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It is a fundamental Biblical principle that all Christians are called to be ministers to some degree or another

• only a very few are called to give our lives / careers to the cure of souls, but most of us are called to minister in the world where we’re placed as God enables us.

So what is a minister? Or what is the illusive word ‘ministry’ actually mean?

• Let me give you my definition of it – to ‘minister’ to someone means to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ, in all its fullness, to bear on their lives.
• It means to be the conduit of God’s love and his grace and his power to someone else’s being.

I hope I don’t need to persuade you that I’m speaking honestly when I say that to be ‘a minister’, to devote ones working life and energy to this task, is an awe-inspiring task. It’s a huge privilege!

• And I don’t say that because it’s the kind of grand-sounding phrase that preachers can toss around so carelessly, I say it because its the truth. It’s the genuine feeling of my heart.
• I regard it as a privilege to open God’s word for you, to be the chef who cooks up your spiritual Sunday roast. My desire is that you will leave from this sermon fed and nourished and to leave here having had a the very best meal that Ian White (and the worship team and etc) can offer to feed and nourish your soul.

In this passage Paul talks about his own ministry – his own calling to bring the power and love of God to bear on the lives of people (in this instance) in Corinth.

To be sure, at this point in his life, Paul’s ministry was being called into question by various people in the Corinthian church.

Sense of privilege

Paul is saying “I’m not addressing you with any sense of pride, but with a great sense of privilege – I know I’ve been anointed by God for this task.”

How do you get across what ministry is like?

Many of us today are in need to this kind of ministry

you may just have had a tough week, or you may be asking big questions about who you are or where you’re going in life and you need to be on the receiving end of God-anointed ministry.

Paul uses four contrasts in this passage to unpack the wonder of what he’s called to – to be a minister of God’s word

Contrast 1:

Scent or stink? (v14-16)

triumphal processions

2 Cor 2:14-15

14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

15 For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.To the one we are the smell of death, to the other the fragrance of life.

Contrast two smells:

• Coco Chanel introduced Chanel no. 5, created for her by Ernest Beaux, in 1921¹. Today, Chanel sells a bottle of this popular fragrance every 30 seconds.
• On the other hand, when I was very young my mother had a lady who came to do some cleaning in the house. My bother and I nicknamed her four-star because she wore this heavy perfume that smelled like 4* petrol!

Procession well known

Roman army won victory the triumphant General had a right to a parade through the streets of the town he represented.

• his troops followed behind and the prisoners taken were dragged along in the rear

furthermore, part of the procession (possibly the head of the procession) would be made up of priests carrying incense waving their perfume in all directions.

• so not only was there noise to hear and a sight to see, there was a fragrance to smell
• an aroma to bring beauty and a pleasant atmosphere to the place

The picture is so clear!

God is our heavenly general!

He won the victory for us when Christ Jesus was raised from the dead

We are the troops celebrating behind him!

The picture is not of fighting the the spiritual battle – it is of enjoying the spiritual victory! <ppt>

and what is it that provides the beauty for the occasion? – who is the aroma?

We are!

God’s intends that the aroma of his son, Jesus, should emerge through the witness of his children like us!

BUT some people will react / recoil from the fragrance. For them it’s the smell of death and these people, says Paul are those who are perishing.

If you’re a Christian, not everybody will like you for it – especially if you want to let Christ’s fragrance loose in your world.

ECHR judgements this week >>>

4 cases of discrimination because Christians were acting according to conscience

3 were turned down, one upheld,

But that’s not a disaster.

• In cases where UK Christians were wanting to make their faith clear to other people, our domestic courts were beginning to develop impossible tests on what constitutes manifestation of Christian faith.
• They did not even accept the cross as a Christian symbol or the belief in sexual purity as a conscience issue for Christians.
• The European Court of Human Rights has turned this on its head and stated categorically that such beliefs flow from Christian faith and are therefore worthy of protection.

Contrast 2:

Minister or Miser?

2 Cor 2:17 Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit.

There were religious teachers in Paul’s day (and there were obviously a large number of them because he says “unlike so many”) who saw religious teaching as nothing more than a way to make money.

