CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LEAST OF ALL GOD’S PEOPLE

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

EPHESIANS 3:8

Writing a book is a formidable and daunting task, involving a lot of hard work. One of the most prolific writers of our time, Charles Swindoll, described the process this way: “blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights, lengthy stares at blank sheets of paper, unproductive days when everything gets dumped into the trash, and periodic moments when inspiration and insight flow.”[57]

My own difficulty is further compounded because, as my wife said to me, “You do choose some of the more difficult subjects to write about.” But as difficult as it is to seek to handle the Word of God correctly and present His truth accurately, it is even more humbling to realize that, though I try to, I have not lived up to the truth I am writing about.

I well remember the days when I was working on my first book, The Pursuit of Holiness. The more I studied and wrote about the subject of personal holiness, the less holy I saw myself to be. Some mornings, while shaving, I would look in the mirror and burst out laughing. I would say to myself, “Who do you think you are to be writing a book on holiness? You ought to be reading one yourself. But write one? No way!”

The only thing that gave me courage to continue was a verse of Scripture that would always come to my mind, Ephesians 3:8, which says, “Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” I realized I really did not deserve to write on such an awesome subject as holiness, but that I was doing so by the grace of God —by His free, unmerited, unearned, and undeserved favor.

Since that experience with my first book, Ephesians 3:8 has become a “life verse” for me —a verse of Scripture I go back to continually for encouragement. In fact, I doubt if a single week goes by when I don’t have occasion to fall back on the realization that I am in the Christian ministry, not because I deserve to be, but because of God’s free, unmerited favor.

Paul’s testimony of receiving his office as a minister of the gospel purely by the grace of God was a very personal statement. Paul never ceased to be amazed that God chose him, the foremost persecutor of the church, to be the apostle to the Gentiles and to proclaim to them the unsearchable riches of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:9, he said, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

Not only did Paul consider himself the least of the apostles, to the Ephesians he referred to himself as “less than the least of all God’s people.” The expression “less than the least” is actually a “superlative comparative” word coined by Paul to express the depth of his genuine amazement that God would call him to be an apostle. Alfred Marshall translated Paul’s coined word as leaster,[58] while F. F. Bruce translated it as lessermost,[59] both of which are coined English words seeking to accurately and literally translate Paul’s emotional expression.

THE UNWORTHY APOSTLE

Paul freely acknowledged that he received his apostleship purely as a result of God’s undeserved favor. God then used Paul’s testimony to encourage me at a time when I most keenly felt my complete unworthiness to write on the subject of personal holiness. The question, however, is this: To what extent can we use Paul’s very personal testimony and my own experience to establish a scriptural principle regarding Christian ministry? Is all ministry, whether it be teaching a children’s Sunday school class, or witnessing individually to inmates at the local prison, or preaching to thousands of people each Sunday, performed by the grace of God by people who are unworthy to be doing it?

Harry Blamires had an incisive answer to that question:

In the upshot there is only one answer for the preacher who wonders whether he is worthy to preach the sermon he has composed or for the writer who wonders whether he is worthy to write the religious book he is working on. The answer is: Of course not. To ask yourself: Am I worthy to perform this Christian task? is really the peak of pride and presumption. For the very question carries the implication that we spend most of our time doing things we are worthy to do. We simply do not have that kind of worth.[60]

Of course, it matters little what Harry Blamires or Jerry Bridges thinks unless our thinking accords with Scripture. So what does the Bible say to this question? In Romans 12:6 Paul said, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” Paul was referring to spiritual gifts given to every believer to enable us to fulfill the ministry or service God has appointed for us in the body of Christ.

But note that Paul said these spiritual gifts are given according to the grace of God, not according to what we deserve. The Greek word for a spiritual gift is charisma, which means “a gift of God’s grace,” whether it is the gift of eternal life as in Romans 6:23 or the gift of a spiritual ability for use in the body.

