Since 2/7/2009 (February) I have been in. Although I must note that two or three volume are missing from the Logos offering like the new work on Revelation by another author and some OT works. Please Logos include the missing volumes?

It would be nice to have this commentary series in Logos & thanks Mark for the write up recommending this series. Those who want a feel for the series, see below.

Ted

The character of preaching

Please read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

The Corinthian church was tangled in the nasty business of exalting one preacher over another. To counter this, Paul argued first that the nature of the gospel is such that there is nothing for man to glory in. Then he argued that the nature of the believer's experience is such that there is nothing for him to glory in. Now Paul says the nature of preaching is such that there is nothing for man to glory in. Saving power is not to be found in the preacher of the Word any more than it is in the hearer of the Word. So Paul says exalting one preacher over another constitutes a complete misunderstanding of what preaching is all about.

Preaching is not intended to be something which glorifies men. It is not something to be used by men to gain the admiration and praise of their hearers. John Stott makes this painful point quite well: 'We must never show a reverence to ecclesiastical dignitaries which is due to God alone. Preachers are especially exposed to the danger of flattery. I fear that the whole frame of mind in which some Christian people go to church is wrong. They do not go to worship God or to hear God's Word. They go to hear a man. So it is not the message to which they listen, but the oratory.'

What, then, is true preaching? According to Paul it consists of three elements: having the right message, the right method and the right motive.

The message

Paul summarizes the right message in two phrases: 'the testimony of God' and 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified'. Together these phrases cover the source and content of the message.

The source of the message

'The testimony of God' reveals the divine authority behind the preacher's message. God's testimony is what he has revealed concerning himself. If our message is the testimony of God, then our trying to improve it by human wisdom and eloquence is like holding up a candle to help the sun shine.

It is not a matter of eloquence being inherently wrong. History is replete with accounts of eloquent preachers being mightily used of God. But the preacher must never allow himself to think his eloquence is sufficient to convert souls. The power to convert resides in the gospel, not in our eloquence (Rom. 1:16). If God's power resides there, so should our confidence.

Here lies the explanation for the weakness we see in our churches today. Our pulpits are filled with preachers who question the divine authority of the very message they are proclaiming. Is it any wonder our churches are filled with people who will not stand for anything and fall for everything?

Why is there is so little conviction of truth among church members in general and preachers in particular? The answer is that we, like the Corinthians, have been overly impressed with the intellectual accomplishments of our age. We seem to think the Bible is unable to compete with the latest scientific, technological knowledge. And our society is quick to detect our timidity about our message and eager to show the disdain it feels for people who still profess to believe in the truth of the Bible. They dismiss us with a knowing glance and a rueful shake of the head as though we didn't have a clue to the latest facts and, therefore, are deserving only of their pity.

In such a climate, it is all too easy to become self-conscious and embarrassed and even to think the cardinal doctrines of Christianity might be wrong. Before we know what has happened, we have succumbed to the subtle temptation to adjust our message to the so-called 'assured results of modern scholarship'. We may even find ourselves excusing our compromise of Christian truth by arguing that Paul didn't have to contend with our situation, and he would, if he were in our shoes, be in the vanguard of making Christianity acceptable and relevant.

But wait a minute. Think again of what it meant for Paul to renounce wisdom and eloquence at Corinth of all places. Corinth boasted that its institutions of learning and its philosophers excelled those of Rome and Athens. And Paul came to Corinth from Athens where his preaching of the gospel had been received with scepticism and ridicule (Acts 17:16-34). If ever there was a time for Paul to reconsider his message and adjust it to the prevailing intellectual climate, it was after he left Athens and before he arrived in Corinth. Paul knew full well if there was one place where excellency of speech and philosophy would be impressive it was at Corinth. We may even surmise that Paul spent a sleepless night wrestling with this very problem before launching his ministry there. However, when Paul began to preach in Corinth, it was without any of the appealing embellishments so popular there. It was the same old gospel he had preached everywhere else.

How are we to explain such stubbornness on the part of Paul? The answer is right here in these verses. Paul was convinced his gospel was God's own testimony and, as such, it was essential for Corinth. I, for one, don't expect to see real power return to our churches until Paul's conviction returns to our pulpits!

