Laborers Together with God

Will you? You may, by His grace. “For God’s fellow workers we are”* (1 Corinthians 3:9) (literal Greek). (Grimm’s Lexicon says the word means “a joint-promoter; a partner in labour.” See also 2 Corinthians 6:1, “to put forth power together”; Mark 16:20; 1 Thessalonians 3:2, “one whom God employs as an assistant.”) Have you ever paused to think what that means and to assimilate it? The whole content of redeeming love and life has been poured into the Calvary sacrifice of Christ, and from the empty tomb of the Savior, who could not be held by death, has emerged the triumphant Head of a New Creation.

Blessed be God, then, for the new man in Christ is to be the vehicle for the display of the self-same energy of the Godhead along every road of divine activity. Have you yielded to the stupendous issues of such a fellowship? Then all the powers of hell are to know it, for where God works, you work. “Labourers together with God”—what a commission!

Silence all arguments. Say, “Whatever God has for me in this, I am taking it,” and you will be shown more clearly than I can say for what purpose you have been brought into conflict with the most formidable foe that exists, to the realization of the plan and the purpose of the Almighty.

Then must I always be fighting? Until the Lord returns for His own, as one day He surely will, the Christian must never put off his armor or lay aside his sword. He may be a victor on the field, but to be assured of it he will need to plumb the depths of 1 Peter 5 and scale the heights of Ephesians 6.