I became a servant of this gospel according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the exercise of his power.
Paul is saying it has nothing to do with him. He did not come up with a plan. He did not decide it was a cool idea to be a servant of the gospel.
When he was drawing up his life ambition (if there ever was a time), one of the options wasn’t to be a carrier of the gospel, with the attendant persecution.
Look at the words he used in this focus verse: “gift of God's grace.” It was not by human learning, it was the gift of God's grace, it was not because he was a first class Pharisee, it was the gift of God's grace. Whatever he understood and had been communicating is because of the gift of God's grace.
He was loaded with the grace of God and that drove him. The grace is like the spiritual programming. The divine determination of how Paul was going to run, the spiritual software that powers his life and ministry.
And then there is the “exercise of the power of God.”
Remember I said before that when the focus is on our uniqueness, the focus is on the Father; when the focus is on oneness among ourselves, the focus is on the Son.
That is why the Father disciplines us individually as sons (see Hebrews 12:5–11) and Jesus addressed his letters to church bodies (Revelation 2-3).
Jesus's prayer emphaised unity (John 17); Jesus spoke to discples about the need for cohesion among themselves talking about the need for the one who will be the greatest to be the servant of all (Mark 9:35, Mark 10:42–45).
And Jesus said that it was the Father who personally revealed that Jesus was the Christ the son of the living God to Peter (Matthew 16:15–17).
And when Paul is writing about his uniqueness in this verse, his focus was on the Father, who gave him the gift of His grace through the exercise of His power.
There is power at play here. Whenever we have the word power, we need to realize that we are talking about opposition that has to be subjugated. There would be no need for power if there was no opposition.
Jesus said that He has given His disciples power to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means harm them (Luke 10:19).
We were also told that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38).
And what did Paul say he became? He said he became the servant of the gospel. Meaning that is what he serves, that is what he gives to the people to meet their needs.
He was convinced that the problem is that people are far from God because of sin, and that God brought His Son to take care of the problem of sin forever, as the solution of the problem between God and man, and that through the sharing of that good news, when the people believe, they will receive the gift of eternal life just as he did.
And that became his lifetime engagement, and even to believers that the letter was written to, he also continued to present the truth of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God to overcome the deathgrip of sin on us.
So, we need to continually hear the gospel, the word of God, that has been send to us to heal us from the entanglement of sin in all our being.
We need the power of the gospel. Why? We need that power since we are in a struggle against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).
Therefore, we need to watch what we expose our minds to in the name of the truth, so that rather than the power at work, we are not being put into bondage with the words we hear.
That is why the Bible rails against false teachers because of the negative effect of their word on us.
It's like food that is not food, like phantom food; you eat it and you are still hungry. We falsely believe that we are fed even though we are starving.
So we repeatedly fall on our faces. And when the fight begins, you are flat on your face before the enemy throws a punch (speaking metaphorically).
When Jesus said man shall live by every word of God (Luke 4:4), it seems to me that He was saying the word of God is spiritual food, and when He told Peter feed My sheep (John 21:15–17), I think He was saying the same thing.
The truth must be taught so that we can be strong in the Lord (Ephesians 6:10-12) not weak. That is the truth. And we should also note that Jesus warned against certain teachings. And one thing he said must be preached is the gospel (Matthew 24:14).