A Pastor's Job Description

Every Sunday afternoon I sit down and briefly read through the passage that I have scheduled for the next week. And sometimes it is with joy that I read the passage and I look forward to preaching it. Other times it may be with a little bit of trepidation that I read the next passage because it has a difficult doctrinal issue or, like was the case two weeks ago, the main point of the passage is so high and lofty that there’s no way I can adequately teach it. And then there are some passages that, truth be told, I just want to skip and move on to the next section. That is the beauty and the challenge of consecutive exposition of Scripture though is that I don’t get to skip anything and have to wrestle and deal with God’s Word when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Our passage this week is one of those hard passages for me as a pastor because I’m basically giving you, like the title says, my job description and then leaving myself bare to your determination as to how I am doing.

Colossians 1:24–29 CSB

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I am completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body, that is, the church. I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.

Paul’s Mindset

Colossians 1:24; Philippians 1:12; Philippians 1:15-18; 1 Timothy 3:1; Hebrews 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 11:21-29; Acts 5:40-41; John 16:33; Romans 5:3; Revelation 12:13-17

Paul begins with a statement that in the context is easy to overlook. Paul says “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you” and our human tendency is to blow right past the first part to get to the second. Look at how Paul suffered and I will suffer too. Chin up young man - it’s like Winston Churchill said if you’re going through hell, keep going. But that is not the core of what Paul is saying here. Paul must have been an enigma to those who came into contact with him. When he was imprisoned in Philippi he was singing hymns at midnight and something tells me that Swing Low Sweet Chariot wasn’t the tenor of the songs he was singing. Even now as a prisoner in Rome Paul would express his joy in ministry.

Philippians 1:12 CSB

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually advanced the gospel,

And in the same passage with regard to those who were preaching the Gospel in such a way that they didn’t compromise the message but that, in some manner, was couched to bring pain to Paul

Philippians 1:15–18 CSB

To be sure, some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will. These preach out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, thinking that they will cause me trouble in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Only that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice

Paul recognized and consistently wrote about what a privilege it is to be a pastor

He would tell his young protege Timothy it is a good thing to aspire to or desire.

1 Timothy 3:1 CSB

This saying is trustworthy: “If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work.”

Joy doesn’t always mean happiness - sometimes it means a resolute determination to see it through.

This is not to say that sometimes you just have to “grin and bear it” in ministry. We don’t experience joy through our own strength, our successes or even our own determination. In his ministry Paul experienced highs and lows. He wrote glowing letters to the church in Thessalonica and corrective letters to the church in Corinth. It didn’t seem to make a difference how long he was with the church either - he was in Thessalonica for only three weeks but in Corinth for 18 months. And to be fair the church in Thessalonica had issues - but I think I would rather have a church of people looking to Heaven because they don’t want to miss the rapture than one where there are divisions over gifts and sexual issues and division abounds.

Paul could maintain his joy because of Who he was serving not what he was doing.

In doing so he was following the standard set by his Master.

Hebrews 12:1–2 CSB

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Commenting on our Saviour, Charles Spurgeon said it this way

Barbed Arrows from the Quiver of C. H. Spurgeon Workmen—Joyful

GET a man at work at a statue—an artist whose whole soul is in his chisel, who knows that there is a bright spirit within that block of marble, and who means to chip off all that hides the lovely image from his sight. See how he works! No man does a thing well who does it sorrowfully. The best work that can be done, is done by the happy, joyful workman; and so it is with Christ. He does not save souls of necessity, as though He would rather do something else if He might, but His very heart is in it, He rejoices to do it, and therefore He does it thoroughly, and He communicates His joy to us in the doing of it.

It is for this joy that we serve and devote ourselves to the service that God has called us to. And that is true whether you work in retail, education, the white collar world, the blue collar world or the pastorate. Our joy is found in serving the One who has redeemed us and it looks forward - beyond our afflictions - to the joy that has been promised for us in Him.

One of the ways we lose our joy is when we take our eyes off of Christ and put them on our circumstances and feel they are unjust. It is when we think we deserve something better than what we’ve been given. It is the old adage “the grass is always greener” that leads to the demise of joy.

Paul’s Suffering

When we keep our eyes on Christ we can maintain our joy despite our afflictions.

