The Privilege of Proclaiming the Gospel

I. The Roles of the Gospel Preacher

The Prisoner - Be prepared to sacrifice for the Gospel

The Steward - Treat the Gospel as your special charge

The Servant - “Deacon” of the gift of God’s Grace, the gift of preaching the Gospel.

II. The Humility of Honest Repentance

Paul invents a new Greek Word here - it’s a comparative of a superlative. Positive “lowly”; Comparative “lesser”; Superlative “least” - compares between three or more. So what’s less than the least? A hyperbole.

This is not just empty words. Paul never forgot his former life as a persecutor of the church 1 Cor 15:9-11

1 Corinthians 15:9–11 NKJV

For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Paul was in his former life 1 Tim 1:12-16

1 Timothy 1:12–16 NKJV

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.

A Blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent (Violently arrogant).

Blasphemer because he despised Jesus the Son of God. Describes his words.

Persecutor because that’s what he did - describes his actions

Violently arrogant - describes his attitude. He was self-assured in his opinions, and used violence to achieve his aims.

Ignorant. Ignorance doesn’t exempt you from punishment; however, ignorance does make it possible for you to repent.

So when he calls himself the chief of sinners, he is quite serious. There are few sins conceivably worse than threatening to stop God’s entire program in this dispensation. He was working very hard to make sure the world would never hear about eternal life, so on the track he had been going, he would be preventing people from receiving eternal life, thus he was helping to damn them to hell for eternity. Yikes.

However, Jesus showed him mercy, for a pattern to those same people, that Jesus made sure did hear about and receive eternal life. They would see that God is longsuffering and merciful, and imitate Paul’s pattern of repentance by repenting and receiving mercy themselves. Maybe that’s why God saved you, too?

Paul’s actions prior to Salvation

He assisted in the martyrdom of Stephen Acts 7:54-60

He persecuted the church Acts 8:1-3

He even pursued them to Damascus, and would have kept going if God hadn’t stopped him Acts 9:1-2

III. The Unsearchable Greatness of the Gospel

The gospel of the Unsearchable Riches of Christ

The Fellowship of the Mystery

Our Access and Boldness to God through Christ, apart from the Law

IV. The Wisdom of God made known

the privilege of preaching the gospel is to declare God’s wisdom to the Angels

This wisdom is the reflection of God’s eternal purpose

The major emphasis is that Gentiles and Jews together all have the right to boldly go before the God of the universe. This is different from the Mosaic Law, where there were barriers between God and man. That was the point of the temple, to allow sinful man to come before God without risk of death. So the ancient Israelite could not come boldly, they would come cautiously.

All this is a round about way of explaining that Paul’s imprisonment should not cause shame, as the very reason he is in prison is the glory of God, to declare the wonderful Gospel.