“Faithful ministers of the Gospel will labor hard for the salvation of souls, and will deny themselves, and will be willing to undergo hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. They will be of a spirit to spend and be spent for souls.
But what are the labors of the most faithful and laborious of the ministers of the Gospel, and what is their self-denial in comparison of the labors and sufferings that Christ has gone through for souls, who has waded through a sea of blood and gone through a furnace of wrath for their salvation?
He has purchased them with His own blood. No minister of Christ was expended and was spent for souls as their Master was.”
–Jonathan Edwards, “The Minister Before the Judgment Seat of Christ,” in The Salvation of Souls: Nine Previously Unpublished Sermons on the Call of Ministry and the Gospel, Eds. Richard Bailey and Gregory Wills (Wheaton: Crossway, 202), 80. This ordination sermon was preached by Edwards on November 17, 1736 in Lambstown, Massachusetts.
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