That phrase “marks of Jesus” in 6:17 is designed to remind us of the wounds Jesus endured on our behalf. Paul’s point is that all faithful ministry will follow that same path; enduing suffering on behalf of God’s people instead of dishing it out. Bearing the marks of Jesus that others might be spared. Preserving their freedom rather than bending people to our will.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians might not be the first place we turn for a model of pastoral ministry. It might even be the last place we’d think to go, given its dense theological arguments and Paul’s exasperated tone. And yet in many ways it is a shining example and defence of authentic ministry.
You can see that best in the final passage – Gal 6:11-18. In those climactic verses, much of the letter’s argument is brought to bear on the question of how true gospel ministry can be distinguished from false and fleshly ministry.
Two things in particular characterise Paul’s ministry: he boasts in the cross of Jesus and he bears the marks of Jesus.
Boasting in the Cross of Jesus
So much of the letter is designed to celebrate the work of Jesus so that the Galatian church will put its hope there. In Gal 1:4 Paul speaks of Jesus “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” The rest of the letter develops that theme, showing how Christ’s coming is the definitive intervention, the great turning point in human history, where slavery turns to freedom and curse to blessing. God has sent his Son and his Spirit into the world and that changes everything.
Boasting in the cross bears many fruits but Paul draws our attention to two in particular.
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Jesus tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.

“Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching”
When I was a teenager, I often failed to do what my parents asked of me in a timely and adequate manner. At the root of my problem, they had often to point out, was the fact that I “just didn’t listen.” In many ways, a failure to listen lies at the root of most of our struggles to grow as Christians. We hear partially. We hear what pleases us and edit out the rest. We mishear. We ignore. We reinterpret what we hear. It’s not simply that we have failed to understand what God is saying to us. It’s that we have preferred not to listen.
Jesus’s famous parable of the sower in Luke 8 outlines various responses to the Word of God. Given how famous the parable is, the passage that follows is often overlooked, yet it has much to say to us about how we listen to God in the preaching of his Word. First, Jesus imagines a ridiculous scenario: lighting a lamp and then putting it under a jar or a bed. This, of course, defeats the purpose of lighting it. It makes no sense. Instead, the lamp goes “on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light” (v. 16). That’s why we light lamps. In the context of the chapter, read alongside the parable of the sower, Jesus is saying that those who have received the Word in faith are like lamps that have been lit. Their purpose is to shine the light of the Word in such a way that others might be drawn to it and welcomed in.
Jesus reinforces that point with this principle: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (v. 17). To understand what is being said here, we should not miss how Jesus uses the same language to talk about his own message. He tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.
Well, so what? What difference should Jesus’s teaching about the Word here really make? Jesus drives home the implications: “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away” (v. 18). This verse serves as a conclusion for the whole section of Luke 8, beginning with the parable of the sower, that deals with the way the Word of God works. Verse 18 tells us that the key issue, the vital factor, must be how we hear the Word.
Hebrews 2:1 makes a similar point. The author urges his readers to “pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” When it comes to the way we listen to preaching, the stakes are far higher than we may at first imagine. Hebrews 2:1 warns us of spiritual drift. Luke 8:18 goes even further and warns of eternal consequences if we “have not” when, through the preaching of the Word, every opportunity to “have” has been afforded us. So what does it mean to take care how we hear? How shall we “pay much closer attention to what we have heard”? These are the questions we hope to answer in this chapter. Put more directly, we need to know how we can get the most from expositional preaching.
The Westminster Larger Catechism offers some important help. It asks, “What is required of those that hear the word preached?” and answers, “It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.”
This is an excerpt from the chapter, “Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching” from David Strain’s book, “Expository Preaching,” part of the Blessings of the Faith series. Pick up a copy of “Expository Preaching” for more insight into the importance and benefits of this approach to the Word of God. Used with permission.

But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).

