication tactics of the
devil and the world is a great one, and prohibited by God.
If we return to that initial fateful sin once more, we shall see that the
first motivational speaker in the history of humanity was a serpent. He
introduced the concept of possibility thinking into a world governed by
the providence and love of a most powerful God, and it shattered that
world forever. The great error of Adam and Eve was to think that they
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were to take responsibility for that which was, in fact, God's
responsibility. Satan might have called it the maximisation of their
potential, but God called it rebellion. The serpent has not changed his
tactics in all the millennia since then, and we, it seems, are still as
gullible as we were back then. The foolish assumption, that we can act
as though we are God, lies at the root of all sin.
Much of the modern church has become like Uzzah, feeling that
without their assistance the glory of God is under threat. We interfere
with the majesty of God. We want to stabilise an ark that seems
wobbly to us. We do this in a multitude of ways, and we do not realise
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that we are working against ourselves and against the purposes of
God.
It is for this reason that Paul has the courage to speak the plain truth of
God's Word, and to direct himself to the conscience of each one he
speaks to. He is not deceived into thinking that he can accomplish
more than the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. He does not distort
or go beyond the word of God, and neither does he allow any minister
of the new covenant to do so.
It is told that the donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem went home
that night and boasted to his friends and family about what had
happened. He had never noticed who sat on his back and was
thoroughly convinced that the uproar was about him. The story might
make us smile, but the fact is that many of us are like that donkey.
When we reflect the glory of the Lord and we see the effect that it has
on people, we are tempted to think that there is something special
about us.
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4. The Effects of Our Ministry
The next point that Paul makes flows logically out of everything that
has been said thus far: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to
those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of
unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ.”
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ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for
Jesus' sake.” Clearly this is the choice facing the preacher of God's
word. Either he can preach Christ, or himself. Preaching Christ involves
pointing people to Christ, and it happens where the preacher
understands that Christ alone can remove the veil. When a preacher is
misled to think he himself can remove the veil, his preaching will not
be Christ-focused, but self-focused. The party who is thus seen as the
revealing agent of God's light and glory will of necessity receive the
prominent place in the sermon. When we understand that Christ alone
can remove the veil, we shall never be tempted to preach ourselves.
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“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light
shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Christ.”
There is only one who has the authority and power to create light in
darkness, he reminds us. It is God. The same God who said “Let there
be light” at the beginning of creation, now says “Let there be light” at
the beginning of the new creation. In the next chapter this argument is
drawn to its logical conclusion when Paul says: “Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All
this is from God…” (2 Cor 5:17)
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“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-
surpassing power is from God and not from us.” The power to create
life and light is from God, not from us. It is so vital that the distinction
remains clear, that God has designed a way for us to constantly be
reminded thereof. He does this by revealing to us that we are mere
vessels containing the treasure, and very fragile ones at that.
In the next verses Paul provides us with examples of exactly how this
message is driven home on a daily basis, and how we are constantly
reminded of our own brokenness, mortality and dependence on God:
We are hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted and struck down, and in
this way we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus. All of
this takes place to remind us that it is God’s power, not ours, and that
we merely reflect God’s glory.
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2:3). This will reveal the true source of the power behind the message,
both to the preacher and the audience.
Conclusion
As Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For when one says, “I
follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely
human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom
you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered,
but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters
is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
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May the Lord bless you as you meditate on the words above and
commit yourself to becoming a true minister of the New Covenant.
ADDENDUM
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It is significant that Christ said 'for him who has ears to hear, let him
hear', and not 'for him who has not ears to hear, let him understand in
some other way.' Faith, which is the word describing the action of
'hearing' and 'seeing' spiritually, depends for its existence on the
absence of 'hearing' and 'seeing' non-spiritually, or sensually. Which is
why it is written: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things unseen. Also, this is why 'a wicked and adulterous
generation' asks for a sign, and why no sign shall be given them save
the sign of Jonah, namely the cross. Which is exactly the way Paul
responded to the Jews who asked for a sign, and to the Greeks who
asked for wisdom: I preach Christ crucified…for those who are being
saved (those with spiritual sight and hearing, or, in other words, those
with faith) both the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Christ and Paul shared the same understanding of truth. Truth, when
heard by the spiritual person, is recognised by an inner resonation, and
so the spiritual person is identified by his or her ability to read the
parables of Christ - parables that remain coded for the unspiritual
person. For truth to remain truth, and for the distinction between the
spiritual and the non-spiritual person to remain a distinction, truth may
never be proclaimed in any form other than that of a parable. The
parable shares its nature with that of the cross, namely hidden
treasure accessible only to those who have been given sight by God.
To try and unearth the treasure for the blind is tantamount to casting
pearls before swine. It is the cheapening of the message of grace - a
message so dear that only those who have paid with their lives are
granted access to it. And so it undermines the qualifications and
prerequisites for spiritual sight laid down by Christ in the Sermon on
the Mount: Poverty of spirit, mourning, hungering after righteousness,
meekness. Needless to say, where these virtues are absent in a
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person's life, such absence brings with it an intended and necessary
debilitation to see God, to be filled and comforted, to inheriting the
kingdom of heaven. The exclusion of those who are blind remains vital
for the health of the gospel, as their blindness is a necessary judgment
for their refusal to submit to the terms and the regulations laid down
by Christ in the beatitudes. To try and overcome these debilitating
effects in any way other than to challenge the blind with Christ's
prescription for vision, is to pervert the gospel and empty it of its
transcendence.
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