Serving God In The Spirit

Romans 1:8-15

8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, 10 making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established— 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

13Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. 14I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. 15So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.

In Bible College I learned a great deal from the books I read, the lectures I heard, and the papers I wrote. But, then and now, I learned most from the attitudes and actions of the godly men under whom I studied. While around them, I discovered their true priorities, their true convictions, and their true devotion to our Lord.

In the opening verses of his letter to the Romans, Paul also set himself forth for his readers to see before he attempts to teach them some deeper truths of the gospel. He opens his heart and said, in effect, “Before I show you my theology, I am going to show you myself.” 

We cannot underemphasize the importance of the character of teachers.  The godly character is essential in a couple obvious areas.  First, it is essential that they actually be godly!  This cannot be short changed – as it forms the basis for how God will work and bless the ministry and work of the leader.  God requires faithfulness of His servants and He will not bless those who are not truly godly.  That this begins with salvation, sadly, cannot go unsaid in this day and age, but it cannot stop at merely being saved, it must go on to the manifestation of true and, dare I say it, profound fruit in the area of godly Christian character. No one will be used of God, in any other than a purely passive fashion, if they are not living the life of godliness that the Word of God commands all believers to live, and especially commands leaders to live out before their charges.

Second, that life of godliness must be lived out publicly, that is, if must be visible for those to whom God sends the leader to minister.  Though the leader is entitled to a private life, that entitlement is severely curtailed by the level of scrutiny that his life must be and will be under as a leader of the Church of God.  If we aspire to be leaders, then we accept the scrutiny and the level of exposure to those to whom God sends us as a part of that commission.  It is, in fact, an essential part of that commission, as it is essential to the sheep that they see godliness in their shepherds.  This is for any number of reasons, chief of which is the idea of the pattern or example of godliness that the shepherd sets for them as they seek to follow after his instruction and example and walk with Christ. 

So it is no small thing for Paul to begin this Epistle with a discussion of his personal feeling and example for the believers there in Rome.  His experience with the Lord was very relevant and valuable to them as they could seek to come to grips with all that he was going to say to them in the great letter.

People serve the Lord from many motives. Some serve out of legalistic effort, as a means of earning salvation and God’s favor. This was the case of Martin Luther before his revelation and conversion concerning salvation by Grace through Faith alone.  He was working to please God out the understanding that he had to earn God’s favor, and that he could do so if he were good enough and if he worked hard enough.

Some serve the Lord for fear that, if they do not, they will incur His disfavor and perhaps even lose their salvation. This is, of course, related to the above, but comes at it from the reverse direction.  Some are convinced that, for whatever reason, they have God’s favor, or have a basic connection to He and His grace, and they must work to maintain it, or it will go away.  This is the root idea behind the Roman Catholic view of sanctification – and the reason for their views of confession and penance.  They must keep themselves in a state of grace before God, or they lose the benefit of their standing that, they believe, was established at their baptism as infants.  Obviously, we have severe problems with this view.

Some, like Diotrophes (3 John 9), serve because of the prestige and esteem that leadership often brings. There are many in ministry today that are in ministry because of the public or societal impact that ministry can bring.  They view ministry as a social convention and that the minister’s primary vocation is to bring about social change and social benefit for people.  They are in it for political power, and little of any real spiritual value.

Some serve in order to gain preeminent ecclesiastical positions and the power to lord it over those under their care. They like to tell people what to do, and they like having people look up to them.  They like the busyness and the sense of accomplishing something for the achieving of a goal.  They are fascinated and often addicted to the trappings of success, and would be unable to minister if they were successful and powerful.

Some serve for appearance’s sake, in order to be considered righteous by fellow church members and by the world. This is a function, purely, of pride and ego.  They serve because ministry is the place that the best and the most spiritual go.  This reason is often linked to the others already listed.

Some serve because of peer pressure to conform to certain human standards of religious and moral behavior. Children are often forced into religious activities by their parents, and they sometimes continue those activities into adult life only because of parental intimidation or perhaps from mere habit. Sadly, there have been, and still are many in the ministry for this reason.  They are in because their father was a minister, and because everyone expected them to, and they never really considered anything else.  This is not to say that a Pastor’s son can never go into the ministry, but that simply that he is a Pastor’s son is not sufficient reason to do so.  Many think that all believers ought to go into the ministry – that there is nothing better that a Christian can do than go into the Lord’s work.  This is no motivation or commission to service either.

Some people are even zealous in Christian work because of the financial gain it can produce.  there is big money in fleecing the sheep and there are many around that are padding their bank accounts and lining their pockets with the tithes and offerings of those who look to them as spiritual leaders.  There is even a huge segment of the population today who see this as a desirable thing and teach a wealth and prosperity “Gospel” claiming that God’s first priority for us is to healthy and wealthy.

But those motives for service are merely external, and no matter how orthodox or helpful to other people the service might be, unless it is done out of a sincere desire to please and glorify God, it is neither spiritual nor acceptable to Him (cf. 1 Cor. 10:31). It is, of course, possible for a person to begin Christian service out of genuine devotion to God and later fall into an occasion or even a habit of performing it mechanically, merely from a sense of necessity. In fact, this is a real danger!  Pastors, Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, missionaries and all other Christian workers can carelessly leave their first love and fall into a rut of superficial activity that is performed in the Lord’s name but is not done in His power or for His glory.

Even when the Lord is served from a right motive and in His power, there always lingers near a ready temptation to resentment and self-pity when one’s work is not appreciated by fellow Christians and perhaps goes completely unnoticed.  it is our nature as self-centered people to think in such directions.

The apostle Paul was doubtlessly assailed by many temptations from Satan to give up his ministry when he was opposed, or to give up on a difficult, fleshly, self-centered, and worldly church such as the one at Corinth. But Paul was greatly used of the Lord because, by God’s grace and provision, he always saw to it that he kept his motives pure. Because his single, over-riding purpose was to please God, the displeasure or disregard of other people, even of those he was serving, could not deter his work or lead him into bitterness and self-pity.  This is not to say that he didn’t hear it, or that it didn’t affect him at all.  I’m sure that he grappled with it, he was human after all!  He simply did not allow it to win out over him greater priority of serving Christ in whatever capacity the Lord called him so to serve.

In his opening words to the believers at Rome, Paul tells of his sincere spiritual motives in wanting to minister to them. With warmth, affection, and sensitivity that permeate the entire letter, he assures them of his genuine devotion to God and his genuine love for them. Although Paul had not personally founded or even visited the church at Rome, he carried the heartfelt passion of Christ for their spiritual welfare and an eager desire to develop their spiritual and personal friendship. The letter to Rome reveals that Paul not only had the zeal of a prophet, the mind of a teacher, and the determination of an apostle, but also the heart of a shepherd.

When they first received Paul’s letter, the believers in Rome probably wondered why this great apostle whom most of them did not know would bother to write them such a long and profound letter. They also may have wondered why, if he cared so much for them, he had not yet paid them a visit. In verses 8-15 of chapter 1, Paul gives the answers to both of those questions. He wrote them because he cared deeply about their spiritual maturity, and he had not yet visited them because he had thus far been prevented. In these few verses the apostle lays bare his heart concerning them.

The key that unlocks the intent in this passage is the phrase “God, whom I serve in my spirit” (v. 9a). Paul had been raised and educated in Judaism. He had himself been a Pharisee and was well acquainted with the other Jewish religious set, the Sadducees, the scribes, the priests, and the elders. He knew that, with few exceptions, those leaders served God in the flesh and were motivated by self-interest. Their worship and service were mechanical, routine, external, and superficial. Paul also was well acquainted with the Gentile world and knew that pagan religious worship and service were likewise external, superficial, and completely motivated by self-interest.

Referring to such religion, Jesus told the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, “An hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24). Worship that is true and acceptable to God does not involve a particular location, ritual, or any man-made activities or forms.

During the years before his salvation, Paul himself had worshiped and served God in an external, self-interested way (Phil. 3:4-7). But now that he belonged to Christ and had Christ’s own Spirit indwelling him, he worshiped and served Him in spirit and in truth, with his whole being. Paul was now motivated by a genuine, inner desire to serve God for God’s sake rather than his own, in God’s revealed way rather than his own, and in God’s power rather than his own. He was no longer motivated by self-interest or by peer pressure and no longer focused on Jewish religious tradition or even on self-effort to keep God’s law. He was not interested in trying to please other men, even himself, but only God (1 Cor. 4:1-5). The focus of his life and his ministry was to glorify God by proclaiming the saving grace of the gospel. He lived in conformity to the divine standard he proclaimed to the Ephesians, serving God “not by way of eye service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). As he reminded the elders from that church, “I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me” (Acts 20:33-34).

Paul did not serve because it was “fun” and self-pleasing. “For even Christ did not please Himself,” he points out later in the epistle; “but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached Thee fell upon Me’” (Rom. 15:3; cf. Ps. 69:9). Nor did Paul serve in order to gain glory and honor from men. “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). In a later letter to the church at Corinth he declared, “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5; cf. 1 Cor. 9:19).

I need to be sure that I am serving God from such pure and ideal motives – seeing to it that lesser and more human motivations do not enter in and spoil my ministry before God.