Living Oracles
Find us on Facebook
  • Meditations
  • About
  • Audio
  • Contact

Two Glorious Ministries

9/10/2015

0 Comments

 
2 Corinthians 3: 4 - 9 & Exodus 34: 29 - 35

The apostle Paul contrasts two ministries:  the ministry of Moses and the ministry of the men of the New Covenant.  Each ministry expresses the character and will of God, and the glory of those ministries belongs to God.  No competent ministry in the name of the Lord brings glory to man.  Glory is the unique possession of God.  Our creed, our asseveration and confession is – always, absolutely, and exclusively – “Thine be the glory!”.  Any excellence in the servants of the Lord is reflected splendour only.  Glory cannot be attributed to them.

Moses’ face only shone because he was in the presence of the Lord in the tent of meeting.  The radiance of his face would soon fade.  Glory did not originate in him.  Nor does it in any human being.  The ministers of the New Covenant have no cause to boast.  Paul the inveterate boaster because of his breeding and attainments frankly admits this:  Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God.  Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.  He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant (vv4-6a).

Any sufficiency, any achievement, any good thing in thought or deed is of God.  God is the initiator of excellence; man is the instrument.  In the service of the gospel this is particularly apparent.  To personalise it, Paul and Moses are both servants of the gospel in different phases of its disclosure.  They were both preachers of righteousness.  It is a simplistic summary, and there is much inevitable overlap, but Moses was the preacher of divine righteousness revealed in the law given to him on tablets of stone on Mount Sinai, and Paul was the preacher of human righteousness wrought on man’s behalf in Jesus Christ.

Both men commenced from the same foundation.  The human race has fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  We were created in the image of God and that image has been shattered by sin – revolt against God rather than lives lived in harmony with his holy nature.  The first reality has to be brought to our understanding.  We need to know the law – God’s wholesome rule for our benefit and protection – that we have rejected and broken.  We need to be aware of our defection from God and the danger of our situation.  To be at war with God is fatal.

Moses was given that law to announce to the people.  It was instruction in God’s righteousness and our unrighteousness.  The tablets Moses was given drew a contrast between ourselves and the Lord.  They revealed that we merited condemnation and walk the path of death.

The law in its brilliant display of holiness – God’s essential and beautiful goodness and our responsibility to reflect it – opens before our eyes the great gulf that separates man from God.  The law etched in stone reveals the evil of our hearts through our rebellious lack of conformity and when Moses, on discovering the wickedness of the people during his absence from them threw the stone tablets to the ground forcefully breaking them he was demonstrating a broken law that sentences man to exclusion from the presence and favour of God forever.  The letter in stone kills not because of the law but because of our lawlessness.  We cannot keep the law and have cast it aside.  The ministry of Moses was to awaken us to sin – its horror and horrible result.  Our disobedience has nullified the benefits of the law.  If we divert from a narrow mountain road we are in trouble.  If we divert from the law we fall.

The ministry of Moses was to alert us to the danger that surrounds us and the future peril that lies in wait.  Moses informs us of our need of a Saviour and he foreshadows his coming.  In declaring the righteousness of God, the responsibility of man, and the promise of a Redeemer the ministry of Moses was truly glorious.  We in hindsight see it to be Christocentric, an anachronism to historians, but a wonderful fact to believers who acknowledge Moses to have been in receipt of a divine commission from the God who is directing history and the timeless universe to the ultimate manifestation of his majestic excellence.

The inferiority of Moses’ covenant is not from God but the plight of man that has rendered the law impotent as an instrument of retaining and regaining communion with the Lofty One.  Moses had embarked upon an enterprise that was preparatory and promissory in its nature.  It required fulfilment.  Realisation is greater than expectation:  “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1: 17).  Posting an item of mail is vitally important but the purpose is that the addressee should receive it.  Moses ventured to draft the message of grace and Jesus revised and delivered the heavenly news of complete salvation.

That is why Paul can exult:  If the ministry that condemns man is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! (v9).   The new covenant is not of the letter but of the Spirit.  This is not an objection to information in print or an excuse to ignore the Bible, sit loose to the text, and follow one’s wildest and most fanatical impulses.  It is simply to say that the message of the gospel must be engraved upon the heart from whatever medium it is received.  The Spirit writes the conviction of sin upon our consciences – the interior record of our unrighteousness, and then he inscribes the gospel of our salvation through Christ on the internal page of our understanding.  The Spirit through the word illuminates the path of life carved out before us by our blessed Saviour.

By the law we cannot gain the righteousness that makes us acceptable to a holy God, nor can it to the slightest extent win his favour.  According to the law we are dead, doomed, and done for, rushing to the second death.  According to the gospel, which Moses anticipated, God has provided that missing righteousness for us.  It is his own credited to us.  It is nothing to be found in or formed by any of us (Romans 3: 10-20).  It is a pure gift received through faith – not from faith – in the one who has performed it on our behalf via passive and active obedience.  God’s law is glorious.  It reflects his goodness and provides his loving guidance.  But we have repudiated it.  We don’t want God and we despise his instruction.  Our breach with him is total.  Now the law serves no benefit for our restoration inwardly or to God.  But it guides us once we are his. God’s love through Christ, announced in the gospel is supremely glorious.  For believers in Christ’s accomplishment on our behalf – who place their confidence entirely in him, renouncing all worthiness and forsaking all self-righteous works in an attempt to please him – Christ’s perfect righteousness is our qualification for access to God, acceptance by him, and everlasting life with him.  Our hearts are radiant with gratitude and joy, and our lives, sometimes only dimly, but always partially, reflect the splendour of God in renewed nature created by the Holy Spirit.

We are not creatures of doleful duty striving for righteousness.  We are folk of enormous delight in Christ’s righteousness donated to us.  The ministry of the law has shown us our spiritual destitution.  The ministry of the new covenant has presented us with our restitution – our retrieval  to God through a righteousness not our own but accounted as ours by the merits and mercy of the Lord Jesus.  How brightly we should shine with the reflection of his glory (Romans 1:17).

RJS

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

      Join the mailing list.

    Subscribe

    Picture
    ...more articles.

    Archives

    January 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010

    Categories

    All
    Adolescence
    Ambitions And Acquisitions
    Anglicanism
    Antinomianism
    Ascension
    Augustinianism
    Calvinism
    Celebrity
    Cheap Grace
    Christian Toy Store
    Companionship
    Confidence
    Conviction
    Death Of The Grown-up
    Desire
    Discrimination
    Electing Love
    Faith
    False Prophets
    Fellowship
    Grace
    Helplessness
    Ignorance And Inadequacy
    James Ussher
    Legalism
    Liturgy
    Longing
    Love
    Means Of Grace
    Mercy
    Moral Destitution
    Moralism
    Moses
    Pop-culture
    Prayer
    Predestination
    Pride
    Reliance
    Ritual
    Sacramentalism
    Samaritan
    Self Righteousness
    Sin And Temptation
    Social Justice
    Speech
    Thirty-Nine Articles
    Works

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.