Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

47
and to whom he preaches, the preacher serves as shepherd.
Love for his people must be obvious, love combined
with courage--a desire to help rather than merely
please.°° And he never sees himself as superior, but
as one among the many, pupils together of God's
Word.!'l
Before the preacher speaks, all his hearers already
fall within the realm of God's sovereign action. The
preacher therefore does not call persons to destinychanging
decision, but to awareness and belief In what
God has already done.
2 Man in his natural state,
ignorant of God's provision, gropes for meaning and hope.
Yet, he resists God's Word.
He [man] prefers his own life below to the
divine life above. He chooses to persist in
it. He must have it as he himself wills to
have it. He must be the one he himself wills
to be. He is thus the man who remains below
where he does not belong, and is not at home,
but where he irrevocably has his place--so long
as his corrupt will is not broken by the
direction of Jesus.."5'5
But God, in his sovereignty, has enabled Jesus to break
In and change the course of humanity. Therefore, the
church's (and preacher's) "commission is that of
declaring to them [non-believers] the kingdom of God,
. that God has already begun to do something for them
and that he will also complete it in spite of their
opposition."'
With this awareness, the preacher cannot expect to
change the people through his words--even if he succeeded
in that effort, any change thereby wrought would be but a