The Ministry of the Cross
“Ministry” or “minister” are words you here often in religious conversation. “Minister” basically means “to serve” so “ministry” is that of giving service. One who ministers is one who serves the need, whatever it is. Both words carry with them the idea of “humility.” Scripture has much to say about “ministry.” It speaks of young Samuel ministering to Eli and Joshua ministering with Moses. Priests at the altars were ministers. Governing authorities are spoken of as ministers of God. Those seven men chosen to serve tables in the early church were ministers. In Ephesians 4 we read that pastors and teachers are given to the church to equip the saints to “do works of service, so that the body of Christ might be built up.” Ministers and those who do ministry then are not some elite few or select few. A church does not have one minister or a select ministry team, ministers are all those who put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and how great is that calling!
Our ultimate example in ministry is Jesus Christ who “came in the nature of a servant” and “came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Indeed, he said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:41-45).
In this passage we are confronted with Paul’s ministry which is the ministry of the cross and challenged to make our ministry rest in God’s power, not ours, which is found in the message of the crucified Christ. Again and again Paul has set out to make the point to the Corinthians that their fascination with human standards of wisdom, power, and status which portend themselves to human self sufficiency, pride, and boasting are disregarded and proven to be foolish in God’s economy. Again, Paul labors that point with the example of his ministry to them.
We learn that Paul’s ministry is pathetic (by human standards), proclamation (of God, Of Christ, in weakness, and without manipulation), and power.
I. The Ministry of Paul is Pathetic (by human standards).
Paul says he did not come to the Corinthians with “eloquence or superior wisdom,” rather he came “in weakness and fear, and with much trembling” and his message and preaching were not with “wise and persuasive words.” By human standards, this sounds pathetic, useless, powerless, and wimpy and would be especially pathetic to a society that greatly values and treasures sophistry and rhetoric. In Corinthian culture, if you had a golden tongue, you were treated and looked up to as a world-class superstar. It mattered little whether your content had any substance, only if you could speak convincingly and movingly. In Corinthian culture, if you were one of great pedigree, or one who is wise, or one who is powerful you had great status and influential. The result of such things is pride, arrogance, and idolatry.
So Paul had a choice, he could either come and wow and pizzazz them with awesome eloquence and presentation thus resulting in human praise and adoration for himself or he could choose the less traveled road and seek to demonstrate in his weakness and through the foolishness of what is preached the glory and power and wisdom of God in the foolishness of the cross. If he chose to come and wow and pizzazz them with his high-sounding, sophisticated, and eloquent words he would have been guilty of self-display. After laboring in the previous verses about boasting only in God, Paul would be a hypocrite if he was to come demonstrating superiority and pre-eminence with high sounding words. He would be guilty of self-boasting! We of course know that he “resolved” to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He dare not preach the gospel with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Rather, he stuck with the message of the cross, for it is in the foolishness of what is preached, that is Jesus Christ, that God is most pleased.
In another way, Paul wants the Corinthians to realize that his behavior among them matched the message he preached and was centered entirely on Christ and not himself. He did not want to be a hypocrite and disqualify himself. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets a prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” As Engberg-Pederson say, “preaching the gospel in ways that exhibit human wisdom would be an expression of self-assertion and would thus go directly against the content of the gospel.” “The gospel always points beyond humans to God and Christ and becomes garbled whenever humans exploit it instead to headline themselves as its stars” (Garland, 82).
Let’s be clear about what Paul is not saying in these verses. First, it would be wrong to infer from these verses that Paul is a bad speaker. Paul was a scholar and an orator of the highest degree. When Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra, the pagans identified Paul with Hermes, the Greek god of communication because Paul was the chief speaker. D.A. Carson says, “Doubtless Paul displayed many communicative skills and worked to improve the clarity and potency of his presentation. In Thessalonica he earnestly “reasoned,” “explained,” and “proved” that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead (Acts 17:2-3). What Paul avoided was artificial communication that won applause for the speaker but distracted from the message.
