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I. THE CHARACTER OF GOSPEL MINISTERS.

1. They are ministers of Christ.

(1) They derive their commission from Christ (1 Timothy 1:12; Ephesians 4:8-13; Matthew 28:20).

(2) They are under Christ's direction and command. They ought not to go until He sends them, and they ought to go whenever and wherever His providence and the voice of His Church call them.

(3) They are employed in Christ's service, to act under His authority, to publish and enforce His law and His gospel, to keep the ordinances of His house, and by all appointed means to subserve His work of grace and holiness and the interests of His kingdom and glory in the world.

(4) Christ Himself is the great subject of their ministrations. They are to preach Christ Jesus the Lord; and all the lines of their ministry are one way or another to centre in Him.

(5) They receive their furniture for Christ's work, and their assistance in it, from Him.

(a) As to their temporal concerns, that they may be subsisted in His service, He has ordained that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel. And He takes care, in His providence, to protect them from the rage of their enemies, so long as He has any work to do by them (Acts 18:9, 10).

(b) And as to their gifts and graces, He is exalted to fill the officers of His Church with such supplies as are necessary for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:7); He distributes His gifts with great variety for different administrations by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:11); and is with them alway to the end of the world.

(6) All the success and reward of their ministry proceeds from Christ. They can speak only to the ear, but He speaks to the heart, and adds such energy to their words as turns them into spirit and life.

2. They are stewards of the mysteries of God.

(1) What their stewardship relates to. The mysteries of God. The doctrines of the gospel may be called the mysteries of God on various accounts.

(a) They were secret in God till He revealed them, first more obscurely under the Old Testament and afterwards more clearly under the New (Romans 16:25, 26).

(b) And even after these things are revealed in New Testament light there are mysteries in them still, especially with relation to the manner of their existence or of their operation (1 Timothy 3:16; John 3:8).

(c) After all the revelation which is made of them unrenewed souls do not see their excellence and beauty till Christ opens their understandings to understand the Scriptures, and they come to view them in the transforming light of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).

(2) Their stewardship itself.

(a) They are not lords of the affairs which are under their management. A steward is but a servant to his Lord, and under Him; and so are all the ministers of Christ (Matthew 23. 10). They are not authors of the mysteries they dispense, but are to preach only that gospel which they have received from Him.

(b) Their stewardship intimates that what they are concerned in is committed to them as a trust, which they must give an account of to God (1 Corinthians 9:16, 17; 2 Timothy 1:13, 14).

(c) Their stewardship intimates that faithfulness, care, and diligence are to be used in discharging their trust (ver. 2). They must be faithful to Christ, to truth, and to their own and others' souls.

II. THE REGARD THAT IS TO BE SHOWN TO GOSPEL MINISTERS. "Let a man so account of us," &c. You should consider them all —

1. As servants and stewards, that you may not raise them too high in your account of them.

2. As the servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, that you may not sink them too low in your account of them.

(J. Guyse, D. D.)

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KJV: Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.

WEB: So let a man think of us as Christ's servants, and stewards of God's mysteries.