“My brothers and sisters, I myself am convinced about you that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. Nevertheless, I have written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the gospel of God. God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Humility is one of the fundamental virtues necessary for growth and development in the Christian life. Embracing the Gospel begins from a place of humility—we must humbly accept that God is God and we are not. Along the way, though, ever more humility is required both to learn and to teach others. We see both sides of this humility in what Paul says next as he begins to turn much more personal as he is winding down this great letter.

Every writer has a style. There are certain phrases they frequently use; certain stories they regularly tell; certain ways their arguments tend to be crafted. One of Paul’s common approaches was to offer some challenging, toe-stomping observations and then quickly follow this up with, “But I know this doesn’t really apply to you.”

It was a gracious move on his part. It allowed him to challenge them in ways they needed to be challenged while giving them an out to escape the worst of his piercing counsel. It was as if he was saying, “I know you don’t need this right now, and probably really just need to be teaching this to others, but just in case, I’m going to go ahead and tell you this should you ever find yourself needing it.”

That’s what Paul does here. “My brothers and sisters, I myself am convinced about you that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.” Got that? You’re awesome and really don’t need any of this. In fact, you actually need to be teaching other people.

But just in case… “Nevertheless, I have written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the gospel of God.” That is, I’m just saying what God told me to say. You didn’t necessarily grow up with any of this because of your Gentile heritage, so you might need to hear some of this.

Paul’s wording here need not be lost on us. He was instructing them, and all the more boldly on certain points, offering instruction that took the form of commands, because of what God had done for, in, and through him. It was the grace of God that pushed Paul in this direction. It was nothing that came from him. He was not the source of any of this. He was sharing what had been shared with him.

There’s a lesson here. When we share the Gospel, we are merely sharing what has been shared with us. We are not making any of it up on our own. We don’t have the kind of knowledge or wisdom we need to come up with any of this. It’s all God from start to finish. If we try to go off on our own, that’s when things get weird or hateful and quickly. As my theology professor once said, we don’t want innovative theologians. That’s always dangerous.

Embracing this and making sure we are faithful to the message requires great humility on our part. Keep in mind that humility is most fundamentally concerned with honesty. We are honest about God. We are honest about ourselves. We are honest about the problem we are facing. We are honest about the solution God has given in Christ. We don’t have to be creative or clever with any of this. We can just tell the truth, sharing our personal story of the difference that truth has made in our lives.

And the thing is: all of us are called to do this. We are called to share this message with others. We do it so they can hear it. We do it so they can be equipped to do it for yet others.

In Paul’s case, he was called to do it for the sake of the Gentiles. “God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” He was called to engage with this people until they were fully who God was calling them to be. I wonder: with whom is God calling you to engage? Who is someone or perhaps an entire group of people that God is moving in your heart for you to reach with the Gospel until they are fully transformed by it?

Such a work won’t happen overnight. It will take time. Lots of time even. It will require patience and dedication. It may come with sacrifices and even suffering on your part. They may reject you at first. And at second. And at third. Your efforts will advance only in fits and starts. You’ll get pushback from people who naturally oppose you. You’ll get pushback from people who you would have expected to naturally support you. And by the end of your life, you may only see a little bit of movement in the direction you have spent many years trying to go. But when you serve a God who operates on the timeline of eternity, for whom all of human history is but a blip on the radar, what you see as limited success may be the beginning of a great work that leads to the transformation of the world.

When we define success by things like numbers of actual conversions (often measured by baptisms), the sense that we have failed may loom large over our heads and hearts. When we change our metric to faithfulness to God’s call and command, however (which, admittedly, is harder to measure and is why we use things like baptisms and reported conversions to fill in that gap), what God does only during our lifetime starts to matter less. We can trust that He will redeem our best work and make it all the greater still. Ours is to follow faithfully as obedient servants, quietly and consistently advancing His purposes with all the resources He has given us. That’s a goal worth pursuing.