 |  |
particular aspect of truth that belongs to God, which He has entrusted to the steward to
dispense. What is the chief characteristic that one looks for in such a man? Not
intellectual prowess or cleverness, but just complete reliability and trustworthiness,
specially when one remembers a steward is handling, not his own property, but someone
else's. There can be no deviation from this, or any substitute for faithfulness. The Lord's
commendation in the parable was not `Well done, thou good and successful servant', but
"well done, thou good and faithful servant" (Matt. 25: 21), and every one of us who
seeks to serve the Lord must continually keep this in the forefront of his mind, for it is of
the utmost importance.
With the exception of the book of the Revelation, which deals with the future Day of
the Lord described by the O.T., and the final winding up of things when the mystery of
God will be finished (Rev. 10: 7), the Apostle Paul is the only writer who uses the word
`mystery' or secret in his epistles. His ministry deals with a number of secret aspects of
the Lord's great redemptive plan, culminating in the great Secret of Ephesians and
Colossians of which he alone claimed to be the minister or channel of revelation
(Eph. 3: 3-10; Col. 1: 24-27). Peter faithfully gave his witness without using the word
once. One must therefore take care to distinguish the fundamental truths relating to
salvation that are common to all the apostles, and those other aspects which are peculiar
to the ministry the risen Lord gave each of them and the particular sphere to which they
were sent by Him.
Having stressed absolute loyalty and trustworthiness as the basic requirement of a
steward of God, the question arises, by whose standards of trustworthiness is he to be
judged? So the Apostle continues:
"To me it is a matter of the smallest importance that I should be examined by you, or
by any human assize" (4: 3 100: K. Barrett).
If Paul had been affected by every criticism he received, he would surely have given
up his ministry in despair. His argument, which is implicit, is that no fellow-believer can
fairly or righteously assess the Christian service of another. Only the Lord Himself, the
righteous Judge, can do this (Rom. 14: 4). It is fairly obvious that the criticism which
appears as a full-scale attack in II Corinthians, had already begun. The last words of the
above translation are literally "by man's day". If the day of Christ is the time when He
will righteously judge His people's service, then man's day is the present time when man
has `all the say' and is judging, or more truthfully, mis-judging. The Apostle is quite
indifferent to this, man's poor attempts to do God's work for Him. He even does not
depend upon the verdict of his own conscience:
". . . . . I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not
hereby justified: but He that judges me is the Lord" (4: 4 R.V.).
Even though my own conscience does not reprove me in any way, says the Apostle, I
am not justified by this. My only real judge is the Lord Himself. As the Lord's coming
during the Acts was imminent, and the Corinthian letters were written during this period,
Paul insists that all judgment must be left to the soon Coming One: