The Marks of a True Apostle

There is a bestselling book by Shiv Khera titled You Can Win, with the subtitle Accelerate Success and Achieve More; it has sold some 3.8 million copies. The message is everywhere: be a successful man, and here is how. Walking through the airport I saw a card in front of me, a recruitment tagline for an airline: "The sky needs stars." The world is forever calling us to shine, to win, to be successful. But how do we, as the people of God, fit into a world like this? What kind of people is God looking for in these last days? Yes, we too want to win, we too want to be successful. But how does Jesus define success, and what kind of people is He actually looking for? Our text for this meditation is 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.

We live in a day when you may not hear a phrase like "the pulpit needs stars," but you will hear plenty of words like extraordinary and supernatural from the pulpit. We love to call a church incredible and extraordinary; we love to say of a preacher that there is supernatural power in the way he ministers. The irony is that we have become so taken up with the supernatural that we have forgotten the natural; so caught up with the extraordinary that we have forgotten the ordinary. In Acts 2:1-5 you see the extraordinary — a rushing wind, tongues of fire, everyone speaking in tongues. Anyone watching would call it extraordinary. But do you know what was ordinary? From verse 42 onward: they met together every day, they devoted themselves to the study of God's word, they sold their property and held everything in common. Someone put it well — a true Pentecostal does not stop at Acts 2:4, where they all spoke in tongues, but presses on to Acts 2:44-45, where they sold what they had and shared with all. It costs nothing to experience the extraordinary. What does it take to feel a wind, or to speak in other tongues? But it truly costs something to live the ordinary life — that will cost your wallet.

In a place I come from there was a great revival some years ago. A convention was meant to end by 9:30 at night, and the elderly founder-president, tired, had already gone home. But the Spirit seemed to be moving so powerfully that the people could not bring the service to a close. From 9:30 it ran on to 10:30, to 11:30, to 12:30, to 1:30 in the morning. Finally the associate pastors went to the old saint's house and said, "We cannot close this meeting in prayer; please come." And do you know what that old man of God asked them? "Did you take the offering this evening, after the Spirit began to move?" "Yes, we took it," they said. "How much was it?" "Three hundred." "And yesterday?" "Two hundred and eighty." Then the saint said, "This will stop in a few minutes. Go and sleep." If it had been a true wind, a true revival, the fruit of it would have shown up right there in the offering box.

We are all drawn to the extraordinary minister — the man thrown into prison when suddenly the foundations shake and the doors fly open; the apostle whose passing shadow falls on the sick and they are healed. But most of the time we only remember the story up to the miracle. We forget that the apostles did not run out when the prison doors opened; they stayed. What does the ordinary, everyday life of a minister of God actually look like? That is exactly what 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 gives us a glimpse of.

This passage is a continuation of what Paul began in chapter 1. Two errors had crept into the Corinthian church. First, human wisdom had taken over, so much so that they began to treat the things of God as foolishness; that is why Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. This was written to believers — believers who were not being led by the Spirit, who could not discern God's wisdom. Second, they had begun to exalt human leaders, letting their eyes drift toward the apostles. In chapters 1 and 2 Paul confronts the wisdom that comes from below; in chapters 3 and 4 he corrects their misunderstanding about the apostles of God. Notice how the threads carry over: the word "servant" that appears in 4:1 was already used in 3:5, and the theme of not judging in 4:5 connects back to 2:15. So in these verses we are not starting something brand new — the theme of servants and the theme of judgment continue from chapters 1 and 3.

Our time is not so different from Paul's. We live in a celebrity culture where fame, name and popularity are a big deal, and we have a tendency to idolize people. We want to know what our icons eat, what their hobbies are, what colour they like — and those who see themselves as icons work hard to attract exactly that kind of gaze. These days pastors have fallen into the same trap. Ministers are evaluated by the size of their church, the size of their staff, the number of their social media followers. Success is measured by how many likes a post got, by how many people shared the sermon. There is also what we might call ethnocentrism — people from one region convinced they are better than everyone else, sitting only with their own, boasting that all the real apostles come from their part of the country and quietly looking down on believers from elsewhere. The same spirit shows up in a meeting like this: only if a certain person leads worship is it good; only if a certain person translates is it good; if anyone else does it, we are unimpressed. We operate with prejudice. We even hear it in the way people talk about their predecessors — "before I took this office everything was a mess; after I took over, things changed" — and we let such words pass as though they were harmless.

