{"id":6069,"date":"2020-10-13T08:59:19","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T14:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=6069"},"modified":"2020-10-13T08:59:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T14:59:19","slug":"motive-for-preaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2020\/10\/13\/motive-for-preaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Motive for Preaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Corinthians 4:5 For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus.<\/span>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This significant verse reflects Paul’s motives and the motive for every person called to preach the gospel. The temptation when standing before people is to accept their praise for fine rhetoric or effective stories and let this build up one’s self-esteem. One of the most deliberating things for a public speaker is when the audience ignores or rejects what is said. This has a negative effect on a person’s self-worth. So, in order to avoid this, speakers will do everything possible to make themselves look good in the eyes of the audience. Aristotle labeled the person of speaker as the\u00a0ethos<\/em>. Ethos is one of the five important elements in speeches. The question becomes, how will the Christian preacher build his or her ethos so that it helps relate the message clearly and convince the audience of its truth?<\/p>\n

Paul makes his motive clear in this verse.. He gives two clear motives in this verse for preaching. He and his companions were not preaching themselves. This may be a subtle critique of the opponents in Corinth who may have been in it for the money and honor. Their motives were selfish. Their message was about themselves, or at least in some way built themselves up in the eyes of others.<\/p>\n

Paul, however, preached Christ as Lord. This is more than a verbal message of Christ’s supremacy. It required the full commitment of entire sanctification. To preach this message requires that a person submit in humility to Christ’s supremacy. This requires consecration through dying to the old self and being transformed into a new person. This is what 3:18 is all about and what Paul describes further in Romans 6.<\/p>\n

This new life should become evident through how we interact with others. Paul describes this here as being slaves to others. This is not slavery in the typical understanding of working for no pay or being under some type of physical bondage. Rather, this slavery is “through Jesus.” It is service to others out of love for Christ and love for others. It is going out of one’s way to the benefit of others. First Corinthians 9 shows how Paul sacrificed many things in order that the Corinthians could come to know the gospel. He set aside his own benefits in order that others might hear and come to believe in the good news of Jesus. He sets a good example for all who proclaim the gospel. This is the type approach we must have to be faithful servants of Christ.<\/p>\n

For older posts, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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2 Corinthians 4:5 For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus.\u00a0 This significant verse reflects Paul’s motives and the motive for every person called to preach the gospel. The temptation when standing before people is to accept their praise for fine rhetoric or effective stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6072,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6069\/revisions\/6072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}