Living and Leading in the Way of the Cross

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Perhaps you would turn with me in the scriptures to First Corinthians four. First Corinthians four. I would like to read the entire chapter. So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time, each will receive His praise from God. Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not take pride in one man over against another for who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not already? You have all you want already. You have become rich, you have become kings, and that without us. How I wish that you really had become kings, so that we might be kings with you. For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men, we are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored. We are Dishonored to this very hour. We go hungry and thirsty. We are in rags. We are brutally treated. We are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless when we are persecuted, we endure it. When we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment, we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children, even though you have 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ, Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord, He will remind you of my way of life in Christ, Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere, in every church, some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you, but I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have for the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip or in love and with a gentle spirit? So reads the Word of God most people, I suspect, at some time or other, dream about being a leader. The shape of the leader we daydream about will, of course, vary according to the field. What it takes to be a leader as a sumo wrestler is not exactly what it takes to be the leader of the needlepoint guild. What it takes to be in charge of the local trade union is not exactly what it takes to be a TV personality. But however different the field, most of the daydreams about leadership in this fallen world have certain characteristics in common. We dream of being the best. We dream of gaining a certain kind of prestige where all acknowledge that we are the best we may fancy some period when various people look upon us and look down upon us, and to think, what right does this person have to lead? And then at the end, after we have demonstrated all our vigor and our perseverance, we are Vin. Indicated and trial, and it doesn’t really matter what the field is, that’s pretty well characteristic of the way most of us think in our worst moments of the nature of leadership. Now the opening chapters of one Corinthians have already introduced, indirectly, a fair number of characteristics of Christian leadership. Those of you who have been following this series will remember the problem that Paul sets out in the first chapter, in chapter one, verses 10 and following, he draws attention to deep divisions in the church that turn, in no small measure, on a false understanding of leaders. He says, I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another, so that there may be no divisions among you. Verse 11, my brothers, some from Chloe’s household, have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this one of you says, I follow Paul another. I follow Apollos, another. I follow Cephas, still another, I follow Christ. Now, the reason they had gone on this tack stemmed in part, from the influence of the surrounding culture upon them. Their surrounding culture in the Greco Roman world, loved to esteem certain leaders highly in the Greek world, especially those who had a certain kind of wisdom, a certain kind of philosophical stance that explained all the problems of life. They were whole structures of thought positions that explained how to think, how to react, how to get on with people, how to advance in the world, to explain the systems of economics and politics that prevailed. They were universal explanatory systems, and these people wanted the same kind of gurus within the church who would supply them with quick answers on everything, and doubtless without Apollos Paul or or a Paul approving what was going on. Various people had aligned themselves, in their own minds, with with Peter, and said, Peter really has an inside track on godliness and Christianity and an explanation of how God’s revelation works. Paul’s All right, but my favorite is Peter, and others would opt for a pause, doubtless swayed by his Alexandrian rhetoric and so forth, and the result was endless one upmanship and party rivalry and divisiveness, even in the church. So Paul, in the first two chapters, goes back to basics. He reminds them afresh of what the gospel really is, that it is the Savior alone who suffered for them, the Savior alone who died for them. And if they understand God’s secret wisdom the gospel, it is because of the gift of the Spirit, they have no ground whatsoever to be proud. And then in the third chapter, as we saw last week, Paul starts delineating the relationship between the people at large, the church at large, and Christian leaders. And what we saw there was that the various Christian leaders all contribute to the same cause. They are not autonomous. They do not have some independent task. One plant seeds, one water seeds. But you don’t have a planter. Without those who are involved with the cultivation and irrigation, you don’t have irrigators. If there’s no planter, they are all involved in the task, and at the end of the day, only God Himself gives the increase. Not only so, but Paul gives an architectural metaphor to warn the leaders themselves that they are responsible for building. Well, it is possible to be an ostensible leader in the church and build with such straw, the material, that on the last day you’ve got nothing to show for it. All the putative conversions haven’t been real. All the alleged spiritual growth has been superficial. And at the end of the day, you may be saved yourself, Paul says to these leaders, but you will escape as one who manages to get through the flames. So now at the end of this section, Paul tells people, at last, how they should regard Christian leaders. And if we understand this chapter, it will help us understand something of the nature of Christian leadership in the church, how it differs from leadership in the world, and give us a sense of our responsibility and our tasks and our relationships to leaders, not only those who stand at the front Sunday by Sunday, but all of us who exercise any sort of leadership role in the Sunday school, in our homes, in in house groups, leadership works at different level. You.

