True Christian ministry is affectionate affliction for another’s sanctification. You need all three pieces. You must have a genuine love for the person you are serving, not just a “I love them for what they can do for me” mentality. You must be committed to laboring on through suffering and difficulty. True Christian ministry fights against the world, the flesh, and the devil, so you should expect and prepare for strong resistance. And finally, your goal should always be that whoever you are ministering to becomes more like Jesus.

I recently was teaching a Sunday School at my local Church on Galatians 4:12-21. It occurred to me as I was studying that Galatians 4:19 gives a wonderful summary of 3 marks of Christian ministry:
My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!
Galatians 4:19, ESV
In one little verse, Paul lays out the affection inherent to Christian ministry, the suffering that accompanies Christian ministry, and the goal of Christian ministry. I wonder if much of what bears the title of “Christian ministry” actually reflects what Paul describes in Galatians 4:19. I know in my own life, I have found myself involved in “ministry activities” with the wrong heart attitude or the wrong focus. Today, I want to think through what Paul says in this single verse and it’s implications for how you and I “do ministry” in the local Church.
Background
Paul’s words in Galatians 4:19 appear in a unique section of Galatians. Up until this point, Paul has directly addressed the Galatians leaving the true gospel of “justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone” to follow a false gospel of “Jesus and circumcision saves.” Paul defended his apostleship to the Church and laid out in chapter 3 that the Old Testament does not teach a salvation by works. Throughout the first three chapters of Galatians, Paul has expressed his astonishment that the “foolish Galatians” could be led astray so quickly from the true Gospel into error.
In chapter 4:12-19, however, Paul’s tone changes. His tone is less harsh and he addresses the Church more personally. I think in these verses you see Paul’s heart towards the Galatian Church which puts the rest of what Paul says in the letter into perspective. It is in this personal section that Paul gives that great summary of the marks of Christian ministry in 4:19. Paul is sharing with the Galatians both the love he has for the Church and the pain he feels that they are listening to false teachers. So, with that context in mind, how does Paul describe his ministry to the Galatians and what the the implications for Christian ministry in general?
First Mark of Christian Ministry: Genuine affection for those you serve
The first statement Paul makes in Galatians 4:19 is “my little children.” This is the only time in the letter that Paul uses this phrase to refer to the Galatian Church. Contained in this little phrase is a profound metaphor for the affection Paul has for the Church. If you are a parent, then you know the unique, special love a father or mother has for his or her child. Even when your child is misbehaving and needs correction and discipline, as a parent you still love them genuinely and deeply. In fact, even your correction is an externalization of the affection you have for your child.
Paul is saying the same thing here. At the time, the Galatians were listening to false teachers that were making Paul out to be their enemy. Yet even then, Paul still views these believers with a deep love. Even though Paul has been correcting the Galatian Church throughout the letter to the Galatians, this verse makes it clear that this correction came from a place of affection, not anger. Just as a parent genuinely wants the best for his or her child, Paul truly cares for the Galatian’s souls and wants the best for them on a spiritual level.
Implication: Do you serve out of a love for others? or do you serve to “get something out of it” for yourself?
What is the implication for you and I? One of the marks of Christian ministry is a true care and genuine affection for the souls of those you serve. True Christian ministry flows out of a love for others. If you serve in ministry, whether that is at Church or in the home or when you parent or when you disciple or when you teach with an attitude of “I am doing this so I can get something out of it” then you are not involved in Christian ministry. Christian ministry is about serving the other person, not so that you can “get something in return.”
Now, certainly as you pour yourself out for others, you will receive spiritual blessings yourself. However, the starting point of Christian ministry is not you wanting or needing something from those you serve. Rather, you start with a genuine love and affection for the other person. And this love, like it did in Paul’s case, can lead to correction and direct conversation that might not be pleasant. But for the one involved in true Christian ministry, love of others, not of self, will dominate all you do.
Read More
Related Posts:

I accept the fact that one can love people of the same sex or love multiple people at the same time, but I will not give you approval for sexual behavior with these people any more than I will give approval for people who love someone married to someone else or even those who love somebody but are not married to that to person to engage in sexual behavior. I’m not going to probe into anybody’s personal affairs nor will I find the need to comment on them, but if I am asked to affirm such behavior, I cannot do so. I believe that “love is love” indeed, but not that any kind of love justifies sexual behavior—precisely because not every form of sexual behavior can help one in reaching that end in God I identified above.

