Albert Mohler as soon as said, “The Christian pastor holds the best workplace of human accountability in all creation.” But of all of the excessive positions one can fill in society—a member of Congress, a golf skilled, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and many others.—the pastorate wouldn’t even make the highest ten in most individuals’s minds. Is the designation “best workplace … in all creation” an apt description or hyperbole?
Mohler continues, “[The pastor] known as to evangelise the Phrase, to show the reality to God’s individuals, to steer God’s individuals in worship, to have a tendency the flock as a caring shepherd, and to mobilize the church for Christian witness and repair.” Now that’s a excessive calling!
Notably, Mohler’s view of the pastorate isn’t any totally different than what we discover in Scripture: “[God] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and academics, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for increase the physique of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12).
The place does the pastor-teacher function come from? Who got here up with it? In line with Paul, God did. He put it in place as a present to the church—a present of the ascended Christ for His bride. The truth that the workplace originated with God Himself speaks to its immense worth.
The pastor’s ministry is a present that God’s individuals typically neglect to their peril. If we’re to honor the place that God has carved out within the church, then it’s very important we perceive it. Ephesians 4:11–13 outlines the basics and the capabilities of the function.
Fundamentals of the Pastor-Instructor Function
Based mostly on Paul’s broader New Testomony instructing on the difficulty, we perceive the sample of management to be certainly one of each parity and plurality—that’s, ideally, the pastor-teacher is an elder among the many different elders in a church (1 Tim. 5:17). Nonetheless, inside this shared management, there must be a chief among the many leaders. The buck has to cease with somebody. Knowledge would dictate that the individual with the first instructing function greatest fills this place. That approach, he can steer the ship, so to talk, by means of the common preaching of the Scriptures.
With the practicalities of the workplace in thoughts, what’s the elementary motive for which God established the pastorate within the first place? It’s said in verse 12: “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry”—in different phrases, in order that the physique of Christ could also be strengthened.
Apparently, not all English translations render verse 12 correctly. The King James Model inserts a comma after “saints.” (Take into accout, there’s no linguistic authority for commas in Bible translation. The unique languages don’t have them.) Right here’s how the KJV reads, with a part of verse 11 included for context: “He gave … shepherds and academics, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the physique of Christ.”
By including the comma, the translators modified the verse’s which means. It locations the accountability of equipping the saints and the work of the ministry squarely into the pastor-teacher’s arms. However the textual content, rightly translated, paints for us a unique image: The pastor equips for ministry; the saints present ministry. This sample is a matter not solely of knowledge but additionally of divine instruction. It’s God’s appointed means for “increase the physique of Christ.”
Capabilities of the Pastor-Instructor Function
With the basics for the pastor-teacher workplace established, verses 12–13 deal with its capabilities. In different phrases, what occurs when the pastor-teacher function is rightly understood in a church? Paul will reply this query with three phrases: ministry, unity, and maturity.
Ministry
Efficient ministry will outcome from a correctly functioning pastorate. Two phrases in verse 12 deserve a better look: “ministry” and “equip.”
The phrase “ministry” is diakonia within the Greek, from which we get deacon or deaconess. It merely means doing the works of service. It’s the identical phrase we discover in Luke 10:40, the place Luke tells us, “Martha was distracted with a lot serving.” The pastor-teacher serves his individuals when he teaches the Bible in such a approach that the instruments for ministry are positioned of their arms, empowering them for work.
The second phrase, “equip,” is a medical time period. It offers with orthopedics, used, as an example, within the resetting of a limb. It’s additionally used within the Gospels to explain the disciples mending their fishing nets (Matt. 4:21). With that fishing imagery in our minds, right here’s what it means to equip: The pastor applies God’s Phrase to God’s individuals by the facility of God’s Spirit, inflicting the tangled, knotted, and disjointed options of their lives to realign with God’s functions.
How God’s individuals hearken to God’s Phrase is important.
This understanding radically adjustments the thought of God’s Phrase being taught. It strikes us instantly from the thought of “Was it good? Did I prefer it? Did it make really feel good?” to the extra urgent questions: “Was I geared up as God’s Phrase was proclaimed? Did it put together me to glorify God in my each day duties?” How God’s individuals hearken to God’s Phrase is important , for God makes use of the pastor-teacher’s instruction to construct up His physique.
