Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word, a Great Commission project bringing out the big ideas of the New Testament chapter by chapter. In this chapter, the apostle Peter counts himself as one of the elders. But Paul, who sits behind this microphone, is about to bring out an even more important point when it comes to the leadership roles within the church. This is going to be good. First Peter chapter five: Getting church leadership straight. One of the great mysteries of life I contemplate every spring involves an extra long electrical cord I own.

I like to garden and use an electric tiller to get the soil prepared each spring. So it’s early May now, and the soil is finally warm enough, and I decided to till up a garden this past week. I picked a new spot quite a distance from my house and went into my garage for the tiller and the cord. And I found the electrical cord, as always it seems, with multiple tangles in it. I know from lots of experience that if I just tried pulling it out there where I needed it to reach, the tangles then would turn into knots and kinks. Am I the only one that has this problem?

So I had to stop and patiently set about untangling it all. How can it be that this happens every year? Like some evil person or mysterious power purposely tangles up my electrical cord. I hope you like untangling things because this podcast I’m going to do my best to straighten out a topic that can be pretty confusing and in some cases spiritually dangerous. It’s a subject we’ve not covered before, before it comes up here in First Peter chapter five. To see just how tangled or straight your understanding of the subject is, I’ve got a short quiz for you up front.

I’m going to give you a list of ten religious titles or roles, and the question is, which of them are used in the New Testament among the early churches or the Christian movement in general? Are you ready? Here they are: pastor, priest, apostle, pope, elder, bishop, deacon, cardinal, evangelist, prophet. We could actually add more, but that’s a nice even ten. So how many of those do you read about as offices or leadership roles in the New Testament? Pastor, priest, apostle, pope, elder, bishop, deacon, cardinal, evangelist, prophet.

Got a number in your head? Let’s see how Peter brings up the topic in chapter 5, verses 1 through 4. He writes there, I urge elders among you, as your fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily according to the will of God, and not with greed, but with eagerness, nor yet as domineering those assigned to your care, but by proving to be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, talking about Jesus’ return, you’ll receive an unfading crown of glory. Elders, actually, is the most commonly used term in the New Testament for local church leaders. It was borrowed directly from the same usage in the synagogues of the Jews from whence many of these early Christians had come.

Synagogues had a council of elders which acted like a leadership board, and one of those members served as the president. In the New Testament, the term is ruler of the synagogue. Although we don’t ever see the specific phrase ruler of the church in the New Testament, we do often see elders as a name for local church leaders, as here in 1 Peter chapter 5. Similarly, in Acts chapter 14, it says Paul and Barnabas, after planting churches throughout Galatia, appointed elders in each city before they left that region. And as we’ll see, when we get to the pastoral epistles, the apostle Paul gave his associate Titus extensive directions regarding those who could act as church leaders, and he uses there the term elders for church leaders. He describes the kind of character they should have, and that they should be mature individuals who can lead and teach others effectively.

I think it’s noteworthy that Peter, who was a personally appointed apostle of Jesus Christ, identifies himself here simply as your fellow elder. He was an apostle, yes, but he was also a local church leader. In the early chapters of Acts, we see that he was one of the leaders at the large community of believers that grew up in Jerusalem, and also that he led a house church that met in John Mark’s parents’ home there. So Peter really functioned as an elder on the local church level. But here’s something else interesting that we can untangle that’s also in these opening verses of chapter 5. Peter uses terms associated with two more of the offices on our list when he instructs elders to shepherd the flock of God, exercising oversight.

Two key words: shepherd and oversight. The first verb translated shepherd, or maybe tend in your translation, is in its noun form elsewhere translated pastor. Pastor, not elder, is the most common term for leaders we use today in our churches. Although the noun form pastor is only used once in the whole New Testament, the verb form, as here, shepherd God’s flock, is used several times for what elders are to be doing. Just as physical shepherds made sure their flocks were fed and protected them from dangers, that’s what local church pastors and/or elders do on a spiritual level: feed God’s flock by teaching them His Word, as well as protect them from false teachers who, like wolves, can do a lot of harm. In the same way, the other verb Peter uses, exercising oversight, that appears in noun form elsewhere in the New Testament with the word overseer, or in some translations, bishop.

