AT TWO BURIALS 2
READINESS
E.C.Burr
This chapter is written by Paul with direct bearing on the collection or the giving of the saints; but Paul has that skill given by the Holy Spirit, manifested also in the service and ministry of the Lord Jesus Himself, to interweave in his consideration of, or setting out of, the truth bearing on very practical matters, something which is of universal and general application. He had spoken in the preceding verse of collective readiness in the saints, and comes in this verse to, "if the readiness be there, a man... ".
As we are here for this particular occasion, it is in connection with the burial of a man in whom there was readiness, the readiness was there. I think Paul looks for that in the local assembly collectively. Paul is addressing the whole Corinthian assembly in relation to readiness, but he brings it down specifically to readiness in a man - something that no doubt searches us.
There is very much to be done - in one sense there is hardly time to do all that needs to be done. Nobody need think that their hands need ever be idle if the readiness is there. If there is idleness or lack of occupation, it may be that the readiness is not there: but if the readiness is there, there never need be idle hands. In this chapter, as I say, Paul weaves not only the practical reality of what he was enjoining this local assembly in relation to in connection with their giving, but matters of distinct spiritual and moral import. He refers to persons who gave themselves first to the Lord (that is what underlies readiness, not giving themselves first to the apostles, "and to us by God 's will", but, "gave themselves first to the Lord") and the giving of oneself to the Lord involves that one is readily available to Him for any service or activity that He might require. Paul had said in the first epistle to this same company that his beloved brethren should "be firm, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord", 1 Cor 15: 58; and it is in persons who have given themselves first to the Lord that that comes out. We are not here to speak especially about the dead - these occasions bear on the living - but we cannot be apart from the impressions of what we have gathered up in our beloved brother: one who, I think we could all say, had given himself first to the Lord; owing a great deal, as many of us here do, to parents who also were in the same way; having also, as some of us have the privilege of having, children who have given themselves to the Lord; and the consequence is that readiness is there.
Paul draws on other things too. He does not just speak about the collection and the giving in this chapter as if it is something dry or material, but he blends in with it grace, and faith, and word, and knowledge, and love, and as we look at a character in whom there has been readiness, we see that there has been faith, and the word, and grace, and knowledge, and diligence, and love. I think that when Paul contemplates that there will be a man in whom there is readiness, it is these moral qualified that he will find in a man. Just think of them. Think of faith. Think how it marks those who are ready as given first to the Lord; it marks them characteristically in their subsequent history and in all their activity. Faith, and grace, and diligence – readiness is not there if diligence is not there: and if diligence is there, readiness will always be there. Diligence is a thing in which we most easily fail, but if readiness is there, diligence is there. And the word is there. What use would readiness be if it were apart from the word, that is the word in its general sense and the current application of the word of God as it may come to us. And knowledge is there because it forms the framework within which that readiness is extended.
Then, not to go through the whole chapter, Paul comes to this very touching allusion to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beloved, what readiness was there. If the readiness was there, then that Man was accepted according to what He had. Think of what He had: “for your sake he … became poor”, but think of what He had even in His poverty, One as poor as He. We used to be reminded that Mr Darby, in the French, translated this as that ‘He lived in poverty’. But even when He was poor, think how much he had. “If the readiness be there, a man is accepted according to what he may have”, and think even in the poverty of the Lord Jesus, of what He still had, of which nobody could deprive Him. He might have nothing material, and had to ask for a penny if He needed one, but nobody could deprive Him of the excellence of the moral qualities which were what He had, and which were what He was accepted on account of. Think of His piety - He was "heard because of His piety" - all this entered into the readiness of that blessed Man. "If the readiness be there, a man is accepted according to what he may have" - think of it refined in Jesus, what was there in readiness: "not my will, but Thine be done"; "as the Father has commanded me, thus I do"; "I come..... to do, O God, Thy will". Think of the readiness of what was there, a Man accepted according to what He had. What blessedness He had, what He has achieved through what He had, but in this as in other things, He serves as a model that we should follow in His steps.
This is in no sense a deprecatory reference. Paul is not here saying, 'even if a man has only a little he will be accepted according to that'. What Paul is looking at is the substance that there is in a man who has readiness, grace given to each according to the measure of the gift of the Christ. How it comes out in individuals in distinctiveness, Paul elsewhere telling us that star differs from star in glory, the saints appearing according to what they may have. Think of the greatness and the blessedness, the fulness of the work of God, in a man. You wonder at it that God is able to take ordinary human vessels and make out of them that which draws on the continual appreciation even of their brethren. Think how we are able to esteem what God forms in a man 'according to what he may have'.
Not all have the same thing. Paul says "not according to what he has not". So a man is not esteemed, not accepted in readiness, say, as an apostle if he is an evangelist. He is not accepted as a prophet if he is a pastor and teacher. It is according to what he may have, "but to each... has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ" (Eph 4: 7) and, beloved, we have seen these things formed in our brother, not just in store, not something that was a treasure to himself, kept in a secluded way or that would make what God had given him a private possession, but we have seen readiness with what the Lord had given him, and the man is accepted according to what he has.
The word for us I believe, beloved brethren, especially us in our own city, is whether the readiness will remain. Readiness is needed - how often we observe as we gather together that readiness is needed, and how often our beloved brother himself has contributed that readiness called for even as the saints have been together. How often he has contributed it, too, in service to one and another. Many of us can say, as Paul says of Phoebe, "and of myself", (Rom 16: 2); the readiness was there. And as our beloved brother has gone and his readiness with him, then the readiness needs to be filled up, and the Lord will accept those who seek to take on service in that same spirit of readiness according to what they may have. Not according to what they have not: the Lord does not look for things from persons greater than what He has already given them. But according to what He has given them, He looks for it to be fully developed and employed, used not for their glory, but for His.
The Lord would stimulate us, I believe, that the readiness might still be there, that it might not be diminished on account of the departure to be with Christ of our beloved brother, but rather as we commit ourselves in exercise the readiness may be increased, so that men may be accepted according to what they have.