Verse 15
15. Study Be earnest or zealous.
A workman A labourer, whether husbandman or artisan.
Rightly dividing the word Commentators greatly differ as to the figure. Melanchthon supposed the allusion to be made to the priest dividing the sacrificial victim; but this suits not the word workman. A similar objection lies against Calvin’s applying it to a carving carver cutting bread. The applying it to a ploughman cutting a furrow makes no apposite illustration. The most suitable is the image of a carpenter or architect rightly, with square and compass, dividing the parts of a timber. The thought as regards the preacher is not so much that he divides for each class of persons their own appropriate share; but that he so distributes the doctrines of the gospel as to give each its proportion, place, and measure, so as to preserve the symmetry of Christian truth, in order to assign to each class of errorists their proper representation and antidote.
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