If God chooses to add a little extra beauty, shouldn’t I? In those matters God calls me to do, shouldn’t I go beyond merely getting them done and instead add an extra bit of effort? Wouldn’t I be most closely imitating him if I went beyond merely completing the task and chose instead to do it with joy, with excellence, with a desire to in some way make it beautiful? 

The sky was still dark as I left the house this morning. When I went overseas just three weeks ago the sun had already risen by this time and I was walking in dawn’s early light. But summer has given way to fall and the nights have quickly grown longer. I press “play” in my Bible app and set out.
I round a bend and in the corner of my eye see an unusually bright star in the southern sky. I make a note to look it up when I return, though I know I’ll probably have forgotten by then. I realize my mind has wandered and while I still hear David Cochran Heath’s voice in my AirPods, I have lost track of chapter and verse. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,” I hear him say, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch…” Ah yes, Jeremiah 23, one of the sweetest chapters in the whole book. “And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’”
My plan prompts me to skip ahead to Jeremiah 26, then to Psalm 77 and James 2. When I’ve heard “for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” it is time to pray and, as it happens, to turn to the southeast. I begin to thank the Lord for giving me the precious gift of faith and to ask him to help me be diligent in showing my faith by my works. As I glance toward where the sun will soon rise, I see that the sky has begun to turn shades of pink and purple.
I spend some time confessing sin and making requests on behalf of family members, and while I do so the sky continues to brighten.
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Prayer, as Calvin puts it, is our chief expression of faith. Prayer is how faith is manifested and expressed. If you don’t believe there is a God or that you need God, then you don’t pray. But if you do believe there is a God who hears, if you believe that you need Him, then the way you express that belief is through prayer.

So far in this series on pastoral character, we’ve considered the role of the pastor’s piety and the pastor’s holiness upon his ministry. Those articles have largely been cautionary, warning pastors against the particular temptations that come in ministry. But what should a pastor cultivate positively in order to grow in pastoral character? Spurgeon’s first answer would likely be the importance of cultivating communion with Christ, expressed in the pastor’s private prayer.
The Problem: Ministerialism
One of the greatest dangers that the minister faces is the danger of what Spurgeon calls formalism or officialism or ministerialism. Listen to his description:
The worst [snare a minister can face] is the temptation to ministerialism — the tendency to read our Bibles as ministers, to pray as ministers, to get into doing the whole of our religion as not ourselves personally, but only relatively concerned in it. To lose the personality of repentance and faith is a loss indeed…
I hate ministerialism, yet I often find it creeping upon me. One gets inside a pulpit, and begins to feel that he is not as other men are; but I like, if I can, to preach as a sinner to sinners; as one saved by grace to tell the love which Christ had towards me, the chief of sinners, and “less than the least of all saints.” I do not doubt that, as soon as you get out your little book to take with you, you feel like a missionary, and not simply like a sinner saved by grace. But, I pray you, do not feel like a missionary; feel like a sinner who has been washed in the precious blood of Jesus. You will never do good if you go to your work simply because of your office, [rather than] because of your soul being in it, because your heart yearns toward sinners, because you must have them saved. Strive not against any habits that are good; but against that evil tendency which, somehow or other, Satan, who is exceedingly crafty, manages to cast over our very best habits.
In other words, even as we pursue holiness and fight sin, we have to keep the gospel central. We have to cultivate a deep awareness and sorrow over our personal sin and the temptations of our hearts. We have to live in dependence on God’s grace in Christ. And then we speak as sinners saved by grace. This is how our holiness becomes warm and attractive.
Apart from our own personal grasp of the gospel, all our efforts at piety and holiness will become a stumbling block to our own sanctification and ministry. The strange thing is that people don’t always notice ministerialism in their pastor. The unspiritual people in the congregation won’t mind that their pastor doesn’t demonstrate any spiritual life before them. Even while the minister is just keeping up appearances, a church can have a growing budget and the congregation can be entertained. But in the end, as far as the pastor is concerned, it’s all external rituals and no spiritual life.
Spurgeon describes one such situation:
I read the other day, that no phase of evil presented so marvelous a power for destruction, as the unconverted minister of a parish, with a £1200 organ, a choir of ungodly singers, and an aristocratic congregation. It was the opinion of the writer, that there could be no greater instrument for damnation out of hell than that. People go to their place of worship and sit down comfortably, and think they must be Christians, when all the time all that their religion consists in, is listening to an orator, having their ears tickled with music, and perhaps their eyes amused with graceful action and fashionable manners; the whole being no better than what they hear and see at the opera — not so good, perhaps, in point of aesthetic beauty, and not an atom more spiritual. Thousands are congratulating themselves, and even blessing God that they are devout worshippers, when at the same time they are living in an unregenerate Christless state, having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.
May such words never be said of our ministries.
The Answer: Private Prayer
So what’s the solution? How do we fight against formalism? We fight by cultivating our private prayer lives, our communion with God. And Spurgeon particularly emphasizes prayer… Not just Bible reading, but prayer, i.e. communion with Christ.
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In his death, Christ endured God’s wrath against our sin. Jesus carried out the full sentence, with no reprieve. This was a costly sacrifice, one that cost Jesus everything. And God accepted it. On that day there was no smoke that curled into the sky, yet Christ’s gift rose to heaven as a most pleasing fragrance. Breathe it in: this is the glorious gospel.

Certain smells we love.

Wood smoke in a campground on a summer evening. The smell of freshly baked bread. These are pleasing smells to us, happy and calming.
What kind of smell does God like? Ephesians 5:2 says that when Jesus gave himself for us, this was

a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Christ’s death was like a smell that God breathed in deeply and which gave him joy.
Now, Jesus’s dying, his blood being poured on the ground, probably didn’t have much of an odour—and if it did, it probably wasn’t that pleasant. To understand this “fragrant offering,” we turn to Leviticus. It describes the many kinds of offerings that God invited from his people. They would bring into the LORD’s presence a gift of grain, a measure of oil, or a choice animal.
A sacrifice like this was meaningful. For it was costly, highly prized by the person worshiping. This is why they brought flour that was finely ground—high quality stuff—or an unblemished animal. Or even the very first products you’d collected in the harvest, the part of the crop that you’d be most inclined to keep for yourself after all your hard work—yet you gave it away. Sacrifices come at a price.
More important than the cost of the sacrifice was the spirit of the person who brought it. These gifts were a way of saying to God that they were thankful for his gifts, or sorry for sins, or that they needed his help in a season of trouble.
Point is, the person sacrificing had to bring it with his whole heart.
Whenever a sacrifice was placed on the coals of the altar, the smell of burning went up to heaven. Imagine the aroma of burning animal flesh or burning incense. Leviticus says that such an offering would ascend “as a sweet aroma to the LORD.”
God doesn’t have a physical nose on a physical face. But it meant that a sacrifice was pleasing and acceptable. To him, this sacrifice gave off a good smell because the relationship was right, because
God knew that the worshiper’s heart was loyal.
Through all the centuries of Old Testament worship, there was never an offering that got a 10/10.
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