And there are afflictions. Paul goes on to say that he rejoices in his sufferings. We have already highlighted the sufferings that Paul was experiencing as he wrote these words. He was on house arrest and chained to a roman soldier 24 hours a day. In Rome and other places around the Mediterranean basin there were those who were preaching Christ but preaching Him in such a way as to bring shame or to cast Paul’s ministry in a bad light. They were saying, much like Job’s friends, that he couldn’t have been righteous or in God’s good graces because if he was he wouldn’t have been locked up in prison. But even before this, in the letter written to the troubled church in Corinth, Paul lists a litany of sufferings that frankly would drive most men out of the ministry. Turn quickly with me to 2 Corinthians 11 starting in verse 21.

2 Corinthians 11:21–29 CSB

I say this to our shame: We have been too weak for that! But in whatever anyone dares to boast—I am talking foolishly—I also dare: Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I’m talking like a madman—I’m a better one: with far more labors, many more imprisonments, far worse beatings, many times near death. Five times I received the forty lashes minus one from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the open sea. On frequent journeys, I faced dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, and dangers among false brothers; toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and without clothing. Not to mention other things, there is the daily pressure on me: my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?

Paul almost minimizes here the physical sufferings that he had faced but instead says that the greatest suffering he experiences is his concern for all the churches. He says that it is a daily pressure. And this is the challenge that all pastors face. Here we are blessed with a unified body with no major divisions and a deep and abiding love for one another - but there is still suffering that will happen as your pastor. Paul says who is weak and I am not weak. In another place he would say that we should weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

And suffering doesn’t have to come from within the church body - the world is more than happy to dole out suffering to those who are willing to call its evils to account and hold them up against the standard of the Word of God. Right now in Iowa I have a friend and mentor is about to face a bench trial because he and another man were willing to stand outside an abortion clinic and try to plead with women for their baby’s lives. Another man was just sentenced to a one year unsupervised probation and a $700 fine for doing the same thing in Arizona. But we should not be surprised by this. Following Christ’s ascension the church establishment persecuted those who were left in Jerusalem. In Acts 4 and Acts 5 the disciples were called before the Sanhedrin and put on trial for what they had been teaching. In each instance they were told to stop speaking in Christ’s name and then in Acts 5 they were beaten.

Acts 5:40–41 CSB

After they called in the apostles and had them flogged, they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus and released them. Then they went out from the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to be treated shamefully on behalf of the Name.

Later it was not only the Jewish ruling council but also the civil authorities. Paul at this very moment was subject to the influence and the whim of the civil authorities as they held him in prison. He says that what he was experiencing was on two levels - he was in prison on behalf of Christ and on another level that his current sufferings were on behalf of the Colossians.

And while we may never suffer on behalf of the church - there are benefits to suffering that directly impact our lives.

Suffering drives us to Christ.

We are a very self-sufficient people and we live in a country where the notion of pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps and starting over until we find success is applauded and even encouraged. We will often allow this mindset to infringe upon our faith and think that we are in control and that we can handle our situations better than God can. Even more than self-sufficient we should just call it what it is - pride. When we’re facing a hard situation and we’re suffering pride can impact us in one of two ways - the first is I’ve got this. I can handle whatever comes against me and I will. God you can sit this one out on the sidelines. The second way that pride can impact us is the misguided notion that we deserve better. We may not even want to be in a better or a different field - this one is just fine but what’s happening in this field shouldn’t be happening to me. Yet what if we took the paradigm shift that maybe our suffering is designed to do the exact opposite. What if we looked at our suffering as something that reveals our insufficiency instead of our strength? In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul cryptically tells us of a thorn given to him so that he “would not exalt” himself. He even reacted the right way - rather than girding himself up for battle and facing the challenge on his own he says he pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away from him. God’s answer to him is instructive to us in our own struggles and sufferings - and it is one we well know but I think in some ways it has only ever impacted some of our heads and not our hearts because when the suffering comes in our life we jettison these words for the Nike slogan “Just Do It”.

2 Corinthians 12:9 CSB

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.

Another element to suffering is

Suffering is a sanctifying process.

The Puritan Richard Sibbes once said

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans Better to Go Bruised to Heaven

It is better to go bruised to heaven than sound to hell.