Dr. Gordon Fee has some helpful insight on the connection of grace and gifts. In his comments on 1 Corinthians 1:4, which says, “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus,” Dr. Fee said,

The specific basis of Paul’s thanksgiving in their case is God’s “grace given you in Christ Jesus.” Commonly this is viewed as a thanksgiving for grace as such, i.e., the gracious outpouring of God’s mercy in Christ toward the undeserving. However, for Paul charis (“grace”) very often is closely associated with charisma/charismata (“gift/gifts”) and in such instances refers to concrete expressions of God’s gracious activity in his people. Indeed, the word “grace” itself sometimes denoted these concrete manifestations, the “graces” (gifts), of God’s grace.[61]

Peter wrote in a similar fashion as Paul: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10). Peter and Paul are saying the same thing. The spiritual gifts we have and the ministries we perform are gifts of God’s grace. None of us deserves the gifts he or she has been given. They are given to us by God’s undeserved favor to us through Christ.

This means the most “worthy” and the most “unworthy” of all Christians both receive their gifts and their ministries on the same basis. The “unworthy” person surely does not deserve his gift, but neither does the most “worthy.” They both receive them as unmerited favors from God.

I put quotation marks around worthy and unworthy in the previous paragraph because in reality there is no such distinction in God’s sight. In His sight, we are all totally and permanently bankrupt spiritually. Paul’s statement “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23) is just as true for believers as for unbelievers.

We never earn our privileges of ministry because of our hard work or faithfulness in previous service to God. I taught adult Sunday school for many years in a small church before God launched me into a much wider sphere of ministry. But I did not earn an enlarged ministry through my “faithful” teaching; rather, it was a gift of God’s grace.

We are so accustomed to thinking of spiritual gifts in terms of abilities to minister that we lose sight of the ordinary meaning of the word. A gift is something given to us; something we don’t earn. But even our ordinary meaning fails to adequately convey the biblical sense. We tend to give gifts to people who, even though they have not earned them, in some sense deserve them because of their relationship to us or because they have done us a favor of some kind. But God gives spiritual gifts to people who do not deserve them. None of us deserves to be in God’s service, whether it’s teaching a children’s Sunday school class or serving on some faraway mission field.

It is an awesome thing to attempt to speak on behalf of God. Yet that is exactly what we do when we teach or preach or write. It matters not whether our audience is one person or fifty thousand, whether they are kindergarten pupils or graduate theological students. Any time we say or write something that we hold out to be biblical truth, we are putting ourselves in the position of being God’s spokesman.

Peter said, “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God” (1 Peter 4:11). I suspect that most people who read this book do teach the Scriptures occasionally if not regularly. Do we appreciate the awesomeness of our responsibility, to be speaking on behalf of God? Do we consider the accountability that comes with being entrusted with the divine message?

Paul himself was keenly conscious of his immense responsibility when he said, “Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God” (2 Corinthians 2:17). He said he spoke like a man sent from God, but he also said he spoke before God, or in the sight of God. That is, God not only sent him, but observed him.

One Sunday as I stood up to teach my adult Sunday school class, to my dismay, I realized the president of our denominational seminary was sitting in the class. To make matters worse, he also happened to be the professor of homiletics (the art of preaching). I was sure he was critiquing everything I said, both in content and delivery. Now if the presence of a seminary president in my class was an awesome experience, how much more awed should I be when I realize I speak, or write, in the very presence of God and on His behalf.

What, then, will give us the courage to undertake or continue to teach the Scriptures or, for that matter, to exercise any other spiritual gift? The answer is the heartfelt conviction that we have our ministry by God’s grace. Again, as Paul said, “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:1).

It was a sense of God’s mercy that gave Paul courage or, as he expressed it, caused him not to lose heart. Mercy is God’s grace expressed specifically toward people who are viewed by Him as guilty, condemned, and helpless. It is generally expressed in terms of relieving the misery due to their sin. But God not only relieved Paul’s misery, He elevated him to the office of apostle and gave him the ministry of proclaiming the riches of Christ.

But Paul never lost sight of his own unworthiness, even when exercising his office of apostleship. He never forgot he held that office by God’s mercy. Here we see the biblical relationship between a sense of one’s utter unworthiness on the one hand, and the courage to undertake a ministry for God on the other. To lose sight of our unworthiness is to risk exercising our gifts and fulfilling our ministries in a spirit of presumptuous pride, as if God were fortunate to have us on His team. But to focus too much on our unworthiness, to the neglect of God’s grace, will effectively immobilize us for His service. That attitude is also an expression of pride because we are still focusing on ourselves and our worthiness or unworthiness, as if God were dependent on some innate quality within us to equip us for His service.

