This morning my daughter went to the hospital with her husband to give birth to their third child. For most women this is an agonizing process. But in the end it results in great joy as they see their baby born.
In a spiritual sense, Paul went through the same process as a minister of the Gospel. He says so to a congregation of believers in Galatians 4:19:
My little children, I am again suffering labor pains for you until Christ is formed in you.
This church had come into being as a result of God’s Spirit at work through Paul’s proclamation of the gospel. But shortly after Paul left them, the church was infiltrated by false teachers who troubled them (Gal. 1:7) and unsettled them (5:12) by adding additional requirements to faith in Christ. Basically, these false teachers, called Judaizers, told the Galatians that they had to become like the Jews in order to be good Christians.
But this teaching contradicted the gospel, because it divided the Jews and Gentiles inside the church, where believers “are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Apparently, these false teachers were jealous of Paul and were trying to get others to follow them, whereas Paul’s goal was to see Christ “formed” in them.
The character of Christ had already been taking shape in Paul’s life. Earlier in this same letter he wrote, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Paul longed to see the same spiritual development in the lives of these church members. Philip Graham Ryken wrote,
This ought to be the goal of every pastor: not the favor of men, but the formation of Christ.
Ryken goes on to say,
This kind of spiritual formation does not happen overnight. It takes a while for an embryo to grow into an infant, and then for a child to grow into an adult. Cell must be added to cell, tissue to tissue, sinew to bone. In the same way, the Spirit gradually uses God’s Word to make God’s children like God’s Son.
In Galatians 4:19, Paul addresses the church as “my little children,” a term expressing parental affection. In his letter to the Thessalonians, he likens himself to “a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thess. 2:7). Then in the next sentence he writes, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”
Love is what motivates a mother to suffer through the pains of childbirth. Deep affection drives her to care well for her young children. The same is true of pastors and other Christians who labor hard to see believers become like Christ.
Moments ago my wife (who is with my daughter) texted me to say that the nurse was about to “start Pitocin,” a natural hormone that induces labor. I suppose we could say that love is the pastor’s Pitocin. The compassion of Christ is what initiates labor in the heart of spiritual leaders, until they see Christ fully formed in God’s people.
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Col. 1:28-29)
My daughter has a long, agonizing day ahead of her. Yet I remember the words of Jesus: “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (John 16:21).
As believers, we share in a similar joy as people are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6) and then “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). As John the apostle testified, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).
Where are you on the path to Christian maturity? What pains will you endure to help others along the way?
