Would Paul Trust You With His People?

Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may be encouraged by news about you. 20 For I have no one else like-minded who will genuinely care about your interests; 21 all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:19-21 (CSB)

Writing to the Philippians, Paul desires to send Timothy to check up on how they were doing. Why Timothy? Because Paul says he had no one else “like-minded” who would genuinely care about the interests of the Philippian church. He goes on to bemoan that “all seek their own interests and not the those of Jesus Christ”.

Even in his day, Paul was having a hard time finding pastors and teachers who had the best interest of the church at heart, because their interest were not aligned with those of Jesus. It is crucial to see and understand, though it might obvious, that the interests of the church and the interests of Jesus are one and the same. The fulfillment of the goals and priorities of Jesus are what the church needs, and therefore, it needs leaders, pastors, teachers whose aims are aligned with those of Jesus.

Apparently, the list of those who cared about the interests of the church was quite small, which should be alarming to us and cause us to pause, check our life, our heart, our mind, and wonder:

“Would Paul trust me with his people?”

In order to answer that question, I think you take a good, hard look at the ministry of Jesus and at the ministry of Paul and you prayerfully consider if you ministry aligns with theirs in its aim and in its shape. Based on what we are trying to accomplish, based on what we teach, based on how we spend our time, would our lives and ministry be recognizable to Paul as being aligned with the interests of Jesus Christ?

A good start to this is to consider the summary statements Jesus gave for his purpose in coming to the world. This is helpful because the work of the apostles would be an extension of that ministry.^[1]

One of the best, overarching statements of the ministry of Jesus, in my opinion, can be found in John 6, which reads:

“Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”^[2]

The reason Jesus came was to guarantee the eternal life of all of God’s people for His glory. This was the ultimate interest of Jesus, this was what shaped all that he did. And how would Jesus accomplish this? Through the cross.

The interests of Christ led to the cross, and this reality would profoundly shape the content of the ministry of Paul, who made it clear that he sought to make nothing known “except Jesus Christ and him crucified”^[3].

Furthermore, the ministry of Jesus shaped the attitude and posture of Paul’s ministry. It took the swagger out of it.

Keeping in mind how Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”^[4], we see Paul adopt this posture, eager to share not only the gospel of Christ, but his own life also, enduring labor and hardship for the church.^[5]So much so that his philosophy of ministry could be summed up as “For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.”^[6]

Informed and shaped by the gospel which he proclaimed, the ministry of Paul was directed by the interests of Jesus – which meant sacrificially seeking the salvation of God’s people through the preaching of Christ crucified. It meant loving God’s people at great personal cost, to the end that Christ would be formed in them. It meant giving yourself to see the church glorified.

And apparently so rare was this kind of ministry, finding workers who shared Christ’s interests, that Paul had no else he could really trust besides Timothy.

I wonder if Paul would trust me? Would he consider me to be like-minded?

There is much that can shape the trajectory of our ministry and flavor our teaching, but nothing will warp our trajectory or spoil our flavor more than seeking our own interests or the interests of any other besides Christ^[7]. To build a reputation, to be loved, to feel justified, to get affirmation, to grow influence base, to increase the size of our church, to be relevant to the culture, to pursue economic prosperity – all of these things risk rendering us as untrustworthy servants. Every day our own interests or the interests of our culture can creep in and begin to corrode our ministry. We need to return to Christ, to the cross, we need to fix our eyes above and be daily recalibrated to his interests, which are also the interests of his church.

I am challenged by this to look to Christ, to remember how he loved me and gave himself for me, and to serve and speak out of the overflow of living by faith in that reality. It is through burning love for Christ that his interests become ours and when his interests are ours, we are in a position to serve the interests of the church.