“Paul evangelized as the commissioned representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. Evangelism was a task that had been specifically entrusted to him. ‘Christ sent me . . . to preach the gospel.’ Now, see how he regarded himself in virtue of this commission. In the first place, he saw himself as Christ’s steward. ‘Let a man so account of us (myself, and my fellow-preacher Apollos),’ he wrote to the Corinthians, ‘as of ministers of Christ, and (in that capacity) stewards of the mysteries of God.’ ‘A dispensation of the gospel (i.e., a commission to dispense it: ‘a stewardship’, RV) is committed unto me.’ Paul saw himself as a bondslave raised to a position of high trust, as the steward of a household in New Testament times always was; he had been ‘approved of God to be intrusted with the gospel’, and the responsibility now rested on him to be faithful to his trust, as a steward must be, guarding the precious truth that had been committed to him (as he later charges Timothy to do), and distributing and dispensing it according to his Master’s instructions. The fact that he had been entrusted with this stewardship meant, as he told the Corinthians, that ‘necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is me, if I preach not the gospel !’ The figure of stewardship thus highlights Paul’s responsibility to evangelize.”

(J. I. Packer, Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1975, 42-43)