The content of the message

Paul, then, believed in the divine authority of his message, that it had originated with none other than God himself. But what is this message? Paul summarizes it as 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified'. Paul isn't saying he preached only on the crucifixion of Christ as a historical event, but everything he did preach had Jesus' death as its point of reference. No other doctrine has any meaning apart from that because it is through Christ's death that God saves his people. The right message is the good news of salvation through the crucified Christ.

The method

One can have the right message and still not be doing true preaching. A preacher must also have the right method. In short, the Christ of Calvary must be preached in the power of Pentecost. Paul's preaching at Corinth is an example of the correct method for all preachers. It featured neither eloquent style nor philosophical content. The omission of these elements was not a mere blunder or oversight on Paul's part, but was his deliberate choice. He purposefully omitted eloquence and philosophy and came preaching 'in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling'. In other words, Paul preached with a keen sense of his own inadequacy and utter dependence upon the Lord to carry the truth of the gospel home to human hearts.

Has it ever occurred to you that Paul would never be hired to pastor most of our churches today? We have a liking for the preachers who have wit, flash, charm and eloquence. Paul wouldn't rate very highly in this day and age because he just didn't have enough going for him. But one thing Paul did have—when he preached, the power of God fell! That alone puts him miles ahead of the powerless glamour boys in most pulpits. One look at the power of God attending Paul's preaching, and we surely feel compelled to pray, 'Oh, Lord, give us an epidemic of weakness, fear and trembling!' How can we see a return to this much-needed power? The first step, as Stott suggests, is to humbly acknowledge our desperate need for it!

Then we must make living holy lives our daily priority. It has been said before, but it bears repeating—the church is looking for better methods, but God is looking for better men. Only when holiness becomes our burning passion can we legitimately expect the Spirit of God to come upon us with the power Paul knew. True preaching combines the right message, which is Christ crucified, with the right method, preaching in the power of the Spirit. But there is still more. The preacher must also have the right motive.

The motive

Paul says his motive in preaching to the Corinthians was that their faith 'should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God'. In other words, Paul was saying he purposely designed his preaching to keep his hearers from trusting in his ability as a preacher. By glorying in various preachers, the Corinthians were doing the very thing Paul was most anxious to avoid! It is easy to see why Paul was intent on their faith not resting on him. Faith that depends upon a polished preacher and a clever argument is always at the mercy of a more polished preacher and a more astute argument. But faith that rests on the power of God will never have to worry about being outmoded.

The secret of powerful preaching

We may summarize what Paul has said in the following truths. First, the way to convert people to Christ is to set forth the truth of the gospel. Secondly, the proper way to state the truth of the gospel is with a deep sense of insufficiency, realizing the success of the gospel depends, not on the skill of the preacher, but on the power of the Spirit. Thirdly, there is only one faith that converts sinners from the error of their ways and sets their feet on the path of life. That is the faith which comes to men through the power of God as the truth of God is preached.

C. H. Spurgeon captured those three lessons in these immortal words: 'The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher; otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher's learning; otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it—the Holy Ghost changing the will of man.'

Welwyn Commentary Series - Strengthening Christ's Church: The message of 1 Corinthians.

True spiritual warfare

Please read 2 Corinthians 10:1-6

The opening verses of chapter 10 mark the beginning of the final section of Paul's letter to believers in first-century Corinth. A new section has clearly begun. The tone of the apostle's language has altered. His style is more intense, more deeply personal. There is humour and sarcasm, much information about Paul not found elsewhere in the New Testament and a remarkable degree of candour. The apostle opens his heart to his readers.

In one sense, the subject of these chapters is Paul himself, but in another sense the subject is spiritual maturity, how the work of God is to be done, even the very nature of the gospel itself. Paul's ministry had come under sustained attack from a group of men who had wormed their way into the confidence of the church at Corinth. These men aimed their accusations at Paul personally. Once destroy Paul's reputation, and the church could be weaned away from him. Much more was at stake, however, than Paul's reputation. Their attack on Paul exposed a glaring difference of opinion right across the spectrum. Begin a debate on spiritual leadership, and other issues come into play: how are we to communicate the gospel? Indeed, what is the gospel anyway?

