The "New" Minister

The day is here where everyone desires the call to ministry because they see the perks and privileges that come with ministry, yet miss on the loneliness and misery that ministry brings. Ministry is more that Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok live streams and posts. It is more than your face on a flyer for the next conference or preaching engagement that you have been invited to speak at. Ministry does not matriculate through hallowed halls, but it may matriculate through low lying areas. If you equate ministry to 30-45 minutes behind a podium, then, you have a narrow view of what God has called ministers to do. There was a time where people ran from ministry, now they run to it with arms outstretched…they use events in their lives and a sordid past to claim God has called them to ministry. Again, God does use events to confirm his call, but God called his people before the foundation of the world, so any type of event does not deter a person from walking in their calling. Today, ministry is glamorized , glitzed up and famed up…gone are the days of locust and wild honey, now enter the time of designer shoes and suits. Today, ministry requires more make up instead of the Holy Spirit, and preaching sounds more like a dissertation than a word from the Lord. Ministry is measured by human standards....pews and the offering plate…and the church determines what she can do by the amount in both areas. Ministers “pimp” themselves out to the highest bidder as it is evident that some are trying to cancel the truth of the word. Minister is not one who just preaches, but it is someone who always serves....

Paul’s Defense of his Apostolic Ministry

When others may criticize one’s ministry, one needs a clear measuring rod by which to appraise oneself before God. The critics will try to impose their own measuring rods to gauge the minister. If the minister is to remain faithful to God’s calling, then only God’s standards matter. In the face of the Corinthians’ challenge, Paul shows that he has a keen understanding of his place in God’s scheme of things. “Humans standards will always cause your to miss God’s standard.” He knows whose he is, and consequently he knows who he is, a minister of the new covenant whom God made sufficient for his task. Throughout the letter, the topic of commendation reappears, and Paul is aware that some criticize him and accuse him of boasting...

Self-commendation is therefore equivalent to self-introduction.The REB comes closer to this technical sense of the verb with its translation: “Are we beginning all over again to produce our credentials?” Marshall shows that “self-commendation was a common form of recommendation in which a person committed himself to another, with or without the aid of mutual connections, with the intention of forming a reciprocal relationship based on trust.” In self-commendation the person does more than simply introduce himself; he entrusts himself to the other. The practice of commendation is therefore not a moral issue but a social one. The “again” in 3:1 refers to Paul’s initial visit to Corinth, when he “entrusted himself to his first converts or Christian contacts.” When Paul sought out hosts in the various places where he established his ministry, he probably followed the normal convention of self-commendation, which established bonds of trust. In his first visit he solidified his friendship with them by entrusting himself in person rather than presenting them with written letters from third parties. Recent dissension has buffeted the original relationship between Paul and the Corinthians, and some in Corinth may have blamed him for the breach. If he were to commend himself to them again, he would be admitting that he had done something to jeopardize the friendship and must do something now to regain their trust. Rather than Paul’s having to reestablish the ties of friendship by commending himself to them again (3:1; 5:12), the Corinthians should have commended him as their apostle because they have witnessed and have been the beneficiaries of his apostolic work (3:2–3; 12:11). His life and work are an open book, and he has always acted with godly sincerity and love toward them (1:12; 2:17). He never transferred his affections for them to someone else (2:4; 6:11–13; 7:2–4; 11:11; 12:15). He will make the point, however, that God is the one who ultimately knows him best and commends apostles (5:11–12; 10:12, 18). Human endorsements do not make apostles. Consequently, Paul seeks only God’s commendation (10:18) and evaluates his apostleship according to the measure God assigned to him (“measured him”; 10:13). He firmly believes that “God’s recommendation of him was indelibly written by the Spirit and, with regard to them, could not be withdrawn (3:3).” That explains why he does not try to conceal his humiliations, afflictions, hardships, or faults (1 Cor 4:9–13; 2 Cor 4:8–9; 6:4–10; 11:23–33) as others might. Instead, he boasts of his deficiencies (11:30; 12:9) because they show most clearly how the power of God works in and through him. This background explains why Paul frames his question, “We do not need letters of recommendation to you or from you as certain ones do, do we?” to expect the answer no. Paul does not disdain letters of recommendation. They were an essential part of initiating and fostering friendship in the ancient world. Letters were the usual means to introduce fellow Christians to one another as they traveled around the world. Paul is therefore not engaged in a polemic against those who flaunt their own laudatory letters of recommendation. But the whole issue causes him some pain. In a rueful tone he basically asks them: “Has our relationship sunk to such a low that I must now call upon outside parties to vouch for me?”

