Last month, I celebrated my fifth-year anniversary serving here at Jubilee Evangelical Church. Now that I am in my sixth year, I have been thinking about my next steps. The next step after high school is university. The next step in a corporate job is promotion. My next step from being a youth pastor is to be an ordained minister. So, I recently asked our senior pastor about the process of ordination. He was quick to remind me that this is not my decision. Pastors don’t ordain themselves. Someone else has to endorse me and begin the process. After hearing this, I shifted my thinking. Rather than thinking about the process of ordination, I began asking myself what I can do to convince people in church that I am fit to be ordained. I came up with a list:
- Dress well and look presentable.
- Prepare and preach the best sermons I can deliver.
- Be respectful to the leaders, and honor them every chance I get.
If I do all these well, then sooner or later, the church will acknowledge my calling and have me ordained. This was my plan. It was a foolproof strategy, and I was sure that it would work.
But something about this didn’t feel right. The Holy Spirit was making me realize that I can’t push through with this plan. Why? What’s wrong with being well-dressed and presentable? What’s wrong with being well-prepared and delivering excellent sermons? Is it wrong to honor my leaders and be respectful to them? Not at all. I believe God calls all pastors to be the best pastors they can be. But if I pursue excellence just so that the people watching me will accommodate my personal ambitions, then how could I call myself their pastor? How can I shepherd people and tell them they should seek first God’s kingdom if I am using my pastoral ministry to build my own kingdom and make a name for myself?
There are plenty of pastors in the world. We have our degrees and accolades. We wear nice clothes, stand on stage, and preach our sermons with passion and charisma. You see our pastoral glory on the church stage, on the church bulletin, on our social media pages, in our Bible studies, and in our outreach ministries. But there is something that you don’t see. You don’t see our hearts. You don’t see our true motives for doing our ministries. Some pastors serve God and his church with pure motives. Others have wrong motives. Paul himself noticed this and wrote,
“It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.” (Philippians 1:15)
Paul had been declaring in this passage that his imprisonment advanced the gospel. More and more people were preaching Christ as a result of his suffering. How did his suffering inspire many preachers? As we discussed last week, it is unlikely that these preachers wanted to suffer like Paul. Rather, what emboldened them was seeing Paul display courage and commitment amid suffering. The affliction Paul experienced advanced the gospel by showing everyone that his faith and ministry are genuine.
But Paul is not naïve. He knows that not everyone who was preaching Christ as a result of his imprisonment served with pure motives. Some were preaching Christ “out of envy and rivalry.” We might find their hypocrisy distasteful, but how often do we perform our church duties with wrong motives? Do we always have the best intentions when we do our ministries? Whenever we preach, teach, lead worship, and lead Bible studies, do we always check our hearts and ask ourselves why we do what we do? Today’s passage will answer three questions:
What does it mean to serve Christ with pure motives?
What does it mean to serve Christ with wrong motives?
How do our motives affect our ministries?
Serving with Pure Motives.
“The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.” (Philippians 1:16)
Paul described the two kinds of preachers during his day. There are those who have pure motives, and those who have wrong motives. Here in verse 16, he describes the preachers who had pure motives. How do preachers with pure motives perform their ministry of preaching Christ? They do so “in love.” They understand Paul’s deep love for the church and commitment to the gospel. They know that Paul loved God and his people so much that he was willing to be imprisoned “for the defense of the gospel.” They not only saw this genuine love in Paul’s ministry. They also sought to exercise the same love as they preached Christ to others.
I want to avoid over-spiritualizing my personal religious experiences. But I would like to share one “visual image” that the Lord helps me paint in my mind whenever I preach God’s word. I imagine the crowd in the worship service as a flock of sheep. Then, I would look up over their heads and imagine seeing Christ wearing shepherd’s clothes. I imagine him looking into my eyes with both firmness and care. The look in his eyes says to me, “Feed my sheep. Love these people.” What makes this image compelling for me is that it reminds me that Jesus sees my heart. I can always present myself as a faithful pastor outwardly, even when I do not have the purest intentions. Why? Because no one in the audience can see my heart. I can easily pretend to be a faithful preacher even when I lack faithfulness. But Jesus knows everything. He sees my heart. He knows whether I truly love the people I am serving.
What does it mean to serve the Lord with pure motives? It means to serve with love in our hearts. We must truly love the people God is calling us to serve. Church, let us perform our ministries with genuine affection, not just before men, but before God. We can try to pretend to be faithful and caring servant leaders in front of people, but God knows our hearts. He sees whether our affections are genuine. Let us therefore strive and pray that God would make the love we have for people in our hearts real.
