THE RECOVERY OF THE PRIESTHOOD FOR GOD'S BUILDING
Message Six
Being Laboring Priests of the Gospel of God by Serving God in Our Spirit in the Gospel of His Son
Scripture Reading: Rom. 1:9; 15:16; 16:25
I. "That I might be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, a laboring priest of the gospel of God, in order that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit"—Rom. 15:16:
A. Paul's being a laboring priest of the gospel of God to minister Christ to the Gen-tiles was a priestly service to God, and the Gentiles whom he gained through his gospel preaching were an offering presented to God—1 Pet. 2:5:
1. By this priestly service many Gentiles, who were unclean and defiled, were sanctified in the Holy Spirit and became such an offering, acceptable to God—Rom. 15:16; 16:4-5.
2. These Gentiles were set apart from things common and were saturated with God's nature and element and were thus sanctified both positionally and dispositionally; such a sanctification is in the Holy Spirit—6:19; 15:16.
3. Based on Christ's redemption, the Holy Spirit renews, transforms, and sep-arates unto holiness those who have been regenerated by believing into Christ—3:24; 12:2; John 3:15.
B. Paul is a pattern of the priesthood of the gospel; in the Epistle to the Romans, which concerns the gospel of God, he tells us how sinners can be saved and jus-tified by believing in the Lord, how they advance in Christ by being sanctified and transformed, and how they present themselves to God as living sacrifices so that they may become members of the Body of Christ to live the church life, expressing Christ corporately and awaiting His coming—1 Thes. 2:1-12; Acts 20:17-36; Rom. 1:16-17; 3:24-26; 12:1, 4-5; 13:11.
C. The New Testament service ordained by God is that all believers are priests to serve God with the offerings that He desires—Rev. 1:5-6; 5:9-10; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9:
1. As priests of the gospel of God, we offer saved sinners, as parts of the en-larged and corporate Christ, to God as sacrifices—Rom. 15:16.
2. The offering of the believers to God is in three steps:
a. Those who preach the gospel offer the newly saved ones to God as spiri-tual sacrifices—v. 16; 1 Pet. 2:5.
b. After the new believers grow and begin to understand what it is to be a believer in Christ, they are encouraged to offer themselves to God as a living sacrifice—Rom. 12:1.
c. As the believers continue to grow unto maturity, those who labor on them present them full-grown in Christ—Col. 1:28.
D. In order to function as priests of the gospel, we need to see that the gospel of God includes the entire book of Romans; this Epistle shows us that when we preach the gospel, we make sinners the sons of God and members of the Body of Christ, and we help them to grow so that they can be active members in the practice of the Body life in the local churches—1:16-17; 3:24; 5:10; 8:16; 12:2, 4-5.
E. The service of the priesthood of the gospel is the service of the church as the Body of Christ; the focus of our service is to save sinners and offer them to God, and the goal of our service is the building up of the Body of Christ—15:16; 12:4-5; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Eph. 4:11-12, 16.
II. "God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of His Son"— Rom. 1:9:
A. For all the requirements related to the believers revealed in the New Testament, especially that of announcing the gospel of God, we need to receive the divine supply of the Body through the dispensing of the processed Triune God—Eph. 3:2; Heb. 4:16; Rom. 5:17, 21; John 7:37-38; Acts 6:4; Phil. 1:5-6, 19-25.
B. We need to see that our service to God in the gospel is our worship to God; in the New Testament, serving God is actually the same as worshipping God—Matt. 4:9-10; S. S. 1:2; cf. Psa. 2:11-12:
1. Paul said that the believers at Thessalonica "turned to God from the idols to serve a living and true God"—1 Thes. 1:9:
a. God must be living to us and in us in every aspect of our daily life; the fact that God controls, directs, corrects, and adjusts us, even in such small things as our thoughts and motives, is a proof that He is living—Phil. 1:8; 2:5, 13; 1:20.
b. We live under the control, direction, and correction of a living God to be a pattern of the glad tidings that we spread—1 Thes. 1:5-8; 2:10; 2 Thes. 3:5.
c. As believers in Christ, we must live a life in our spirit which bears the testimony that the God we worship and serve is living in the details of our life; the reason we do not do or say certain things should be that God is living in us—Rom. 8:6, 16.
2. The Greek word for serve in Romans 1:9 means "serve in worship," as used in Matthew 4:10, 2 Timothy 1:3, Philippians 3:3, and Luke 2:37; Paul con-sidered his preaching of the gospel as a worship and service to God, not merely a work.
3. When we come to serve God, or worship God, we need a blood-purified con-science; our defiled conscience needs to be purified so that we may serve God in a living way—Heb. 9:14; 10:22; 1 John 1:7, 9; Acts 24:16; cf. 1 Tim. 4:7.
