When we allow the church to sink to a compromised place of clergy-client commerce, there is no power to exhort or admonish or rebuke or reprove – all of which are called for in the church of the New Testament. If we opt for a more casual democratic arrangement, then just as in any human forum, those who pay the bills will call the tune. Those in leadership will have no choice but to minister out of the posture of educated counselors and facilitators, and those ministered to will vote with their giving and attendance. No one will ever preach sermons like we find in Luke 4 (at Nazareth) or John 6 (at Capernaum) or John 8 (at the temple in Jerusalem) or Acts 28 (in Rome) in this environment!

Paul gave himself to the word of exhortation, and as a result when the Holy Spirit put words of exhortation in his mouth he spoke them with amazing boldness and clarity. He charged people before the elect angels and in the sight of the God the judge of the dead and the living. He commanded that the saints learn how to conduct themselves in the church of the Living God. He handed those with habitual and defiant sin over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, and he welcomed them back into the church when the job was done.

Throughout all Paul’s letters he is constantly beseeching, appealing, charging, encouraging, warning, admonishing, and even begging those under his leadership that they walk worthy of the high calling of Christ. All of this is exhortation. All of this is focused on fighting the good fight of the faith.

The call for a life as a living sacrifice is paralleled by Paul’s call to Timothy for a soldier who doesn’t entangle himself in civilian affairs, and the Olympic champion who strives for masteries, for victory. Our consecration, our possessing the vessels of our physical bodies in sanctification, is dependent on both this call and the single-eye focus and absolute devotion that must accompany it.