Living & Preaching  

The Bible says, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (KJV)

Paul saw himself as Christ's herald. When he describes himself as an appointed preacher of the gospel (2 Timothy 1:11), the noun he uses means a herald, a person who makes public announcements on another’s behalf. When he declares “we preach Christ crucified,” the verb he uses denotes the herald’s appointed activity of blazoning abroad what he has been told to make known. When Paul speaks of “my preaching” and “our preaching” and lays it down that after the world’s wisdom had rendered the world ignorant of God “it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe,” the noun he uses doesn’t mean the activity of announcing, but the thing announced, the proclamation itself, the message declared.

Paul, in his own estimation, was not a philosopher, not a moralist, not one of the world’s wise men, but simply Christ’s herald. His royal master had given him a message to proclaim; his whole business was to deliver that message with exact and studious faithfulness, adding nothing, altering nothing, and omitting nothing. And he was to deliver it not as another of people’s bright ideas, needing to be beautified with the cosmetics and high heels of fashionable learning in order to make people look at it, but as a word from God spoken in Christ’s name, carrying Christ’s authority and authenticated in the hearers by the convincing power of Christ’s Spirit. Our preaching and our living are all to be simply done to reach the lost and to encourage Believers!

         Daily Chronological Bible Reading: Ezra 7-10