Remember we did not declare temporary spiritual bankruptcy. Our bankruptcy is total and permanent. The only worthiness we have for entrance into God’s Kingdom is in Christ. The only worthiness we have with which to come before God is in Christ. And the only worthiness we have to qualify us for ministry is in Christ. If we are to progress in any aspect of the Christian life, we must look outside ourselves and only to Christ. It is in Him that the grace of God is so abundantly poured out on us.

THE INADEQUATE APOSTLE

Paul was conscious throughout his entire ministry of his utter unworthiness to be a servant of Christ. We have seen how he expressed this sense of unworthiness in Ephesians 3:8 and 2 Corinthians 4:1. We again see him expressing it in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10:

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them —yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Paul freely admitted he did not deserve to be an apostle but that he was one by the grace of God —that is, by God’s unmerited favor. In verse 10, however, we see Paul making a subtle, natural transition of thought as he frequently does. The word grace in his expression, “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” can be taken in the context to mean either God’s unmerited favor or God’s enabling power. Looking back to his acknowledgment of unworthiness in verse 9, his statement would appear to mean, “I am unworthy to be an apostle, but by God’s unmerited favor I am one.”

Looking forward to the remainder of verse 10, however, where Paul was speaking about the effects of God’s grace on his ministry, it would appear to mean, “By God’s enabling power I am an effective apostle.” I believe both of these meanings of grace are incorporated in Paul’s statement. He was not giving us a technical treatise on grace and distinguishing its finer shades of meaning. Rather, Paul was speaking from his heart, and he was saying God’s grace was sufficient for both his unworthiness and his inadequacy. When he said, “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” he was saying, “I am an apostle as a result of God’s unmerited favor shown to me and as a result of God’s enabling power at work in me.” And even the working of God’s power is itself an unmerited favor from Him.

Like Paul, you and I need both aspects of grace to minister, because, also like him, we are neither worthy nor adequate. We need both. A school board interviewing men and women for the position of school principal should look for evidence of sterling character (worthiness) and professional competence (adequacy). Some candidates might be worthy but not competent; others competent, but not worthy. The school board must insist on both.

But God insists on neither. Instead He glories in calling into His service people who are neither worthy nor adequate. He makes them worthy in Christ alone, never in themselves. Then He makes them adequate through the mighty working of His Spirit within them.

Listen to how Paul expressed this last thought in Colossians 1:28-29: “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Paul found his worthiness in the worthiness of Christ and his adequacy in the power of Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14-17, Paul spoke of his ministry of the gospel, which in its eventual effect leads either to life or death. To those who believe, it leads to life; but to those who reject it, it leads to death. The eternal consequences of proclaiming such a gospel led Paul to exclaim, “And who is equal to such a task?” (verse 16).

You share the gospel informally with a neighbor, or perhaps in a more direct fashion when you are engaged in some evangelism program. In each case you are the smell of death or the fragrance of life to those with whom you share. Who is equal to such a task? You stand on Sunday morning before a class of junior high boys and girls. It seems to be almost insignificant; yet I have heard many adults give testimony of the life-changing influence on them of a childhood Sunday school teacher. Who is equal to such a task? You meet individually with a young person for basic discipleship training. He later goes to the mission field and translates the New Testament for a primitive tribe, which in turn evangelizes a neighboring tribe. Who is equal to such a task?

Paul answered this question just a few sentences later when he said, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).

Note that Paul said, “Not that we are competent in ourselves.” If you feel incompetent in God’s service, you are in good company. Paul felt that way also. If there is anyone in the history of the church who could have relied on his own God-given endowments, surely it would have been Paul. He was a brilliant theologian, a gifted evangelist, a tireless church planter, and a sound missionary strategist. He was also adept at cross-cultural ministry (“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. . . . To those not having the law [the Gentiles] I became like one not having the law” [1 Corinthians 9:20-21]). Yet Paul, with all his abilities, said we are not competent in ourselves.

