Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
(Hebrews 13:7 – ESV)
(Hebrews 13:7 – ESV)
In the Body of Christ, you are either a leader or you need to be led. Now everyone needs to be led by Christ through the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit, but there are also leaders in the Body, and those leaders are present in the local church body. You cannot be without a leader unless you are a leader, and truthfully, even leaders need to be led.
You may say that you have no leader but Christ. However, if you have no other leader then you must be a leader. If you are supposedly good enough to go it alone, which is not true, but hypothetically, if you were, then you would be needed to lead others. You would be called by Christ to lead in His church. By not leading you are disobeying a lot about what God says about the church and everyone having a role in it. The truth is, you are either not strong enough, which would be my belief about you, or you are strong enough and yet you won’t lead others. Either way you are wrong and out of the will of God. You either need to lead or need to be led and Christ leads those who know this; if you don’t you aren’t being led by anything other than yourself. Well, and the Enemy of your soul, the devil.
You need to be discipled and you need to disciple others. Catch that: even if you have been discipled and are ready to storm the gates of hell all by yourself you have the responsibility to disciple others. If you are such an ace why would you not want to serve your supposed Master by helping others earn their wings? Go ahead and fly your own solo missions and see if you don’t get shot down time and again.
Look at Hebrews 13:17 (ESV) – Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls… This verse assumes that there are leaders in the church. It is easy to see that there are those being led, of course. What this text doesn’t say, and what no New Testament text says or implies, is that there is a situation where there is no earthly leader. There are always teachers and those taught. You are one or the other or both. The truth is that we are all both. Well, except those that are neither. They won’t submit to teaching, and they teach no one. They might as well rip this verse right out of their bibles!
Consider 1 Peter 5:1 (ESV) – So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder… Are there elders among you? Not if you are by yourself! In life you are always learning from someone else, why would that change now? Christianity isn’t a graduation into an individualistic thing it is exactly the opposite; it is learning to depend on God by depending on others and them depending on you. If you are strong enough to be an elder, leader, or Sunday School teacher, then do that, don’t sit at home disobeying God’s call on your life.
Finally Titus 1:3 – But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching… I hope my preaching has manifested the truth to you. Listen, we are all are following something and someone. If you aren’t being led to being in the church you aren’t following Jesus.
You may say that you have no leader but Christ. However, if you have no other leader then you must be a leader. If you are supposedly good enough to go it alone, which is not true, but hypothetically, if you were, then you would be needed to lead others. You would be called by Christ to lead in His church. By not leading you are disobeying a lot about what God says about the church and everyone having a role in it. The truth is, you are either not strong enough, which would be my belief about you, or you are strong enough and yet you won’t lead others. Either way you are wrong and out of the will of God. You either need to lead or need to be led and Christ leads those who know this; if you don’t you aren’t being led by anything other than yourself. Well, and the Enemy of your soul, the devil.
You need to be discipled and you need to disciple others. Catch that: even if you have been discipled and are ready to storm the gates of hell all by yourself you have the responsibility to disciple others. If you are such an ace why would you not want to serve your supposed Master by helping others earn their wings? Go ahead and fly your own solo missions and see if you don’t get shot down time and again.
Look at Hebrews 13:17 (ESV) – Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls… This verse assumes that there are leaders in the church. It is easy to see that there are those being led, of course. What this text doesn’t say, and what no New Testament text says or implies, is that there is a situation where there is no earthly leader. There are always teachers and those taught. You are one or the other or both. The truth is that we are all both. Well, except those that are neither. They won’t submit to teaching, and they teach no one. They might as well rip this verse right out of their bibles!
Consider 1 Peter 5:1 (ESV) – So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder… Are there elders among you? Not if you are by yourself! In life you are always learning from someone else, why would that change now? Christianity isn’t a graduation into an individualistic thing it is exactly the opposite; it is learning to depend on God by depending on others and them depending on you. If you are strong enough to be an elder, leader, or Sunday School teacher, then do that, don’t sit at home disobeying God’s call on your life.
Finally Titus 1:3 – But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching… I hope my preaching has manifested the truth to you. Listen, we are all are following something and someone. If you aren’t being led to being in the church you aren’t following Jesus.
19 comments:
Good point. You do an excellent job of logically connecting the dots with verses to back up your point.
Thanks Jazzy....I sure hope people will consider all of the things that have been and will be written on this subject, as we have placed a permanent page with all the posts under our profile box...
Do you have to go to church to be a Christian? NO
Do you have to go to church WHEN you are a Christian? YES!
Even So -
"Do you have to go to church WHEN you are a Christian? YES"
This statement used to be a
"no brainer". When and how did this "you don't have to go to church" way of thinking come about?
Thanks for this series, Even so...