Second, these verses make no room for lazy preachers. Again D.A. Carson has wisely commented on this verse, “Lazy preachers have no right to appeal to 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 to justify indolence [indifference] in the study and careless delivery in the pulpit. These verses do not prohibit diligent preparation, passion, clear articulation, and persuasive presentation. Rather, they warn against any method that leads people to say, “What a marvelous preacher!” rather than, “What a marvelous Savior” (Carson, 34, 35).
A certain church had a beautiful stained-glass window just behind the pulpit. It depicted Jesus Christ on the cross. One Sunday there was a guest minister who was much smaller than the regular pastor. A little girl listened to the guest for a time, then turned to her mother and asked, “Where is the man who usually stands there so we can’t see Jesus? Too many preachers of the word so magnify themselves and their gifts that they fail to reveal the glory of Jesus Christ.
Paul in his ministry wanted everyone to look past him and see the Savior. He wanted to decrease that God might increase. He wanted Jesus Christ to be lifted up, so that all peoples may be drawn to him. He wanted to be hidden behind the message of the cross so he made sure his ministry matched the message he preached and was centered entirely on Christ and not himself. Pathetic, foolish, weak to the world? So be it.
II. The Ministry of Paul is Proclamation (of God, Of Christ, In Weakness, Without Manipulation).
Paul’s ministry was not to serve himself, but to serve others, and he served others through the ministry of proclamation of God, Of Christ, in weakness, and without manipulation.
First, his ministry proclaimed the testimony of God (v.1). Rather than engaging himself in public displays of rhetoric and philosophy, which he very well could have done, he engaged in bearing witness to God. Indeed, verse one says he “proclaimed” God. That is, he preached and announced the wonderful acts of God. This proclamation about God finds its ultimate expression in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. By preaching or proclaiming we are not to understand it only as what I am doing right now or every Sunday for 30 to 40 minutes. We are all to proclaim the wonderful acts of God. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” We are to be proclaiming with our mouths the testimony about God. God has taken action, and the good news is announced. God is not negotiating; he is both announcing and confronting. In God we live and move and have our being! God is working all things together for good. God works all things after the counsel of his will! Proclaim God? Yes! Proclaim and boast in him! It is because of him that we are in Christ Jesus!
Done properly, proclaiming the testimony of God is simply the re-presentation of God’s gospel, God’s good news, by which men and women come to know him. Thus preaching mediates God himself. So in your ministry of the cross to others, proclaim God first. This does not mean be loud and boisterous and obnoxious, it means talk about him, share his wondrous acts with others, and please do not undue with your actions what you say with your lips! The more you think about God, the more you will talk about him!
Something God has been laying on my heart this week that I would like to proclaim to you about God is “do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the spirit will reap eternal life.” God knows all your thoughts and actions. You cannot trick him or slip one by him. You cannot deceive him. If you are living your entire life in pride, arrogance, self sufficiency, my way or the high way, you are sowing to the sinful nature and you will reap destruction. There is no doubt about it. God will not be mocked. Let go of your pride and resolve to know nothing but Jesus Christ.
This proclamation of God ultimately culminates in Jesus Christ and so that leads us to the second facet of Paul’s ministry.
Second, his ministry resolved to focus on Jesus Christ (v.2). It says in verse two, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” With the phrase “to know nothing” we are not to understand Paul as one who has his head stuck in the sand, blissfully ignorant of anything and everything save Jesus Christ and him crucified. We know that Paul is not ignorant nor is he anti-intellectual and it would be wrong to infer that from this passage. Peter acknowledges the weighty arguments of Paul in his epistle! Paul’s point is that he deliberately set out to put aside any methods that would showcase his own knowledge and wisdom. “To know nothing” does not mean that he left all other knowledge aside, but rather that he had the gospel, with its crucified Messiah, as his singular focus and passion while he was among them. Paul is not anti-intellectual, but he does oppose intellectual vanity. Paul did not come to them as a know-it-all. On the contrary, he was content to be identified as a know nothing who preached foolishness: Jesus Christ crucified. He preached the message of the cross, for it is the power of God to those who are being saved and by it, God has destroyed the wisdom of the wise and frustrated the intelligence of the intelligent.
