We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: . . .
— Second Corinthians 6:3-4a
Paul's Corinthian detractors first tried to discredit him entirely by starting a whispering campaign to the effect that he was actually no apostle but a power-hungry impostor seeking to bring them under his control. When the apostle had written his reply in defense of his apostolic authority, they then shifted their attack and accused him of other kinds of double dealing. "He gives himself as a reference for himself," they said sarcastically. "He must have letters of recommendation like a common traveling preacher. Such a man cannot be an apostle." Paul had to answer that, and he did. But it was not easy. His second epistle to the Corinthians was surely one of the most difficult he was ever called upon to write, for he was forced for the church's sake to speak in his own defense.
His beloved fellow Christians must trust him if he is to help them, so he will state his case frankly, even if his whole soul shrinks from the task. The words "I am speaking as a fool," "I am become a fool," indicate how deeply he felt the humiliation. But he sacrificed himself for the good of the church and let his enemies think what they would. That was Paul's way.
thought
Paul commended himself to the Corinthian church by his sufferings. His detractors condemned. His life and ministry commended. What about our life and ministry?
prayer
May I, too, Lord, be ready to sacrifice myself for the good of your Church.
If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.
— First Peter 4:15-16
The Christian who finds himself in trouble for his faith's sake may draw a lot of consolation from Paul's epistles to the Corinthians. Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the humanity of the great apostle seen so clearly as when he staggers under the cruel attacks of the anti-Paul bloc in the Corinthian church. His sufferings are there the most poignant and nearest to the sufferings of Christ because they are inward and of the soul. For always the soul can suffer as the body cannot.
thought
Always must the suffering Christian make certain that he or she is suffering for Christ's sake and not because of his or her lack of love, understanding, sensitivity, or because of careless words or living.
prayer
Lord, strengthen me to suffer for Your sake and to understand when it is not for Your sake that I suffer.
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
— James 2:26
We would make a clear distinction here between moral action and mere religious activity. In truth there is already too much of that popular type of activity which does little more than agitate the surface of religion. Its never-ending squirrel-cage motion gives the impression that much is being done, when actually nothing really important is happening and no genuine spiritual progress is being made. From such we must turn away. By moral action, we mean a voluntary response to the Christian message: not merely the acceptance of Christ as our personal Savior but a submission to the obligation implicit in the doctrine of the Lordship of Jesus. We must free ourselves from the inadequate concept of the gospel as being only "good news," and accept the total meaning of the Christian message centering in the cross of Christ.
We must restore again to the church the idea that the offer of salvation by faith in Christ carries with it the condition that there must be also a surrender of the life to God in complete obedience. Anything less than this puts the whole thing in the passive voice. A lifetime of passive listening to the truth without responding to it paralyzes the will and causes a fatty degeneration of the heart. The purpose of Bible teaching is to secure a moral and spiritual change in the whole life. Failing this, the whole thing may be wasted.
thought
Vital faith results in radically changed living. Biblical teaching calls not just for intellectual assent but life obedience. Faith unreflected in deeds is highly suspect.
prayer
Father, I have sometimes done well in hearing the Word but doing has not always followed. Forgive me in Jesus' name.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
— Romans 6:11
Most readers will remember (some with just a trace of nostalgia) his or her early struggles to learn the difference between the active and the passive voice in English grammar, and how it finally dawned that in the active voice, the subject performs an act; in the passive voice, the subject is acted upon. Thus, "I love" is active, and "I am loved" is passive. A good example of this distinction is to be found at the nearest mortuary. There the undertaker is active and the dead are passive. One acts while the others receive the action. Now what is normal in a mortuary may be, and in this instance is, altogether abnormal in a church. Yet we have somehow gotten ourselves into a state where almost all church religion is passive. A limited number of professionals act, and the mass of religious people are content to receive the action.
The minister, like the undertaker, performs his professional service while the members of the congregation relax and passively "enjoy" the service. One reason for this condition is the failure of the clergy to grasp the true purpose of preaching. There is a feeling that the work of the preacher is to instruct merely, whereas the real work of the preacher is to instruct with an end to securing moral action from the hearers. As long as there has been no moral response to the instruction, the hearers are passive merely and might as well be dead. Indeed, in one sense they are dead already.
thought
Rather than counting ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus, are we living as though we were dead to Christ and all too alive to sin?
prayer
Lord, deliver me from casket living! I'm alive in Christ.
I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.
— First Timothy 5:21
Gospel churches which mostly begin with the lowly are usually not content till they attain some degree of wealth and social acceptance. Then they gradually fall into classes, determined largely by the wealth and education of the members. The individuals that comprise the top layer of these various classes go on to become pillars of the religious society and are soon entrenched in places of leadership and influence. It is then that their great temptation comes upon them, the temptation to cater to their own class and to neglect the poor and the ignorant that make up the swarming population around them.
