MINISTRY: ITS USE AND ITS RESPONSIBILITY
MINISTRY: ITS USE AND ITS RESPONSIBILITY
The first great thing connected with ministry is that it is the communication of the truth of God. In the beginning of God’s dispensations with man, the mind of God was revealed by inspiration, word by word. The prophet could only say what the Spirit communicated to him. This of course was the basis and authority for every exhortation in connection with it. In those early times we do not find so much the preaching side as the practical effect produced by the revelation; hence the opening books of Scripture are for the most part a detail of the effect produced on men of God through faith in the revelation. There is very little actual revelation, but a great deal of the effect produced by the [p. 429] power of God on man, in keeping with the revelation. The revelation to Noah, directing him to build an ark, produced a history of its own; the revelation of the new covenant in Genesis 9 introduced a new era, and there were effects accordingly. The effects were certain, whether essentially natural or spiritual, so that the history sets forth on the one hand the reception of the truth and the nature of it, and on the other the rejection of it and the nature of that. It is a faithful record of both sides, the reception and the rejection; and it is by inspiration, because no one but God could distinctly so determine what, according to His mind, is adherence to His word, or what is the denial of it, or how both would be disclosed or ascertained.
Further on we get the prophets, and to them the revelation was much larger and more copious. It announced the judgments that were coming on Israel because of disobedience, and on man in general, because of departure from God, and it also announced better things to come, the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow.
Now when we come to the New Testament, it is all different. In it we have God manifest in the flesh, the record of Him in four different aspects, and how man answered to it. It was not a mere revelation, but it was God manifest in the flesh, walking among men, doing everything in divine perfection; and every response or return made to Him by man disclosed what man was in relation to God, because God was there beside man, clothed in the humble garments of a man. Thus man was thoroughly tested. This we have in the gospels. But when the Lord, being rejected and ascended on high, having led captivity captive, gives gifts unto men, now for the first time true ministry by gifts really begins. It is not merely, as at first, revelation to guide the saint, nor is it the prophets to recall what was already given, while pronouncing judgment, or foretelling the eventual state, even “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness”. Gifts are now given from the ascended Christ, the exalted Man. It is not simply revelation, but gifts concurrent with the fulness of revelation, for the perfecting of the saints. The apostles and prophets are the channels of the revelation, and the others more the missionaries, each in a peculiar way, of what has been revealed. The apostle is the great channel to introduce and establish the truth, or to recover it and re-establish it if lost; the prophet, as a gift, to use the word so as to expose the state of the heart; the teacher to expound the word of God; the pastor to apply it to any individual case; the evangelist to declare or preach the gospel. Now the power and usefulness of each gift is as the gifted one uses the word of God in its force and integrity to effect that for which it was sent and for which he received the gift. A gift is not eloquence or any mental power, but it is a faculty conferred by the Spirit for expounding and presenting a distinct line of truth, drawing from the word of God that which will contribute to the good of souls. His power is not anything natural or acquired, but it is simply great according to the true and direct application of Scripture. The power is in the word of God, and the Spirit of God alone can impart it, and the gift is the effective direction of the word of God in its own peculiar, perfect light.
Thus the use of ministry is incalculable. No study of the word for oneself can ever supersede ministry. No one possesses all the gifts in himself, and yet if he does, he is dependent on his gift for edification, and not on his mere knowledge of Scripture. No soul indifferent to the gifts can be perfected. The word of life may and often does reach the soul apart from any apparent instrumentality, but there is not progress without appreciation of the gifts; as I know the nurture and admonition of the Lord I value the gifts. Ministry by gifts is the great evidence of the exaltation of Christ. “He ... gave gifts unto men”. The gifts are the means, divinely [p. 431] appointed, for the edification of the body. It is true that there is an edification of the body effected by the contribution which every joint compacted together supplieth, but then the gifts and their special effects are all there.
I shall now call attention to the various ways in which ministry is regarded. I shall not refer to the use superstition makes of it, except so far as it leavens the saints. First then there are some who disregard ministry, and say that they can learn from the Bible for themselves. These gradually sink to a low standard of truth, or they become unsound because they have not subjected their own thoughts to the scrutiny of gifted men beside themselves. It is reducing the whole of the circle of Christ’s interest and power to an individual, and therefore something unnatural and preposterous must be the result; and if bad in a man, how much worse in a woman! Paul communicated the gospel he preached to the apostles privately (Galatians 2) lest by any means he should run, or had run, in vain. Self-taught men, who have not submitted their acquisitions from Scripture to the scrutiny of their brethren, are generally unsound. The best taught do not hesitate to invite discussion respecting the truths they have seen, and thus have been only confirmed in them and enabled the better to expound them. Those who fall into the snare of rejecting ministry are but drones in the hive; they derive from it, but add not to it; they are never bright, and never concerned for Christ’s interests on the earth, however interested they may be in works of philanthropy; they condemn every one but themselves. Secondly, there are those who have their favourites as to ministry; these border on having “itching ears”; they consult their own tastes, and the minister is the impersonation of those tastes, while at the same time he presents truth sufficient to satisfy their conscience. They are bound to him, not as to a pastor, whose care and knowledge of them personally might entitle him to a special place [p. 432] with them; and indeed if he were such, he would expose and condemn the gross partiality which led them to confine themselves to the ministry of only one of the Lord’s servants, as the Corinthians did, when they said, “I am of Paul; and I of Apollos”. A soul might as well expect to grow and advance when warped by this exclusive partiality, as a man could expect to be constitutionally in vigour, who devotes his whole attention and energies to the cultivation of one sense. The Spirit is given to every man to profit withal, and the value and use of ministry is lost sight of and unappropriated when only one person, be he even Paul or Cephas, is the sole oracle, the one you class yourself under; for no one saint can say that he is exclusively of Christ. We are all of Christ, and all the gifts are ours in common too. Contentions and eccentricities are the result of this abuse of ministry. Such are not practically governed by the truth, however great and devoted their assumed patron, they have “men’s persons in admiration”.
Thirdly, there are those who are Athenian in their character; who like some new thing; Acts 17: 21. They like going to hear where they are interested. Good words and fair speeches greatly affect them; they like to be acted on, and the remarkable and painful consequence is that, as a rule, those who seek to be acted on rarely act out the word and truth of God. It is for solemn warning to every minister, lest he should intermix with the word of God that which can meet the human mind, and thus damage souls by constructing that which is unreal, forgetting the commission to the minister, namely, “But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts”. This class tends to produce those who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”.
Fourthly, there is the right class, those who with fear seek the word of the Lord from the mouth of every taught servant, with purpose of heart to carry it out.
[p. 433] They always apply themselves to the understanding of the word, because it is as the word is understood that the conscience is ruled by it, and their one desire is to be governed by it. They are often less quick in apprehension of its meaning than the less conscientious and the sentimental, but they always value the close and direct exposition of the word of God ministered in the quiet solemnity which always marks one who is himself controlled by what he expounds. It is not a mere vision which excites him, but a reality that he himself is in, and into which he seeks to conduct others.
The Lord teach us both the use and the responsibility of ministry.