To say “I resolved” means nothing more than that he purposed to continue his regular practice. It was always his practice to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is “of first importance.” Jesus and the cross molded his entire message and his whole approach! We cannot throw out the cross or ever stop proclaiming the message of Jesus and the cross! Give me that old time religion. Give me that old rugged cross! Without it I am still dead in my sins! Without it I am hopeless and helpless, condemned to an eternity without Christ in hell. The cross reveals yours and mine sin in its deepest, darkest depravity and God’s power at its most dazzling and spectacular. Christ and him crucified is where the power is at. If you really hold that God has supremely disclosed himself in the cross and that to follow the crucified and risen Savior means daily dying then it is preposterous to adopt a lifestyle designed to impress and boast and flatter about yourself! Resolving to know only Christ crucified means you can proclaim with Paul, “but whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”
Let this resolve of yours also drive you to share the foolish message of the crucified Christ with all those you know! Be resolved to know Christ crucified and to share Christ crucified.
The more you think about Jesus, the more you will talk about him.
Third, his ministry of proclamation did not fear weakness (v.3). In verse three he says “I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.” Paul reminds the church that God works through weakness. Garland says, “The subject of the preaching, Jesus Christ crucified, was regarded as weak, those who responded to the preaching were regarded as weak (1:27), and the preacher of the gospel came off as weak” (84). We cannot be sure how Paul was weak, perhaps it was from physical illness, or perhaps it is more general like an unimpressive presence. We should not get sidetracked by such a discussion and should focus on his point which Weber brings out when he says, “it is in the nature of the cross that it cannot be preached elegantly and brilliantly, only in weakness.” By coming in weakness, fear, and trembling Paul did not come as one who was self-important or proud hearted. Paul comes in total weakness and frailty, stripped of self-reliance. Paul had cast himself on the mercy and grace of God.
In your ministry do you come to it in weakness and fear and trembling or do you come to it full of human strength and self reliance? Do you come to it thinking how can God use me for this or do you come to it thinking how much God depends on me for this!
Paul has learned to boast in his weakness because he has experienced in it the sufficiency of God’s grace and the perfection of God’s power. 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10 says, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak then I am strong.” Let our weakness ever remind us of our frailty, of our dependence. Let it ever remind us that you are all powerful and all things come from you and depend on you.
We need to learn, like Paul, to have complete dependence upon God. The effectiveness and success of Paul comes not from his strength but God’s and he has learned to throw everything on him. When I am weak, then I am strong because then I depend more fully on you.
I want to boast of my strengths and the world all around us tells us we must boast in our great achievements and strength but the reality is when I do so I am at my weakest. Paul lived just the opposite. He boasted in his weakness, so that everyone would see the power of God in him.
Most of us would have stayed home, but Paul knew something we would all do well to remember, that God is sufficient in our weakness. It does not depend on our strength but on God’s. We are called to be faithful, God will do the rest. “As long as people are impressed by your powerful personality and impressive gifts, there is very little room for you to impress them with a crucified Savior” (Carson, 39).
Fourth, his ministry of proclamation did not seek to manipulate (v. 4), but rested in the Spirit’s power. Paul does not mean that there is no sense in which he seeks to be persuasive. In 2 Corinthians 5:11 he says, “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.” Rather, Paul avoids at all cost persuasion that is manipulative. He shuns preaching that moves people by its eloquence but does not faithfully present the gospel. It is only the truth and the power of the gospel that produces truly changed lives, not glamour and sophisticated rhetoric. The integrity of the gospel depends on this. If the church is full of those who are following Christ simply because they are enamored with the preacher or the glamour and jazz of the service, than it is just superficial and will wear out and fade away only to be replaced with the next new thing.
III. The Ministry of Paul is Power
Paul’s ministry resulted in a demonstration of God’s power. It says in vv. 4-5, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
By every human standard, Paul should have failed and fallen flat on his face. He has taken every step possible, he has gone way out of his way, to demonstrate that nothing is done in his own power and strength, it is all done in God’s strength. By all human estimation and wisdom Paul was bound for failure, but instead, Paul in his character and message demonstrated the very power of God. He demonstrated that God in his foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom and God in his weakness is stronger than man’s strength.