One of the administrators at my school recently asked faculty to contribute a “solidarity statement.” The email specified what was being sought:
For your statement, we’re asking you to share how you personally will engage in the work of creating an inclusive and equitable campus community that truly values all. What, specifically, will you do in your classroom, in your advising meetings, in your mentorship or research with students, or in other areas of your professional life? Our BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students, as well as those who identify with other historically marginalized groups, need to know they have allies at St. Thomas who will actively stand and act in solidarity with them. And as teachers, we have the wonderful opportunity to not only serve as allies for some but to educate all.
You may have heard of this through Rod Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative. [i] Some colleague of mine leaked this to Mr. Dreher. I didn’t do it, nor do I know who did. But I fully approve of the leaking. As Mr. Dreher notes, this is the “woke version of a loyalty oath.” As he quotes my leaker colleague, this is “a clear violation of academic freedom,” putting untenured faculty in the position of either saying nothing and thus endangering the possibility of tenure (silence is violence, don’t you know?) or penning “some b.s. made up stuff and violat[ing] your conscience.” Would a statement that simply affirms the dignity of all human beings fit the request? Would a statement that supports positions contrary to Catholic teaching on sexual morality be acceptable as part of this project at a Catholic school? Would a statement that affirms Catholic teaching on sexual morality be deemed to show solidarity? Some colleagues wrote a joint letter asking that the project be shut down. Another colleague asked whether this was a requirement, and the answer was given that it is fully optional. Of course, it wasn’t shut down and these statements now are available on the interior-facing website. I read through a number of them. Some are fully woke statements, beginning with statements of identity such as “As a cisgender white male” before committing to looking at everything through a progressive political lens, always considering one’s own sinfulness in light of it, and acting on some specified course of action such as asking for “all-gender restrooms.” Others are rather formulaic and generic recitations of some of the phrases of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hymnal. Still others are rather clever statements that fully comport with a Christian viewpoint and focus on the Jewish and Christian teaching about the image of God, the good of liberal education to help us understand each other, or pick out some element of the faculty member’s research or teaching that is getting at racial or sexual biases without committing the professor to the progressive worldview that animates the DEI office and much of the university administration. In short, they don’t sink to the level of “some b.s.” I applaud these colleagues for keeping their integrity, but I think the difficulty is that actual concrete speech on my campus as on many others keeps getting pushed away. One can get away with saying something general if it strays from the DEI-orthodoxy in these statements but rarely something particular.
I did not write a solidarity statement for the university at the time, but I’ve been thinking about what it might involve, as a believing Catholic Christian and political conservative, to write a real statement that is not limited to generalities. So here is my attempt. It represents my views alone.
First, for all students of any and every description.

I vow to treat you all with the dignity that is yours because you are made in the image of God, with free will, a rational mind, and an end that has been given by God himself. That end is to know, love, and serve God, so as to live as happily as you can in this life and in the fullest happiness forever with God.
Though we were made with these capacities and this destiny, the human situation is that we are a fallen race. Because of a catastrophe at the beginning of human history, in which humans rejected that call to follow God, we are all sinners. We sometimes refuse to God’s will for our lives, even when it is blazingly obvious that accepting it will make us happy. I will keep in mind that you—like me—are morally and spiritually frail and can make decisions that are wrong or even morally bad. I will not cancel you because God does not do so.
Instead of canceling humanity, God’s solution was to become one with all of us, uniting himself to human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, who followed God perfectly even to the point of death at the hands of the most powerful government in the world. Because of that perfect obedience, he rose again from the dead in his human body, ascended into heaven, and then sent his Holy Spirit to his Church. Every human being’s end can be achieved through being united to Jesus Christ and his Church. You may or may not be Catholic, but you have chosen to attend a Catholic university. I will do my best not merely to teach you about particular subjects, but about how to view the world through the lens of this wonderful belief that God not only created you in his image but came to make that tarnished image shine again and fill it with his life.
I will do my best not only to make you feel valued, but to know your value.

Second, for BIPOC students (Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color), I’d like to say first what I will not do in my solidarity.

