August 13, 2007
Treading Grain
To demonstrate that ministers of the gospel deserve a share of the material harvest of their ministry Paul says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” (1 Cor 9:19a NIV) I understand his illustration and point, but I think there are other ways to look at the statement. I’m not so sure the classification of one who is ‘treading out the grain’ applies only to those who are on the church payroll. I’ve known many unsalaried people who can pick grain from between their toes.
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Gail;
-----From the context of I Corinthians 9 and II Corinthians 11:7-11 it seems there were some in Corinth who were dogging Paul on whatever point they could, including whether or not he received a living for preaching the gospel. In these two passages, Paul presented the reality that man has to live. Of course, that requires income, which makes a place in the economy for preaching.
-----Speaking to the rest of your point, the New Testament defines an economy which is the church’s own. It is an economy of love - the aspect of love that is not self-seeking but always protects and preserves. It is out of love that the grain is trodden in the church. And at least in principle, it is out of love that all tread some sort of grain. That creates supply. If there were no need it would be senseless to create supply. But there is need. And where there is both need and supply there is usage. Therefore, the diversity of talents and gifts employed within the body is engaged in the same economy of love as are the diversity of needs and consumption of gifts. It is the mutual care that love takes of one another.
-----I have heard some preach against consumption in the church, railing against the idea that any member of the body should be a consumer. But these preachers are so bound to seeing through their own eyes they do not understand the nature of systems. It is as if a leaf were to demand the root to stop using the nutrients it produced from the sunlight, or as if the root demanded the leaf to stop using the minerals it extracted from the dirt. Or as if the trunk demanded both to stop benefiting from the sap it carries. In that case, not the leaf, the root, nor the trunk would be understanding the whole system that the tree is, because each is willing to relate to only its own function.
-----This is exactly the mentality Paul addresses in I Corinthians 12. Any preacher who does not understand that the member of the body is in just as much need of bread as are the lost outside does not understand the Lord they serve nor the new life to which they have been called. These men rather think that the church is a bakery only sending bread out the door. They portray love as applying only to the walkers of the streets, vision as only having in sight the lost, and duty as only the presentation of the gospel.
-----But the New Testament portrays love as goodness to all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith. In it duty is not restricted to the lost. To the contrary, the overwhelming majority of the exhortation to good behavior, interest sharing, and needs-meeting made by it is of that done to the members of the Lord’s body. When we have come into the body we have come into a better way, therefore producing an excess available to go out the front door to those on the street. But we have not come into a perfection, as if our needs had somehow been miraculously and permanently fulfilled. That is why what is available to go out the door is just the excess, not the entire production.
-----If a tree lived by the preaching of these geniuses, if somehow it miraculously were able to grow to maturity that way, it would simply excrete all its sap out its leaves onto your front yard. Stupid tree. Only thing it would be good for then would be firewood. And it would not serve well for that even, without its sap. But I guess, like the tree, we have to put up with a little sap among us, too.
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