I just read the comment from anonymous, and if it's alright, I would like to humbly contribute a response.
Gosh, you could probably go back to Old Testament times when people were aware that they were called God’s chosen people, but they did not adhere to the written precepts. Way back in Leviticus, there were sacrifices to be done for sinning unawares. New Testament persecution comes along, and I’m sure people had reservations about going to church at so-and-so’s house. These people were admonished not to forsake the assembling of the believers.
For people to shy away from gathering today though… this is a new concept. It is not ignorance or fear of serious persecution, but probably more of an independent spirit. This rugged individualism is cherished as an American freedom, but it’s really more like rebellion against God, by refusing to submit to His people here on earth. How can we say that we love God, who we cannot see, when we do not care about those around us who we can see? (Yup, I’m still singing the same tune from last Monday.)
Good stuff, as always, Craver, I was going to remark on the American Individualism bit...
Really, now, the loss of neighborhood community, weakening of marriage, loss of intimate connection via Internet and cell phone, etc. could all be brought into play here...but of course, it is all just a symptom of the larger problem...everybody say it with me, now....
SIN
Anon, I think the "when" has probably been an "always" to some extent, but to the degree we see it now, I would say starting with the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800's, commensurate with the decline of emphasis on Sovereign grace and covenantal community, along with the rise of Arminianism...yeah, I know, we always seem to blame the same things, don't we, but truly, this is my belief, that a man centered gospel leads to an egalitarian, individualistic idealized notion of what salvation is, what it does, and where it leads one to....
Sin? I was going to say "television". But sin works too. ;-)
One way to know if you are a leader or not is whether anyone is willing to follow your lead.
The commentary here is informative but invaribly leaves me with more "thought" questions like...
Daniel says that one way to know if you are a leader or not is whether anyone is willing to follow.
Follow what?? I must tell you that I've been guilty of "following" the wrong leader..I think that's why I'm so messed up! Things that seemed right and true were not! I guess that's why I have an understanding of why someone may want to be a "lone ranger". I'm not saying it's right...just that I understand.
Sure, anonymous, I’ll buy that. I too, could understand how someone might want to be a lone ranger. And that’s different from agreeing with someone in their conclusion to become or remain a lone ranger.
Can I understand how an individual who was wronged might have an urge to retaliate? I certainly can, but I cannot condone it. In fact, if I am aware of the situation, I have a civic and Christian responsibility to persuade my friend to abide by the law. Or at least, to make an attempt at such.
Anyway, in this case, I think I can appreciate the perspective. None of us likes it when we take a risk and it goes bad. For those times, Scripture doesn't seem to give us license to avoid church, but only an encouragement for those within the church who know how to ask questions and compare teachings with God's Word, like the Bereans.
Well, we certainly need to be in worship, fellowship, and discipleship with other believers, but we musn't swing the pendulum too far the other way by saying that we must all be in the same type church or that we cannot leave a local church or if we do that means we are not a part of Christ.
The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Church of Christ, Seventh Day Adventist, etc. are wrong...those that would identify themselves as the "one true church" are indeed not. Be on the lookout for articles and such that would say things like, "Christ wanted us all to be part of one big denomination", or "unity means there is only one true visible church", or having said that then they ask, (so as to lead to their brand, of course) "what are the identifying marks of the true church, or the remnanat church, etc."...these groups are (insert denunciation)...
On the other side of the pendulum, we would admonish not to stay in a church at all costs...fellowship, or koinonia is around the truth, not togetherness alone, as we discussed in our "Cross Stitching" post.
You don't have true fellowship without the truth. You are not worshipping the same God, and you are not being discipled into the same image, that of the same Christ as the Jesus of scripture.
So we are against authoritarian institutions and individual bodies and leaders who say you must be with them or you are out of the Body.
No, what you must do is desire to be in a body of true believers, not perfect, but not so sectarian that they think they alone are the remnant and that there is no salvation outside their fellowship.
Yes it can seem to be a fine line, but not really, and the people whom we are really adressing these posts to are those that would use these things as an excuse not to try and fellowhip, worship, or be disciples anywhee, they just want to stay home.
Yeah, this is going to be its own post...
Anon, the first person to take any interest in me (spiritually speaking) was a devout baptist. He knew his bible backwards and forwards, and started mentoring me. Because I didn't know the bible, I trusted everything he said.
Very early on he challenged me to believe everything I read in the bible. I had been, up until that point, silently editing the bible in my mind, because I figured that it was written so long ago that it was probably full of errors, and even if the text were true to the originals, come on - the guys who wrote it were practically cavemen. But he made me see that if I doubted any scripture, it was irrational to trust any of it - since I would make myself the final arbiter of whether a thing was true or not - scripture would just be a source book where I could pick and choose the parts I liked to believe, and throw away the rest. I took that to heart, and determined to believe everything I read.