First, apart from this little statement I will never think of you or talk about you as “BIPOC,” which seems to lump everybody into a category on the basis of whether you think of yourself or are categorized as “white.”
Because this category is completely arbitrary and does not take into account your own very diverse experiences and understandings from your own particular communities, nor your deepest held beliefs, I will not assume all or even most “BIPOC” people think alike on issues of politics, policy, and the deepest things.
Nor will I ever tell you, as so many do these days, that “you’re not black” or that “you are brown people speaking with a white voice,” or any of the other political pressure statements designed to keep people in a particular political stable by threatening them with excommunication from some ethnic or racial group.
I will not think of you as victims nor encourage you to think of yourselves as victims. You live in a great country in which, though white racism still exists (and will always exist, just as envy, hatred, lust, resentment, and every other sinful thought and attitude will exist until Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead), it is rare on the ground. You have endless opportunities in this great country of ours, and there are both countless individuals and institutional measures designed to help people of all backgrounds.
I will not grade you differently from white students. You have the same dignity, the same great possibilities, and the same need for critical and constructive feedback as white students. To expect less of you has been called “the soft bigotry of low expectations” and it is wrong.

What will I do?

I will hold you to the same standards as everybody else, knowing that you can handle the truth about your work and you can improve it with solid effort and the help available to you.
To that end, I will engage you as I do every other student, offering you the same opportunities to get extra help by meeting me in my office, getting feedback on your work—including comments on drafts of papers—and helping you in thinking through the issues you are learning about in my class, other classes, or even just in life.
I will talk to you in the same way in class and out as I do every other student. Academically, this means that I will help you hone your ideas and challenge you. In class, I will occasionally banter with you, make jokes about you and your verbal mistakes that are funny, and in general make you feel as though you belong as I do every other student regardless of race.
When I say I will talk to you the same way, that also means I will not talk down to you. This is your bonus for choosing a political conservative as a professor. As social psychologists discovered several years ago, white liberals tend to use a “competence downshift”—also known as dumbing down their language—to many minorities, especially black people, whereas “if you’re a white conservative, your diction won’t depend on the presumed race of your interlocutor.”[ii]
That further means I may express disagreement with your views, even on tough issues that sometimes have race as an element. I don’t believe in a great deal of what is said about racial issues from a progressive perspective, and you might not either. A college classroom is the place to hash out arguments in search of the truth. When many people in academic and public life say they want an “open and honest discussion” about issues, they really just want to hear their own views affirmed. We may agree on some issues and disagree on others—just as happens when everybody’s from the exact same racial, ethnic, or cultural background!—but we can argue about the merits of the positions and seek the truth together.
I will also work to oppose the very existence of the DEI office, which I do not believe actually helps students of color all that much, though it provides cushy jobs to people in higher education and further politicizes campuses.[iii]

Now, for the students identifying as “LGBTQIA+.”

For all of you, I will treat you with all the respect that is due to you as human beings and will treat you with the same respect indicated above. That means speaking honestly to you. If I get to know you in class or out and the subject comes up, I will encourage you not to locate your true identity in either your sexual desires or a perceived “gender” that is separate from your biological sex. I will encourage you to locate your true identity first and foremost as a child of God, made in his image and called to eternal life with him. Other aspects of you such as your desires and your ideas might be important to know in learning how to teach you or help you in various ways, but they are not who you are.
I accept the fact that one can love people of the same sex or love multiple people at the same time, but I will not give you approval for sexual behavior with these people any more than I will give approval for people who love someone married to someone else or even those who love somebody but are not married to that to person to engage in sexual behavior. I’m not going to probe into anybody’s personal affairs nor will I find the need to comment on them, but if I am asked to affirm such behavior, I cannot do so. I believe that “love is love” indeed, but not that any kind of love justifies sexual behavior—precisely because not every form of sexual behavior can help one in reaching that end in God I identified above.
I am happy to call you whatever you say your name or nickname is, but I will not use pronouns of you that are different from your biological sex and instead represent what you consider your gender. I will not go out of my way to use what I think your correct pronouns are, but I will not use other pronouns. Some people think this is hatred, saying that to do so means “denying your existence.” I do believe you exist, and I also believe that you were fearfully and wonderfully made by God either as a male or a female. Gender identity is a sense of one’s identity as either male or female. That sense might be wrong if it doesn’t match with your biology. I believe that it is accepting that gift and call of your nature that will ultimately bring you happiness. I stand in solidarity with you as a person and thus will not affirm anything that is untrue about you because I believe that such falsehoods will hurt you.
Similarly, if called upon to explain my positions to you, I will do so with care and love. If called upon to tell a friend the truth, it is wrong not to do so even if it upsets the friend.
I will work to protect you from unjust discrimination and hatred. That includes anybody who calls you vile names or refuses to serve you in getting the necessities of life. I will even help you get the use of a single-stall restroom if you feel uncomfortable using the restroom of your own sex. I cannot, however, support measures that allow you to use the restroom or locker room of the opposite sex. I believe that women and men deserve privacy from the other sex in these settings. I also cannot support measures that allow biological men to participate in sports against biological women. It is unfair to allow men, who enjoy a number of biological advantages in strength and speed, to compete with women.

