C 13 - Coworking with God and Christ

COWORKING WITH GoD AND CHRIST

13. But the ministry has the attraction of an infinitely greater fellowship: the minister is a coworker with God and a fellow worker with Christ. “We are God’s fellow-workers,” said Paul; and Jesus said, * * My Father worketh even until now, and I work,” meaning that God is ever at work. Medieval artists painted God as resting at ease on a gorgeous couch amidst golden clouds, and we have not yet gotten altogether rid of the impression that God, having finished his creation, has nothing to do. Work is an unpleasant suggestion to us and we think that it must be a degradation to God. But God is a laborer now as much as he was in the beginning. The heavens are still his mighty workshop in which suns are flying off the anvil of his creation like sparks of fire. And he is equally still at work in the human world, indwelling in the minds of men, immanent in all human history and activities and working out his eternal plan and purpose. So also Christ is still working in the world through his Spirit and disciples and Church and all the channels and agencies of providence as he is building his Kingdom among men. All men live and move and have their being in the immanent God, who is present and active in every operation of nature and event of our human world. The minister in a special sense is coworking with God and Christ in the service of preaching the gospel and building the Kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men. His mission has been planned and his message shaped for him in the divine mind, and in a sense he is the voice of God speaking to men, and the hands and feet of Christ doing his work among men; doing not only the same, but greater works than Jesus himself did, because he lives in a greater world, more unified and open and responsive to the gospel message. The minister is the ambassador of God, as though God did beseech men through him, however imperfectly and unworthily he may fulfill this office. The preacher is a prophet of God, the divinely appointed successor of the ancient Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles, who stands in Christ’s place and speaks in God’s name.

He sees all things in a divine light and applies eternal principles to temporal conditions. The prophet has ever been the foremost and most important man in the world, standing above the world and judging righteous judgment based upon eternal standards and exalting inner worth above outer wealth and the spirit above the flesh, and the Christian minister is the prophet of to-day. He stands with his hands joined to God’s hands and is a fellow laborer with him in all his work. It is because of this divine partnership that the minister knows that the gospel is the dynamite of God unto salvation. Sin can never be cleansed from human souls by sociology or science, education or art, however valuable these and other like human agencies may be as aids in this work. Only the Spirit of God can eradicate this terrible malady. The minister has the assurance that God in Christ is working with him to give saving efficacy to the truth he preaches. The very idea of such a gigantic task as the redemption of this world staggering under all its weight of sin and woe would overwhelm and crush him were it not for his faith that it is God’s work and he will carry it through. If God be with the minister, who can be against him? No other man in a greater or possibly in an equal degree has this supreme assurance and at traction in his life work.