Serving with Wrong Motives.
“The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.” (Philippians 1:17)
Paul now describes the preachers who preached Christ with wrong motives. How do these preachers do their ministry? They do it “out of selfish ambition.” They do not have God’s kingdom purposes in mind. They may appear as faithful ministers outwardly, but inwardly, they are serving “not sincerely.” Notice the aim of “the former” preachers who were preaching Christ during Paul’s affliction. They intended to “stir up trouble for [Paul] while [he was] in chains.” When I first read this, I was perplexed. These folks are not teaching a false gospel. The text says that they “preach Christ.” But why did they intend to hurt Paul? Also, why did they think that their preaching of Christ would “stir up trouble for” Paul? I thought about this for some time. Then it dawned on me. These worldly preachers saw their mission of gospel preaching as a competitive enterprise. The saw ministry as a numbers game. They were counting how many people were coming to Jesus under their preaching ministry and were comparing themselves with other preachers. Their service to the Lord was corrupted by envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition. They were so blinded by their worldliness that they thought Paul also preached with the same worldly intentions. They assumed that Paul would be devastated if he found out that other preachers are leading more souls to Christ than him.
We might criticize these worldly preachers for their pride and selfish ambition. But how often do we perform our ministries with the same desire for fleshly affirmation? How often do we measure our success in the ministry with worldly measures?
What does it mean to serve Christ with pure motives? It means serving with genuine love. It means having deep affections for the people we are serving. What does it mean to serve Christ with wrong motives? It means to serve with selfish ambitions. Rather than serving out of our deep love for God and others, our worldly desires compel us to serve ourselves.
The Anchor of Our Success.
“But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:18a)
The worldly preachers assumed that Paul preached with the same worldly ambitions they had. They thought he was pursuing fame, numbers, and the praises of men. That’s why they thought he would be offended to discover that other preachers are expanding their ministries while he was stuck in prison. But notice that Paul doesn’t care about all that. He wrote, “But what does it matter?” Paul is only concerned about one thing: that “Christ is preached.”
How does a preacher’s motives affect the success of his ministry? Verse 18 is clear. Motives do not affect our effectiveness in ministry very much. For Paul, as long as a preacher is preaching the true gospel, “whether from false motives or true,” he can achieve the aim of preaching Christ, glorifying his name, and establishing his kingdom. This truth is both a warning and an encouragement.
It is a warning because it teaches us never to gauge our spirituality on the basis of our success in ministry. We may preach the best sermons, lead the biggest Bible studies, share the gospel with the most amount of people, and yet not have the pure motives that will make our heavenly Father proud of us. Likewise, we can preach the worst sermons, lead the smallest Bible studies, and experience the most amount of rejections as we are trying to share the gospel, and yet still have our heavenly Father bestowing on us the highest honors because he knows that we are doing our best with the gifts he has given us, and that we are serving with the purest intentions.
The truth that our motives do not directly affect our effectiveness in ministry is not just a warning, but also an encouragement. How so? Because none of us have pure motives. All of us are sinners. The more we grow in our relationship with God in Christ, the more we realize how much we have sinned and have fallen short of his glory. We all have mixed motives in ministry. And if you are like me, then you are still struggling with pride and selfish ambition, even in your volunteer church work. Verse 18 reminds us that God can use broken vessels like me to build his church and establish his kingdom here on earth. The word of God reminds us that, even while we are still repenting of our sins, and are seeking the transforming work of the Holy Spirit through the gospel of Jesus Christ, God can use us mightily for his kingdom purposes.
Church, let us strive to serve the Lord in all our ministries with the purest motives. But even as we struggle with pride and selfish ambition, let us not be crippled by our guilt and shame. Let us remember that the Lord can still use us for his name’s sake, despite our moral limitations. Let us remember that, if we are truly in Christ, if we truly trust in his finished atoning work on the cross, and if we truly confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins. Remember that Christ has graciously sent us the Holy Spirit, who is the seal of our eternal inheritance, and our present help to sanctify us, to renew our minds, and to make us the people God has called us to be. We look forward to the day when in Christ, and through the power of the Spirit, we would be able to stand before our Father in heaven, righteous, unashamed, rid of all our selfish ambitions, and worshipping with the purest of all motives.