#34 Let no one boast of men

From Meditations on the Epistles of John, by Samuel Froehlich

Even though Jesus bore record of Himself, yet it was no presumption but the truth for He knew whence He had come as the Son of God, but if another person would speak in that way about himself he would be a liar. But men like to betake themselves to human authority and thereby become devoted to a party and are deceived, and Paul, already in the early life of the Corinthian church, had to repress this evil.

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, ...?

Let no one boast of men; they are too inconsiderable, as servants. We have not yet attained to lordship; there is only one Lord over all, in heaven. We dare not take any man except Christ Himself—and only Christ—as our Pattern; otherwise one would even be worse than the other and each one would comfort himself with someone who is worse.

However, when an apostle witnesses by Christ’s Spirit of Truth and those who teach and those who hear it, find exactly the same testimony of the Spirit in them, these then know that they are in the truth and have the Spirit of Christ. It is true, we no longer have any apostles in person among us, but in their place we have their written word of Christ, and if we now come before this testimony and examine ourselves according to it, the inner testimony (Christ in us) is then either in harmony with it, or if we have not the Spirit and Life of Christ in us, we do not understand the written word, and in that case men read it like an almanac and fiction or not at all.