What Paul says in this chapter is three things. First, Christian leadership means above all being entrusted with the mysteries of God. Christian leadership means above all being entrusted with the mysteries of God. He begins verse one. So then, after I’ve told you how not to view Christian leaders, let me tell you how you should view them. So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God, servants of Christ, notice not servants of the church. It is important to remark on that there is a sense in which, of course, Christian leaders are servants of the church, but there is a deeper sense in which they are servants of Christ alone. Part of our problem is that we have developed accountability structures in the western world that are unidirectional. They either come down from the top, like IBM or the Vatican, where all the power finally comes down from the top and works out, or we have developed patterns of democracy, where, at least in theory, the power emerges from below and works up. Now we say we are a congregational church, that is, we have no hierarchy telling us what to do, and therefore we say we are like a democracy, where the power is at the church level. Well, there is some truth to that, but it is a very dangerous thing simply to import democracy into the church. Part of the reason is that the nature of democracy itself has changed drastically since the time when it was invented, whether in this country or in America or in other Western democracies, when the notions of democracy were being knocked about in the Federalist papers in the US, or earlier than that over here, democracy was seen first and foremost as the way of preserving the nation against the usurpation of power, against the prostitution of power Lord Acton. ActOns dictum was was recognized a little later on to be true of all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The overwhelming majority of men and women, if they’re put in power long enough, become intoxicated with their power, and they become unbalanced. They they no longer think humbly. There are instances of that. In Scripture. There is King Saul so timid at his initial appointment that he’s hiding in the baggage, afraid to come out before the people. A little later on, he’s prepared to be not only king, but priest, and Samuel rebukes him and says, when you were small, in your own eyes, God was prepared to do great things with you. Now God is going to take the kingdom from you. And so democracy became a way of turfing the blighters out. Every so often, it sort of cleaned the house and put others in. And the assumption in this world view is that democracy is a kind of safeguard against the corrosion of power, because human beings are evil, and no matter how good the human being, no matter how wise and experienced the politician, sooner or later, power begins to corrupt. Democracy protects you against that nowadays, however, in the Western world, we have largely lost this vision of human beings as deeply evil. We don’t think that. And therefore, democracy has undergone a certain shift. Now we speak of the wisdom of the people as if there is something profoundly wise when a whole lot of people all say the same thing, they may all be duped by the same media. They may all be shanghaied to the spirit of the age. There is nothing profoundly wise at any necessary level simply because the majority vote the Tories in or the Republicans, or whoever they may all be following the latest guru. At the end of the day, democracy is not perceived in the present environment to be a safeguard against power. It is perceived to be an expression of wisdom, and that is folly. That is folly. It is especially folly in the church, and in fact, in the church, instead of having a unilingual line of development, the IBM corporate model down, or the democratic model with power up, there is in the New Testament a certain kind of tension on the way. One hand, leaders are constantly charged with the responsibility of bringing discipline to the church. On the other hand, there are instances where the leaders themselves are disciplined. We shall come to that by the church. So the power does not simply go one way. And the reason, of course, is because either the leaders or the church can be corrupt, and in any day, in any case, the church doesn’t belong to either of them. It’s Christ’s church. Now it is within that framework, then that it is important to see leaders in the church, not first and foremost as servants of the church. There is some truth to that. But they are, first and foremost, servants of Christ, servants of Christ. Now, if they lose that vision, there may be a case for discipline by the church. We’ll come to that in due course. But first and foremost, they are servants of Christ, and as such, they are entrusted with the secret things of God. Now those of you who were here two weeks ago will recognize that this expression has already been used. It cropped up in chapter two, verse seven, we speak of God’s secret wisdom. There we discover that God’s secret wisdom is nothing other than the gospel. It is something that God has in some measure hidden in the past, but which is now revealed in the past. God predicted a time when a new temple would be built, when a king would come, when a servant would suffer, when a when a priest would serve as mediator, when God Himself would come. But who, in the first century, understood that all of those various predictions would come together in one man, the God man, Christ, Jesus, the things were hidden. But after Jesus, after the cross, after the resurrection, then all the biblical strands were clearly perceived to have come together, and that which was hidden