Look carefully at 4:1: "This, then, is how you ought to regard us." Paul says regard us, not regard me. In 3:22 the names are Paul, Apollos and Cephas. Now if you or I said "regard us," it would usually be because we had no followers of our own and wanted to hide our emptiness in the crowd — "we are all just servants together." But Paul was not in that position. Paul had followers. There were people in that church who said, "Apollos, you are a fine preacher, but Paul is the pioneer; we follow him." Paul had every reason to build a personal following, and he refused it.

In 4:3 Paul says, "I care very little if I am judged by you." Two kinds of judging were going on around him — some judged him positively, some negatively. People regarded him as great for two reasons. First, without Paul there would be no church in Corinth at all. Second — and read 1 Corinthians 1:14 — "I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say you were baptized in my name." Be honest: have you ever met a minister who thanks God that he did not baptize people? Last week I watched a wedding where the officiating pastor announced, "This is my 1,465th wedding." We have heard pastors boast, "This is my 3,123rd wedding." But Paul says, in effect, "I thank God I baptized almost none of you — otherwise you would all be lining up behind me." He did not want followers looking at him, comparing him with Apollos and concluding that he was the great one.

This is a temptation every one of us will face. The one who baptized you, the one who solemnized your wedding, the one who conducts every function in your family — the more that person does, the more his value seems to rise in our eyes, until we begin to idolize him. Some of you may already be tempted to remind people, "Don't forget, I am the one who baptized you." Ten years from now someone will stand in front of you and say, "Don't forget, I sent you to Bible college." Paul knew nothing of that kind of life; he entertained no division. And there was a fourth group in Corinth — the "Jesus party" — and I think they were the most dangerous of all. The parties of Paul, Cephas and Apollos you can somehow manage, but the ones who said "we follow Christ" had made their own private island; they looked down most severely of all on everyone else, despising others in the very name of Jesus. Paul does not spare even them.

In this passage Paul draws three pictures to show what the ordinary life of a minister looks like. A servant is not a superstar. A servant is not a celebrity to be worshipped. A minister must never make a market for himself by comparing himself with others and looking down on them.

Before the pictures, a word to those of us given the privilege of studying the Scriptures. All of us seated in a place like this are privileged — we have been given the opportunity to study God's word systematically, on a level most ordinary believers never reach. People outside are limited to their vernacular Bibles; a person reads his Hindi or Telugu or Malayalam Bible and thinks he has understood everything about a verse, and that is fine, for he never got the chance to look deeper. But some of us make the great mistake of coming to a place like this and then neglecting the very tools we are given. When the Greek module is offered, we only want to scrape a pass; when advanced Greek is offered, we say, "Too much hard work, I will not take it." That is a mistake we will regret.

The first picture is the servant. When you read "servants of Christ" in 4:1, and "servants" again in 3:5, it is easy to picture a hired household helper who comes in the morning, does a few limited chores and leaves in the evening. But in the original text two different words are used, and that is no coincidence — it is deliberate. In 3:5 the word is diakonos. In 4:1 Paul reaches for another word entirely: huperetes. Huperetes appears only about twenty times in the New Testament, mostly in John, a few times in Acts, and in all of Paul's letters only here in 1 Corinthians 4:1. It is not the ordinary word for a household servant, nor is it doulos, the common word for slave; it is a more intense word. Trace it to its root and it means "under-rower."

The under-rowers were galley slaves. Corinth was a seaport, and Roman warships — galleys — were a common sight. Such a ship had several decks, and the under-rowers were the men chained to the benches on the bottom deck. They could not get up; they were tied to the oar. People said that to be sentenced to life in the galleys was considered the next most severe punishment after execution. Execution is over in a few minutes, but the pain of the galley is unbearable and unending. The rowers all had to pull to a single beat; if one man slowed, the whip cracked across his bare back. From the writings outside the New Testament we read how horrible their life was — backs covered in scars, skin peeling off from the salt air off the sea, sitting like that not for a day or a month but for many months. Historians say half of them died at the oar; when the commander found a man no longer breathing, they simply unchained the body and threw it into the sea. At the front of the bottom deck stood a commander beating out the rhythm, and the slaves rowed to his beat, faster and faster, some of their bones breaking as the pace increased, while they had no idea what was happening in the world above. And what was happening above? On the top deck people were enjoying life — drinking, celebrating with their friends. Pomp and glory for a few on top; misery and death for the others below.

