Brother pastors, will you renounce all pretense and hypocrisy? Will you hold yourself open to the people you serve, exposed to the light of God’s Word, that it might be plain that you are sun-tested, who minister “as from sincerity”? By the open statement of the truth, be sincere preachers of the Word, not cheap peddlers. As a faithful ambassador who heralds nothing other than the message he’s received, be faithful to preach the Gospel in its unvarnished purity, and leave the results to God.

 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. 2 Corinthians 2:17
In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, condemning the teaching of the false apostles, and calling the believers there to faithfulness in gospel ministry. In verses 14 to 16, Paul battles his own discouragement by meditating on precious realities about ministry: that Christ our conquering general has secured the victory, and always leads us in triumph; that God is absolutely sovereign in the salvation of sinners no matter what the results of our labors; and that therefore our great concern is simply to be a faithful fragrance of Christ in our Gospel preaching. Eternal life, or eternal death, must follow the preaching of the gospel.
As these lofty truths stream into Paul’s consciousness, he cries out in the middle of verse 16: “And who is sufficient for these things?” One commentator captures the idea when he asks, “How can any frail and fallible mortal fail to be conscious of his own utter inadequacy when charged with so stupendous of a responsibility?” (Hughes, 82). God has designed to completely overwhelm you with how totally unequal you are to this task of Gospel ministry, so that you would perceive your own insufficiency, be humbled to the dust, and cry out to Him for His sufficiency, for His grace. So, who is sufficient for these things? Paul says, “Sufficient in myself? Not me!” First Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
But his point in this passage isn’t to say he’s unqualified for ministry.
His response is to meet the challenges of ministry by drawing upon the infinite sufficiency of the grace of God.
And he says that in chapter 3 verse 5: “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as [ministers] of a new covenant.” So, on the one hand, the faithful minister of the Gospel is not adequate in himself. But on the other hand, God has made him adequate by grace.
And then he explains why. “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God.” The kapēlos, the Greek word for the dishonest peddler, would add water to the wine that he purchased, diluting it and reducing its quality and genuineness. Dr. MacArthur summarizes the idea simply in his commentary when he writes, “A kapēlos was a huckster, a con artist or street hawker who cleverly deceived unwary buyers into purchasing a cheap imitation of the real thing” (74). Paul is teaching that the faithful minister does not adulterate the Word, by mixing divine truth with human ideas, man-made ideologies and strategies.
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With Jesus Christ, you are never without an intercessor that can overcome all your enemies, comfort all your wounds, advocate for all your needs, and sustain even the greatest of doubts and the weakest moments of faith. You are covered in his grace from this day until the very last. You may feel weak and unworthy, but take heart, Jesus lives for you!