We are not competent, but God makes us competent. That is what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them [the other apostles].” God’s grace in its concrete expression of divine power was effective in Paul. In fact it was so effective that Paul could say he worked harder than all the other apostles. That is quite a statement and, at first glance, seems to put Paul in a position of unconscionable boasting. I used to be troubled by this statement. It seemed to be excessive boasting and quite out of character with Paul’s obviously genuine humility. But I have come to realize Paul was not boasting. Rather, he was exalting the grace of God. He was saying that God’s grace at work in him was so effective it caused him to work harder than all of them. The grace of God motivated him, enabled him, and then blessed the fruits of his labors.

But then, perhaps realizing he could be misunderstood, Paul added, “Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” Perhaps John Calvin helps us best understand Paul’s intent when he wrote:

For having said that something was applicable to himself, he [Paul] corrects that and transfers it entirely to God; entirely, I insist, and not just a part of it; for he affirms that whatever he may have seemed to do was in fact totally the work of grace. This is indeed a remarkable verse, not only for bringing down human pride to the dust, but also for making clear to us the way that the grace of God works in us. For, as though he were wrong in making himself the source of anything good, Paul corrects what he had said, and declares that the grace of God is the efficient cause of everything. We should not imagine that Paul is merely simulating humility here. He is speaking as he does from his heart, and because he knows that it is the truth. We should therefore learn that the only good we have is what the Lord has given us gratuitously; that the only good we do is what He does in us; that it is not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we act only when we have been acted upon, in other words under the direction and influence of the Holy Spirit.[62]

Lest we lose sight of the human element in Calvin’s emphasis on grace, I want to call your attention to one statement near the end of the quotation: “that it is not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we act only when we have been acted upon.” Colossians 1:29, which we already looked at briefly, brings out the scriptural view of our working by His grace: “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

The word struggling connotes great intensity, “to put forth every effort, involving toil.”[63] So in 1 Corinthians 15:10, there is no hint of inactivity or turning it all over to the Lord. Paul said he worked hard. But he worked hard because God’s grace worked effectively within him. Nor is there the suggestion that God and Paul worked together in the sense of a partnership. God did not do the evangelizing or church planting. Paul did that. But he did it because God’s grace —that is, God’s power through the Holy Spirit —was at work in him.

R. C. H. Lenski shed light on the relationship of God’s grace to Paul’s efforts: “It would, however, be a mistake to picture God’s grace and Paul’s efforts as two horses together drawing a wagon, . . . for the two are not coordinate. Paul’s effort is, in the last analysis, due to God’s grace, and it is put forth only as long as the Holy Spirit rules, guides, and leads him.”[64] To which I would want to add, “and enables him.”

The Holy Spirit must not only prompt, guide, and enable us, He must also bless our efforts if they are to have any effect. Paul recognized this truth when he said, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).

Paul and Apollos could both work extremely hard. They could do so in humble, conscious dependence on God’s grace. And yet they could fail to see any results from their labors because they, of themselves, could not change hearts. Only God can make things grow. Only He can cause the Word to take root and grow in the heart of that little girl in your Sunday school class. Only He can open people’s hearts to respond to the gospel. Only He can cause that person you are seeking to disciple to respond to your challenge and instruction.

God’s grace must work in the heart of the other person as well as work through us to minister to that person. So we must depend on His Spirit to work in us and through us, and we must also depend on Him to work in the hearts of those we are seeking to minister to.

Within the scope of this and the previous chapter we have seen that in ourselves we are weak, unworthy, and inadequate. We really are! We are not denigrating ourselves when we recognize this truth. We are simply acknowledging reality and opening ourselves to the grace of God. As we do this, we can expect to experience His grace working mightily in our lives for, to paraphrase James 4:6, “Although God opposes the proud, He does give grace to the humble.” James 4:6 is both a warning to the proud and a promise to the humble. That is, to those who genuinely acknowledge they are weak, unworthy, and inadequate, God does promise to give grace.

