In the second letter to the Corinthians, we read a few verses from the seventeenth verse of the second chapter, through the opening verses of chapter 3.
For we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ.
Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?
Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men;
being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.
And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward:
not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God;
who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written, and engraven on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which glory was passing away:
how shall not rather the ministration of the spirit be with glory?
This is another phase in this whole letter and document relating to the ministry of the church. We are going to dwell this evening upon this further phase concerning these living epistles and letters of commendation, in which we shall, if we do not immediately see, something of the nature of the ministry of the Lord’s people—not the ministry to the Lord’s people at the moment, but the ministry of the Lord’s people.
When we commenced this consideration, we pointed out that right through the letter there are many indications of the sufferings and adversities which had come upon the apostle Paul from this church in Corinth—at least from a section of it. It is very difficult to believe that the whole church was like this, but a section is referred to. We do not know how large it was, but it was large and serious enough for him to take so much account of it as to write at least these two considerable letters. They both have to do with that attitude which had arisen against himself.
It is not at all certain that Peter ever went to Corinth. The fact that there was a Peter section in Corinth is rather illuminating; I think it is a key to the situation. We have no knowledge whatever of Peter having ever been to Corinth, and yet there was that group there in the church which said, “We are of Cephas.”
I think it indicates the work of the Judaizers, who followed Paul wherever he went—to every church, every assembly of believers which had come into being through his ministry—following him to discredit him in the church. A wretched business; a miserable, contemptible lifework. But there it was.
We know it was affecting other churches, like Galatia; that is definitely referred to. And the fact that this Peter element seems to point to the work of the Judaizers is because Peter was the apostle to the circumcision—that is, to the Jews.
While Peter would not have agreed with them, this group—the Peter group, we are told—was there, and they had influence. This Judaizing infection had influenced these people, saying, “Now, you see, Peter was the first and great apostle. He was the great spokesman on the Day of Pentecost. Peter is the big man, the man at the beginning. And Peter, you see, is the apostle to the Jews. And who is this man Paul? He has repudiated that realm, the Jews, and gone to the Gentiles, which you are here.”
You see the work? It was not heaven. This leaven, this evil leaven, had leavened the church at Corinth. Therefore, there was amongst these believers this wretched, miserable, contemptible activity, discrediting the apostle Paul and his ministry.
One of the lines, quite evidently, that they had adopted was this: “Did Paul ever bring you letters of commendation from the church at Jerusalem? Have you ever seen his certificate of ministry which was given him by Jerusalem?”
Jerusalem—not Antioch. They could not have said Antioch; that would not have served their purpose. But Jerusalem is the place for the Jewish element, is it not? “Have you ever seen his certificate? Have you ever seen his letter of commendation? Did he ever come having in his hand something from Jerusalem to establish his bona fides as an apostle of Christ? No, you have never seen such a thing, because he has not got one.
“Jerusalem has not written him authority. Jerusalem has not accredited his apostleship. Jerusalem has not ordained him to the ministry. He has no letters of commendation. He has no certificate of his authority.”
Well, the apostle had met that. It had cut him, like many other things which we will not mention but which are indicated in this letter. It cut him very deeply; he suffered very acutely because, after all, this church owed everything of Christ to him. He had suffered for them. He had, day and night, ministered amongst them for two years. He had given his life for them.
And naturally—God knows he was human—and because of his spiritual devotion, he naturally felt this kind of thing very acutely. So he answers it: “Need we, as some do, letters of commendation?”
I do not know; there is a bit of sarcasm, you know, perhaps in that “as some do.” Well, I will leave that with you to work out.
Need we letters of commendation? Do we really—do you need a certificate for our apostleship? Is that the ground of our credit? A piece of paper? Letters of commendation?
Look at yourselves. Who was it that led you to Christ? How did you come to know the Lord Jesus? Who was His instrument in bringing you into salvation? It was not Peter. It was not Apollos.
He did not answer it; he only asked the question and left them to answer it. Look at yourselves, and look at your beginning. Look at what you have of Christ, love of Christ, and what Christ means to you; and then answer the question in your own heart: How did it come to you?
Need we documentary evidence? You are the documentary evidence. You are an epistle—not an epistle of us. Note: be careful, not of ourselves. “We are not sufficient of ourselves.” No, he is discounting himself. Although an instrument, a vessel, a means, he discounts himself and says, “You are an epistle of Christ.”
You are not just representatives of Paul and his teaching. Come again: this is not merely the truth that he propagated. You are not just members of a Pauline group. You are, if this is Christ, epistles of Christ. That is the only credential. That is the true certificate.
Men make a great deal of these other things, you know: official support from Jerusalem, wherever that may be; ordination; the certificate of ordination. They make a lot of these things.
But without putting all these things away altogether, they go for nothing—I mean, nothing. They give us no credit, no standing, no right, no authority. The only true certificate is that people look at us and read Christ—discern Christ, read Christ—not Paul’s teaching, not some man’s name.
We may have a vast amount of teaching. We may have had it all for all the years and all the conferences, but if, in looking at us, people do not read Christ, it goes for nothing. Remember that.
The people we live with—do they read Christ? Are they able to discern Christ, decipher Christ, in our lives? The people we work with?
This is our ministry, you see. Ministry is not in the hall and gathering on the Lord’s Day, or at special times. The ministry is in our home. That is where we can be read most clearly—be read.
It is in our business place. It is wherever we are. Wherever we are, that is the place of our ministry as the church and its members. The ministry is that we are read. Make no mistake about it: we are read.
People who live with us are reading us. People with whom we work are reading us, summing us up, taking account of us, passing their mental judgments upon us. And what is it? What is it? Are we difficult people to live with, to work with—awkward, contentious? Or do they read Christ? “Epistles of Christ,” says Paul.
