James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
1 Corinthians 4:1
THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY
‘Stewards of the mysteries of God.’
In the early part of this chapter we have a description of the Christian ministry and its responsibility, and an assertion that its responsibility is not to man, but to God.
I. God’s stewards, not man’s.—The ‘mysteries’ we clergy are stewards of are God’s mysteries, not man’s. They are entrusted to us by God, not by man. Therefore it is God, not man, that we are responsible to. ‘He that judgeth me,’ says St. Paul, ‘is the Lord.’ St. Paul even says that though he knows nothing against himself, yet even that does not prove him to be faithful. When Christ in the wilderness caused the Apostles to feed the five thousand He Himself provided the food by miracle. The store which the Apostles had was altogether insufficient. So it is with the Church and with her clergy. They are appointed by the Holy Ghost to feed the Church of God. But they have nothing of their own which will suffice. Therefore God Himself provides them with what is necessary. They are stewards of God’s mysteries, i.e. God’s mysteries are the food which He supplies to His ministers that they may have wherewithal to feed His flock.
II. But how is this office of stewards to be exercised by the clergy?—How are the clergy to ‘feed the Church of God’? What are these mysteries which they are to dispense in their character of stewards?
(a) We clergy are responsible to God for teaching you the truths of the Gospel. Whether men will hear or whether they will forbear; whether the truths are pleasant or whether they are unpopular, it must be all one to us—we are bound to preach them all the same. If we do not, God will judge us.
(b) Then come the various ordinances of public worship. In coming to church you come into God’s house, not into man’s. You come into God’s house that your souls may be with Him, and Him only.
(c) Then comes the chiefest ‘mystery’ of all—the Divinest ‘food’ of all, by which the Church of God is fed and the spiritual life of souls maintained—the Body and Blood of Christ—which is our spiritual food and sustenance in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
III. How ought Christian people to regard the Christian ministry? It seems to me they ought to be very thankful to God and Christ Who have thus provided that men are not left to themselves in things of so much consequence to them. How could men be sure that their clergy were teaching them God’s truths and delivering to them God’s mysteries if, after all, their clergy were only their ministers, and not God’s? Where a preacher is responsible to his flock he must do what pleases his flock.
Illustration
‘The steward is a man into whose hands property is placed. It is his duty to take care of it just as though it were his own, to see that the lands are honestly farmed, and the buildings fairly treated by the tenants, to be the medium between those tenants and the landlord, to receive the rents of the estate and to pay over to the landlord every penny that remains after all legal liabilities have been discharged. If he fails in any of these duties, he proves himself an incompetent or a faithless steward. When he fulfils them diligently, earnestly, thoroughly, and in the spirit of justice, he secures the confidence and esteem of his employer and of the tenants with whom he has to deal. But though he occupies, as a rule, a higher position than the tenant, he equally occupies a position inferior to that of the man he serves. A steward, however cultivated he may be, whatever may be his social position, is, as far as his official duties are concerned, only a servant after all.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
CLERGY AND PEOPLE
Teaching is an essential part, but is after all only a part of the work of the clergy. What would be thought of the servant or the steward who, when left in charge of the mansion, never looked to locks, or bolts, or bars, allowed it to be broken into and its valuables stolen without lifting a hand in its defence? Well, we need not say what the world would think, because we all know.
I. The clergy as stewards are placed in charge of the property which the piety of individuals has given to God’s Church through the centuries.—Against the House of God enemies have come up, and because the stewards have acted as true stewards should act, raised the ‘hue and cry’ and assembled their fellow-servants in defence of God’s heritage, they have been reproved. Could the clergy, as honest men, have done otherwise? Of course, no human power can destroy God’s Church. If every penny of her property was stolen from her and every parish church in the kingdom sold for building material, and priests were hung here and there from the steeples—as they were in the days of Edward VI—those who remained would gather their flocks in the barn or by the hedge-side and the Faith would prevail. But for all that we should be faithless stewards if we did not manfully defend that which is rightly God’s, Church Defence is one department of the work which His stewards have to fulfil.
II. But what of the ‘mysteries of God’ which these stewards have to defend and dispense?—How awfully solemn is the mission entrusted to these same unworthy, feeble servants.
(a) The steward of the mysteries of God stands at the font and takes the unconscious child into his arms, and baptizes it in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and at once the life which was far off is brought nigh, and in the act the Lord Jesus Christ has taken it and placed it within the city gates: it has become a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. What that child’s future may be no human being can foretell. But in this life it can never forfeit all its privileges, can from the depths of sin call God its Father, and the Lord Christ its Brother; if it will, may turn, and repent and live. How great, how solemn, how comforting a mystery is this! and what honour and responsibility does God confer upon the man chosen to be its steward!
(b) And shall we not say that the second mystery is still more solemn, more comforting, more awe-inspiring? I need not here repeat our Lord’s teaching, or the true story of the institution of that Blessed Sacrament. You know it well. To the faithful He gives Himself, and we draw near, meekly kneeling, and receive the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for us, and the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for us, and we know and believe that both are given to us for the preservation of our bodies and souls unto everlasting life.
III. How shall you receive these stewards? What can you do to help them?
(a) They are human and will often make mistakes. You must bear with them, remembering that they are of flesh and blood like yourselves. You must listen earnestly and with attention to what they say, remembering that—if they are true men—they are giving you not something of their own devising, but that which God has given to them for you. You must pray over their teaching, and, if you are not satisfied about it, go humbly and trustingly to God’s Word for light (according to the wholesome rule of our Church in her Sixth Article). If you are true and loyal Churchmen you will do more than that: you will honour them for their message, remembering Whose ambassadors they are.
(b) You will never fail to pray for them. You see their prominent, often elevated position; at times you delight in their eloquence, you admire their piety. Sometimes you see their failures, their mistakes, their foolishness, their vanity. Sometimes, but thank God very rarely, you see a terrible fall. But you do not see the inward struggles, the temptations, the doubts, the fears that assail them; the troubles that pour in at times like a flood, the hopes dying down, the prospects blasted, the bitter assaults of the devil. Oh, pray for them. Cry unto God for your clergy that they may have grace to live the lives they preach, to minister with clean hands and a pure heart with deepening faith and reverence, to teach the whole truth pure and undefiled, to persevere through all discouragement to the last. If the people do not pray for their clergy God’s Church will never prosper. A praying people will mean a living, growing, ingathering Church, and a holy, self-denying, faithful ministry.
—Rev. Samuel Pascoe.