SUFFICIENT GRACE

God’s grace is sufficient for our weakness. Christ’s worth does cover our unworthiness, and the Holy Spirit does make us effective in spite of our inadequacy. This is the glorious paradox of living by grace. When we discover we are weak in ourselves, we find we are strong in Christ. When we regard ourselves as less than the least of all God’s people, we are given some immense privilege of serving in the Kingdom. When we almost despair over our inadequacy, we find the Holy Spirit giving us unusual ability. We shake our heads in amazement and say with Isaiah, “LORD, . . . all that we have accomplished you have done for us” (Isaiah 26:12).

The contrast between human weakness and divine power is vividly illustrated in Isaiah 41:14-15. This particular passage is set in the context of a lengthy message of encouragement to the downtrodden nation of Israel. Verses 14-15 read:

“Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob,

O little Israel,

for I myself will help you,” declares the LORD,

your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

“See, I will make you into a threshing sledge,

new and sharp, with many teeth.

You will thresh the mountains and crush them,

and reduce the hills to chaff.”

God addresses the nation as “O worm Jacob, O little Israel.” The designation worm is not used by God in a disparaging sense, but rather calls attention to the weakness and helplessness of the nation, as does the term “O little Israel.” The metaphor of a worm is well chosen to express their weakness, because few things are more helpless and exposed to being trodden under foot than a worm. But the humbling designation as a worm and as little serves only to magnify the greatness of the encouragement God gives the nation: “Do not be afraid,” “I myself will help you,” and “I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth.”

The promise of the overall passage is that Israel, weak and downtrodden though she may be, will in due time prevail over her enemies because the Lord Himself will help her. He will not only help her, He will make Israel herself into a threshing sledge that devours her enemies. The ancient threshing machine was a sledge of thick planks armed with iron or sharpened stones as teeth to thresh the grain. God promises that, just as the threshing sledge breaks up the heads of grain, so “worm” Jacob will devour her enemies.

The imagery of the passage is a study in contrast between the weakness of Israel and the mighty acts she will perform with God’s help. Dr. Joseph Alexander, a renowned professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in the mid-nineteenth century, said concerning this passage, “The image presented [of the threshing sledge] is the strange but strong one of a down-trodden worm reducing hills to powder, the essential idea being that of a weak and helpless object overcoming the most disproportionate obstacles, by strength derived from another” (emphasis added).[65]

That is a picture of the grace of God at work: a weak and helpless object overcoming disproportionate obstacles by strength derived from another. God makes us weak, or rather He allows us to become painfully conscious of our weakness, in order to make us strong with His strength.

Some years ago when God opened up for me a wider Bible teaching and writing ministry, I felt drawn to Isaiah 41:14-15. Even though the promise was given to the nation of Israel, I sensed God was allowing me to make a personal application, that He would indeed make me into a threshing sledge, a harvesting instrument in His hand. But I also sensed that God required, as a condition of the promise, that I accept the description of “worm Jacob, little Israel,” not in a denigrating sense, but as a realization of my own personal weakness and helplessness.

I go back to that condition and promise almost every time I teach the Word of God or sit down to write. I do not do this in the sense of rubbing a good luck charm, but rather to acknowledge my own inability to accomplish anything for God and to lay hold of His promise to give me the power to minister for Him. God seems to keep saying to me, “As long as you are willing to acknowledge you are as weak and helpless as a worm, I will make you strong and powerful like a threshing sledge, with new, sharp teeth.”

The gracious paradox of divine strength working through human weakness as taught in Scripture has been recognized through the centuries by the great teachers of the church. The respected Puritan theologian John Owen, for example, said,

Yet the duties God requires of us are not in proportion to the strength we possess in ourselves. Rather, they are proportional to the resources available to us in Christ. We do not have the ability in ourselves to accomplish the least of God’s tasks. This is a law of grace. When we recognize it is impossible for us to perform a duty in our own strength, we will discover the secret of its accomplishment. But alas, this is a secret we often fail to discover.[66]

SACRIFICIAL GRACE

Effective Christian ministry, whether it is to one person or thousands, inevitably involves sacrifice. The Greek word we use to designate a minister is also the word used for servant. Thus a minister of the gospel is a servant, not only of God, but of those to whom he ministers. That is why Paul could very naturally say, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5, emphasis added).

