He Could No Longer Tell Whether He Was Serving God or Managing People

Everything he does is good, and that is the problem.

He teaches. He drives. He is at every meeting and he prepares properly for the ones he leads. Nobody could point at a single item in his week and say it should not be there, and if he stopped doing any of it, real people would be worse off.

And somewhere around the fourth year he lost the ability to tell why he was doing any of it.

Not in a crisis way. He did not have a moment. What he noticed was smaller: that when a thing went well he checked the room, and that when somebody senior was absent the preparation was slightly lighter, and that he could not honestly say the second thing had never happened.

He is not a fraud. If you told him he was he would be devastated and he would also be right to be, because a fraud knows and he does not. What he has is a genuine service and an unreadable motive, and no way to separate them.

Paul asks himself the same question in the middle of a letter and does not soften it.

He asks it about himself, in public

Here is the verse, and it is worth noticing who is speaking.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

This is Paul. Late in his ministry, writing to churches he founded, and he is putting the question to himself in a document he knows will be read out loud in rooms.

Which tells you something before the content does: this is a live question for a mature man rather than a beginner's problem. A person who has been at it four years and cannot read his own motive is not behind; he is in the same place as the apostle, asking the same thing.

You are asking a question that an apostle asked about himself in writing. Galatians 1:10 is Paul examining his own motive out loud, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, including the part of a man he cannot get a look at.

The word yet is the whole hinge

Read the conditional clause carefully, because everything turns on one word.

For if I yet pleased men.

Yet here means still, as in: if this were still what I were doing. Which implies there was a time when it was, and that something changed, and that Paul is not describing a temperament he was born with.

That is important for two reasons. It means the condition is common enough that an apostle had it, and it means it is a condition somebody came out of, which makes it a situation rather than an identity.

And note the stakes he attaches: I should not be the servant of Christ. He puts them as alternatives, not as a balance to be struck. He does not say a man should please men less. He says the two are different jobs, and a person is doing one of them.

You are in a situation rather than stuck with a temperament. Galatians 1:10 uses the word yet, which describes a state somebody came out of, and it is by the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:17, that liberty is named as what is there where the Spirit of the Lord is.

Jesus names the mechanism and it is about where honor comes from

There is a sentence in John where He diagnoses this in a group of people, and it is a supply question rather than a courage question.

How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? (John 5:44)

Receive honor one of another. He is describing an economy. There is a circulating currency of regard, everybody in the room is issuing it and receiving it, and it works, and it feels good, and it is real.

And His question is not whether that is nice. It is: how can ye believe, which means He is treating it as an obstruction to faith rather than as a minor vanity.

The reason is in the last phrase: the honor that cometh from God only. There are two supplies, and a person who is well supplied by the first has no urgent need of the second, and faith is what a person does when they need the second.

That is a much more merciful diagnosis than the usual one. The problem is not that a man wants honor. Everybody wants honor and God does not treat that as a defect. The problem is which supply he is drawing on.

You are able to draw on a supply that does not circulate in a room. John 5:44 names the honor that cometh from God only as a separate source, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness of belonging is borne rather than issued by anybody present.

The instruction is to change the address, not the work

The practical correction in the New Testament never asks anybody to do less. It asks them to re-address it.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23)

Whatsoever ye do. The activity is untouched. The teaching, the driving, the preparation, all of it stays.

As to the Lord, and not unto men. Only the address on the front changes, and that is a thing a person can actually do at seven in the morning before a meeting, out loud, in about four seconds.

I have found that this works in the opposite direction to how it sounds. It does not make the work more solemn. It makes it lighter, because a piece of work addressed to a room has to be defended afterward, and a piece of work addressed to the Lord has been delivered the moment it is done.

You are able to change the address without changing the work. Colossians 3:23 leaves the activity and moves the recipient, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 3:16, that a person is strengthened in the inner man for it.

The test He gives is about the unseen version

Jesus gives a test rather than an inspection, and it is designed for exactly this unreadable situation.

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them... But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:1,3-4)

He does not ask anybody to examine their heart. He knows that does not work; a heart under examination performs.

He gives an experiment instead. Do one of them where nobody can see. Not as a permanent policy, and not instead of the visible work, which He never forbids. Do one, unseen, and notice what happens in you.

That is why the physical action on this page is what it is. A man cannot read his own motive by looking at it, and he can find out a great deal by doing one small right thing with the audience removed and paying attention to how much it costs him.

You are able to run an experiment rather than an inspection. Matthew 6:4 makes the unseen version the test and puts the reward with the Father which seeth in secret, and it is by His Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person knows who was watching.