So who is a minister of God? Paul says, if you must regard us, regard us as galley slaves. Look at 4:8: "Already you have all you want; already you have become rich." Paul is the one who brought them the gospel, yet Paul is still rowing while the Corinthians have grown rich and comfortable. What does it mean for a servant of God to row like that? It means being a slave of God's word — handling it without diluting it and without distorting it. In 2 Corinthians 2:17 Paul says, "We do not peddle the word of God." Have you seen the street vendors who wheel a little cart through the neighbourhood, carrying only what people want — a few vegetables, a few fruits — calling out at each door, "Mother, come and buy"? Paul says we are not like that; we do not serve up only the dishes people want to order. We deal not in petty things but in treasure — the gospel of Christ. May God raise up here a people who can tell the difference between treasure and trivia.

In 2 Corinthians 4:2 Paul says we do not distort God's word. Have you seen how a fruit seller arranges the mangoes so that from the outside you want to buy the whole shop? I have been fooled many times — I order two kilos of the mangoes I saw on top, take them home, open them, and half of them are useless. To distort the word is to present only its attractive side, to turn the other side away and never preach it. The true minister is an under-rower tied to the bench; he deals only in treasure, and he does not show only the good side. Without the good news you cannot make disciples — I agree. But with the good news alone you will not make disciples either, for the good news comes with a cost, and we must preach that cost too.

Listen carefully: serving is not a stepping stone to success. You may have heard people testify, "I served, I toiled, I laboured — but now I enjoy the reward." That is not the picture of an ordinary minister of God. Serving is not a ladder — "I rowed at the bottom for two years, and now I am up on the top deck." Serving is itself the success. To remain an under-rower is the successful life. If all of us could take one pledge today, let it be this: I will always be a man rowing at the lowest level. When someone says, "Your preaching was wonderful," answer at once, "I am only an under-rower." When someone says, "Pastor, you baptized me, that is why I am here," answer, "I am only a slave rowing at the lowest deck."

The second picture also appears in 4:1: "as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed." Again we can thank God for being able to read the original. The word behind "entrusted" is oikonomos — an estate manager. Estate managers held the authority to run their master's agricultural estate or workshop in his absence. In the first century wealthy landlords owned property in many places and could not oversee it all at once, so they would appoint a manager and say, "I am away for the next six months; oversee this, take care of it, and do it faithfully." If you have ever rented out a house, you understand the picture. Suppose you spent fifty lakhs building a house and rented it out — do you expect the tenant to knock down your walls and rebuild as he pleases? I know families so careful about their property that they are upset over a single nail in the wall, or who ask a tenant to leave because one pane of glass was broken. We expect tenants to treat the house as their own. Paul says we ministers are not the heroes and not the owners; we are only the oikonomos, the estate managers.

Managers of what? "The mysteries God has revealed." This mystery, according to 1 Corinthians 2:7, is the gospel — hidden for ages, now revealed: that through the crucified Messiah, when you put your trust in Him, you are saved. That gospel is not ours; we are simply making sure the right gospel is preached and safeguarded. But there is a second trust laid on these managers as well. We are estate managers not only of the gospel but of the church of God. You see both in Colossians — in 1:23 Paul is a servant of the gospel, and in 1:25 a servant of the church.

Here is where I believe our nation especially needs to listen. There are so many ministers who will destroy the church for their own benefit — who will split a congregation just so that they can become the pastor. They are not servants of the church; they are playing the owner of the church, and that is a dangerous thing. Read 1 Corinthians 3:16-17: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple?" This is plural; it is the church, not the individual body, that is in view. "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person." And how do you destroy a church? Not with stones, not with rifles — you destroy a church with words. You cannot destroy a community like this by smashing its windows or breaking a few chairs, but we are all quite capable of destroying God's community through backbiting and spreading evil reports about one another. This is a fasting prayer; some of you hoped to pour out your heart to God here — there is time for that. But if it is not happening here, then all our loud expressions of worship will remain trapped within these walls. Ministers of God must make sure that the words coming out of their mouths build others up.

Let me plead with you: after graduation, never play God by becoming the owner of a church. Do not make independent decisions without hearing from God. Always remember, the church belongs to God. And if after graduation there is no open door, no church, no place to go — never manipulate, never write exaggerated letters to promote yourself.