A final word to each and every student.

I think the very idea that we ought to compose “solidarity statement” to individual groups is a bad idea because it seems to assume that you should mistrust people and assume the worst in them—that they discriminate against you on the basis of race or that they hate you because they disagree with you. I began by noting that my solidarity is with every person. I mean that. And I promise never to write another solidarity statement again. If you agree with me on this point, I ask that you stand in solidarity against such initiatives.

[i] Rod Dreher, “The Grand DEI Inquisitor,” October 25, 2021.
[ii] Isaac Stanley-Becker, “White liberals dumb themselves down when they speak to black people, a new study contends,” Washington Post, November 30, 2018. The article quotes one of the researchers as saying that this difference is due to the fact that “we know empirically that white conservatives are less likely to be interested in getting along with racial minorities,” making it sound as though conservatives are somehow hostile to minorities. But you should understand what this really means: conservatives are not interested in getting along with anybody on the basis of race. We’re interested in what you think, believe, and do.
[iii] A new study by the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank, to be sure—looks at the introduction of such diversity officers at the K-12 level and discovers that though they do a lot of political activism, their work does not close any racial achievement gaps. In fact, they sometimes exacerbate them. I’ll bet the same would be true at the university level. See Equity Elementary: “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Staff in Public Schools.
The featured image is “In der Schulklasse” (19th century) by an anonymous artist, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
David Deavel is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Co-Director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy, and Visiting Professor at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). He holds a PhD in theology from Fordham and is a winner of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award. With Jessica Hooten Wilson, he edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (Notre Dame, 2020). With Liz Kelly, he co-hosts the Deep Down Things podcast. Besides his academic publications, Dr. Deavel’s writing has appeared in many journals, including Catholic World Report, First Things, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal.
Source

While the present creation is described as being subject to futility (Rom. 8:20), there is in store a new creation. Against the bleak backdrop of this fallen world, the apostle whets our appetites: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). 

We mentioned last time that in the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon brings to bear phrases and terms and scenarios that give us perspective and sharpen the visual acuity of our faith as God Himself ministers to us. These expressions capture life in a fallen world and resonate with our common experience. Not only do they set the tone, they set the stage for another reality, a redemptive reality.
Probably the best known phrase associated with Ecclesiastes is the one that opens and closes the discourse of the Preacher. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2; 12:8). Often, we associate vanity with conceit, where we think highly of ourselves and believe others should share our opinion.
But in Ecclesiastes, vanity has more to do with frustration, fruitlessness, futility, and failure. We will see this vividly at play across the various dimensions of life addressed in the book. Best laid plans come to naught. Cosmetic efforts to hold time at bay ultimately fail. Escape through pleasure only blinds to the inevitable. Seeking meaning through religion comes up empty. And where is God in all this? It’s hard to tell. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
Another expression found in Ecclesiastes that sets the tone has to do with the setting, the milieu, in which we experience vanity. After opening with his observation that all is vanity, the Preacher introduces us to this second phrase: “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Eccl. 1:3). The collective answer of Ecclesiastes is not a happy one, at least to all appearances.
“Under the sun” speaks to the created order. All of life transpires under the sun that brings us warmth and light. But for the Preacher the expression conveys another reality. The world in which we live is a fallen world. Sin has entered in to the created order, bringing disorder, dysfunction, decay, and death. Thorns infest the ground, and we are afflicted by them.
Read More
Related Posts: