The Vision of the Tabernacle |
The Ministers of the New Covenant |
To be a minister of God is not a title obtained in a theological seminary or by human choice or designation. The selection for this function is made by God (2 Cor. 3:5-6). It is God who enables us to be His ministers, not our human abilities, our eloquence or our will to serve God. If we want to serve Him adequately, we must deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Him by seeking Him for the supply and capacity to serve Him.
The second characteristic of those who minister is that they serve the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit (v. 6). In the Old Testament the ministry of God only made demands on man according to laws and regulations, without, however, supplying him with the life and grace needed to fulfill the law. Consequently, man was not able to fulfill the requirements of God’s law and for this reason that ministry became a ministry of condemnation. It was the ministry of the letter. But under the new covenant we have the ministry of the Spirit. Christ, the Man who fulfilled the entire law of God, became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) and lives today in the spirit of all those who believe (2 Tim. 4:22), enabling them to live according to God and fulfilling in them the entire law of God. By having the Holy Spirit mingled with our spirit and by Him being the life-giving Spirit, every time we turn to the Spirit, we have life; every time we use our spirit, we receive more of the divine life. This is especially practical when we contact the Bible. When we read it, we cannot be content with gaining knowledge or in knowing the dead letter. Rather, we must find the living Christ and touch the Spirit that is in the Bible. In John 5:39-40 Jesus told the Jews, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” There really is eternal life in the Bible. The Lord did not deny this fact or reprimand the Jews for their seeking. However, this life is not found in knowledge, doctrines, or by merely analyzing with the mind. The secret is in coming to Christ, in having a living contact with Him in our spirit. By means of this His words become spirit and life to us (John 5:63). When we read the Bible in this way we are fed spiritually and receive light and revelation.
Another important characteristic of the ministers of the new covenant is that they are constantly beholding God in the Holy of Holies (2 Cor. 3:18). They have been set free from every veil by the Spirit from all that hinders them from knowing God intimately. Consequently they live in the spirit and are thus transformed from glory to glory. Therefore, to be a minister does not depend on our abilities or how much work we do for the Lord but only on the spontaneous issue of our life of fellowship with God.
We cannot stress too much the fact that God has not called us to be His ministers because of our abilities or merit of our own. To be a minister of the new covenant does not depend on our qualifications but on the Lord’s mercy (2 Cor. 4:1). Because many Christians have not known this crucial truth, they have been damaged in their service to God because of pride and the boast of having received some gift or ministry. Still others promote divisions in the church in order to be recognized for their “calling” from God. We must not forget that God wants to call us and His calling is the free exercise of His mercy. Hence, we have nothing to be proud of. We can boldly say that we are priests (1 Pet. 2: 5, 9) because all the work that qualifies us for this has been consummated by the Lord and given to us freely!
To be a minister of God is something great and important. It signifies that we have been chosen by Him to be His slaves, ready to fulfill His every command. The ministers are not called to be great “men of God,” who are recognized and proclaimed by people, but are called to be slaves of God, and they must always be ready to lead men to Him and to represent Him before men. Our destiny was to be cast into the lake of fire for eternity, but God, in His mercy, wanted to make us ministers of the new covenant that He established with mankind. The question is: are we living as such ministers or are we still living for ourselves?
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