The Qualities of the True Servant of God - 2 Corinthians 1:1-11
[21st July 2009]
I have recently been trying to read 2 Corinthians for my personal devotional Bible reading. I say “trying” because I find its content so dense it can be hard to take in. But secondly, and more importantly, it is hard to read because the content is so challenging – and I am overcome with a deep sense of my unworthiness to be a servant of God.
One reason why Paul wrote the letter 2 Corinthians was the arrival of false apostles in Corinth in his absence. These false apostles had disparaged Paul’s authority. One has the impression they may have been proud super-spiritual itinerant ‘health and wealth’ religious teachers, like those who still infest our world today. They thought that Paul could not have been a real apostle: because he did not charge for his services; because he had suffered; because he was a poor public speaker. This mindset is not extinct in our 21st century. In 2 Corinthians, Paul is trying to justify his authority as an apostle to a sceptical and arrogant Corinthian church. But the letter is written with tremendous humility, by this man Paul who was “turning the world upside down” through his international ministry – and knew it.
· But in the process Paul lays out some spiritual laws for those of us who might be in any form of Christian ministry. In 1:3-11 Paul sets out the hard truth that the suffering of the Christian worker brings, in a mysterious way known only to God, blessings to those to whom he ministers. Later in the letter Paul lists various the bad things that had happened to him during his apostolic ministry, only a fraction are actually recorded in the Book of Acts. This can work in many ways – at the hard end: martyrdom really does seem to truly be the seed-plot of the church. I often reflect on the WEC graveyard at Ibambi station in Congo which Joyce and I were taken to inspect the first day we arrived as new missionaries. Many adult missionary graves and a few children’s graves – parents paying the high price for their obedience. I may have said before that the lady who taught us Lingala, Marjorie Cheverton, was there for 54 years and her 1st term of service was 11 years! A tour of the mission field in Congo and its sister missions is one of glory and sacrifice.
· Grounded in the promises of Scripture, I have great confidence that Jesus will build his church in every culture before He returns. But I am under no illusions that it will happen at great cost – which was why the Book of Revelation was written: Not to give comfortable Western Christians a timetable to Armageddon and their rapture so they can plan their superannuation, but as a persecution tract for the suffering church. As new churches are planted – and they will be – it will come at great personal cost to the planters.
· We who are involved directly or indirectly in world missions and as missionaries and trainee missionaries, we do have an advantage when we read the Bible, especially the New Testament, compared to (say) the Christian vetinary surgeon or the Christian secondhand car salesman - in that so much of the Bible is explicitly about our ministry. We cannot spiritualise too much away – it is there in our face, as Paul laboured, church-planting and bringing the message of the gospel to what is now southern and western Turkey and Greece in hard circumstances. This is a tremendous encouragement - that God is so interested in our ministry – that so much of the New Testament is given over to the life of the missionary, church planter or pastor in new Christian situations.
· On a less dramatic scale I hear very positive feedback about my wife Joyce’s counselling ministry in Hamilton and here at college. I believe that her own personal physical suffering has brought a strange authority and effectiveness to those whom she helps. Fruitful ministry is not cheap. It was not cheap for Paul, neither will it be for you.
· I was very challenged by the recent reminder that many of the conventional missionary sacrifices of the past are no more. Separation of distance and friends and family are no more. With jet travel and skype! Many of the diseases which slew our missionary forebears have been defeated. What God wants is not our imagined sacrifices but as Jae Seong said, he wants us to leave behind ourselves.
· The false apostles Paul was dealing with at Corinth were deceiving themselves – they could well have believed they were good apostles. But they had taken on board the Greek philosophical lifestyle and culture of the day and wrapped it in the flag of Christianity. And we too can deceive ourselves. I can deceive myself that I am doing the sacrifices worthy of a missionary. In fact nothing of the sort is happening! And Paul is right – that if I am going to be effective, suffering will come my way and be willing to suffer. That was only the first 11 verses of 2 Corinthians!
· However I find that whenever I start to consider the cost to me personally, I begin to excuse myself or to rationalise or spiritualise away it away. “It’s not me!” “I’m not wired that way!” We today have a culture that encourages us to be authentic. Authentic to what? To ourselves! Existentialism! It is the religion of the age, and the religion of many churches – and they do not even know it. It’s a self-deceiver’s charter. Why we have to keep reading this book – and why I am finding 2 Corinthians such hard work in my devotions.
· In one of his ‘Apologies’, Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” This is not a Greek philosopher’s saying to be ignored - but the Bible encourages us to examine ourselves. Though we do not need to look to philosophers for this exhortation. Paul encourages us twice to examine ourselves – 2 Cor 13:5 – “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith.” The only other place where we are exhorted to examine ourselves is in 1 Cor 11 where we are to examine ourselves before we take communion – when we contemplate the cross.