They soon become hardened to every appeal of the Holy Spirit toward meekness and humility. Their homes are spotless, their clothes the most expensive, their friends the most exclusive. Apart from some tremendous moral upheaval, they are beyond help. And yet they may be among the most vocal exponents of Bible Christianity and heavy givers to the cause of the church. Let us not become indignant at this blunt portrayal of facts. Let us rather humble ourselves to serve God's poor. Let us seek to be like Jesus in our devotion to the forgotten of the earth who have nothing to recommend them but their poverty and their heart-hunger and their tears.
thought
Are we receiving those who are different than we? In his He Sent Leanness David Head includes these prayers prayed in the heart when saying something else with the mouth: 'Bless all foreigners, but don't let them come to live next door. Bless all natives in foreign parts and keep them there.'
prayer
O Lord, may I welcome with open arms all who are Your people, even when they are quite different from me.
Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. . . .
— James 2:5-6a
In spite of our lip-service to democracy, Americans are a decidedly class-conscious people. The very politicians and educators and church leaders among us who sound abroad the praises of the common man and plead for equal rights for all are in private practice as aloof from the plain people as the proudest monarch could ever be. There exists among us an aristocracy composed of famous people, rich men, social lions, actors, public figures and headliners of one kind or another, and these are a class apart. Beneath them, standing off in wild-eyed admiration, are the millions of anonymous men and women who make up the mass of the population.
And they have nothing in their favor ? except that they were in the heart of Jesus when He died upon the cross. Within the church also there exists a class consciousness, a reflection of that found in society. This has been brought over into the church from the world. Its spirit is completely foreign to the spirit of Christ, utterly opposed to it, indeed; and yet it determines to a large degree the conduct of Christians. This is the source of the evil we mention here.
thought
It is often the materially and reputationally poor who are richest in faith. Kingdom status is marked by faith and humility, in extraordinary contrast to worldly status.
prayer
Lord, help me to see people as You see them.
He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
— Matthew 25:45
No observant man will attempt to deny that a vast amount of Christian money is being spent on those who do not need it, while the poor and the needy and such as have no helper must often go unnoticed and unhelped, even though they too are Christians and servants of our common Lord. (The modern church would appear to be as blind and partial as the world in this matter.) Our Lord warned us against the snare of showing kindness only to such as could return such kindness and so cancel out any positive good we may have thought we were doing.
By this test, a world of religious activity is being wasted in our churches. To invite in well-fed and well-groomed friends to share our hospitality with the full knowledge that we will be invited to receive the same kindness again on the first convenient evening is in no sense an act of Christian hospitality. It is of the earth earthy; its motive is fleshly; no sacrifice is entailed; its moral content is nil and it will be accounted wood, hay, stubble before the judgment seat of Christ.
The evil here discussed was common among the Pharisees of New Testament times. In chapter twenty three of Matthew, Christ mercilessly exposed the whole thing, and in so doing earned the undying enmity of those who practiced it. The Pharisees were bad not because they entertained their friends but because they would not entertain the poor and the common among the people. One bitter accusation which they hurled against Christ was that He received sinners and ate with them. This they would not stoop to do, and in their high pride, they became seven times worse than the worst among the sinners whom they so coldly rejected.
thought
Do you find yourself refraining from reaching out to someone in need because sometime in the past you were deceived or otherwise taken advantage of? But better to be deceived than to miss the opportunity to show Christ's love to one of His hurting children.
prayer
Father, may I be a committed servant of Yours through whom You reach out to those in need.
My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism.
— James 2:1
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun ? one that grows and does not diminish. And it is all the more dangerous because it is done without evil aforethought but, as it were, carelessly and without wrong intent. It is the evil of giving to them that have and withholding from them that have not. It is the evil of blessing with a loud voice them that are already blessed and letting the unblessed and the outcast lie forgotten. Let a man appear in a local Christian fellowship and let him be one whose fame is bruited abroad, whose presence will add something to the one who entertains him, and immediately a score of homes will be thrown open and every eager hospitality will be extended to him. But the obscure and the unknown must be content to sit on the fringes of the Christian circle and not once be invited into any home.
This is a great evil and an iniquity that awaits the judgment of the great day. And it is so widespread that scarcely any of us can claim to be free from it. So we condemn it only with utter humility and with acknowledgment that we too have been in some measure guilty.
thought
Our openness to other people may be determined by class favoritism or by lack of comfort with those of another culture, language, ethnic or racial group, or status whether higher or lower than ours. But whatever triggers favoritism violates brotherly/sisterly love.
prayer
Make me a humbler receiver of all Your people, Lord, not an importance measurer of them.
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
— John 17:3
Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem and saw not the king's face, though the king was his own father. Are there not many in the kingdom of God who have no awareness of God, who seem not to know that they have the right to sit at the King's table and commune with the King? This is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is a hard and grievous burden. To know God, this is eternal life; this is the purpose for which we are and were created. The destruction of our God-awareness was the master blow struck by Satan in the dark day of our transgression. To give God back to us was the chief work of Christ in redemption.
To impart Himself to us in personal experience is the first purpose of God in salvation. To bring acute God-awareness is the best help the Spirit brings in sanctification. All other steps in grace lead up to this. Were we allowed but one request, we might gain at a stroke all things else by praying one all-embracing prayer: Thyself, Lord! Give me Thyself and I can want no more.
thought
The foremost quality of eternal life is to know, experientially know God. We can fully know Him in Christ in whom God gives us Himself.
prayer
O God, I can know You, experientially know You in Christ. In Him You have given me Yourself. Hallelujah!