That was a turning point in my relationship to my "teacher", for until that moment, whether I understood it or not - this mentor had been the arbiter of truth in my life - he didn't ask to be, or even try to be - and had he understood what was happening, I think it would have upset him. In fact, had you asked me if that was happening at the time I would not have understood it as such - but hindsight can be clear. I wasn't merely taking my spiritual cue from this guy, I refused to eat a thing for myself that hadn't been pre-chewed by this fellow.
But when I began to trust that scripture was entirely true - suddenly this fellow became just another Christian, and fallible.
He "discipled" me for about two and a half years - we did bible studies twice or three times a week, and I studied scripture extensively on my own. Not to mention the other bible studies I was involved in at the time, my own independant efforts to learn biblical Greek, and to read through as many theology text books as I could lay my hands on.
By the middle of that discipleship I became convinced that this fellow didn't rightly understand Romans six, seven, and eight. He regarded the texts as a pragmatic recipe for suppressing sin and taught me that the best you could do was recite some scripture to yourself, and put a cork in it- that when you feel tempted your job was to auto-suggest yourself into obedience until the temptation passed: I tried to convince myself that I was really dead indeed to sin, but this sort of positive thinking was deceptive - I was in utter bondage to sin, and pretending it wasn't so, at least until the temptation passed, seemed ridiculous (at best!). Though my friend pleaded with me to see it his way, I knew that his understanding of scripture was "off" on this one point. He truly believed that sanctification was simply an act of suppressing the outward expression of sin through sheer will-power. That was all fine and dandy for stealing, and lying - but what about lust? How can you "suppress" a thing that defines you? You can cork the fount of bitter water - but that isn't the same as having sweet water. He didn't see it, and I wasn't convinced by his arguments.
Had I continued to regard this man's opinions as authoritive I would never have been able to disagree with him. Really, I would have been following --him-- as opposed to following his lead. He knew himself to be fallible - which is why he encouraged me to believe scripture for myself from the start. He understood that all of us have blindspots - blindspots that can be identified by others in Christ who sharpen us.
I believe he was a true leader, in that he led me to follow Christ and not himself. He was a gifted teacher, but not infallible - he made errors, and had I been trained to follow him and not Christ, I may have fallen into the same errors as him (I had my own errors), but as it was we were able to discuss our differences because we were both following the same light.
So to answer the question, from my own experience - you do not follow the leader, your follow his lead. If his eyes are set on Christ, set yours on Christ also, and not on the leader.
The truth is, a leader can be a bad teacher, and it happens all the time, and that is regretable because of all the damage that can (and does) cause - but on the other foot - a "follower" can be a bad student too, by following the teacher instead of the teacher's lead.
I think that makes sense, but let me know if it is too crytpic.
Those of us with many blind spots need to be in a fellowship where faithful believers can (lovingly) show us where we are out in left field. Likewise, those of us who seem to have it all together need to be in fellowship because there are many who do not have it altogether, and they need to be (lovingly) pointed at the Savior.
God calls us to use our talents in the body - not to bury them in our own backyard. His gifts are given to the church through individuals, and not to individuals for their own ends.
It is an utterly, self-absorbed believer who can cry out "I don't need church!" That's nice - even if you didn't (and you most certainly -do-), the church needs you.
you do not follow the leader, your follow his lead. If his eyes are set on Christ, set yours on Christ also, and not on the leader.
All of this is very good, Daniel...including your a-game topic of sanctification and supression, friend ;-)
Daniel, check out some of the other posts and you will see some of the same stuff you mentioned here, thanks again...
JD - I hope one day that everything I teach will be up to A-game status.
I really liked the one man army post. Now that you got these labels I can swing around all over the place. ;-)
Daniel, that was awesome commentary! A couple of years ago, I may not have understood what you were saying because of "where" I was at spiritually.
For quite some time I've been in
de-tox/de-brief/de-program mode and teachings that may seem simple to some have been difficult for me. But the fact that I understand what you're saying, gives me hope about where I'm "at" spiritually. Thanks!
Craver and Even So--I appreciate your comments as well.
As usual, Daniel comes into "my park" and hits a home run, he he...
Anytime, and the more the better...
For His Glory...
JD
In order to keep leaders, leading those who are not ready to lead people must come to the realization that even to the very end Jesus was teaching those who would listen. Even on the cross itself.
There were two theives on the two crosses, one on either side of Christ. One listened and one refused to listen, one was heaven bound and the other... DON'T BE THE OTHER!! Listen, learn and lead when you are able.
However as JD has stated so many times, YOU must be in Church for this to accomplished!
11/27/08
Praise God for the leaders He has put in authority over us.
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