The Minister of the Mystery: How to Become One (2)

Having made it clear that every Christian is in a sense is a minister (Eph. 3:7), there is another use of this term in Scripture, namely, those who God calls to “the ministry” as their vocation, that is, men He calls, trains, qualifies, and ordains who then preach and teach Scripture and lead God’s people as their sole activity. Now, while the Oxford English Dictionary points out that the English term minister in this strict sense of the “full-time minister” came into use in Protestantism in the 16^th Century—partly as protest to the term “priest”—other New Testament terms, such as “bishop,” “elder,” and “pastor-teacher” reflect this unique leadership office.

We are going to leave a more detailed look at this subject for our study of Ephesians 4:11, but may we briefly consider this statement made by Martyn-Lloyd Jones several decades ago as he preached on the present text: “That the Church counts for so little in the modern world is largely the result of her failure to realize the origin and character of the ministerial calling. The whole idea of the ministry has become debased. It has often been regard as a profession. The eldest son in a family goes perhaps into the Navy, another son into the Army, another into Parliament; and then the remaining son “goes into” the Christian ministry. Others think of a minister as a man who organizes games and pleasant entertainments for young people; one who visits and has a pleasant cup of tea with older people. Such conceptions of the Christian ministry have become far too current. But they are a travesty. The minister is a herald of the glad tidings, he is a preacher of the gospel. It is largely because the true conception of the work of a minister has become debased that the ministry has lost its authority and counts so little at the present time.”

Decades later the situation is far worse. The minister, or whatever you prefer to call him, today is viewed as part administrator, part manager, part philanthropist, and even part entertainer. He is expected to be, and even desires to be, “well-rounded,” that is, someone who can wear many hats, including: businessman, media figure, psychologist, and philosopher. But there is not one shred of Biblical revelation that even implies any of those so-called “qualities.”

As we’ll study in 4:11, God has called, specially gifted, and then given certain men to the Church as leaders. To adequately study this, we’ll also tie it in with a few specifics from the third chapter of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. Why do this in an exposition of Ephesians? Because at the time Paul wrote his letters to Timothy, Timothy was the pastor of the Church at Ephesus. What fascinates me here is that the key to understanding I Timothy 3:1-7 is that that the qualifications Paul lists are set against the backdrop of the unqualified leaders in Ephesus. He places God’s standards against what the Ephesians had allowed the leadership to degenerate into in the approximately six years since he had written the Ephesian letter to them. Some of the leaders were teaching false doctrine (I Tim. 1:3; 4:1–3, 7; 6:3–5), turning aside to “fruitless discussion” (1:6), misusing the law, and misunderstanding the gospel (1:7–11). Some leaders were even women (2:12), which Paul had already shown to be clearly forbidden (1:15-19). Others were guilty of sin and needed public rebuke (5:20).

I am acutely aware that such views are very unpopular in our day, but should we ignore what the Bible says? After years of studying the issues, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that the problems we see in Christianity today—the redefining of the Gospel, the “seeker-sensitive” movement, the entertainment-orientation of ministry, the Relativism and Pragmatism that rule all aspects of Church life, and so on—all come from the breakdown of leadership, which in-turn, may I add, comes partly from putting people in leadership who Biblically should not be there. To repeat Lloyd-Jones’ words, “It is largely because the true conception of the work of a minister has become debased that the ministry has lost its authority and counts so little at the present time.”