Thematic Bible: Who is a minister of God


Thematic Bible



Be every one of you subject to the ruling powers. for every ruler holds of God: the rulers in being are constituted by God. so that he who opposes the ruler, disobeys the orders of God: and will be punished too for resisting, by those very powers. rulers are not a terror to virtue, but to vice. would you then live without any dread of the civil power? do what is right, and you shall have his commendation. read more.
for his administration is appointed by God for your good. but if you do wrong, you have reason to be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: he being the minister of God, to execute punishment upon malefactors. wherefore you ought to submit not only from an apprehension of punishment, but from a principle of conscience. for this is the reason why you also pay tribute, because under God, they are continually

Do I begin again to commend my self? or need I, as some others, commendatory letters to you, or from you? you are my epistle, your conversion being writ in. my heart, known and read by all men: which shows you to be the epistle of Christ, written by my ministration, not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on living tables of the heart. read more.
It is by Christ that I have this confidence in God. not that I am sufficient of myself to effect any thing by the strength of my own reason: but my sufficiency is from God. who also hath enabled me to be a minister of the new covenant, not of the literal sense, but of the spiritual meaning: it is the letter that denounces death, but the spirit gives life.