McGever, Sean. Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024. 240 pp. $18.00
Sean McGever joins the evangelical deconstruction project[1] with his most recent book, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield.  Like the other books in this genre, Ownership denounces white evangelicals for “their” theology and practice, but not on the basis of Scripture.[2]  McGever tells them right at the outset of his book that even if they deplore the black slave trade of the early modern era,[3] they are still mistaken in their view of slavery in general, among other things.  If they want to learn the truth, they must listen to and affirm the so-called singular black perspective and their white allies (6-8, 10).[4]
According to this purported position, all slavery is a sin which “God hates” (184).  To support this claim, McGever briefly describes early accounts of slavery in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.  He then notes that Exodus 21:1-11 regulates slave acquisition, but he then glosses over the rest of the Old Testament to say that it “imagines slavery as a common component of human societies that is utilized for communal and personal gain and a negative experience that the enslaved person seeks to escape” (34-35; incidentally, McGever does not discuss the stipulations in Exodus 21:5-6 for slaves who “love” their masters and do not want to go free).  McGever does not exegete any of the passages on slavery in the New Testament either, but rather cites John Anthony McGuckin (an Eastern Orthodox priest) to say that it has “considerable tension in regard to the issue of slavery: never quite feeling confident enough to come out and denounce it explicitly, since to do so would have been tantamount to a declaration of social revolution” (36).[5]  But God, McGever implies, wanted believers to infer that slavery was 1) wrong and 2) to be peaceably abolished.
For the next eighteen hundred years of Church history (from Ignatius to the Puritans), most Christians did not see it that way or seek its total eradication.  Rather, to McGever’s dismay, a number of them sought to put limits on slave acquisition and treatment, citing Scripture.  The Great Awakening preachers accepted this reasoning and tried to apply it to the African slavery already in their contexts.  From this group of ministers, only John Wesley questioned the institution of slavery later in life due to the influence of the egalitarian Quakers, and then, he only used “natural law” to condemn it (141).
In the concluding chapters of Ownership, McGever returns his gaze to modern white evangelicals whose “spiritual genealogy . . . originates” with eighteenth century “enslavers” (170).  He exhorts these descendants to own, repent, and learn from the mistakes of the Great Awakening preachers (171, 173).[6]  This repentance, he says, must include “a posture of open arms to people of all races who have every right to navigate our open arms on their own terms and in their own timing” (173).  But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).
McGever continues his admonition to white evangelicals by exhorting them to listen to “unlikely voices (like the Quakers for Wesley)” (181) outside of their formative “religious influences” (176) to bring about change that pleases God.  He cites himself as an example of a man who experienced such an alteration:
To question the established norms of my Christian upbringing was something I feared to do out loud.  Instead, I had to do it in private, through hushed personal conversations and quietly learning alternate views wherever I could find them.  Most often, and even in most of my seminary experiences, I had to guide myself if I wanted to consider a different perspective.  Nearly all the Christians I was around tended to provide the best version of their view and the worst (or no) version of alternate views.  It took me quite a while to realize that the church past and present has plenty of beliefs about which faithful Christians disagree, and that there are some things that Christians have come to realize they once believed wrongly – most notably (now), the institution of slavery (181-182).
He then asks: “What alternate voices along the shore of my stream should I listen to?  How should I navigate my own internal questions and instincts about how to honor God?  What are good, less good, and flat-out bad ways to process all of this?”  He says nothing about turning to the Scriptures (Is. 8:20; Acts 17:10-12; I John 4:1), but claims: “These answers require the precious and usually decades-acquired virtue of wisdom” (182).
Since McGever’s own faith was built on a mixture of doubt, instinct, and multiple theological perspectives, he eventually began to:
depart from what I learned in my formative years.  With all due respect to my formative influences, I changed how I balance my time and focus between ministry, family, and personal health.  I changed who I choose to relate to – I have more friends and peers who are women and those who don’t look like me or have the same beliefs as I do.  I changed my views on the roles men and women undertake in the home, community, and church.  Each of these changes came slowly and after much thought and reflection.  Each of these changes represents a departure from what I once believed and how I acted several decades ago (182-183).
McGever now believes that he “cannot predict what specific changes [he] might adopt in the coming decades” (183).  Considering where other deconstructionists have gone before him, it may not be too hard to guess what changes could come next.[7]
Jonathan Peters is an administrative assistant at Reformation Bible Church and Harford Christian School in Darlington, MD.

[1] For a listing of some of the books in this project, see Jonathan Leeman, “Defending Sound Doctrine Against Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism,” 9Marks (October 14, 2021): https://www.9marks.org/journal/sound-doctrine-the-foundation-for-faithful-ministry/editors-note/.
[2] See also Jonathan Peters, “Review: Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond,” Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview 5, no 1 (Fall 2024): 109-111.
[3] Many may do so on the basis of Exodus 21:16, James 2:1, etc.
[4] Deconstructionists at times fail to recognize that there is no monolithic black perspective, just as there is no monolithic white, Asian, indigenous, male, or female perspective.  There are, however, biblical and unbiblical theologies which anyone may embrace.
[5] McGuckin (and McGever) are more or less saying that Christ and His Apostles were moral cowards, contra John 16:8, Acts 5:29, Acts 17:6, etc.
[6] Interestingly, McGever makes no mention of non-white Christians who count the eighteenth century “enslavers” as a part of their spiritual heritage.  One may wonder if McGever would also hold them “responsible” for their spiritual ancestors’ mistakes.  Phillis Wheatley, “An Elegiac Poem On the Death of that celebrated Divine, and eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Revered and Learned Mr. George Whitefield,” Phillis Wheatley Historical Society: http://www.phillis-wheatley.org/mr-george-whitefield/, Thabiti Anyabwile, “This Black Pastor Led a White Church – in 1788,” Christianity Today (May 3, 2017): https://www.christianitytoday.com/2017/05/lemuel-haynes-pioneering-african-american-pastor/, Sherard Burns, “Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner,” in A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2004), 145-17, and Samuel Sey, “Cancel Culture and Christian Culture,” Slow to Write blog (July 3, 2020): https://slowtowrite.com/cancel-culture-and-christian-culture/.
[7] Neil Shenvi notes that the “‘deconstructive’ approach to theology is necessarily a universal acid.  Even if [deconstructive authors] weren’t explicitly committed to challenging evangelical doctrine broadly, their methodological approach makes such an outcome inevitable.  This erosion is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears.  I worry that pastors will embrace these books thinking that their application can be confined to, say, race alone.  But once a white pastor endorses the view that he — as a white male — is blinded by his own white supremacy, unable to properly understand relevant biblical principles due to his social location, and in need of the ‘lived experience’ of oppressed minorities to guide him, how long before someone in his congregation applies the same reasoning to his beliefs about gender?  Or sexuality?”  Neil Shenvi, “Sociology as Theology: The Deconstruction of Power in (Post)Evangelical Scholarship,” Eikon (November 21, 2021): https://cbmw.org/2021/11/21/sociology-as-theology-the-deconstruction-of-power-in-postevangelical-scholarship/.

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