III. The Gospel has a distinctly superhuman origin.—“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (ver. 12). Paul’s reception of the Gospel was not only a revelation of Christ to him, but at the same time a revelation of Christ in him. The human vehicle was spiritually prepared for the reception and understanding of the Divine message; and this moral transformation not only convinced him of the superhuman character of the Gospel, but also empowered him with authority to declare it. The Gospel carries with it the self-evidencing force of its Divine origin in its effect upon both preacher and hearer. It is still an enigma to the mere intellectual student; only as it is received into the inmost soul, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, is its true nature apprehended and enjoyed.
Lessons.—1. Man everywhere is in dire need of the Gospel. 2. The human mind is incapable of constructing a saving Gospel. 3. The Gospel is inefficacious till it is received as a Divine gift.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Ver. 10. Fidelity in the Ministry.
I. The proper nature of the ministry is not the word or doctrine of man but of God.—Ministers are taught to handle their doctrine with modesty and humility, without ostentation, with reverence, and with a consideration of the majesty of God, whose doctrine it is they utter.
II. The dispensing of the Word must not be for the pleasing of men but God.—Ministers must not apply and fashion their doctrine to the affections, humours, and dispositions of men, but keep a good conscience and do their office.
III. If we seek to please men we cannot be the servants of God.—He that would be a faithful minister of the Gospel must deny the pride of his heart, be emptied of ambition, and set himself wholly to seek the glory of God in his calling.—Perkins.
The Servant of Christ.
I. There is nothing dishonourable in the idea of a servant absolutely considered.—On the contrary, there may be much in it that is noble and venerable. Nothing can be more contemptible than an affectation of independence which resents or is ashamed of a servant’s name. And many who despise servants should be told that they themselves are so worthless that nobody would think of honouring them with hiring them for service. It was Christ’s honour that His Father so employed Him for the work of our salvation, and said, “Behold My Servant, whom I have chosen”: and the highest honour of the preachers of the Gospel is that they are the ministers, that is, the servants, both of Christ and His Church. There are cases, no doubt, in which servitude is degrading. The master may be infamous; though even then the servant’s condition is not dishonourable unless he be employed in infamous work. Many servants have wrought out most honourable names for themselves in doing good work under bad masters. Matthew Henry has said well that there is nothing mean but sin, and with such meanness and dishonour is every man affected who is not a servant of Christ. There is for us all the choice of only two conditions; there is not a third and neutral one. The alternative is a servant of the Son of God or a slave of sin. It may not be of sin in its most hideous forms, in the form in which it tyrannises over the drunkard, the lewd man, or the ambitious, but even in its milder and less-offensive form, when it may reign only with the power which it exercises over the worshipper of wealth or of human applause; still, it is a degrading vassalage. Let no worldly man, then, affect to pity or scorn the disciple of the Gospel as being one whom superstition enslaves, though it were admitted to be a slavery; he himself labours under one infinitely more oppressive and degrading. Whose appears the greater liberty and the least oppression, he who is governed by the salutary laws of the Gospel, or he who is the sport and victim of his own ignorance and passions, or of the opinion of the world, to which, at the expense of the violation of his own conscience, he feels himself compelled ignominiously to submit? The question needs not an answer. There is everything honourable in the one service, everything dishonourable in the other. Only that man is truly a free man who is a servant of Christ.
II. The servant of Christ.—Others profess that they are servants of God; the Christian replies that he is a servant of Christ. There is perhaps nothing by which his faith is more distinctly characterised than this. “Is he not, then, a servant of God?” some one may ask, either in the spirit of a scorning objector or in that of an astonished inquirer who is as yet ignorant of the beautiful mystery of Christian salvation. When others profess that they are the servants of God, and when the Christian replies that he is a servant of Christ, does it signify that he is not a servant of the eternal Father? Such is the question; and our reply is, that in serving Christ he approves himself not only the best servant of God, but the only one whose service is genuine. In serving Christ he serves God, because God has so appointed and ordained. He has ordained that we be the servants of His Son; and if we serve not His Son, then we resist His ordination, so that we serve neither His Son nor Himself.