Practical Use of the New Testament.
I. The New Testament is the revelation of eternal life by Christ; of life which must begin in man's spirit by the conviction of sin, must be entered on by justifying faith, and carried on by the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. It comes to us, not as a code of laws, but as good news: this has ever been its name since its first announcement. And the good news have been of the most attractive kind. We find in the Gospels the independent testimonies of four holy and truthful men to a set of facts substantially the same. No concert had been previously entered into, to make them tally with one another; no collusion has taken place since their writing, by which seeming discrepancies might be removed. In some minor details, it cannot be denied that their accounts are considerably divergent; in their consecutive order and arrangement of events, the same divergence is observed. How precious to us is all this, as matter of teaching, that we must not be children of the bondwoman, but of the free; that the same great Spirit, who worketh in every man severally as He will, worked according to this analogy in those holy men also.
II. The Gospels are usually taken up as a miscellaneous collection of histories, without any reference to their distinctive character. We should read them to obtain not only a correct historical idea of the important events which they record, but which is far more important, to be able to form in our own minds, and for our own spiritual lives, that living and consistent image of the glorious person of our Lord, which their separate testimonies, when combined, build up and complete.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. v., p. 277.
I. An able minister of the new testament, as many think, is a powerful, talented, and acceptable preacher of God's word, especially of the New Testament one who is well acquainted with every part of the gospel, and well able to set it forth from the pulpit. There is nothing of the kind in the text. For "new testament" has no reference to that which wenow call by that name: we know it cannot have, for the simple reason that the New Testament was not then written; some of the books of the New Testament were in existence, but more were not, nor had any one, in all probability, the slightest notion that there ever would be a volume such as we possess in the New Testament. In point of fact, the phrase "new testament" in our text means "new covenant" that covenant, namely, which God made to men in Christ Jesus, in place of the older and now abolished covenant which He made to Israel by the hand of Moses. The contrast between the two is drawn out in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in other places.
II. And in the second place, "ministers" has nothing at all to do with preachers: it simply means servants, or as we say "ministering servants" such as are actively employed in carrying on the practical work of any dispensation or scheme; by a natural transition it comes to be specially applied to those who lend their active powers to the service of God and His Church.
III. Lastly, ableministers was never meant to convey a notion of cleverness or talent, or acceptableness in themselves. What St. Paul meant was, that God had made them able to be ministers and made it possible for them to act as ministers; but sufficiency, he says, is of God, who also enabled even us, utterly unworthy as we are, and, humanly speaking, quite inadequate, to be ministering servants of the new covenant made to man in Christ and ratified by His death.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 317.
Religious Thought and Life of the Age.
I. There is in our age a tendency to greater simplicity of creed. The divines of today would hesitate to lay down, even on cardinal points, strict and narrow lines of orthodoxy; and still more would they shrink from including in any confession of faith a number of other dogmas, which, whether received or not, are not to be regarded as an essential part of the gospel. The feeling is strong, and it is continually growing, that the foundations of Christian fellowship are to be laid in spiritual sympathy rather than in theological agreement, and that all doctrinal formularies should be made as brief and as general as is consistent with the assertion of the grand principles of the Evangelical system.
II. The second tendency to be noted is that towards a truer and broader humanity in our system. I use what may seem the somewhat ambiguous term "humanity" to signify in general the disposition to recognise that a theological system must consider the aspect in which it presents God to man, as well as the coherence of its theory with the Divine government.
The theology of the day does not pretend that the creature can have any claim on the Creator, but it sees what has too often been forgotten, that God must be true to Himself. Confessing the necessary limits to all human investigations, it yet feels that intellectual power has been given in vain, and that there can be no meaning in the gracious invitation of God Himself, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord," if the gospel is not to be examined, and its teachings compared with those which God has given us through the conscience. The new tendency leads the preachers to deal with the false religions of the world as Paul dealt with the Athenians, when even their own errors and superstitions were used as stepping-stones up which they might be guided to the knowledge of the true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He had sent. In short, it deals with man as the object of the Divine love after whom God is seeking, and it endeavours, by appeals to the intellect, conscience, and affection, to win him for Christ. What is this but carrying into practice the great principle of the Apostle, who recognises the power of adaptation and tells us that he himself employed it. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."
J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 129.
References: 2 Corinthians 3:6. Plain Sermons by Contributors to" Tracts for the Times," vol. iv., p. 161; J. Leckie, Sermons at Ibrox,p. 317; T. Lloyd, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 69; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,p. 395; vol. xxvi., p. 24; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 307; J. H. Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 360; H. Riley, Ibid.,vol. xxxiii., p. 185; R. Bartlett, Ibid.,vol. xxxvi., p. 187. 2 Corinthians 3:6-11. A. J. Parry, Phases of Truth,p. 30. 2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:8. Sermons on the Catechism,p. 173. 2 Corinthians 3:7-11. Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 421; 3rd series, vol. ii. p. 107; Ibid.,vol. ix., p. 121.