Who were Paul's opponents? There is a strong likelihood that they were professing Christians from a Jewish background. As soon as the gospel began to spread after the events of Pentecost, numbers of ethnic Jews became Christians. Many of them saw no need to abandon their Judaism and clung happily to the rites and ceremonies they had known since childhood. Jesus was Israel's Messiah, after all; they were happy to retain their traditional culture. A second group, however, took things further. It was not just that they wanted to retain familiar customs. They also insisted that these things were to be made compulsory for Gentile converts.

The first group did not concern Paul in the slightest, but he saw the second as a considerable threat, not only to the peace of the churches, but to the gospel itself. They were preaching a gospel of 'Christ plus...'. To such people, the work of Jesus on the cross is not enough of itself to save a soul: we need Christ plus circumcision, Christ plus dietary laws, and so on. This mentality was certainly at work in Corinth and it has not been eradicated even though almost twenty centuries have passed since Paul first wrote these words. It is still quite common to meet people who think that the way to God is through Christ plus churchgoing, Christ plus ceremonies and rituals, or Christ plus morality.

It also seems that another influence had been at work in Paul's day. His opponents had taken on board the style of a group of men known as the sophists. Sophists were essentially philosophy teachers who engaged in public debate. They could command enormous fees, especially if their oratorical skills were finely tuned. It was expected that the successful sophist would be a self-publicist. You had to advertise to get custom! All of this rubbed off on Paul's detractors. They assumed that a spiritual leader would naturally be someone who sought out the limelight, a person with charisma and flair. What a heady mixture—Jewish legalism and the personality cult of the sophist injected into a power struggle in the life of a first-century church!

Paul refutes the charge of cowardice (10:1-2)

In verse 1, Paul describes himself as someone 'who in presence am lowly among you, but being absent am bold toward you'. It seems that he is consciously alluding to one of the charges levelled by his detractors. This is repeated in verse 10: '"His letters," they say, "are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible."' His opponents alleged that Paul should not be an apostle at all. He was not up to the job. He had no stomach for a fight. When in Corinth he was a cringing weakling who backed down in the face of confrontation, but once he was at a safe distance, he wrote letters like salvos of heavy artillery. He was brave enough at long range!

The men who were circulating this allegation had taken as their model a style of leadership that was normal in their culture. The sophist needed presence. An impressive carriage, a haughty and confident bearing, would help him overawe both his opponents and his audience. It was all too easy to conclude that the same principle must hold good for the Christian leader too! The same mistake is still being made. In some evangelical circles it is assumed that the Spirit-filled leader is the one who exudes confidence and radiates charisma. And judged by this kind of standard, Paul was a nonentity.

The apostle's response is interesting. On the one hand, he refused to let others squeeze him into their mould. He had a better role model than the accepted style of leadership in contemporary society. He appealed to his friends 'by the meekness and gentleness of Christ' (10:1). Paul would not accept that humility and gentleness were tantamount to weakness and cowardice. Jesus had been tender and accommodating, but when occasion demanded, he was so decisive that his enemies were left reeling at his force of character. This can be seen in the way that he chased moneychangers out of the temple and denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The wrath of a meek man is a force to be reckoned with! In the same way, Paul did not feel the need to flaunt a 'macho' style in his dealings with his friends, but his normal mildness did not preclude the possibility of decisive action should the situation require it.

The sense of verse 2 is something like this: 'When I come to Corinth, I will have to be bold with "some" people. Don't put me in a position where I have no option but to be bold with all of you!' Evidently the church at Corinth had not distanced itself from Paul's antagonists. The apostle was now making an appeal to the majority. It was a tender and carefully worded appeal, but the stakes were high: 'You have been far too ready to give these people a hearing. The time has come to show your true colours. Repudiate them and take your stand with me!' This was no mere matter of Paul cultivating a personal following. This was not so much a clash of competing egos as of competing views of ministry, even of the gospel itself. Like Moses centuries before him, Paul was asking for an end to indecision: 'Whoever is on the Lord's side—come to me!' (Exod. 32:26).