in times past has now been dramatically revealed in Christ and the cross and the Gospel. And not only so, but we ourselves have been made to see these things by the Spirit. As Paul says in chapter two, verse 10, God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. So when Paul now says chapter four, Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. What he is saying is this, Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the gospel of God. That’s what he means. And it is important to say that. It is important to say it again and again and again, because it is possible to develop a generation of Christian leadership that does not think in terms of the benefit of the gospel, but that thinks in terms of ecclesiastical politics, administrative ability, power politics, maintaining an institution. Sometimes God has called forth an institution, such as a mission, society that has met a particular need at the time and has addressed certain deeply felt concerns and weaknesses in the church. And then, after two or three generations, you no longer have leadership with a vision of the gospel. What you have instead is a bureaucracy. And you have a bureaucrat in charge now, a general secretary with a president and so on, where the whole genius of the institution, whether it’s admitted or not, is no longer so much to promote the gospel as to preserve the institution, to promote the institution, to enlarge the boundaries of the institution. Now do not misunderstand me, not for a moment. Am I? Am I suggesting that there is no place for good administrators? God Himself in Romans, chapter 12 insists that there is a gift, a charismatic gift, of administration. Not for a moment am I suggesting that all institutions should hereafter be scrapped after the first generation. What I am saying is this, that where an institution, or where Christian leadership, or where a church becomes so bound up in its vision with something peripheral, rather than with the gospel. It is already sacrificed. What is distinctive in Christian leadership, for Christian leaders should, above all, see themselves as servants of Christ and those entrusted with the gospel, those entrusted with the Word of God, those entrusted with God’s great redeeming good news, those entrusted with that which saves and transforms, those entrusted with what builds the church, those entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s all that is. What is distinctive

everything else is auxiliary, peripheral, negotiable, that you cannot do without. Now it is important to recognize that this sort of thing is said in a variety of ways. In the New Testament, for example, when you read first Timothy chapter three, verses one to seven, the list of qualifications of of a bishop in the New Testament. It is intriguing that most of the qualifications are the sorts of things that somewhere else in the New Testament are mandated of all believers. For example, we’re told that the overseer, the bishop, is to be hospitable, but that is mandated of all Christians in Hebrews chapter 13, we’re told that he’s not to be given to much wine, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are allowed to get roaring drunk every Saturday night. We’re supposed to bring up our family wells. We’re told that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are are allowed to let them go scot free. No, all of the qualifications in those lists saved. Two are mandated of all believers. What are the two? Well, the first is not a novice. That is to say, the Christian leader is to be a little farther along the pike a little more experience with something of a track record before there is any sort of promotion to public leadership. And the second is this, able to teach, which presupposes not only a deeper knowledge of God’s truth than most have in the church, but the ability to communicate it and in Christian vision, living it out faithfully. Now, do you see again, how What is distinctive in Christian leadership does not set Christian leaders apart in a separate past, they don’t have a different set of moral standards. Rather, the standards applied to the whole church apply peculiarly to them because they are leaders. What is distinctive about them is they are entrusted with the gospel. They are entrusted with the Word of God. Now Paul says that is how you are to view Christian leaders as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the gospel. Of all things that Paul could have derived from this truth, he now mentions two. He derives two lessons from this truth. First, Christian leaders, therefore must prove faithful to Him who has assigned them their fundamental task and who will finally judge them for it you see if they have been entrusted with the Gospel, the question must be raised, who has entrusted them with it? If they are servants of Christ, then the answer must be, it is Christ Himself. It is God Himself, through Christ Jesus, who has entrusted them with his task. So Paul says, verse two, now it is required that those who have been given a trust, as leaders have been entrusted with the gospel, must prove faithful. That’s the very nature of a trust. You respond to a trust being given to you by faithfulness and discharging that trust, he says. And in this context, he says, I care very little if I’m judged by you or by any human court, because at the end of the day, I’m not your servant. You see, he is not saying, I don’t care what anybody thinks to me. I don’t care whether I have a good reputation or not. I’ll do things my own way. That’s not what he’s saying. He is not dear casting down a gauntlet of wretched, arrogant independence. What he is saying is, if he is first and foremost