As is the ground of membership, so it is of ministry. It is of God's Spirit. If not, it is nothing or worse, and ought to be so treated by all those who honor God rather than man. If a Christian be an evangelist, he is so everywhere, and not restricted to this or that district, congregation, or chapel. If he be a teacher or a pastor, or both, he of course exercises his gift where he usually resides. But then he is not the teacher, but a teacher: and he is a teacher in the church, and not in a church. “We,” says the apostle, writing to far distant saints whom as yet he had not seen— “we, being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” He is not speaking of what was to be in heaven, but of what actually was on earth, the unity of Christ's body here below. “Having then gifts differing,” etc.
So (1 Cor. 3) in meeting the carnal, because exclusive, preference of one servant of Christ above another, the apostle presses the broad and blessed truth, “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas,” etc. It was a sectarian spirit in respect of those who ministered that Paul rebuked.
It is the same principle in 1 Cor. 12:18-28: “But now God set the members each one of them in the body, as it pleased [him]. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of you. Nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: and those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor: and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; but our comely parts have no need. But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church; first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.” “God set some in the church,” not in a church. Viewed as churches, apostles could be in but few. There were none in the church at Corinth when Paul wrote. Teachers stand clearly on the same base: apostles in the church, teachers in the church.
Again, in Eph. 4:11-16, whether apostles, or prophets, whether evangelists, or pastors and teachers, they are given of Christ, not to be the solitary officials of a denomination, but “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come,” etc. Verse 16 tells us that it is “the whole body fitly joined together,” not broken into sects; the whole body “compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part": a practical thing, and not a mere theory, a thing meant to be in the church while on earth, and not at all referring to heaven. We shall not need such ministration there. In this passage there is also, I would notice, a warrant to faith for expecting the continuance of the gifts of Christ till His body be completed. And of a truth He has never failed during all the long years of ruin in which His gifts were well-nigh smothered, as they were too really and painfully misused.
For I fully recognize that there have been even in popery, in her clergy and laity, those who had gifts of God's grace to build up His own people, and to spread Christ's name among sinners. But, at the same time, I as utterly deny that they were Christ's gifts in virtue of the commission which popery conferred, any more than that others were not His gifts for the want of such a commission. The same remark, I need hardly add, extends still more widely to modern Protestantism. Would to God that the tender love of Christ, in thus cherishing the church as His own flesh, might touch a chord in all His members, that together we might weep over our common sin, and that together we might rejoice, extolling the grace that has abounded but the more!
There is, however, a distinction to be observed, which cannot be forgotten without injury. When the body came together as such, the assembly was under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It would have trenched upon the right of Christ for any individual, however gifted he might be, to absorb the regulation of it into his own hands. The Giver is there, and He is looked to, not the gifts merely. The order of such an assembly is definitely laid down in scripture (1 Cor. 14.). “Ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.” “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.”
It is quite a different principle which governs a servant of the Lord in the exercise of whatever talent has been entrusted to him He owes an immediate and individual responsibility to Christ to trade with it. He may preach to the unconverted, or he may instruct more perfectly the children of God, or both if he possess both gifts. He owes it to his Master to exercise all he has received for the good of souls, hindering and hindered by no one else. Every servant, be his gift great or small, has the same liberty and the same responsibility. Two or more may see it good to associate in the ministry; but let us remember that if Paul chose Silas, recommended to the grace of God, Barnabas took Mark; and we do not read that he was thus honored of God in confirming the churches (Acts 15:36-41). Liberty is not license. The servant is free of man, but bound to obey the Lord; and his brethren are no less bound to judge his disobedience.
These gifts, let it be borne in mind, must be kept distinct from local charges, such as the elders or presbyters of scripture, which are ever regarded there as the same with the bishops, or overseers, as indeed Cranmer and others allow, whose practice was totally different. The charges had to do with some one church, and were appointed by an apostle, or by a delegate possessed of a direct and special commission from an apostle to that end. Such a delegate was Titus. But scripture nowhere intimates that authority for appointing elders was meant to continue. We have seen that the gifts of Christ were to be “till we all come,” etc. But scripture never confounds them with local charges, although both clearly might co-exist in the same individual. We know this to have been Philip's case, who was one of “the seven,” and an evangelist besides.
Pastorship, to come still closer, is a gift (Eph. 4:11), eldership is a charge; but the gift of feeding the flock of God, so far from being incompatible with the office of an elder or bishop, was evidently one of the most important qualifications sought in those who desired that good work. Thus Paul (Acts 20:28) exhorts the Ephesian elders to take heed to themselves, and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers (bishops, ἐπισκόπους), to feed the church of God which He had purchased with His own blood. “Feed the flock of God,” said another apostle, “which is among you, taking the oversight thereof (ἐπισκοποῦντες) not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over their allotments, but being ensamples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2, 3).
In the First Epistle to Timothy (3) we find aptness to teach and ability to take care of the church of God among other requisites. Titus too (1:5-9) was told to ordain such as held fast the faithful word, as he had been taught, that he might be able by sound doctrine to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. But it would be too much to draw thence that all the elders necessarily labored in the public ministration of the word. They were appointed to exercise a godly fatherly care over the church; but laboring in the word and doctrine was not an indispensable adjunct. Hence the apostle says, in 1 Tim. 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine.” In one way or another, all elders were assumed to feed the flock; but there might be elders who did not serve, at least publicly, in the word: a principle recognized in the Presbyterian system.
Another remark is to be made on the question of rulers. Paul, in writing to the saints at Rome, exhorts “him that ruleth” to do it with simplicity. Now all the evidence we have goes to show that there was no official nomination as yet, if ever at Rome. Peter's primacy there is a dream, scripture affirming in a positive way that he was distinctively the apostle of the circumcision, as Paul was of the uncircumcision. Now the latter had not yet visited the faithful in the Gentile metropolis. Accordingly there is not a word which supposes elders to have been appointed there. Nevertheless it is evident that those at Rome, like the rest of the church, had gifts of grace in their midst—prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, ruling, etc. These they might possess, and they are exhorted to use diligently; but not a word is said about elders. It has already been observed that at Corinth no elders are even implied, and yet the brethren were besought to submit themselves to such as addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints, and to every one co-working and laboring.
Again, in 1 Thess. 5:12, 13 “We beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake.” Do not the exhortations “to know” them which labor and rule and preside (the same word as in Rom. 12:8), suggest the thought that it was not a class officially appointed? Office must have been self-evident, and therefore would render needless an exhortation to recognize such laborers. The esteem and love was for their work's sake. An official place was not alluded to. In Heb. 13:7, 17, 24, certain chief men are named (οἱ ἡγούμενοι, leaders or guides); but there is nothing indicative of exterior appointment. It is probable that they were persons whose age, character, and gifts, gave them a certain place. See Acts 15:22.
Now if any one in our day could give satisfactory (i.e. scriptural) proof that he was an apostolic delegate, his appointment of elders ought to be respected; and respected I have no doubt it would be by all (at any rate) whose eye was single to the Lord in the matter. If such proof be wanting, they ought to be as decidedly disowned. If then in scripture we see not elders appointed by any save apostles or their delegates, can nationalism or dissent justify their respective appointments by the word of God? Apostolic succession seems to be the only consistent plea in its pretensions as to this: in its pretensions, I say, for reality it has none—it is Christianity Judaised, or rather it is Judaism Christianized (see Bingham's Ecclesiastes Antiq. b. i. ch. 5.).
(To be continued)