To minister effectively, we need not only the strength and ability to minister but also the heart and disposition of a servant. We must have the sacrificial attitude Paul had when he said, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). Paul gave himself without reservation to the people to whom he preached. Not only did he give unstintingly of his time and energy, but he also became “all things to all men”; he freely adapted himself to them, that he might win them for Christ.

Such a ministry does indeed require a sacrificial attitude, enabling us to put the needs of others before our own and causing us to lay down our lives in a sense to serve others. The question is then, “How do we get such a sacrificial spirit?” To answer that, let’s look at a sort of “case study” of God’s grace at work in an unusual way in the hearts of the Macedonian Christians.

Chapters 8 and 9 of 2 Corinthians have become the classic Scripture passage on the subject of Christian giving. In fact, it is difficult to teach on giving without drawing on principles from those chapters. It is not my purpose now to explore those principles, but rather to use the background situation of the passage to illustrate how we gain a sacrificial spirit by the grace of God.

Paul wanted to challenge the Corinthian Christians to give generously toward the need of the poorer believers in Jerusalem. To do this he held up as an example the generosity of the Macedonian churches. Here is what he said:

And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.

2 CORINTHIANS 8:1-4

The generosity of the Macedonian churches was indeed remarkable. Their giving to the believers in Jerusalem was not out of an abundance, but rather, out of their own poverty. They themselves could well have qualified as beneficiaries of other people’s giving. They gave, not according to their ability, but beyond their ability, in disregard of their own needs. Paul said they pleaded with him for the privilege of sharing in the offering he was collecting for the poor Jewish believers in Jerusalem. And all this for people whom they had never seen nor met.

What was the secret of such an outpouring of generosity? We have no reason to believe the Macedonians as a people were more inclined to generosity than any other people. And people as a whole do not tend to be generous in giving to the needs of others. Consider, for example, that in the United States, one of the most affluent nations in history, our giving to charitable and religious causes averages one or two percent of our income.

Paul said the Macedonians’ secret was the grace of God (verse 1). Here is another occasion where Paul uses grace to mean a working of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. The sense is not that of God’s unmerited favor considered as the source of blessing, but rather the working of His Spirit as a concrete expression of that favor.

Charles Hodge commented on 2 Corinthians 8:1,

The liberality of the Corinthians was due to the operation of the grace of God. The sacred writers constantly recognize the fact that the freest and most spontaneous acts of men, their inward states and the outward manifestations of those states, when good, are due to the secret influence of the Spirit of God, which eludes our consciousness.[67]

So it was the grace of God operating in them through the Holy Spirit, not the superiority of their own character, that caused such an abundant outpouring of generosity from the Macedonians. God did not leave them to the resources of their own human nature —which is not naturally generous —but intervened in their hearts by the power of His Spirit to create this amazing generosity.

The question might arise, “Why didn’t God create this same generosity in the hearts of the Corinthian Christians?” The answer is that is what He was doing at that time through Paul. There is no doubt that God has the power to intervene directly and sovereignly in the hearts of people when He chooses to do so. Paul’s conversion on the Damascus road is an incontrovertible case in point. And in 2 Corinthians 8, Paul said, “I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you” (verse 16). Apparently God worked directly in Titus’s heart.[68]

But God’s more usual way of working in the hearts of His people is through natural means. In the case of the Corinthians, it was through the exhortation and encouragement of Paul. (Although we have no record of it, we can reasonably assume God used Paul in the lives of the Macedonians also.) The Corinthians did respond positively, as evidenced by Paul’s statement in Romans 15:26: “For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.” (Achaia being the province where Corinth was located.)

Having looked at our “case study” of God’s grace at work in the Macedonians, let’s now return to the question, “How do we get the sacrificial spirit we need to serve God and other people?” The answer is, by the grace of God.