We read in verse four he did this with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. The word translated “demonstration” means the most rigorous proof. In Greek rhetoric it was a technical term for a compelling conclusion drawn from the premises. The “proof” lies not in compelling rhetoric, but in the accompanying visible demonstration of the Spirit’s power. As Fee puts it, “Even though he was weak and his preaching lacked “rhetoric” and “wisdom,” their very coming to faith demonstrated that it did not lack power” (Fee, 95).
Leon Morris, “Paul’s very defects had afforded the most convincing demonstration of the power of the Spirit. Though there was nothing impressive about his preaching from a human standpoint, it had carried conviction. It was not human excellence that accomplished this, but the Spirit’s power” (Morris, 51, 52).
What was the demonstration of God’s power? The demonstration of power refers to the actual conversion of the Corinthians, with its associated gift of the Spirit, which was probably evidenced by spiritual gifts. The evidence of the Spirit’s power lies with the Corinthian’s themselves and their own experience of the Spirit as they responded to the message of the gospel. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Here I am afforded an opportunity to throw this out and let you do with it what you will. We tend to minimize the work of the Holy Spirit in Baptist churches. Something I would encourage all of you to do is study the teachings of Scripture about the Holy Spirit and come to appreciate more fully His work.
At the end of verse five we learn the purpose for Paul’s method of ministry. It says, “so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” He wanted to be confident that nothing he did or said made those at Corinth put their faith in something other than God. He wanted them to have a sure foundation.
As Wilson says, a faith that depends upon clever reasoning may be demolished by a more acute argument, but the faith which is so produced by the power of God can never be overthrown. Paul’s intention had been to ground his converts in the divine power and to make them independent of mere human reason. After all, anything that someone can talk you into, someone else can talk you out of.
We need more of this power! Where this power, this demonstration, is present, people cannot help but know it, and the faith of those who turn to Christ is safely anchored in God himself. Where that power is absent, nothing can repair the loss, and the faith of the new converts is likely to be attached, in part, in wrong things.
We will see more of this power when we learn that our faith does not rest on mega methods, mega money, or mega anything. Our faith rests on God’s power, demonstrated in all its glory in Jesus Christ! Jesus is not some wallflower, he is the wisdom and power of God. He is our ministry.
We will see more of this power when we all give up self reliance.
What a freeing thought this is! Our effectiveness in sharing the gospel with others is not dependent on our skills or wisdom or knowledge. The power is in the message itself! Our confidence is in the power of God!
Paul’s own point needs a fresh hearing. What he is rejecting is not preaching, not even persuasive preaching; rather, it is the real danger in all preaching – self-reliance. The danger always lies in letting the form and content get in the way of what should be the single concern: the gospel proclaimed through human weakness but accompanied by the powerful work of the Spirit so that lives are changed through a divine-human encounter. That is hard to teach in a course in homiletics, but it still stands as the true need in genuinely Christian preaching. Fee, 97.
As David Prior says here, “This paragraph provides the perfect touchstone for all preaching, as much as in what Paul rejected as in what he determined to pursue. There are searching questions here for the preacher. Is our preaching genuine proclamation? Do we proclaim the mighty acts whereby God has borne witness to himself in Jesus? Do we obscure our proclamation with lofty words or anything else? Have we made a firm decision to make Jesus Christ and him crucified both the theme of our preaching and the centre of our living? Do we experience proper tentativeness and do we taste our own vulnerability as preachers of the gospel in a pagan, hostile world? Does our preaching demonstrate the power of the Spirit? Do the results of our preaching demonstrate the power of the Spirit? Are people’s lives being changed? Do they know the power of the Spirit in their own lives?
Successful churches are those which stick to the fundamentals, that is the proclamation of God. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God. Where is the power? Is it in fancy words? No! Is it in great pride, strength, wealth and nobility? No! It is in the person of Jesus Christ. Resolve to know nothing save him! Boast in God!
Methods may change all the time but truth never does. In your ministry resolve to proclaim God, focus on Christ, glory in your weakness and refuse to manipulate by human strength and wisdom.
Belief in Jesus is a miracle produced only by the effectiveness of redemption, not by impressive speech, nor by wooing and persuading, but only by the sheer power of God. The creative power of redemption comes through the preaching of the gospel, but never because of the personality of the preacher.