Authentic Gospel Ministry
What does authentic gospel ministry look like? What are the marks of a ministry that is shaped by God’s word and faithful to Jesus? What are the characteristics of a ministry that you would be willing to sit under? These are vital questions that every Christian believer needs to grapple with. And they are the very questions the Apostle Paul tackles head-on in the book of Colossians.
The topic of the authentic gospel was a pressing issue for the Colossian Christians because they had false teachers in their midst. There were those in their community – maybe even within their church – who were pressing upon them distortions of the gospel. Paul himself had never visited this community, it seems. His ministry associate Epaphras had taught them (v.7). But Paul goes out of his way to confirm that Epaphras is “a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf”. Paul’s own ministry, of course, is the real deal—authentic and trustworthy. In the opening verse of Colossians 1, Paul points out that he is “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”. The reliability of the message is bound up with the reliability of the messenger. We all know that instinctively. In both secular and spiritual contexts, if a trusted teacher is later shown to be a fraud or involved in deceit – those who have learned from that teacher go back and question what they learned from him, asking themselves if they have been deceived and taught a lie.
Paul then highlights that authentic gospel ministry is marked by strenuous toil with the energy of Christ. Faithful ministry isn’t going to be easy – it’s going to involve strenuous effort (toil) and even suffering. Paul writes, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (v. 29) This mark of authentic ministry is actually a reflection of biblical reality. The gospel always goes out with cost. That was Paul’s experience, certainly. He knew what it was to work hard: to be shipwrecked, imprisoned, maligned, mistreated, abandoned and betrayed. And in his experience of suffering for the gospel, he was actually following faithfully in the footsteps of the Saviour. The Lord Jesus faced unimaginable suffering to bring hope and salvation to the lost. And, as a minister of the gospel, Paul ties his own suffering in a striking and profound way to the suffering of Jesus. As he writes, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (v. 24)
Perhaps you are experiencing the toil and suffering associated with faithful ministry. Whether you are serving in gospel ministry alongside children or youth or adults, if you are serious about it and mean to do it well (and teach the word faithfully and disciple people carefully), you will discover soon enough that it is toil. It is prayer. It is sometimes heartache. It is investment of time when you might prefer to be relaxing. It is getting involved in the messiness of broken lives when you might prefer peace and quiet. It is costly – and sometimes that cost feels a whole lot like suffering. Be encouraged today that if this is your experience, it is a sign not of failure but of faithfulness. Remember also with thanksgiving that the Lord will sustain you in your task with God-given energy. As Paul points out “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (v.29)