2 Corinthians 3:2-6 ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. ³ You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. ⁴ Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. ⁵ Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. ⁶ He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Sometimes we romanticize the situation in the early churches. But I don’t believe anyone romanticizes the church in Corinth. When I feel like complaining about the problems in my church, I can read the book of 1 Corinthians and be glad that God has put me where I am. At least we don’t have any members publicly defending incest, trying to eat all the communion bread, or fighting for the pulpit in the middle of the service yet.

Paul, however, was not embarrassed to be associated with the church in Corinth. On the contrary, he felt that they were an impressive vindication of his ministry. He describes them here as his letter of recommendation, “written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.” It seems that if Paul had been filling out a resume, he would have been happy to list the congregation in Corinth as a reference, or perhaps more to the point, as exhibit A on his list of projects successfully completed.

Maybe that’s because, for all the earnest and impassioned rebukes he had to direct at these people, he never lost sight of the main thing: “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” These people had not stopped being human as a result of Paul’s mission work. To borrow a picture from Brennan Manning, they did not become the spiritual equivalent of patients anesthetized on the operating table. Therefore they didn’t stop being sinners who regularly needed to hear God’s law.

At the same time, through Paul’s preaching, the Spirit had etched the cross of Jesus Christ on their hearts. They were a tribute to Paul’s ministry, not because of the heights of sanctification to which they had climbed, but because of depths of Jesus’ love in which they had been sunk, washing away their sins and dressing them in robes stained white by Jesus’ blood.

Shame on us for setting up false measures of progress for ourselves and the members of the congregations to which we belong! If Christians had no sin, there would be no reason for pastors, or for Jesus to be their Savior. Jesus tended to the spiritually weak and the sick. He wants us to do the same. Sometimes we forget the obvious: it is the nature of being weak not to act like you are strong.

Of course, we want to move on to maturity, but the difference between being spiritually weak and spiritually dead is still as big as the difference between heaven and hell. When God is using the application of law and gospel to enable strugglers to struggle on a little farther, our ministries have been fantastically and miraculously blessed. Keeping the strong alive takes no skill. Nursing the weak along is a better indication of our competence.

Not that we have any reason for selfish pride. “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for our selves, but our competence comes from God.” The gospel of forgiveness supports more than struggling church members. It supports struggling pastors, too. You remember in Philippians 3 how Paul recounts all the prestige and zeal and legalistic righteousness he used to have as a Pharisee. It made him appear to be a relatively competent rabbi. But now he had thrown it all away, considered it rubbish, dung, manure, for the sake of knowing Christ, and being found in him, not having a righteousness of his own, but having the righteousness that is from God and comes by faith in Christ.

Despite appearances to the contrary, “He (God) has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant.” Paul was an expert on that new covenant in Jesus’ blood. This was not because he was such a great scholar. It was because he was such a great sinner. He had experienced its medicine himself.

When we speak the gospel, we don’t speak like experts on the geography and customs of some foreign country– men who have read every book available but never visited. We speak like natives of that country who have lived there all their lives. The gospel of forgiveness–the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit who gives life–has become our home, not just an object of study. That’s how God has made us competent to share that gospel with others. If being a forgiven sinner is a prerequisite for church membership, it is especially so for being a minister of the gospel.

If the members of our congregations are not too proud to be forgiven; if they speak of Jesus as their dear friend, whether eloquently or clumsily; if they claim his grace as their one great hope, in spite of every other trait they may pick up from us or others, that would be a ringing endorsement of our ministries.