I think for many of us, when we hear the title bishop today, we picture someone wearing religious vestments and a tall hat with a big cross around their neck, performing rituals in a cathedral. At least that’s what I picture. But in the New Testament, that term bishop or overseer is just another interchangeable term with elder and pastor. It refers to the spiritual leader who oversees a local church congregation. Peter uses all three of these terms here addressing church leaders, the same people. That’s not unusual because the apostle Paul uses the same three terms and in the same exact way in Acts chapter 20.

At verse 17 and following, he says, Paul sent word to Ephesus and called to himself the elders of the church. Then he told them, Be on guard for yourselves and for the whole flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God. Elders, shepherds, pastors, overseers, bishops—these were all terms the apostles used for the very same office. So circle the terms elder, overseer, and bishop on our list as leadership roles or offices talked about in the New Testament. Have I straightened out one tangle at least for you now? In a section Paul wrote to Timothy about local church leaders, 1 Timothy chapter 3, in addition to elders, pastors, overseers, he also gave qualifications for deacons, beginning at verse 8 in that chapter.

And he stressed those chosen to serve as deacons must be people who have been tested, who have exemplary character, and are good managers. The term deacon itself means humble servant. Their role, it seems, was to take charge of more practical matters in order to free up the spiritual leaders to focus on shepherding the churches. The clearest example we see of that is when the church at Jerusalem, when it was growing quickly early on, the apostles were getting overwhelmed trying to oversee all the needs of that large congregation. It became necessary to select men who could take more of the mundane responsibilities off their plates. Seven men were chosen and put in charge of seeing that certain physical things were being taken care of properly.

Stephen was one of them, remember? So the office of deacon, which appears to be one of management over physical assets or ministries—is, rather than spiritual things, I mean—is another legitimate office we see operating in the New Testament. So circle deacon on your list too. Now we’ve identified four of the ten as titles referring to biblical leadership roles. Remember, the first three are interchangeable terms for shepherding God’s flock, that is, spiritual oversight. What’s important, though, is the function of that office, not really the title we use for it.

Before we move past the office of spiritual oversight, though, note what Peter instructs those who held that office here in verse 2. He says they should hold it not under compulsion, but voluntarily and according to the will of God, and not with greed, but with eagerness, nor yet as domineering over people assigned to their care, and also proving to be examples to the flock. Not under compulsion means nobody should get pressed into this role. They should be in the position because they, as well as the congregation, believe they’re qualified to be, and because they believe it’s the will of God. Members need to have that confidence, and the man assuming the spiritual leadership role also needs to believe that of himself. Not with greed, but with eagerness means it’s never to be used simply as a way to have a job, or certainly not to take advantage of people financially.

It’s a calling from God that one must be eager to fulfill. And then he says it’s a role to be carried out without domineering people, lording it over people, but rather leading people by way of example. Local churches are volunteer organizations. People have to believe in the mission in order to join in and participate. Church leaders that exhibit real faith and commitment to the cause of Christ, who work hard in the ministry, they motivate other believers in the church by their example. They are not bosses ordering other people around.

The church is not their flock, after all. It is God’s. They are just its shepherds for the time being. Ephesians 4 is the one place where the noun pastor is in fact used as a title, along with apostles, prophets, and evangelists. We’ve already learned that apostle was a specific office created by Jesus. He appointed his twelve chosen disciples to be apostles, and they became the foundational leaders of Christianity.

In both Ephesians 2 as well as 1 Corinthians 3, apostles and prophets together are called the foundation the church is built on, along with Jesus, of course, who is the cornerstone. The apostles’ role, Peter and Paul and John and the others, was to proclaim the gospel and establish the first churches during the first 40 or 50 years of the Christian era. That’s how they built the foundation. In the official sense, I don’t believe there are any apostles after their time. Christianity’s foundation does not need to keep being rebuilt and rebuilt. Besides, no one since them satisfies the criteria for that unique office, that is, to have been personally trained and commissioned by Jesus, as well as a witness of his resurrection.