I say this as a very broken person. When I went to Bible college I was sure God would use everyone except me. To speak a single sentence in English was beyond me. I thought my whole upbringing was against me — that I could never cope with the culture at SABC. When other students walked up to lead worship or to preach, I would watch and think, "Maybe in your world it is possible, but I will never be like you." At SABC we had strictly monitored weekend ministries: the college partnered with around a hundred churches in the city, and students were sent out to preach and lead worship and were evaluated. I was posted to a church, and the first day the pastor asked me, "Joe, what will you be able to do here? Do you play any instrument?" I said no — I came from a village where we had only the drum; I knew that drum well, but there was no guitar and no keyboard in our local church. "Then will you be able to preach?" he asked. I said I would try. He told me, "Next Sunday you must preach." From the Sunday before, I could not sleep. My message was from Revelation 3. I went to the library, took my notes, and Sunday came. I stood there shivering; I could not hold the Bible, so I laid it on the pulpit; I could not hold the microphone, so I asked for a stand. I had forty-five minutes, and I was finished in ten or twelve. And after that service the pastor called me and said — the words are still in my ears — "Joe, the people are asking why we are giving you a hundred rupees. Could you please find another church? We don't need you here."

That was the day a stamp was pressed on my back: you are nothing. Those were very hard days. My father is a pastor; they had only one son, and they had sent me to Bible college, and from Bible college I received that stamp — I can do nothing. I used to turn my pillow over and sleep, because one side would be soaked with tears. My mother would call in the morning, at lunch, in the evening, and somehow I would steady my voice and say, "Everything is fine, everything is fine" — while only I knew how broken I was. I would go out into the field and cry out to God: "I am your servant. Give me a stewardship over the body of Christ. Make me a steward for your service, because it is your church, and with my own skill I cannot do it. My father is a pastor, but he cannot give me a ministry. I study in a reputed college, but it cannot give me a ministry. Lord, give me a ministry that only you can give."

My friends, hear this: just because you are a graduate of this college, the world is not waiting for you. There are better orators outside these walls, people with stronger personalities and better communication skills. But if you are someone who can sit here and honestly say, "I am nothing; I carry that stamp," then I can identify with you. Like every graduation, ours at SABC gathered several thousand people and chose one student to preach as the graduating representative — and by God's grace that student was me. After the ceremony a man came, took my hand, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, "Joe, on behalf of the church we are sorry. Now we can see what God can do in your life." It was the very pastor from that first church. Only God can entrust His church to a man like that. If your father splits a church and hands it to you, you will not be a servant after God's heart; if your sponsor is the one sending you, you will not last long in the place. But if God sends you, if His servanthood is upon you, no darkness can stand before you.

When you are given such a trust, remember 1 Corinthians 4:2: "It is required of those who have been given a trust that they prove faithful." Strive to be faithful, not successful. God's servants are judged for their faithfulness, not for their accomplishments — let that be written on our hearts. That is why in 4:4 Paul says, "My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent; it is the Lord who judges me." You may feel your conscience is clear and you are doing everything rightly, but always remember that we are handling God's property, and the verdict must come from Him. For that we must wait, as verse 5 says, until the Lord comes.

I once read an article whose title I have forgotten, but one sentence has stayed with me: the devil's masterpiece is a lazy preacher. Remember that. If you are given an hour to preach, you are handling God's property; you cannot fill the time with your own stories — "when I went to the UK this happened, when I went to Brazil that happened." That is not preaching. Preaching is exposing the word of God, for the will of God is revealed in the word of God, and the word of God is food for the people of God. When you become pastors, remember that the people seated in front of you are God's field, God's property; you must water them and give them milk so they can grow. Yet even people who have spent two, three or four years in Bible college can be deeply disappointing when it comes to the exposition of Scripture, and much of that is because of a false polarity we have created in academic circles.

