Or ministry, [let us wait] on our ministry
The word (diakonia)
sometimes signifies the whole ecclesiastical ministry, even the
office of apostleship, as well as the ordinary ministration of
the Gospel; see ( Acts 1:17 ) ( 6:4 ) ; but here
"deaconship", or the office of ministering to the poor saints, as
in ( Acts 6:1 )
( 1
Corinthians 16:15 ) , being a distinct office from
prophesying: or preaching the word, and should be used,
exercised, and attended to with diligence, care, and constancy;
for such who are appointed to this office, are chosen not only to
a place of honour, but of service and business, in which they
should behave with prudence, sobriety, and humility:
or he that teacheth, on teaching.
The gift of prophesying or preaching is subdivided into
"teaching" and "exhorting"; the one belongs to "teachers" or
doctors, the other to "pastors"; as the distinction is in (
Ephesians 4:11 ) , not
that different officers and offices are intended, but different
branches of the same office; and one man's talent may lie more in
the one, and another man's in the other; and accordingly each
should in his preaching attend to the gift which is most peculiar
to him: if his gift lies in teaching, let him constantly employ
himself in that with all sobriety and "teaching" does not design
an office in the school, but in the church; it is not teaching
divinity as men teach logic, rhetoric, and other arts and
sciences, in the schools; but an instructing of churches and the
members thereof in the doctrines of the Gospel, in order to
establish and build them up in their most holy faith; see (
1
Corinthians 12:28 ) ( Ephesians
4:11 Ephesians
4:12 ) ; it chiefly lies in a doctrinal way of preaching, in
opening, explaining, and defending the doctrines of Christ, as
distinct from the practical part of the ministry of the word, and
the administration of ordinances, in which the pastor is employed
as well as in this.