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The Call of God
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Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel . . . —1 Corinthians 1:17 |
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| Paul states
here that the call of God is to preach the gospel. But remember what Paul
means by "the gospel," namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus
Christ. We are inclined to make sanctification the goal of our preaching.
Paul refers to personal experiences only by way of illustration, never as
the end of the matter. We are not commissioned to preach salvation or
sanctification— we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (see John
12:32 ). It is an injustice to say that
Jesus Christ labored in redemption to make me a saint. Jesus Christ labored
in redemption to redeem the whole world and to place it perfectly whole and
restored before the throne of God. The fact that we can experience
redemption illustrates the power of its reality, but that experience is a
byproduct and not the goal of redemption. If God were human, how sick and
tired He would be of the constant requests we make for our salvation and for
our sanctification. We burden His energies from morning till night asking
for things for ourselves or for something from which we want to be
delivered! When we finally touch the underlying foundation of the reality of
the gospel of God, we will never bother Him anymore with little personal
complaints. The one passion of Paul’s life was to proclaim the gospel of God. He welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment, and tribulation for only one reason— these things kept him unmovable in his devotion to the gospel of God. |