Paul contends that he needs no letters with them because they are his letter of commendation. The imagery again is striking. Instead of something written on paper with pen and ink, he pictures a divine letter inscribed on human hearts by the Spirit of the living God. The Corinthians are Paul’s letter to the world, having been engraved on his heart, known and read by everyone. Moule aptly comments that Paul’s credentials “are not on paper but in persons.” Today most people in churches recognize that it is not the degrees earned that truly commend a minister but rather the degree of concern for the lives of others and the willingness to sacrifice for them.It may seem unusual that Paul refers to a letter written on “our hearts” rather than on the Corinthians’ heart. But the one who was recommended frequently carried the letter of recommendation with him. Paul carries around in his heart the memory of their response to his preaching. This metaphor expresses his love for the community while providing unequivocal proof of his legitimacy at the same time. Paul appeals to the results of his preaching in Corinth. God alone can provide the validation of his ministry. Indeed, God wrote a letter for him in the sense that God’s power, through the Spirit, founded the church when they responded to Paul’s preaching of the gospel (see 1 Cor 3:6). He does have a letter, so to speak, in the Corinthians themselves; their very existence is divine testimony to power of his apostleship. Hays writes, “They cannot question the legitimacy of his ministry without simultaneously questioning the legitimacy of their own origins as a community.” Consequently, Paul regards the Corinthians as his “workmanship in the Lord” and “the seal of his apostleship in the Lord” (1 Cor 9:1–2). Such language shows that Paul was never satisfied to make quick converts and then quit the scene. His life became intertwined with theirs.A letter written in pen and ink is visible to only a few; this letter is visible to all. Paul’s use of the perfect participle, eggegramenē (“having been inscribed”), suggests that this letter differs significantly from “ephemeral human recommendations.” The switch to participles in the present tense “being known and read” implies that this letter is being known and read by all who encounter him in his itinerant service for the gospel. Only those who are not looking for marvelous spiritual exploits, however, will be able to read and understand this letter.

People are their Credentials

Paul, the writer of over two-thirds of the New Testament, spoke to his church through written correspondence, and even by his own admission was not fond of speaking, but his writing did the work for him. The conversation of whether they need “letters of recommendation” raged on, and I believe Paul’s analogy of those who received Christ as letters of recommendation served better than what he or someone else would write. Paul gives four characteristics of the “letter” in verse 3.

(1) It is a letter from Christ, the highest authority

(2) The letter is related to Paul’s ministry

(3) This letter was inscribed by the Spirit of the living God

(4) Draws a contrast between what is written with ink and what is written by the Spirit.

God did not write his law and word on tablets of stone, which represent the rigid and unforgiving arm of religion, but he writes on the heart of men with the Spirit of the living God. The words of the songwriter ring true, “May the work I’ve done speak for me,” and for Paul every convert is a letter that speaks to his grace and mercy. Your life is God’s tablet that He writes on, so what do people read when they see your life. The “new” minister should be more concerned with converts instead of conversations and be proud of carrying the glorious cargo of the gospel instead of complacency and complicity…The word must be implanted into hearts made receptive by the Spirit. When ink is written on a page of paper, the page receives the image but makes no response. The letter remain only lifeless squiggles unless there is something to make sense of them and to respond to them. A response comes only from human hearts in which the words are sown, take root, and produce fruit. As letters of Christ, they are to communicate to the world what God has done in Christ and what God’s purpose are for humanity and this world. Paul goes on to draw a contrast between fleshy hearts and stone tablets. Papyrus or parchment would seem to be a more appropriate comparison at this point, since letters of recommendation would hardly have been etched in stone. But Paul chooses stones because he will draw a comparison between his ministry for Christ and Moses’ ministry for the law. His primary concern is to give the grounds for “the confidence we have through Christ before God” (3:4), and he wants to contrast the giving of the law that was engraved on stones (Exod 24:12; 31:18; 32:15–16; 34:1; Deut 9:10) with the promise of the new covenant that will be inscribed on hearts. God prefers living hearts to dead stones because they can better communicate what the purposes of the living God are for humanity and what the presence of the life-giving Spirit can do. In composing 3:3, Paul appears to have drawn on more than one Old Testament text in which he interprets Scripture by Scripture.

Confidence in Christ

Do we depend on natural means to accomplish spiritual results? Ministers are natural vessels that God accomplishes his purpose, but the dangers of ministers is over confidence and self confidence. Andrew Murray said, “Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.” Confidence in self dwindles in respect to one’s confidence in Christ. Doing Gods work in your own strength garners no applause from the heavens, but it will get you pats on the back. In dealing with the “new” minister, God has to demolish the demented mindset of self-sufficiency, meaning like God demolished Paul’s former confidence in himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, a zealous Pharisee who was blameless when it came to righteousness under the law (Phil. 3:5-6). After his Damascus experience and his stay on Strait street, God delivered Paul from himself. He no longer places any trust in his own heritage, devotion, or natural powers and now knows that the only recourse from which he can draw is the infinite reservoir of grace provided by God’s empowering Spirit. In saying that he does not reckon that we have any sufficiency from ourselves, Paul is not resorting to false humility. He would argue that he is fully sufficient to exercise his ministry, yet at the same time he fully admits that his sufficiency comes entirely from God’s Spirit, who works in and through him. In interpreting God’s call of Moses, Theodoret asks, “When the God of all things used Moses as His minister, why did He choose for himself a man of stammering speech and slow of tongue?” His answer: “Because this displayed all the more his divine power. For just as He chose fishermen and tax-gatherers to be preachers of truth and teachers of piety, it is by means of a weak voice and slow tongue that He put to shame the wise men of Egypt.” Paul would have agreed that the same applies to God’s choice of him to be a minister of the gospel.