In regard to God’s grace given to the Macedonians, which resulted in abundant generosity, Philip Hughes wrote, “There is no question of human resources, but only of divine grace; and that same grace was available to the Christians in Corinth.”[69]

That same grace is also available to you and me to enable us to be generous in giving of ourselves, which is, after all, the concrete expression of a sacrificial spirit. We saw in chapter 10 that Paul said to Timothy, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1). In 2 Corinthians 8–9, he was effectively saying to the Corinthians, “Be generous in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” And to us he would say, “Serve sacrificially in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Again, we will consider how to appropriate this grace in chapter 12, but for now, we need to be encouraged to realize that God’s grace is both sufficient and effective. We can, by His grace, fulfill whatever ministry He has given us to do in the body of Christ.

THE REWARD OF GRACE

We have seen in this chapter that every aspect of our ministry, whether it be an obscure ministry to one person or a public ministry to thousands, is by the grace of God. We are unworthy to minister, but God considers us worthy through Christ. We are inadequate to minister, but God makes us adequate through the powerful working of His Holy Spirit. We are not naturally given to self-sacrifice, but God gives us that spirit by His grace. All is of grace. No human worthiness or adequacy is required or accepted.

Such a strong, but I believe biblical, emphasis on God’s grace apart from human worth or adequacy does lead to the question of the relationship of grace and rewards. Doesn’t God promise rewards to His faithful servants? Didn’t Paul himself teach that we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due us? If all our efforts are the results of God’s grace, what room is left for “faithful service”?

God does promise rewards, and we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ (see Matthew 25:21; 2 Corinthians 5:10). But these rewards are rewards of grace, not of merit. We never by our hard work or sacrificial service obligate God to reward us, for as Paul said in Romans 11:35, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”

If all our service to God is made possible by His undeserved favor and made effective by the power of His Spirit, then we have really brought nothing to Him that we did not first receive from Him. The Puritan Samuel Bolton said, “If there was anything of man’s bringing, which was not of God’s bestowing, though it were never so small, it would overturn the nature of grace, and make that of works which is of grace.”[70] But it is all of God’s bestowing. Every thought, word, or deed emanating from us that is in any way pleasing to God and glorifying to Him has its ultimate origin in God, because apart from Him, there is nothing good in us (see Romans 7:18).

Even the good works we bring to God are in themselves defective, both in motive and performance. As we saw in chapter 8, it is virtually impossible to purge our motives completely of pride and self-gratification. And we can never perfectly perform those good works. The best we can do falls short of what God requires, but the truth is, we never actually do the best we can, let alone what would meet God’s perfect standard.

That is why Peter spoke of our “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Our best works are acceptable to God only because they are made acceptable by the merit of Jesus Christ. But God does accept them through Christ; He accepts them on the basis of His grace.

Ernest Kevan quoted one of the Puritans on the imperfection of our works as follows:

We do not do all that is commanded but come short of our duty, and that which we do is imperfect and defective in respect of manner and measure; and therefore in justice deserves punishment, rather than reward: and consequently the reward, when it is given, is to be ascribed to God’s undeserved mercy and not to our merit.[71]

Finally, we must go back to the parable of the workers in the vineyard, which we studied in chapters 4 and 5. You will remember that, in the verses immediately preceding the parable, Jesus promised a reward “a hundred times as much,” or ten thousand percent. God’s rewards to us will not only be of grace, but will indeed be gracious —that is, generous beyond all measure.

So the grace of God in our service to Him does not negate rewards but rather makes them possible. As R. C. Sproul said, “But the blessing Christ promised, the blessing of great reward, is a reward of grace. The blessing is promised even though it is not earned. Augustine said it this way: Our rewards in heaven are a result of God’s crowning His own gifts.”[72]

This is the amazing story of God’s grace. God saves us by His grace and transforms us more and more into the likeness of His Son by His grace. In all our trials and afflictions, He sustains and strengthens us by His grace. He calls us by grace to perform our own unique function within the body of Christ. Then, again by grace, He gives to each of us the spiritual gifts necessary to fulfill our calling. As we serve Him, He makes that service acceptable to Himself by grace, and then rewards us a hundredfold by grace.

In Romans 1:17, Paul spoke of the gospel as revealing “a righteousness that is by faith from first to last” —that is, from beginning to end. This is also an appropriate term for grace, for faith is no more than the response to and appropriation of the grace of God. So the entire Christian life is a life lived under grace from first to last, from beginning to end, all “to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves” (Ephesians 1:6).