The apostles played a special role at the outset of the church age, so that’s one more legit biblical office you can circle on our list. Prophets similarly had a foundational role, but theirs was very different. Prophets throughout the Bible are special spokesmen or women for God. They communicated God’s word to other people, sometimes their message regarded the future, but not always. Prophets like Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, and so on were God’s mouthpieces in Old Testament times. But there were also prophets active during the foundational era of the church.

Although this isn’t as clear as I wish it was, based on how the term prophet was always used, I think it’s safe to say that the prophets mentioned in the early church were also directly sharing God’s word in that era. Acting directly as God’s mouthpieces because, remember, the New Testament scripture was not yet available. Peter says in his second epistle that no prophecy of Scripture was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So we can say for sure that those God used to produce the New Testament scripture were prophets. But it appears other people were as well. Other people were God’s mouthpieces to directly deliver messages from Him in the early churches.

As I picture it, in that generation, before there was a recognized New Testament, God spoke through these prophets when Christians gathered. That’s strongly suggested in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, by the way. And besides, the Scripture writers, four or five other people I can think of are identified as prophets in the book of Acts, which describes those early years of Christianity’s development. So, prophet was a special office operating in the foundational era too. You can circle it on our list. Once the New Testament was completed, it has since served as the full and final revelation of God for Christians.

As we discussed just a couple lessons ago, the completed Bible is the settled final word on doctrine and practice for us. So I believe the foundational role of prophets, like apostles, became obsolete after the New Testament scripture was completed and available. Now it’s corresponding to those roles that Paul also lists evangelists and pastors slash teachers in that chapter, Ephesians 4. As apostles laid the foundation by preaching the gospel far and wide and planting Christian churches at the outset, someone gifted as an evangelist does the same thing since then and now. We might call them by a different name. We might call them missionaries, or we might call them church planters.

But again, the function, not the title, is what’s important. Similarly, just as prophets were messengers of God in the past until the New Testament Scripture was completed, since then pastors and teachers have assumed the role of communicating God’s truths to people from the Bible to His people, just as we’re doing now. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors. All offices mentioned in Ephesians 4, so they should be circled along with elder, bishop, and deacon, which we already have, and that makes seven. All of those are terms used in the New Testament for various kinds of ministers that have been or still are active in the church age.

And again, let me emphasize this: it’s not the titles themselves that are so important, but the functions that they have in the church for growth, for the health of the body of Christ, which leaves us only three from that list, and it’s in examining these that we discover some serious problems. After the apostolic age, a distinction started to grow between clergy and laity, as we call it now. That is between regular church members and ministry professionals. Those who work for the church began to be regarded as though they were on a higher plane than other people. This took a couple hundred years to 300 years to develop, by the way. But over time, that wrong idea gained real traction.

And by the year 400 A.D. or so, only ordained clergy members could officiate at church services, or perform baptisms, or serve communion, and so on. Realize nothing at all in the New Testament suggests that that should be the case. This was a wrong outgrowth of institutionalism creeping into the churches after Christianity was embraced by the state. The official state-sanctioned religion of Christianity more and more then developed this hierarchy of clergy, eventually with ranks from parish priests and his local pastors, overseen by bishops, bishops overseen by archbishops, archbishops overseen by cardinals, and finally at the top of the totem pole, the Pope, the Holy Father as he’s called now, a man regarded as Christ’s supreme representative on earth. The papacy began to emerge as a concept not until the fifth century, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

It was a unifying force against the invading barbarians. But I have to wonder, how did all of this evolve when Jesus told his disciples at the beginning, As for you, don’t be called rabbi, for one only is your teacher. You are all brothers. Don’t call anybody on earth father, for only one is your Father who is in heaven. Among you, the greatest should be like a servant. This power structure that developed over the centuries was modeled on the administrative state of the Roman Empire, and it’s exactly the opposite, I think, of what Jesus told his disciples leadership among his followers should look like.

Peter is echoing Jesus’ words here in chapter five when he tells the elders, reading his letter, Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, and identifies himself merely as your fellow elder. The idea of a religion with ranks, like an army, a pope like its emperor, striving for political power, as happened, completely foreign to the New Testament. By the way, this office of pope was not formalized until a church council in 1274 A.D., 12 centuries after the apostles’ time. I’m certain Peter would have been extremely surprised to learn that the institutional church of the Middle Ages created such a religious hierarchy and then claimed that he was the originator of it all, that he was the first pope.