Part of the process of becoming more Christlike is the removal of things in our lives that prevent us from truly showing forth His image. There is never a moment where something is removed where the pain of loss is not felt. Even in the sculpting process, as beautiful as the piece of art being created may be what you are looking at is the scarred remains of a stone that had a piece removed here and a fissure cut there. We don’t see it that way because what we see at the end is the polished work of art but if we could look back to the beginning to see what that stone looked like before we would recognize just how much loss had to take place in order for the beauty that is now placed before our eyes is formed. Suffering in the life of the Christian is like the chisel in the sculptors hand - it is designed to remove the rough edges to reveal the beauty of Christ in His new creation.

Suffering purifies the church.

There are many people who are predicting that within ten years we may face legitimate persecution for being Christians in America. And this is interesting because persecution and suffering is one of the ways that the church is purified of those who could be considered cultural Christians - those who get up on Sunday and attend church because it is the thing to do, its what they’ve always done and as long as it doesn’t cost them anything it is what they always will do. Persecution has always been a factor of the Christian life - whether in the fourth century or when men, women and children were burned at the stake during the Reformation - persecution has always driven the true church to Christ and cut away those who were not true adherents to the faith. Christ alluded to this in His parable of the sower and the seed - these are both those who fall on the rocky soil and those who fall among the thorns - despite their profession of faith they quickly proved themselves to be false converts.

There is one additional reason for our suffering...

Paul’s Addition to the Atonement?

And now we come to a puzzling statement that has caused the rise of all sorts of mischief and false doctrine throughout universal church history. Paul says that he is “completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for His body”. This statement has been twisted to try and say that Christ didn’t pay for all of our sins on the cross and so we have to make up for what is lacking in His atonement. It has been used by the Catholic Church to justify the belief in purgatory - that it is there that we make up for what is lacking in the atonement by completing in our flesh the payment for our sins until we can be finally released into Heaven. But that cannot be Paul’s point here for two reasons.

The first is that he has just spent the last few sentences of his letter - the verses we looked at two weeks ago and last week - to make the point that Christ provided reconciliation through His blood shed on the cross and that He is able to present us holy, faultless and blameless before God. If there were something lacking in what Christ paid on the cross He wouldn’t be able to accomplish that. The second is that one aspect of the false teaching threatening the Colossian church was that of works being necessary for salvation. If Paul were to say that Christ’s atonement were less than completely effectual for those who place their faith in Him then he would be in agreement with the false teachers and would be destroying the argument he is seeking to make.

So what is Paul trying to say here? One clue is found in the Greek word that he uses for affliction. It is the word thlipsis - and while it is used 45 times in the New Testament and translated as distress, suffering or affliction none of these instances point to the redemptive suffering of Christ on the cross. In fact what it almost universally points to is the physical suffering of a person. In John 16 Jesus promises His disciples suffering

John 16:33 CSB

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”

And in another Pauline usage he refers to it in Romans 5:3 saying:

Romans 5:3 CSB

And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance,

The point that Paul is trying to make is that his current physical sufferings are the result of his efforts to build the church and to share the Gospel. Because the world can no longer lay their hands on Christ because He has ascended into Heaven, it seeks to destroy the only part of Christ that it can get its hands on - the church and those who believe in Him. Although it is cryptic there is a picture of this in Revelation 12:13-17.

Revelation 12:13–17 CSB

When the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given two wings of a great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent’s presence to her place in the wilderness, where she was nourished for a time, times, and half a time. From his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river flowing after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth helped the woman. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon had spewed from his mouth. So the dragon was furious with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep the commands of God and hold firmly to the testimony about Jesus.

Now while some of this passage is difficult to interpret what we can clearly see is that the dragon - referred to earlier in this same chapter as Satan - because he cannot reach the woman or the child goes off to wage war against “those who keep the commands of God and hold firmly to the testimony about Jesus”. It is in this way - through absorbing the persecution that the world wants to dole out onto Christ but must instead inflict upon the church - that Paul can say that he is making up the afflictions of Christ in his own body.

It is the same for each of us - because there is a form of suffering that is brought upon us by a sinful world that desires to crush us because of Who we represent.

Conclusion

"As preachers, we have to work hard to ensure that we're not simply helping the listener to understand the meaning of the text, but also laboring to establish its relevance to the listener's personal world."

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