You have surely heard of Gordon Fee. Early on, when he set out to study, he was asked a question: do you want to become a scholar on ice, or a fool on fire? A scholar on ice sits in the library with a swollen head and cold, dead knowledge — able to tell you it is forty miles from Ephesus to Laodicea and thirty from Hierapolis, and nobody says hallelujah for that. A fool on fire, on the other side, takes pride in not having opened his Bible for two hours, and people admire him — "look how he preached without even opening his Bible" — and he even boasts, "I am not here to preach theology," and those who do not understand clap for that too. But when a man says he is not preaching theology, he is really saying he is not preaching about God, he is preaching about himself, for theology is simply the study of God. In Bible college you can slip into thinking the library is not your place, only the prayer garden is — building an artificial wall between academics and spirituality, as if the library were all head and the prayer room all heart. I do not want to be a scholar on ice, and I do not want to be a fool on fire. I want to be a scholar on fire. India is not waiting for lazy preachers, nor for fools on fire; India is waiting for people who can expose the Scriptures in the power of the Holy Spirit. You can be filled with the Holy Spirit while sitting and reading in the library; when you are discovering something in the text, in the Greek, you are handling God's property in the best possible way. Do not shy away from preaching, and do not imagine that the academic and the spiritual are enemies.

The third picture emerges in 4:9: "For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena." The victory parade was a common sight in the streets of Rome. When a Roman general returned from a great victory, the emperor would grant him a triumph — a parade down the main road. Such a procession served two purposes: to thank the deity for the victory and to honour the general who won it. For a general these triumphs were like stars on the shoulder; at the end of his career he was measured by how many he had been granted. Everything in the parade was carefully arranged. At the front walked the general with his soldiers around him, and behind them trumpeters, so that people looked out from their houses and said, "A victory parade is coming." But there was a third group at the very end of the procession — the captives, hands bound and heads bowed. The general did not choose weak men to display; he brought the strong, capable prisoners captured from the enemy, so that the crowd would marvel, "Look at the kind of people he defeated." And for these captives at the rear, the parade smelled of death, for in a few minutes they would be executed. The general's head is high; the captive's head is bowed. The people cheer the general, but they pity the captives.

Paul says it seems we are at the end of the procession — bound and led along, captured by the love of Christ. When the Corinthian believers looked at Paul by outward appearance, some judged him a fool, a man wasting away. But Paul says, "I am very glad, because I have been conquered by Jesus, who walks in front as the victorious General of this parade." When I read this passage I see myself in it. I had no plans to serve the Lord. While I was finishing my B.Com I thought I would take a job, perhaps do CA or M.Com, support my pastor father financially, and live as a happy Christian. But about thirteen years ago, in a meeting like this one, the General defeated me. I felt myself taken captive by the love of Jesus — a prisoner condemned to die, yet willing to serve God to my last breath.

Take note of this, people of God: there is true freedom in being a slave of God. It sounds like a contradiction — free when you are a slave? Yes, you are truly free when you are the slave of God. I do not own many of the material things my classmates have, yet every day I rise and every night I lie down with a full heart, because I am serving God. Now listen very carefully. Money, sex and power are gifts to humanity, but they were never meant to be our masters, and they are always trying to gain control. When money, sex and power are pursued as ends in themselves, they turn into vain and destructive idols. And idols demand sacrifice. Some ministers of God have sacrificed their integrity to serve money; some have sacrificed their families, falling prey to sexual immorality; some have sacrificed everything to the love of power, playing politics and working behind the scenes. Do not imagine that ministers of God are immune to pornography or to sexual sin. Do not entertain those thoughts; do not give the dirty thought any room, because without your realizing it, it becomes an idol, and the idol will demand its sacrifice. We are not called to be slaves of these forces; we are called to be slaves of Jesus — captured by Him, living for Him. We overcome the love of money by generosity, we destroy lust by self-control, and we conquer the love of power by a more powerful love that serves God. How you handle these three forces will determine the depth and quality of your life as a minister of God.

So you have heard what an ordinary, true minister of God looks like. He is a galley slave who rows to his last breath — not a boss, not a celebrity, but a condemned slave. He is not the owner but only the manager, a steward of the church and a steward of the word of God. He is a man captivated by the love of Christ, condemned to die. This meeting would be incomplete without a time to respond. It is easy to give the sermon a mark and walk away; it is easy to wish, "I want to preach like that." It is another thing altogether to say, "Lord, I will be your slave; I will see myself as a galley slave." If you would respond to the word that has come to you, will you stand as an act of surrender and commitment? In the silence of this chapel, heaven is watching. Are there people here who will see themselves as galley slaves, who will overcome the temptation to compare and to build a reputation for themselves? Lift your hands and say, "Lord, may you increase and may I decrease." Do not look around at your neighbour; close your eyes, fix them on Jesus, and say: I will be your servant. I will be a faithful steward of your household. I will be a slave for you until my last breath.