Two weeks ago, I posted a third principle of faithfulness for Gospel ministry from 2 Corinthians 4. If the Gospel is veiled to those who are perishing (2Cor 4:3), and if the problem we’re trying to solve is the world’s blindness to glory (2Cor 4:4), then our task is to preach a message that is powerful enough in itself to overcome that blindness. Paul tells us that such a proclamation is not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord (2Cor 4:5).
And yet it seems that many pastors, churches, and individual
Christians have not understood the implications of those principles.
Sadly, many do preach themselves. Jerry Wragg has offered us two
magnificent posts over the last two days (one, two)
outlining some reasons he sees for this. Another of the reasons I
believe that is the case is that we have a fundamental misunderstanding
of our role. Many evangelical preachers see themselves as orators rather than heralds.
To
help us see the difference, I want to quote generously from a chapter
by Duane Litfin called “Swallowing Our Pride: An Essay on the
Foolishness of Preaching.” It appears in Preach the Word, a book on expository preaching in honor of R. Kent Hughes. In this chapter, Litfin examines the widely-held notion that 1Cor 1:24
speaks only of the foolishness of the message preached to the exclusion
of the method of preaching itself. He contrasts the ancient keryx,
or herald—that is, what New Testament preachers are called to be—with
the orator that Paul labored so diligently to distance himself from (1Cor 1:17–2:5).
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