To intercede means to intervene on someone’s behalf. It means to entreat, to argue, to plead, and to stand in the gap between two people with a view of reconciliation. Intercession is prayer but of a specific kind. There is much that is mysterious about Jesus’s intercession, but the Bible and great theologians of church history offer some clarity. Referring to Christ’s intercession, the Puritan John Owen defined it as “his continual appearance for us in the presence of God, by virtue of his office as the ‘high priest over the house of God,’ representing the efficacy of his oblation [offering], accompanied with tender care, love, and desires for the welfare, supply, deliverance, and salvation of the church.”[1]
      In other words, by virtue of his all-sufficient atoning sacrifice, Jesus stands at the Father’s right hand in heaven, working and praying for us to accomplish our full salvation.
      Whenever we approach a biblical doctrine, there is the temptation to leave it in the realm of the intellectual. But it is good to consider how the doctrine applies to our lives. How does what we now know of Christ’s intercession make our hearts burn within us (Luke 24:32)?
      Here I will make three primary applications.
Application 1: Christ’s Intercession Reveals His Heart for Sinners
      Though we are justified in Christ for all time when we first trust his saving work, we do not stop sinning until the age to come when we are with him in glory. Though we know the truth of God’s love, we still have low thoughts of God, disbelieving, mistrusting, and doubting him. Though we know we are saved by Christ’s works, not our own, we still fall into the old ruts of our self-salvation projects, denying the power of his life, death, and resurrection. Our fleshly desires may wane, but they do not disappear, and we continue to use God’s good gifts for improper ends. Who will save us from this body of death (Rom. 7:24)? Jesus, by the power of his intercession.
      John Bunyan wrote a whole book about Hebrews 7:25 called Christ a Complete Savior. In that book, he said,
      “Many there be that begin with grace, and end with works, and think that this is the only way…But to be saved and brought to glory, to be carried through this dangerous world, from my first moving after Christ, until I set my foot within the gates of paradise, this is the work of my mediator, of my high priest and intercessor. It is he that fetches us again when we are run away; it is he that lifts us up when the devil and sin have thrown us down; it is he that quickens us when we grow cold; it is he that comforts us when we despair; it is he that obtains fresh pardon when we have contracted sin; and he that purges our consciences when they are loaded with guilt…We are saved by Christ; brought to glory by Christ; and all our works are no otherways made acceptable to God, but by the person and personal excellences and works of Christ.”
      Christ’s intercession is there to save us from the sin that remains. God did not expect us to become perfect and never again struggle after our conversion. He factored our ongoing fight against sin into the equation and provided the intercession of Christ to preserve and encourage us. That shows how great the love of Christ is for us sinners. Why would he intercede if he didn’t care? Why would we be continually on his mind if he did not love us? As a parent loves a child and thinks about them all the time, so Christ considers us and always thinks of our good. He prays on our behalf. He takes our prayers and rewords them on the way up (Rom. 8:26). He holds the door to heaven open for us. He is more committed to our salvation than we are, and he will never leave us nor forsake us. He cares for us and sends affirmations of that care to us by his Spirit.
      The Puritan Thomas Goodwin spoke of 1 Corinthians 2:16, where Paul says we have the “mind of Christ.” You know those moments when you sense a word from the Lord, a verse of Scripture, or a reminder of the love of Christ, those seemingly invasive thoughts that remind you of God’s love? Those are Spirit-sent thoughts from Jesus himself. They are sent down from heaven to tell us what he is thinking of us and for us in that very moment. Those are holy moments with our interceding Christ.
      And in those moments when we find ourselves weak and wounded because of sin, when we long for a holy moment but fear we have blown it big-time, we must remember his intercession. We must remember his heart for sinners and sufferers, how gentle and careful he is with us. Hear Goodwin describe it.
      “Your very sins move him to pity more than to anger…For he suffers with us under our infirmities, and by infirmities are meant sins, as well as other miseries…”
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Our children do not belong to the state or to state-schools. They were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They belong to God and they are entrusted to parents for nurture and admonition and that is an order that may not be subverted without the gravest consequences.

Christina Wyman has published an OpEd on NBCnews.com in which she argues that parents who insist on influencing the education of their children do not understand how education actually works. She observes that the latest crisis, focused on the schools in Loudon County, VA, is nothing new. “Parents,” she writes “have always tried to interfere with curricula…” Please note her choice of verb: “interfere.” It means “take part or intervene in an activity without invitation or necessity” (New Oxford American Dictionary). She argues that parents who think that they have a right to have a say in how their children are educated fail to understand how education works. “It’s sort of like entering a surgical unit thinking you can interfere with an operation simply because the patient is your child.” Education, she claims, is a “science,” something that can be done only by highly trained specialists. The author herself has an earned PhD in curricular studies. She observes that 36 states require teachers to earn a master’s degree. She concludes,
The future of our country and world are sitting in today’s K-12 classrooms, and those children will eventually become adults in a world requiring their empathy, passion, intelligence and engagement. Parental interference in school curricula is poised to accomplish the exact opposite. Shielding students from real-world issues and diverse perspectives will create bubbles that will render their children ill-prepared to navigate society, particularly when they are called upon to contribute and think critically.
That schools ought to be helping students face the real world and to think critically is just the thing but she begs the question by assuming that post-modern schools are doing those things.
Responses
First, we should rather doubt her self-serving analogy between a typical “college of education” within, e.g., a land-grant university and the medical school on the same campus. Teachers College is not medical school and teachers are not surgeons. The comparison is risible but that she had the gall to attempt it tells us much about the inflated sense of the profession that has developed in recent decades. Please do not misunderstand. Teachers do valuable work but teaching children to finger-paint and supervising nap time or the correct way to eat Graham Crackers (such were the rigors of Kindergarten in 1966) was hardly open-heart surgery. Even the most demanding High School physics course is no match for even an average pre-med organic chemistry course let alone a medical school program.
More basically Wyman misunderstands the order of nature here. Teachers and schools work for parents and not the reverse. By law school teachers and administrators are empowered to act in loco parentis (in place of the parent). The original authority, however, belongs to the parents. To review some basic biology, when a man and a woman love each other they marry and, in time, in the providence of God, they produce a child. The school did not produce or nurse the child. Indeed, a school does not even see the child until age 4 or 5. Parents temporarily loan their children to the school each day to the end that the child should learn to read, write, calculate, think well, and express himself well. The school’s authority is derived, secondary, and temporary. Your child’s teacher (master’s degree) is expensive hired help and clearly, judging by Wyman’s OpEd, they need to be reminded of their place.
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