Paul refutes the charge of being a lightweight (10:2-5)

Another charge levelled against Paul emerges in the second part of verse 2. His opponents, it seems, accused him of walking 'according to the flesh'. The apostle's choice of wording needs to be weighed carefully. The term 'flesh' has several meanings in the New Testament. Here, the meaning is quite specific. It does not refer to our physical bodies, as in 'flesh and blood'. (Paul uses it in this way in 1 Corinthians 15:39, where he observes that 'All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.') In the same way, Paul does not use the word 'flesh' here to describe our fallen human nature, as he does in Romans 8:8, when he says, '... those who are in the flesh cannot please God.' The men who were trying to oust Paul from the affections of the Corinthians believed themselves to be endued with great power. They were potent men, too weighty and substantial to be ignored. Authority and spiritual might clung to them. They were men of the spirit! Paul, by comparison, was of little account, feeble, a spent force. In other words, by saying that he walked 'according to the flesh', they meant that he was not half the man that they were; he was puny, a spiritual lightweight who relied on such 'ordinary' methods as praying and preaching. Unlike them, Paul had no spiritual 'star quality'.

The apostle's response is to admit that, in one sense, he was guilty as charged. In the opening part of verse 3, he concedes that he did 'walk in the flesh'. By this he means that he was involved with ordinary people in the ordinary world and made no great pretensions for himself. And yet, in the next breath, he begs to differ. The second part of verse 3 makes it clear that, even though he lived in the everyday world, he did not make 'war according to the flesh'; his 'weapons' (10:4) were not 'carnal', or fleshly. At this point, Paul makes use of a military analogy: the work of God is like a war, a sustained, exacting campaign against the powers of darkness.

It is important that we understand the precise nature of Paul's comparison. He does not mean that his opponents were using tangible weapons—swords and shields, or, for that matter, tanks and missiles—while he used exclusively spiritual weapons. His rivals were preachers too! Paul, however, makes the stinging accusation that these people had, none the less, borrowed weapons from the world's armoury.

The same accusation can be made against some elements on the current evangelical scene. Certain methods of evangelism in widespread use are rarely questioned. Assumptions go unchallenged, partly because asking probing questions will get you a reputation for being unloving. Nevertheless, it has to be said that much activity within modern evangelical circles cannot be justified biblically. The church has borrowed the methods which are perceived to work in secular society.

Paul explains his military analogy in verses 4-5. Spiritual warfare is primarily about bringing truth to bear on people's minds. This cannot be stressed too strongly. It is often assumed that spiritual warfare is about tussles between angels and demons, exorcisms and single combat with the powers of darkness. This outlook is fed by a growing body of literature, much of it in the form of Christianized fantasy novels. In response, we need to understand that the 'strongholds' (10:4) that Paul set out to besiege were actually value systems, world-views, habitual patterns of thought, proud castles of the mind with the banner of self floating from the ramparts.

I do not mean to imply that Satan and his minions do not exist, or that they are not active, but rather to suggest that we often miss the true theatre of their operations because things like exorcisms and deliverance ministry attract attention away from it. Think of it this way: far more souls have been lost through Satan's manipulation of the intellectual and theological fashions of the age than through his recruitment of a handful of witches, or luring people into dabbling with the occult. The mind is the seat of man's rebellion against God; it is where he asserts his desire for autonomy, his longing to answer to nothing and no one outside of himself. Paul saw the gospel as a powerful way to infiltrate the citadel of the human mind and heart. People need to be brought back to the point where they think as God thinks.

When a person becomes a Christian, his whole mental frame of reference is turned upside down. He prays, in the words of the old hymn, 'Loving Saviour, true and kind, be the Master of my mind...' Once he proudly asserted the sovereignty of his own opinions. He himself was the supreme judge of anything that might impinge on his personal world. The idea that God might deserve a hearing was resisted with stubborn scorn. But now all that has changed. 'Every thought' has been brought 'into captivity to the obedience of Christ'. Does all this seem a bit cerebral? It is actually a very necessary emphasis. People will never change their behaviour patterns until they change the way they think.