Preaches the Ministry of Life (Transformative Ministry)

Paul equates the Ten Commandments carved in stone as the “ministry of death” but acknowledges the glory that came with it. Israel’s idolatry with the golden calf violated the commandment to make no idol or bow down to a form of anything in heaven above or on the earth below (Exod 20:4–5). It caused Moses to smash the two tablets of the covenant (Exod 32:1–35). Moses castigates the people for sinning a great sin and returns to the presence of the Lord on Mount Sinai in hopes that he can make atonement for their sin (Exod 32:30). The Lord will not relent, however, saying: “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book” (Exod 32:33). A plague ravages the people because they made the calf (Exod 32:35). Moses successfully intervenes with God on behalf of the people (Exod 33:12–17) and is shown the glory of the Lord (Exod 33:18–23). When Moses descended a second time with the tablets of the covenant, his face shone from being in the presence of God (Exod 34:29). His radiance evoked fear, so after delivering to the people all that the Lord had spoken to him, he covered his face with a veil. From then on when Moses approached the Israelites to reveal God’s commands, he wore a veil to cover his face.

Paul takes for granted that the giving of the law was a glorious moment, and that glory was etched on Moses’ face as he emitted a luminous glow from his divine encounter. He does not intend to denigrate Moses and his glory but wants to stress it so he can show how much greater is the glory attached to his ministry. He does identify the ministry associated with Moses as a ministry of death. The NIV translation that the ministry “brought death” is misleading.340 Paul states in Rom 5:12–14 that death entered the world through sin and “death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses” (see 1 Cor 15:21). But in Rom 7:11–14 he argues that “sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.” Sin “produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” The NEB’s translation “dispensed death” is therefore more nuanced. It means that the law deals out death to those guilty of sinning against it.

Ministry of Moses

The law prescribes death as the penalty for sin (Rom. 5:12-21)

The law specifies transgression (Rom. 4:15)--The law clarified the moral and religious situation of the world by revealing that sin is a conscious and deliberate transgression. Sinners not only violate God’s will, but they now know that what they do is a violation of God’s will and defiantly continue in their sin. The law exposes the sinful character of wrongdoing by revealing it to be conscious, active rebellion against God. Its effect is to increase transgression which leads to death (Rom 5:20).

The Law provide an opportunity for sinful people to garble God’s commands with legalistic casuistry and to delude themselves into thinking that they have done what God requires (Rom. 3:19-31)--They then rely on their own inadequate achievements and racial and religious heritage rather than placing their trust in God (Rom 3:19–31). Their legalism may even foster an inner rebellion so that they are ruled by the rule book rather than God.

The law cannot give life because it has no power to do so (Rom. 7:10; 8:1-11)-The law does not offer assistance to obey it and does not grade on a curve. It only announces the penalty of death for those who fail. Even a 99.99 percent obedience rate earns a failing grade. In spite of its deadly consequences, this ministry of death came with an evident splendor reflecting God’s glory. The glory of the Lord is described as a fiery divine radiance (Exod 24:16–17; 40:34–35 [which the LXX renders “glory”]; 16:10; 32:22–23; 34:29–35). When Moses came down from Sinai with the tablets of the law, his face radiated the residual rays of the divine glory.

When the Bible speaks of the veil, it refers to what separated man from God. In the Old Testament, the presence of God was not a comforting presence. Paul is not going beyond the text or even against the text by imposing some theological motive, derived from Christian theology, on Moses’ actions. He argues that Moses veiled himself to protect the people of Israel. The Israelites were justifiably afraid, given their sin and subsequent punishment. No hint appears in the text in Exodus or in contemporary Jewish tradition that the glory on Moses’ face was fading. The glory of God was mediated on Moses’ face, and the repeated veiling rendered inoperative (stopped, cut off) the effects of the glory on his face.408 The veil hides the glory of the Lord because, when the veil is removed, we see the glory of the Lord (3:18). The noun telos means “aim” but does not refer here to Christ as in Rom 10:4. When followed by the genitive of something, telos “is concerned with ‘result, purpose, outcome, and fate, not termination.’ Its connotations are ‘teleological’ rather than temporal when it occurs in biblical literature.” Moses was protecting the people from a dire consequence if they gazed continually at the reflected glory of God radiating from his face. The telos of the glory on Moses’ face does not refer to some purpose or goal, or to Christ, but to consequences. It concerns the death that divine glory inflicts upon “hardened hearts.” The veil, then, is not simply a metaphor for Israel’s failure to see and understand. As Paul sees it, Israel’s fundamental problem is not a failure to comprehend the law but a failure to obey it