GordonSlocum said:
So you see that verse as teaching that Paul is a small Christ?
Amazed truly amazed - What next I wonder?
Now if you see that verse as teaching that Paul is a second Christ, then you are questioning the Bible - is that correct?
No. I am questioning the adulation, or seeming adulation, of missionaries.
Hey, don't get me wrong.
I take my hats off to people who live home and hearth to go to some far away place and probably die there believing they are doing a service for God, though I no longer subscribe to the idea that God must use men to save more souls because I believe Christ is sufficient and He has not failed.
It's the adulation, or at least that's the way I look at it, that I find objectionable.
There is not one single individual on this board, not one, or out of this board, who can stand up and give a testimony of what he was before and who he is now, and what he looks forward to, without Christ FIRST being the one to live His home and hearth which is far, far superior than any of ours' to do what His Father wanted Him to do - die on behalf of sinners.
There is no missionary, IN ANY FIELD, working with ANY kind of fallen creature, who would be where he is, without CHRIST FIRST being the one who worked where He shouldn't be, where He didn't deserve to be.
That is the primary reason why I do not subscribe to praising missionaries, or preachers. The glory is Christ's and Him alone, and no one shares that with Him.
Secondly, those missionaries, and any missionary, isn't saving a soul out of the fires of hell, or from the wrath of God.
Jesus Christ is the Author and Finisher of our salvation.
He finished salvation and all it entails, from the individual to the results for the individual, in as far as eternity is concerned.
There is not one soul any missionary can "lead" to Christ anymore in the sense of eternally saving that soul. However, I do believe that any "fruit" the missionary has in his field of labor, provided he is a true son of the living God, is saved from a life of sin and degradation here on earth as a result of gospel obedience to gospel instruction.
So, no, I don't see that verse as teaching that Paul is a small Christ, and no matter how much you try to twist and manipulate my questions, I have never so much as intimated that there is such a thing as a small Christ.
You are the one who seems to say so.