servant of Christ, and Christ has entrusted him with the gospel, then what you think of me in this game of power politics that is going on in Corinth with some busy saying, I prefer Peter, I prefer Apollos. Paul says, what you think of me finally, doesn’t matter too much if you prefer to follow Apollos. Frankly, my feelings aren’t hurt, because at the end of the day, you’re not my judge. That’s what he says. It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. And he does not mean by this that he does not examine himself, he does not confess his own sins, He doesn’t look into his own heart. That’s not what he means. He means at the end of the day, just as it is not other people’s opinion of him that is the final arbiter, so it is not his own opinion of himself that is the final arbiter. There are some people who go through life with perpetual melancholia they always have in the in jargon, low self esteem. Others go through life with a perpetual optimism, and no matter how sloppily they do things, how wickedly they do things, they’re always upbeat and feel that they’re pretty nice. Spoke. But Paul says, At the end of the day, even as a Christian, no matter how carefully examines himself, how much he examines his own conscience, what he thinks of himself is not the final issue. No, no. He says, It is the Lord who judges me. My conscience is clear. He says, At the end of the day, I do try to keep a clear conscience, and in the matters that you have charged me with, my conscience is clear but but that doesn’t make me innocent. I might have a clear conscience and be guilty of sin. I might be so misinformed. I might be judging falsely. I might be simply patting myself on the back. I might be deeply mistaken at the end of the day, it’s not your opinion that is final. It’s not my opinion that’s final at the end of the day, it’s the Lord’s opinion. The Lord is the judge, and he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. Do you see how freeing that is, do you see how freeing that is for every Christian? Oh, it’s frightening at one level, but it’s freeing at another. If you really believe this, you spend much less of your time worried about what somebody else thinks of you. Become much less concerned with the current state of your self esteem this week, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It’s what the Lord thinks of you that matters, and you aim to please Him. You see the more you focus on your own problems and how you view yourself, and whether you are accepting yourself, and whether you are up or whether you are down, the more you compound your problem. There is a kind of approach to human problems, which, when you address them directly, simply compounds them, but when you recognize that at the end of the day, it is not what others think of you. It is not what you think of yourself that is so critical. It is what God thinks of you. It tends to reorient all of your perspectives and values. This does not mean that those who suffer deep depressions will have them no longer. It means that all things considered, they won’t find them so crippling, because they remember that it is the Lord who judges them. And in fact, at the very moment when you might expect Paul now to release the kind of Zinger he says something strange. Listen, God will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. And then we might expect at that time each will receive his comeuppance from God. But it’s not what we read. At that time each will receive His praise from God. It is almost as if God is a gentler and more compassionate judge than

you see. Christian leaders can do all sorts of stupid things, but God knows their hearts. We are assuming in here we are dealing with with people of basic Christian integrity. He knows why they did them. He knows their own weaknesses, and he takes all those things into account. And at the end of the day, God Almighty is going to stand up and take the leader who has been publicly criticized in the church by almost everyone and say maybe they didn’t like what you did, but I pray you for it, because I know your heart an astonishing thing to say. Christian leaders must prove faithful to the one who has assigned them to assign them their fundamental tasks, and who will finally judge them for it. But there is a second implication. It is this, those who follow Christian leaders must recognize that leaders are called to please the Lord Christ, and must therefore refrain from standing in judgment on them. That’s what Paul says in verse five. Now it is important to say that this is not the only passage in the New Testament that speaks the Buddhist testing Christian leaders in First Timothy five, for example, we’re told that if an evil report is given of a leader, it is to be ignored. But if there is the multiplicity of witnesses that’s different. You take it seriously. And if it turns out that the Christian leader really has been responsible for something just not acceptable, then you must actually make an example of him, so that others will judge. And in two Corinthians, 10 through 13, the. Paul insists very strongly that the church in Corinth take action against the pseudo apostles, the false leaders who have insinuated themselves into positions of leadership in the church, and get rid of them. And he says, If you don’t want I come, I will get rid of them. So there is a sense in which the church must be responsible for a certain kind of discipline over its leaders, if the leaders go greatly astray morally, or if they prove greatly schismatic, or if they prove fundamentally heretical, if they abandon the gospel, the church as a whole is responsible for addressing the discipline of its leadership.

In other words, Christian leaders have no right to think of themselves as petty Popes. We’ve already seen that in chapter three, Paul has laid down some pretty severe sanctions on them from God Himself on the last day, if they build with shoddy material and bring damage to the church. But still, the point made in verse five is essential judge nothing before the appointed time, we are not to become fundamentally judgmental. The power does not begin and end with us. God Himself will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and at that time, each will receive His praise from God. Now Paul says, I have applied these things to myself and to Paulus for your benefit, so that you may learn from us. The meaning of the saying. Do not go beyond what is written. This is not a quotation from Scripture. It is obviously a saying in the church. At the Seminary where I teach, the outgoing Dean has the saying that he is constantly reiterating. It crops up in every third or fourth sermon, keep your finger on the text. Keep your finger on the text. Keep your finger on the text. That is what this passage says, don’t go beyond what is written. Don’t go beyond what is written. You see, part of the problem is that some Christians want the gospel plus something. They want the gospel plus something, and it is that something that gives them their distinctive identity, and thus, it is no longer the gospel that is capturing them, but the plus. But Paul says, keep your finger on the text. Don’t go beyond what is written. What you’ve done is said, I want the gospel plus the rhetoric of Apollos. I want the gospel plus the personality of Paul. I want the gospel plus this little extra. But don’t go beyond what is written. And then you will not take pride in one man over against another. Now he says, I acknowledge that that there are different gifts. You may learn special amounts from a particular ministry or a particular leader or particular gift. But on the other hand, who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? Supposing you have received special blessing from Apollos or from Peter or from Paul, supposing you haven’t particularly strengthened and built up and nurtured and edified in your faith because of the Ministry of Peter. Does that mean, therefore, that you now have cause for arrogance, for a party spirit who makes you different from anyone else? Isn’t God sovereign over these gifts that He has given to Peter and Apollos? What do you have that you did not receive? Hasn’t he put you in a place where you’ve received blessings from these things, and if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? Most of us have benefited greatly over the years from the Ministry of Roy Clements. But at the end of the day, does that mean we should ever have the right to say, I go to Roy Clements church. It is not his church. And if we have received blessings from him, we have received them. We didn’t earn them.

We didn’t give the gifts to Him. We don’t pay him. We support him for the ministry to which he is called.

There’s just no ground for arrogance anywhere in this transaction, except that we have received new insight into the Word of God as God’s Spirit has ministered to us through him. What possible grounds for arrogance is there in that, if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not, as if somehow it’s yours, by right? That’s what Paul says. His first point is very simple. Christian leadership means, above all, being entrusted with the mysteries of God. Second, Christian leadership means living life in the light of the cross. It means living light in the light of life in the light of the cross. What Paul says in verses nine and following would be very powerful in any first century congregation. It seems to me, Paul says that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena when a Roman general took over some new territory, sometimes with there was a triumphal procession through this. Elites of Rome, and the Roman generals and senior officers and various leaders, complete with flags flying, would come through. And then the equivalent of NCOs and the like, more troops, and then the first captives. And if the first captives that fought particularly well or were particularly distinguished, they actually might be given a carriage themselves, perhaps some petty monarch somewhere, some king, the aristocracy, the nobility. But eventually you would also find the phrase people, the artists, the plumbers, and the ancient equivalent of electricians and builders, because it was common when the Empire took over a territory to take off the cream of the leadership and of the crafts people and bring them back to the role to Rome for the greater glory of the Empire. Then right at the end of the process, procession eating everybody else’s dust would be a collection of slaves. Everybody knew where they were heading. They were heading for Saturday afternoons entertainment, the equivalent of Saturday afternoon football or something. But it was a little more malicious. It was in the arena, and some of them would simply be thrown to the lions for the greater enjoyment of greater Rome, or some would become gladiators and kill each other. But that was where they were heading. They were the despised people, the people that nobody wanted, who couldn’t add anything to the Empire anyway, except to give a lot of laughs on a Saturday afternoon. Now, Paul says, it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We’ve been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. It seems to me, he says that we’re not only a laughing stock on Earth. It’s almost as if the angels themselves are scratching their heads and say, saying, Can you can you believe what those jokers are doing? A spectacle on display to the whole universe. We are fools for Christ, He says, but you are so wise you won’t follow your gurus and count yourself so wise. You are honored. We are dishonored. You We are weak. You are strong to this very hour. We go hungry and thirsty. We are in rags. We are brutally treated. We are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. Greco Roman teachers didn’t do that. It was beneath them. So if Paul did it, it must mean that he was an inferior teacher. When we are cursed, we bless. Question is this, where did Paul learn such an approach? Isn’t this simply a description of the Way of the Cross? When we are cursed, we bless? Isn’t that what Jesus did when he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. When we are persecuted, we endure. It isn’t that what Jesus did when he refused to come off the cross to the taunts of those who passed by when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Isn’t this simply following Him who taught us in the sermon on the mount that any pagan can have pagan friends, but his followers are to love their enemies and to pray for those who despitefully use them. Do you see the real problem here is that these Christians in Corinth had got their whole worldview skewed. There is a sense, of course, in which we look forward to the coming of Christ at the end, do we not when there will be no more sin, when all the woes and injustices and evils of this age will finally be put to right, and the Judge of all the earth does what is right. From another perspective, we can look back on the other hand to the cross and say, look at what we’ve already received. Sin is forgiven. The gift of the Spirit is the down payment of the promised inheritance. We are already children of God, sons of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We are children of the King of kings. Now, Christians live in that tension. On the one hand, we’re already king of world. We’re already sons of the King. On the other hand, we live in the valley of death. We live under the curse until Jesus comes back again. If we focus all of our attention on the end, then we will talk endlessly about doom and gloom down here, how dark things are, how the age is getting worse, how there’s nothing we can do, how there is no point actually lifting up our hearts and joy. But then it will be wonderful if, on the other hand, you look backwards only then you will say, I already have the spirit. I’m already the child of the King. I should start living like a child of the King. If God is my Father and He owns the whole thing, well, well, then it’s mine. Isn’t that what Paul has said at the end of chapter chapter three, if the whole thing is mine, then I should enjoy it already, and I should live like a king and be respected and walk as a prayer. It’s in God’s world. That’s why Paul writes with such sarcasm in verse eight, already you have what you want. Exclamation mark, already you have become rich. Exclamation mark, you have become kings and that without us. Exclamation mark. How I wish you really had become kings. How I wish that the end had finally dawned, because then I’d be there with you enjoying this promised inheritance that all of God’s children will one day have. But instead, the very leaders in the church go about as the scum of the earth. Why? Because they follow the way of the cross. Wouldn’t it transform Eden Baptist church if all of us in our personal relationships, in our homes, in the way we got on with one another, in our employment, learned to answer as one who follows the way of the cross. It is so much a part of our fallenness to want to be quick and witty smart mouthed. No one puts us down and gets away with it. We don’t want anybody to look down on us. And even when we start thinking about how to do outreach evangelistically, we think, How can we put on the best front? How can people admire us? What do we have to do so that people will look up to us and respect us, so that we can gain a hearing for the gospel? Hey, do not misunderstand. I’m not for a moment, suggesting that we should be as ugly and as entrenched and as embaffled as possible and as out of date and is perceived irrelevant as possible. I am saying that if we think that we finally do the work of the Cross by denying the Way of the Cross, we end up denying the cross, and in the church itself, there is far more love among the brothers and sisters, far more acceptance, far more tolerance, if we just learn to walk the way of the cross when We are cursed, we bless when we are persecuted, we put up with it, and our strength is seen in Christian integrity following the way of Jesus. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that a couple of years ago, I did a video interview in North America of two giants in evangelical leadership over the last 50 years, Carl Henry, who preached here a couple of years ago on Ecclesiastes 12 and Kenneth concert. Carl turns 80 in January 10, is only a few years behind, and between them, they have led in much of evangelical leadership in North America for the last half century, and this video series was an attempt to put on tape their memories of turning points in 50 years of evangelical history. And they gave their addresses, and then it was my task to interview them for an hour or so. Along the line, I eventually asked them this question.