Accepting the authority of God’s Phrase in our lives is an integral a part of being Christian. Hear James on the matter: “Due to this fact put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and obtain with meekness the implanted phrase, which is ready to save your souls. However be doers of the phrase, and never hearers solely, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:21–22). And Paul reminds the Thessalonians, “While you acquired the phrase of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not because the phrase of males however as what it truly is, the phrase of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess. 2:13).
We see, then, the very important function of the Scriptures within the Christian life broadly and within the pastor-teacher’s operate particularly. It’s essential to acknowledge, nevertheless, that Paul doesn’t set up a direct hyperlink between instructing the Bible (Eph. 4:11) and a mature church (v. 13). The lacking hyperlink in a lot of our church buildings is verse 12: equipping the saints to offer ministry. It’s not sufficient to take a seat below good Bible instructing. We should additionally take it with us, meditating on its implications as we do the work of ministry.
Like an orchestra, by which each individual has an assigned instrument and half to play, so every member of Christ’s church should work correctly collectively if we might attain maturity (v. 16).
Unity
The correctly functioning pastorate will lead not solely to fruitful ministry but additionally however unity. Paul has already urged the Ephesians to keep up the unity that’s theirs by means of Christ (4:3 ). And in verse 13, he speaks of the unity to which God’s individuals attain. Briefly, unity is each maintained and attained.
It’s not sufficient to take a seat below good Bible instructing. We should additionally take it with us, meditating on its implications as we do the work of ministry.
The church’s unity is what makes us distinctive. Certainly, church historical past testifies that we’ve at all times been handiest after we’re most countercultural. It’s after we try and assimilate into the tradition that we grow to be irrelevant. Many right this moment have deserted the church looking for the numinous—some existential dimension that isn’t met by the trivia represented in church buildings that try to achieve the world by changing into just like the world.
However the church is meant to be radically set aside. And it’s as a result of the church’s uniqueness is present in our unity—unity within the religion and within the information and love of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:13). We aren’t like some other group. We aren’t a membership by which we grant admittance based mostly on one’s achievements or social standing. The entryway into the church is by God’s grace. Samuel Rutherford rightly stated, “Down along with your topsail. Stoop, stoop! It’s a low entry to go in at heaven’s gates.”
Our unity, Paul asserts, is caused by information of Christ. The query for our church members is obvious: Do they know the Lord Jesus Christ? For many who won’t, how can the pastor-teacher present them Christ? John Stott says the Bible “will give Christ to you … in an intimacy so shut that he can be much less seen to you if he stood earlier than your eyes.” In different phrases, God’s individuals obtain the unity of religion by means of the constant publicity to Christ that comes by the pastor-teacher’s biblical preaching.
Maturity
A well-functioning pastorate will produce ministry, unity, and, lastly, maturity. Paul envisions the church rising “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Simply as there are levels of sanctity and unity, so there are levels of maturity. How can we attain the maturity about which Paul speaks? We could consider maturity in company phrases, with our personal church buildings in view. We will increase 4 questions to assist us suppose by means of company maturity within the church:
- Is the Phrase of God the driving power that shapes our church’s life? To the diploma that it’s, now we have the chance for maturity. To the diploma that it isn’t, we diminish that risk.
- Is the Phrase of God dwelling in us richly, and are we, consequently, instructing and inspiring each other with all knowledge? That’s Paul’s instruction in Colossians 3:16.
- Are we dwelling within the unity that Christ has bought and offered for His church? We’re referred to as to like each member of the physique—even these with whom we don’t significantly agree.
- Are we rising up in each approach into Christ?
These are essential questions with which we should reckon—questions we might do properly to convey to bear on our church buildings, gauging our diploma of maturity.
Christian unity is one thing to be maintained and attained.
“The Biggest Workplace of Human Accountability”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the late Welsh medical doctor-turned-preacher, typically stated, “I might not descend from being a king to imagine the function of the pulpit. I might be ascending to the function of the pulpit.” He had a excessive view—or what we could rightly name a biblical view—of the pastor-teacher workplace.
Will right this moment’s pastor-teachers preserve the usual? The workplace is a excessive place as a result of God Himself instituted it. We might be clever to method the duty with concern and trembling, praising God for carving out the pastorate as an important a part of the church.
This text was tailored from the sermon “Pastors and Lecturers” by Alistair Begg.