4. To serve God in the gospel is to serve Him in the all-inclusive Christ, because the gospel is simply Christ Himself—Acts 5:42; Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29.
5. In order to preach the gospel of God's Son, we must be in our regenerated spirit (1:9); in the book of Romans Paul stressed that whatever we are (2:29; 8:5-6, 9), whatever we have (vv. 10, 16), and whatever we do toward God (1:9; 7:6; 8:4, 13; 12:11) must be in our spirit.
6. Paul served God in his regenerated spirit by the indwelling Christ, the life-giving Spirit, not in his soul by the power and ability of the soul; this is the first important item in his preaching of the gospel.
7. The gospel of God, unto which Paul was separated, is the subject of the book of Romans; the book of Romans may be regarded as the fifth gospel—1:1; 2:16; 16:25:
a. The first four Gospels are concerning the incarnated Christ, Christ in the f lesh, living among His disciples; the gospel in Romans is concerning the resurrected Christ as the Spirit living within His disciples—8:2, 6, 9-11, 16.
b. We need the fifth gospel, the book of Romans, to reveal the subjective Savior within us as the subjective gospel of Christ.
c. The central message of the book of Romans is that God desires to trans-form sinners in the f lesh into sons of God in the spirit in order to con-stitute the Body of Christ expressed as the local churches—v. 29; 12:1-5; ch. 16.
d. All of us need to function as priests of the gospel of God according to the revelation of the book of Romans; we need to learn the elements and details of the gospel, we need to experience the full content of the gospel, and we need to exercise our spirit to learn how to minister the gospel— 15:16.
C. "We are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh"—Phil. 3:3; cf. Rom. 2:28-29:
1. The flesh refers to all that we are and have in our natural being; anything natural, whether it is good or evil, is the f lesh—Phil. 3:4-6.
2. As believers in Christ, we should not trust in anything that we have by our natural birth, for everything of our natural birth is part of the flesh.
3. Even though we have been regenerated, we may continue to live in our fallen nature, boast in what we do in the flesh, and have confidence in our natu-ral qualifications; therefore, it is important that we be deeply and personally touched by these verses in Philippians 3.
4. We need the Lord's light to shine on us concerning our nature, our deeds, and our confidence in the flesh; we need to be enlightened by the Lord to see that we still live too much by the f lesh and that we boast in our deeds and qualifications.
5. We need theLord'slight to shineonussothatwehavenotrust in ournat-ural qualities, qualifications, ability, or intelligence; only then shall we be able to testify that our confidence is wholly in the Lord; after we are enlight-ened in this way, we shall truly serve and worship God in our spirit and by the Spirit—vv. 7-8.
6. One day, when the light shines on us concerning this, we will want to pros-trate ourselves before the Lord and confess how unclean our nature is; then we will condemn everything we do by our fallen nature; we will see that in the eyes of God whatever is done in the fallen nature is evil and worthy of condemnation.
7. Formerly, we boasted in our deeds and qualifications, but the time will come when we will condemn the flesh with its qualifications; then we shall boast in Christ alone, realizing that in ourselves we have absolutely no ground for boasting.
8. Only when we have been enlightened by God shall we be able to say truly that we have no trust in our natural qualifications, ability, or intelligence; only then shall we be able to testify that our confidence is wholly in the Lord; after we are enlightened in this way, we shall truly serve and worship God in our spirit and by the Spirit.
D. Our work and labor for the Lord in the gospel is not by our natural life and natural ability but by the Lord's resurrection life and power; resurrection is the eternal principle in our service to God—Num. 17:8; 1 Cor. 15:10, 58; 16:10:
1. The life-giving Spirit is the reality of the Triune God, the reality of resur-rection, and the reality of the Body of Christ—John 16:13-15; 20:22; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Eph. 4:4.
2. Resurrection means that everything is of God and not of us, that God alone is able and that we are not able, and that everything is done by God and not by ourselves—Num. 17:8.
3. All those who know resurrection have given up hope in themselves; they know that they cannot make it; everything that is of death belongs to us, and everything that is of life belongs to the Lord—2 Cor. 1:8-9; cf. Eccl. 9:4.
4. We must acknowledge that we are nothing, have nothing, and can do noth-ing; we must come to the end of ourselves to be convinced of our utter uselessness—Exo. 2:14-15; 3:14-15; Luke 22:32-33; 1 Pet. 5:5-6.
5. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit lives in us, enabling us to do what we could never do in ourselves—1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 1:8-9, 12; 4:7-18.
6. When we do not live by our natural life but live by the divine life within us, we are in resurrection; the issue of this is the reality of the Body of Christ as the goal of the gospel of God—Phil. 3:10-11; Eph. 1:22-23.