My perception is that many, many Christian leaders, toward the end of their lives, become idiosyncratic or eccentric. They see younger people coming up behind them, and they resent it, or they get hived off by this particular narrow focus or that focus. But you two, whatever else you’ve done, have remained firmly grounded on the gospel. You remain centered on the gospel, and you haven’t moved off that regardless of what people have thought of you or spoken for you or against you, you remained grounded on the gospel. How have you maintained that allegiance, that centrality? Well, they spider moved and didn’t quite know quite what to say. And were a bit embarrassed, of course, which I expected them to be. And then one sort of blurted out, how can anyone be arrogant or move off to some eccentric position when he stands beside the cross?

That’s exactly right. Christian. Leadership means living life in the light of the cross. And that brings me to my last point, which I will simply mention. Christian leadership means encouraging, and if necessary, warning about and enforcing the Way of the Cross among the people of God. Christian leadership means encouraging the Way of the Cross among the people of God. You see, this is not something just for Christian leaders, it’s for the whole church. So do you see what Paul says? Verse? 14. I am not writing this to shame you. I’m not scoring points, he says, but to warn you, even though you have 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers in the ancient world, if you’re my son, you imitate me. Now that’s what I tell you. I became your father through the gospel. I planted the church. Paul says, Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I am sending to you Timothy, my son, whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ, Jesus, not. He will remind you of my doctrine. He will remind you of justification by faith. He will remind you of propitiation, all of those things this church had already got under its belt. No, no. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ, which agrees with what I teach everywhere and then every church. Do you see what he’s saying. He will teach you how to live. He says. He will teach you what it means not only to believe the doctrines of the cross, but to live the way of the cross. And then he ends up with an auction of warning, threat on the one hand, or blessing and gentleness on the other. Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you, but I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. The power that Paul has in mind is not the display of miracles. I can do a better miracle than you can. It’s not that sort of thing. It’s the kind of power that issues, finally, in the demonstration in the next chapter, where under the Spirit of God, certain false people, in this case, in desperate moral rebellion, are handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. This Paul says you are to do when the power of Christ is gathered in the presence of the whole church, and I will come and I will exercise discipline. If you don’t exercise discipline first, what do you prefer? He says, Shall I come to you with a whip or in love and with a gentle spirit? Do you see Paul’s point? Christian leadership means encouraging and, if necessary, enforcing the Way of the Cross among the people of God. It is not enough simply to believe the right things. You can believe the doctrines of the cross, but if it has not touched your heart and given you a spirit of contrition such that you want to walk where Jesus walked. You want to walk in brokenness in your personal relationships. You want to walk humbly before him. You want to have the kind of strength that endures, not the kind of strength that is triumphalistic. You want to have the kind of strength that cheerfully blesses enemies, not the kind of strength that puts others down so that you may be promoted. You want the kind of strength that forgives as you have been forgiven, not the kind of strength that bears bitterness and resentment and counts how many times you have been wounded. If you want the way of the cross, then you must go back to the cross, and Christian leadership is concerned with enforcing and teaching and promoting and displaying the way of the cross.