Developing right alongside that, the evolution of the hierarchical church structure was another thing that deviated from the New Testament involving church leaders, and that was the reinvention of the role of priests. This began happening a couple hundred years after apostolic times too, and ended up twisting much of early Christianity’s doctrine and practice. To be clear, in the New Testament, there’s no such thing as a special priesthood necessary to mediate with God on behalf of common people. In fact, as we’ve already seen in the epistle of 1 Peter twice, actually, he wrote that all believers are royal and holy priests before God now. A special class of priests standing between us and God, that’s an Old Testament concept that was done away with by the coming of Jesus and what he accomplished for us on the cross.

But the official religion of Rome recreated this class of Old Testament religious functionaries called priests, and they were elevated over other church members as official representatives of the church and of God, with the power to dole out grace to the faithful. One way this happened, and still practiced, unfortunately, is that they changed the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, something early Christians practiced in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice, into something called the sacrament of the Eucharist, which their priests only could officiate over. The teaching became that the bread and wine during communion literally changed into the real presence of Jesus’ body and blood. When members received communion from the priest, they were receiving Christ.

So during each Mass, Jesus is sacrificed over and over, and church members again receive God’s grace over and over by eating of the body and blood of Christ. How could such an idea have developed when the New Testament says every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time sacrifices which could never take away sins, but Jesus, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, has sat down at the right hand of God. Saving grace from God is given to all of us who repent and believe into Jesus. Once for all sacrifice was made on the cross for us. That’s the New Testament teaching. It’s not something that needs to be done over and over, or needs to be mediated by a priest for us.

Near the same time, the Roman Church began teaching that members needed to practice something they called the sacrament of penance. This required that people come to the church’s priest to confess their sins, and the priest, acting as mediators between them and God, had the power to assign penance for and forgive their sins. But doesn’t the New Testament teach that there is one God and one mediator between Him and us, the man Christ Jesus? And that believers, because of our relationship with Jesus, can come boldly before God’s throne ourselves with our petitions. And that if we confess our sins, God will be faithful and just, based on Jesus’ finished work for us, to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Yes, yes, and yes are the biblical answers.

Be very clear about this: priests are not a New Testament thing. The Church of Rome, as it evolved through the centuries, developed that and many other extra-biblical and anti-biblical doctrines and practices. But the idea believers need priests who stand between them and God, people empowered to dole out grace to us through sacraments of a church, ugh, that’s so very contrary to New Testament doctrine. The Apostle Paul was almost prescient when he wrote to an early church around 55 A.D., I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds could be led astray from the simplicity that is in Christ. He too, like Peter, would be surprised to know to what extent that happened over the centuries, as Christianity for many was turned into something almost unrecognizable from what we read about on the pages of the New Testament.

My best advice, our best advice at Share the Word is: involve yourself in a local church where doctrine and practice are rooted in the New Testament. I’m not saying you can’t be a Christian and worship in a Roman Catholic tradition. You certainly can be. But the religion, as it’s developed, has strayed far from the simplicity of the New Testament church and of the doctrinal standards written down in the Word. So if you’re keeping score, Pope, Cardinal, and Priest are the three offices you can X out on that original list, because honestly, they have no roots in the New Testament, and so no legitimate role in Christianity. I hope I have helped straighten out the knots of confusion regarding biblical leadership roles.

I know it’s a little complicated, but I hope I’ve exposed also some wrong ideas that crept into Christianity, which have led many astray. If you have questions about today’s lesson, feel free to email me at paul@sharetheword.org. I’d be glad to discuss any of this with you further from an open Bible. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Paul. Well, if you’re a longtime listener, you know that all of us at Share the Word don’t shy away from scriptures or subjects that might sometimes give rise to public disagreement.

We understand that things discussed today may be one of those times, but our goal is always to provide biblically sound information and deliver it with the hope of educating. We would be happy to discuss this and any other subject with you. Simply email us at info@sharetheword.org or go onto the website at sharetheword.org and use the contact us form. Oh, and by the way, if you agree with today’s podcast, we’d love to hear from you as well. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.