This world runs on credentials. To remain employed, I have to remain a fellow of a college, current with my dies, with my continuing education done (and at times audited). It is not enough to say it: you have to produce the paper: the college has certified copies of all my degrees. I write letters of recommendation on a routine basis. (We call them references).
We do this knowing that the person is not summed up by their portfolio of educational attainments. We do this so that if challenged by those who oppose us we can say that this person was not merely trained well, but the documentation show it. We take the appearance as the reality.
But this we should not do in Christ. For life is not paper, and salvation less so.
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
One of the things that the Presbyterians insisted on was that their teaching elders had a sound theological education: the Anglicans just asked that they had an education. This led to differences in how universities were structured: the Oxford and Cambridge BA did not suffice and the Theology degree (B.Th.) and then by extension the medical, law and engineering degrees were not seen for postgraduates.
The risk here is that we become too academic and try to discover that which is new, as in try to find a new error. The academic world has collapsed under the irrationalists (who used to call themselves post-modernists, but now are better called the establishment) and that is leading the church to look outside of theology to a school of ministry for sound training.
Yet the minister — the teaching elder in my church — scraped through his degree. He trained as a teacher, and then was sent by the presbytery to get his papers… while already running a congregation. His congregation includes highly qualified people with more powerful letters (read Ph.D) behind their names. For we know that the degree is not the life, and Barry has the gifts or burdens of pastoral care, and we are mere scholars.
For our true recommendation is not the credentials we have, but the lives we influence. And that is not our doing.
Paul’s deviation to the glory of the law is instructive. He came from a line of rabbinical scholars: the disciples of this scholar or that were seen as having the authority of the scholar before them. He was not without education.
But he notes that it is the spirit of God that guides us and illuminates our thought, and without it we stumble as if in the dark.
I hold the qualifications and credentials I have with a certain lightness. Do not be deceived, some of them were difficult to attain (I did my Master’s in my 40s) and allow me to do my academic job, others were even harder to get, and allow me to do my clinical job. But those who sit on their credentials and status often are driven by fear, and have no boldness. It is the glory of God in Christ that empowers us and allows mere scholarly mice to become akin to a lion.
For the real test is the lives of those around us. We cannot see the results in our lives as much as those we love. Our true reference is not the letters after our name, but our friends, sons, and daughters, in the flesh and in Christ.