Belly Servers

"St. Paul echoes God's words through Ezekiel when he calls the false teachers "belly servers," or as the NIV renders the passage, those who serve their own appetites (Ro 16:18). They cater not only to their own inclinations but also to those of their hearers. They adapt the message to peoples' preferences and so win them away from the cross, both the cross of Christ and the cross that Christ wants them to embrace. The subtle, perhaps even unrecognized, goal is to win people for the preacher instead of for the cross of Christ, to goal becomes to win people for the ambassador rather than for the one who sent him." Daniel Deutschlander, "Theology of the Cross," page 77