The important word here is not the making of money, it’s ‘to peddle’

• It’s to use God’s word as a bargaining chip – to sell something at a high price when actually it’s not worth very much at all!
• Peddlers like this don’t love Christ and use money, they love money and use Christ.

A contemporary parallel is some TV evangelists who will not pray for you unless you send them the donation they ask for on the screen. That’s not true ministry, it’s peddling!

• And we’ve all heard stories of evangelists who have fallen from grace by allowing their greed for money outstrip their desire to see lives changed.

Paul sets himself over against these money grabbers

17 On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

Can I take a moment to talk to you if you’ve prayed about and had thoughts about giving your life, or a substantial part of it, to ministry or missions, is:

If you’re anything like I was you’ll be asking ‘Can I do this?’

• Can I bear this weight of being the aroma of Christ in some new place? By God’s grace, you can. He will equip you for this glorious task.

Paul gives us four tests in verse 17 to help us know that. I will turn them into questions for you to answer:

Strictly, the next four phrases in verse 17 all modify the word speak. Literally: we speak 2) from sincerity, 3) from God, 4) before God, 5) in Christ. So I ask you:

Will you speak with sincerity?

Will you be real? Will you mean what you say? Will you renounce all pretence and hypocrisy?

This is the between a preacher and an actor.

• An actor asks you to suspend disbelief (I know that lady on the stage is not really Miss Marple, but I’ll suspend my disbelief and pretend she is so I can enjoy the roller-coaster of the plot!)
• A preacher encourages you to engage belief (Because of what I hear from that man on the platform, I’ll trust God’s promises is true for me)

Will you avoid drawing attention to yourself and point people to the Christ of the Bible?

Will you speak as before God?

Will you communicate as if God is watching your every move and listening to your every word? Will you speak in such a way as to be more concerned with the approval of your heavenly Father than the congratulation of your earthly contemporaries?

He is your judge and the scriptures assure us that people who take on this role with be judged with greater strictness by your heavenly Father.

Will you speak as from God?

That is, will you take not only your commission from God, but your words and your authority from God.

• Will you speak his words and not your own. Will you speak in his authority and not your own? Will you draw your strength and guidance from his power and wisdom, not your own?

Will you speak as in Christ?

That is, will you derive your sense of identity and rest your assurance and your confidence and your hope and your courage from your union with Christ?

Because if you will, God has an unblocked channel, or conduit, through which he can let his word flow for the building of his people and the salvation of people He loves.

Contrast 3:

People or paper?

How could anyone tell whether Paul’s ministry was genuine / authentic? They would need some authentication.

2 Cor 3:1-6

1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?

It is clear that in order to demonstrate the validity of their ministry some people in Paul’s day used to write letters of recommendation.

This was a common practice in the ancient world (in fact Romans 16 is a letter of commendation about a lady called Phoebe)

(There is a story of two brothers, rejected from one assembly, they met, wrote each other letters and were then accepted in the other!)

Is Paul going to show off his letter, written on papyrus? No!

2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.

I don’t need a letter from some other Christian to commend my ministry! My letter is all around you – it’s you! You Corinthian Christians can see the power of my ministry by looking into the eyes of fellow Christians who have been transformed by Jesus! (And, but the way, I was the agent of that transformation)

3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

And finally …

Contrast 4:

letter or spirit

How would you know you’re competent at something? E.g. riding a bike.

• By learning it, practising it and doing it!
• Then everyone sees and

5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything of ourselves, but our competence comes from God.

6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant– not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

The old covenant (agreement between God and mankind) was a legal framework. 10 Commandments + the sacrificial system and a whole heap of rules and regulations. You just had to keep the letter of the law.

But in Christ all that changes! His law is written on our hearts! >>>

What a contrast!

Letter

• living by the letter has to do with rule-keeping
• where I live with a sense of oughtness

Spirit

• living with my spiritual radar tuned in to what God is saying. Detecting the promptings of the Spirit in my heart and trusting them.

Pray >>>