Approved to Be Entrusted
3 For our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in deception. 4 But even as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News, so we speak—not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts.
Three denials about the preaching, and then the reason: the audience Paul is actually performing for is not in the room.
Our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in deception. Three charges denied in a row, and they map onto what a traveling speaker in that world would routinely be suspected of — being deluded, being immoral, and working a confidence trick.
The denials are the more striking for coming so early. Paul had been gone a matter of weeks and evidently expected his character to be discussed in his absence, which the length of this chapter confirms.
Verse 4 supplies the ground, and it turns on being trusted with something. We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News — the verb for approval is the one used of metal tested and passed, and what follows the testing is a deposit handed over.
So we speak, not as pleasing men, but God. The contrast is the whole of it. A speaker who needs his audience will shape the message to them, and the only protection against that is a different audience.
And the last clause names why the arrangement works: God, who tests our hearts. Not who hears our words. The examination goes somewhere an audience cannot follow.
settled What this mark means