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supernatural gifts were enjoyed, and it is therefore clear that some parts of its teaching
will not apply directly to us in their primary force. There are, however, abiding
principles, true for all time, which we may consider with profit.
Although the words of this section are addressed to a Church possessing supernatural
gifts, the Apostle carries on the line of thought already begun with reference to the mind,
and we find the section bounded by the following:
"Not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly"
(Rom. 12: 3).
"Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate" (Rom. 12: 16).
One is conscious in reading Paul's epistles that his mind, as taught by grace, had an
instinctive horror of foolish adulation. When, because of necessity, he enumerates his
sufferings for Christ's sake, he says that he has been acting like a fool in his boasting, and
to offset this, he refers to the deep humiliation of having to leave Damascus, not as the
proud emissary of the Jewish Sanhedrin, but in a basket let down from the wall. He
refers also to the messenger of Satan sent to buffet him, lest he should become vain and
boastful on account of the many visions he had received.
"But now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to
be or that he heareth of me" (II Cor. 12: 6).
When the Apostle is seeking to impress upon the consciences of the Ephesian saints
the unique character of the ministry he exercised as the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the
Gentiles, claiming to be the one through whom the dispensation of the Mystery should
first be made known, he breaks into the narrative to add:
"Unto me, less than the least of all saints, is this grace given" (Eph. 3: 8).
Writing to Timothy some thirty years after his conversion, that is to say after thirty
years of such devoted service and suffering as has known no equal since, instead of
feeling that such a record gave him the right to regard himself as above the saints, the
Apostle is found reminding himself and Timothy, that he had been "a blasphemer, a
persecutor, and injurious" though acting ignorantly "in unbelief" (I Tim. 1: 13).
Those who worked with the Apostle were called upon to share this same humble
estimate of their work.
"Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as
the Lord gave to every man?" (I Cor. 3: 5).
"And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself, and to Apollos for
your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that
no one of you be puffed up for one against another" (I Cor. 4: 6).
"Casting down reasonings (though not service that was `reasonable'--see Rom. 12: 1,
2) and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing
into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. 10: 5).