A model for all who preach today.
Paul, the greatest of all preachers of the gospel, was also probably the most effective. Wherever he went he proved the weapon he used. He had abundant evidence that the gospel was the power of God unto salvation. He made ample proof of his ministry.
Yet Paul throughout his career was beset by fears, fears which were very real, ever present and well-grounded; fears which called for constant watchfulness and prayer lest they be realized. “I was with you in weakness and in fear” (1 Cor. 2:3). “Without were fightings, within were fears” (1 Cor. 7:5). Again and again he expressed the fears that beset his mind. “I fear lest…I fear lest…” (2 Cor. 11:3; 12:20).
What was it Paul had to fear so constantly? The same fears should beset every preacher who seeks to follow in his steps. For a preacher has much to fear. He is preeminently the Devil’s target. His very calling is a challenge to the enemy, who will silence him if he can.
How many a preacher has fallen victim because not beware of him, nor alive to the grave dangers that beset the preacher’s mission.
Here are some of the things Paul feared, and because he feared them he escaped their snares.
FEAR AS TO HIS CHARACTER
“Lest I should be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:27). He knew there was a grave risk, and he took nothing for granted. He was “temperate in all things.” He ran to obtain. He fought “not as one that beateth the air.” He kept under his body and brought it unto subjection. Why? “Lest that by any means (appalling fear!) when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:27). He dreaded the possibility that by personal unworthy conduct his commission should be cancelled and he himself rejected from his honored post of preacher of the gospel.
That the fear is a real one today we have only to look around us to know by painful example. How many a voice that rang with power and blessing is silent in shame today? We well need fear. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).
FEAR AS TO HIS INFLUENCE
Paul feared “lest he should make his brother to offend” (1 Cor. 8:13). He knew that as a preacher his influence was great, that it was not confined to his preaching, but extended to his practice. Not only what he said but what he did bore fruit. And for this cause he brought himself under restrictions which might not otherwise have been called for. He refrained from things, lawful in themselves, lest the exercise of his liberty should wound weaker consciences, and that through his knowledge the weak brother might perish, “for whom Christ died.” How careful he had to be, watched and followed as he was! And how careful every preacher ought to be, lest he make his brother to stumble! One has only to read the awesome words of Christ on this subject (Mt. 18:6) to set one trembling with fear.
FEAR AS TO HIMSELF
His very attainments were his danger. His “visions and revelations of the Lord” constituted a peril to that Christian quality most to be prized and soonest lost—humility. His fear was “lest I should be exalted above measure” (2 Cor. 12:7). So the thorn was sent to buffet him.
Pulpit pride is the ugliest and perhaps the commonest of all the sins that so easily beset us. It is certain that few of us preachers can be trusted with much success for fear of it going to our heads. Even Paul must have “a messenger of Satan” to keep him low before the Lord; otherwise God could never have accomplished through His servant the mighty work He did.
Which of us would not covet Paul’s crown, who would yet shrink from his thorn? It is so easy to think ourselves to be something when we are nothing, and to achieve little or nothing in consequence.
FEAR OF GETTING IN THE WAY
Paul even declined to baptize his converts with his own hands for fear: “lest any should say I had baptized in mine own name” (1 Cor. 1:15). It was a real danger, a danger that was experienced in Corinth, where there were those who said, “I am of Paul.”
It is subtly easy to preach ourselves, and Paul knew this. “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus our Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). It is a great temptation to identify ourselves with our preaching, to obtrude our personality into our work for God, to gather people round us rather than round Him of whom we speak, to focus attention on ourselves more than on our Lord. Many a church has suffered from association with one dominant personality as the mainspring of its worship and activities. It is not easy for one conscious of superior ability and gifts to maintain a selfless attitude in his ministry and to say, “He must increase, I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30).
FEAR OF CHOOSING AN EASY FIELD
Paul expressed a fear, “lest I should build upon another man’s foundation” (Rom. 15:20). It is a pleasant and often an easy thing to reap where another has sown, and reflects sometimes a glory that has not been merited. There is, of course, nothing amiss in such service. “One soweth and another reapeth” is happily true and “he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together” (Jn. 4:36). But here again is a snare to be feared, the choosing of a sphere because it is easy. The spade work has been done, the sower has gone forth weeping and there is little to do but gather his harvest.
It is a method common enough in the mission field, where propagandists of a false creed often find it easier to seduce the national Christians to their doctrines than attempt the more arduous work of a virgin field.
It is a sad reflection that in the West, where Christ has been named, there are thousands of Christian workers, often in open or veiled competition, while abroad millions have never heard His Name. Is it because it costs more, with less to show for one’s toil, in other lands, that so many are content to remain at home?
FEAR OF HINDERING THE GOSPEL
He argued boldly in support of his right to temporal support from those to whom he preached. “If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?” (1 Cor. 9:11). Yet having claimed the right, he nobly renounced it. Why? For fear lest by exercising it he should hinder the gospel of Christ. It was a source of the keenest satisfaction to him to preach Christ freely. He claimed no glory for preaching the gospel; that he could not help. Necessity was laid upon him. “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). But he did glory in preaching it without charge. He was no paid preacher. It could never be said he preached for a living. For thereby the gospel would be hindered in its free course among men.
It is to the lasting detriment of the gospel that a class of men should ever have arisen whose profession (in a secular sense) is the preaching of the gospel. How many a preacher’s message has been discounted by his worldly hearers on the ground that it is his paid job to preach it, and that he is not a free agent either as to his creed, to which he is pledged for his living, or the preaching of it, which he is under contract to do. True, it is often an unfair reflection on many saintly servants of Christ, but the reflection remains, often to the hindrance of the gospel.
FEAR OF AVOIDING THE REPROACH OF CHRIST
“Christ sent me…to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect” (1 Cor. 1:17). It is striking and suggestive how insistent he was on this point. He determined to know nothing among men except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. His preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that men’s faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
It is hard to conceive a greater snare to the gospel preacher than this. It is all too easy to trim one’s message—and that almost unconsciously—in order to please one’s hearers.
Very much that passes for gospel preaching today, even in evangelical circles, if candidly and critically reviewed, would prove to contain little of the cross of Christ. Earnest appeals and fervent exhortations to follow Christ are by no means necessarily gospel appeals, and sometimes the cross of Christ itself may be so named as to mean something other than its true gospel significance.
A bloodless cross is not the cross of Christ. There is no preacher the Devil fears if he can divert him from the preaching of the atoning blood, and so make the cross of Christ of no effect. “Then is the offence of the cross ceased” (Gal. 5:11).
FEAR THAT HE SHOULD LABOR IN VAIN
“Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain” (Phil. 2:16). Oh, how he loved those for whom he labored! How he wept over them and prayed for them. How he warned and exhorted them. How he gloried in those he won! “For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2:19-20).
After all, what is a preacher for but to win souls? And how vain it all is if he doesn’t. It is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. He makes a noise, big or little, for a time, and then ceases for ever.
Converts are a preacher’s credentials. “Ye are our epistles read and known of all men” (2 Cor. 3:2). Every preacher should have as a major dread of a fruitless ministry. He has at his disposal a weapon which is the power of God unto salvation, and if it proves powerless in his hands, let him seek, in tears and searching of heart, the reason. It cannot be the weapon. It may be the preacher. Let the preacher examine himself, his message, and his method if he has reason to recognize that his preaching is in vain.
Finally, let us remember that it is a good thing to have such healthy fears, for these are indeed things to fear. To be alive to dangers is the best protection against them. “Let us therefore fear!”