I think it is very probable that Paul had in his mind not only those tables of stone upon which the Lord wrote the law and gave it to Moses, but something with which Paul was quite familiar, which has only come to light in recent years.
I remember, I suppose, forty years ago—perhaps more—I came into possession of a book by Dr. Deissmann, a great German scholar. It was called From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps.
It was a discovery which excavations had made, and it became the basis of a great deal of new information as to life and its ways in the ancient world.
From Egyptian rubbish heaps there had been some excavating, and as they threw up the earth from beneath, there came to light a great amount of broken earthenware—pieces of earthenware. They saw that there were little writings on these pieces of earthenware.
When they came to decipher the writing, they found that they were parts of letters. When they put these pieces together, they made whole letters, and they were letters of the Greek-Roman world: “To the most excellent servant,” and then some kind of a nice word—not New Testament language—or something like this: “Blessings be upon you from one of the gods, the most excellent. The blessing of the gods be upon you. May you be found in happiness and in peace.”
Well, we can pull out the beginnings of Paul’s letters exactly like that. It was a formula of correspondence in those times.
These bits of broken earthenware crockery are called, in their language, ostraca. Our English word “ostracism” comes from that Greek word: thrown out, discarded bits of earthenware.
I think Paul had this in mind when he was writing here. Yes, discarded, thrown out—that is another word, pitched out—bits of earthenware. Not dead china, earthenware, crockery: living epistles. Thrown out, discredited, put on the rubbish heap—are you epistles of Christ?
Very often those two things go together. On the part of the world, and perhaps many Christians like the Corinthians: discredited, dishonoured, ostracised, put on the rubbish heap—refuse. Epistles of Christ.
Such a thing can happen, you see, to epistles of Christ. That happened—actually happened—with the apostle Paul: discredited, without support, without credentials, dishonoured there.
He can write, “His letters,” they say, “are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” Or compare his preaching with some of the Greek orators. You can say that to him. He acknowledged it: “My preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom.”
All right, say what you like about that. My preaching, discredited; my person—I know all about my physical infirmities, and I know my physical presence does not impress you very much. You can say what you like about that. It could be quite true.
And all the other things that they said—there are many of them recorded.
But, dear friends, today—today—what about this ostracised man? What about it? Is he an epistle of Christ? Is he a living epistle?
You notice that this is set in the context of the veil which Moses put on his face. The two things in connection with that veil are these: the glory which was passing, passing, fading; and the glory which remains, survives. The contrast is between the transient, the passing, and the abiding, the permanent.
I suggest to you that Paul belongs to the latter category: the permanent, the abiding, because a ministry of Christ.
Well, this is challenging, is it not? I do not know that it is necessary to say a lot more. This pinpoints it. It shows us just what the ministry of the church is.
But there is another thing here, because this is all of a piece. You go back to chapter 1, and verse 21. You have this:
Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God.
The word is really “into Christ”: establishes us with you into Christ, and anointed us, is God.
An anointed vessel. Now everybody here, I should think, knows the meaning of anointing in the Bible. Kings were anointed; priests were anointed; some prophets were anointed.
But the anointing, which marks the symbol of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon that one, was always in relation to some ministry.
It was not just having the Holy Spirit, but it was the positive aspect of the Holy Spirit in divine expression. If it was a king, it was for kingship, for authority, for rule. If it was a priest, it was for mediation, for his service, his work. So with such prophets as were anointed. It was always the active side.
You will notice that immediately Jesus had been anointed by the Holy Spirit, He went forth to His ministry. First, His ministry was challenged in the wilderness by the devil, and then He returned from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit, came to Nazareth, and He was in His life ministry.
The anointing was the practical, active aspect of the life of a man of God. “And anointed us with you”—joint anointing of the church.
This means that the fact that the Holy Spirit has come to us, dear friends, carries with it the fact of an activity in our lives: in realism, in ministering Christ, in showing Christ, in expressing Christ, in making Christ known.
The Holy Spirit, if His will and purpose are with us on that line, is the enablement, the wisdom, the power, the endurance, the effectiveness—God’s promise, all by the Spirit.
Notice that Paul speaks much about the Spirit here at the beginning of the letter: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” and so on. “And anointed us.” That all goes into this great matter of our ministry.
We are not sufficient of ourselves—not sufficient in the matter. We have no sufficiency, but He has anointed us, and that is the sufficiency.
One little thing—wonderful thing—takes me right back to the beginning of my ministry, where I first had a responsibility for a company of the Lord’s people. I had become, as the language is, their pastor.
But, you know, it was present with me so much there: I have not got the ability. I am not fitted in any way for this work. But the Holy Spirit is equal to it all. I can count on the Holy Spirit.
From that first until this day, I believe that it has just been that: on one side, deep consciousness that we are not sufficient of ourselves; on the other, the anointing—the anointing. We can always fall back upon the Holy Spirit.
I would not be speaking to you so strongly about our ministry if I could not say this to you: that the weakest, poorest, the most inefficient naturally, can count upon the Holy Spirit.
The particular point is that the Holy Spirit’s object is to manifest Christ, to make the impression of Christ by our being present.
I am going to stop for the present. That is another aspect of our ministry: living epistles. How is the gospel spread? How is the world to know?
Well, the apostle does not say here anything—or very much—about our going out here and there and everywhere. It may come into it, of course. But what he does say is, “Known and read of all men.”
That is how the gospel grows. That is how the world knows: people are able to read Christ where we are.
We should go to prayer in our hearts, I am sure, and on our knees more and more: “God, fulfil this ministry. Make me a certificate of Christ. Make me a living letter of commendation of Christ—an epistle.”
We pray.