For Paul, this had an important bearing on the question of method. If tenaciously held world-views were to be undermined, argument and persuasion were vital. When he brought the gospel to the people of Thessalonica, the apostle 'reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead...' (Acts 17:2-3). His opponents, on the other hand, believed that the battle could be won by parading themselves before an audience. To Paul, truth was everything. To his detractors, image was everything. What mattered was not so much what you said as how you came across.

This could not be more relevant. A similar battle is going on today for the soul of evangelicalism. We live in a televisual age. Mass communication is increasingly dominated not so much by words as by images. Some Christian leaders have concluded from this that we need to borrow the techniques which sell soap or elect presidents. Running parallel with this is an increasing confusion about how God speaks. Until the early 1960s, there was a consensus among all evangelicals that God speaks through his Word, but now in some Christian gatherings Bibles are conspicuous by their absence. How does the work of God get done? The old chasm between Paul and his detractors in Corinth has reopened. On the one side, there are those who seek to mount an attack on the sensations, the world of impressions and feelings. People are to be subjected to a barrage on their emotions, overawed by triumphalist displays of power and leader-figures who project sanitized versions of the charisma usually associated with big names in entertainment, sport, politics and business. On the other side, there are those who believe that all this is an attempt to fight God's battles with weapons forged in hell.

Do you desire to bring down the grim fortress that dominates the mind of each man and woman until Christ breaches the walls and the Holy Spirit enters and routs all resistance? In that case, present the truth. Do it in both formal and informal, low-key situations, one to one or to large audiences, but make the case for Christ and his gospel. Before you do it, as you do it and after it is all over, pray that God would use, not flashy personalities, but words that he will clothe with his own power, words that will worm their way in through the defences of the mind and bring the whole edifice tottering down.

Conclusion (10:6)

In verse 6 we read of Paul's readiness 'to punish all disobedience' when the 'obedience' of his supporters in Corinth was 'fulfilled'. This takes us back to the thought of verse 2 and the apostle's plea that his friends in Corinth should stand by Paul's gospel, Paul's methods and, therefore, Paul himself and, in doing so, isolate his detractors. Allow Paul's opponents their head, and they would lead the churches into something sub-Christian. Would the Corinthians see sense and repudiate the influential handful that had caused such havoc? Would they take steps to distance themselves from these men in advance of Paul's arrival?

We too live at a decisive period in the history of Christianity. The divide is not always obvious. The enemy is subtle and the battle must be fought on many fronts, but let me make a plea for Christian seriousness. At its best, the Reformed faith of our spiritual ancestors produced a tough-minded, rational, disciplined piety. It produced Christians who could think because they had surrendered their intellectual powers and thought-processes to the lordship of Christ. Over against that, I see the emergence of a kind of evangelicalism which sits lightly to the Word of God and the proclamation of truth, a kind of spirituality which is often cheerfully ready to dispense both with the Bible and with the mind.

Welwyn Commentary Series  – Strength in Weakness: 2 Corinthians simply explained.

Rosie Perera said:

Sometimes people have been able to drum up enough interest among other users to push a pre-pub resource up over the 100% mark by starting a new forum thread and talking up the benefits of the product.

I had overlooked this resource offering previously, but the recent posts caused me to read the entire thread and add my pre-pub order. Is it safe to trust Mark Barnes this much? [8-|]

Ted Hans said:

Although I must note that two or three volume are missing from the Logos offering like the new work on Revelation by another author and some OT works. Please Logos include the missing volumes?

The
Welwyn Commentary Series is shipping soon http://www.logos.com/product/4907/welwyn-commentary-series

Below
are four titles missing from the Logos catalogue. Could you please make them
available at a future date?

Thanks.

1)
The expectant prophet http://www.epbooks.org/expectant-prophet-p-2142.html?cat=282

2)
Practice makes perfect http://www.epbooks.org/practice-makes-perfect-p-2040.html?cat=282

3)
A ransom for many http://www.epbooks.org/ransom-many-p-2528.html?cat=282

4)
For the sake of the gospel http://www.epbooks.org/sake-gospel-p-2473.html?cat=282