Every
Believer is a Minister
By
Geoff
Volker, Revised and
expanded by Steve Lehrer
Originally posted on In Depth Studies
Statement on offsite articles
Most
people don’t give a second thought to the way church is done. They
say, “We have always done it this way” and “If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it!” I want to challenge you to give it a serious second
thought. In this article I want to
put before you the biblical argument that every believer is a minister.
This profound truth should change the way you “do church” in many
ways.
The
local church is made up of professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a
family of believers. When I write the word “family” I mean that in the most
intimate sense of the word. The
church is a group of people who have something far more important than
“blood” in common; they have the New Covenant. Understanding the New
Covenant is the key to understanding the church.
In
Hebrews 10:11-18 the author of Hebrews (whoever he was) describes the saving
work of Jesus Christ as the New Covenant. He
begins by contrasting the ineffective work of the Levitical
priests with the effective work of Christ:
Day
after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again
he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this
priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right
hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool
(Hebrews
10:11
-13).
Christ’s
work actually accomplished something. He
acquired perfect forgiveness of sins while the Levitical
priests were unable to obtain any forgiveness for those they represented.
But
Christ purchased more than simply the forgiveness of sins: “because
by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy”
(Hebrews
10:14
). This verse gives a description of
the two things that Christ purchased for all those He represented.
First he speaks again of the forgiveness of sins that makes the believer
“perfect” in God’s sight. We
call this justification. He also
refers to believers as “those who are being made holy.”
That is, Christ purchased a work of the Spirit of God in the life of
every believer to progressively make him holy.
We call this sanctification. The
work of forgiveness and the work of making one holy can never be separated.
The
author of Hebrews identifies the combination of justification and
sanctification as the New Covenant by his quotation of Jeremiah 31 in verses 15
through 18:
The
Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: “This
is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will
put my laws in their hearts1,
and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” And where
these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin
(Hebrews10:15-18).
Christ’s
work on the cross purchases a work of the Spirit in the life of the believer
that causes him to love God. This
is what all believers have in common and it is what makes the body of Christ
into an intimate family.
The
Faulty Covenant and the Rebellious People
It
is important that we look back at the Old Covenant and the nation of
Israel
so that we can get a clear picture of
what the New Covenant people of God are not like.
In the New Testament the New Covenant is contrasted with the covenant
that God made with the nation of
Israel
on
Mount Sinai
through Moses. The Old Covenant did
not produce a believing, God-loving people of God; it was never intended by God
to produce a people of real believers:
For
if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have
been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said “The
time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the
house of
Israel
and with the house of
Judah
. It
will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them
by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to
my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord (Hebrews 8:7-9).
When
you read the passage above, it is hard to miss the fact that there was something
wrong with the Mosaic Covenant. But
this is a bit shocking if you stop and think about it.
Didn’t God make this covenant? We
know that God is perfect and doesn’t make mistakes.2
He was the author of the Mosaic Covenant.3
God is perfect and yet that which He made is not perfect.
How can we understand this passage without doing damage to the character
of God? Here is what I
propose: The Old Covenant was just
as God desired it to be and from that point of view it was perfect.
But, from the point of view of making a faithful and forgiven people of
God, it was inadequate; it was faulty. It
was unable to make a people acceptable to God and it was unable to make a people
who actually loved God. This fits
neatly with verse 9 above that describes the Israelites as unfaithful, and
verses 10-12 that describe the benefits of the New Covenant as forgiveness of
sins and love for God.
But
should we really characterize the Israelites as an unfaithful people, or were
they like we are today which is a people who love God but struggle with sin?
As a whole, the nation of
Israel
was an unbelieving people.
They were God-haters rather than God-lovers.
Let’s look at some major evaluative statements about the Israelites at
pivotal points in their history. At
the end of Moses’ life and ministry he says a few words to the Israelites
before they entered the Promised Land:
For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been
rebellious against the LORD while I am still alive and with you, how much more
will you rebel after I die! Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes
and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and
call heaven and earth to testify against them.
For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt
and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will
fall upon you because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD and provoke
him to anger by what your hands have made (Deuteronomy 31: 27-29).
These
words are an evaluation of Moses’ experience with
Israel
and his prediction for their future.
Perhaps Moses had simply become a bit jaded.
He was given a lot of responsibility and his life had been difficult.
He wasn’t allowed to enter the land for which he longed and he was
about to die. Perhaps these were
simply the impassioned ramblings of a bitter old man.
The Israelites did, after all, enter the
land
of
Canaan
and have a measure of success.
When
we turn to the book of 2 Kings when
Judah
is about to fall to
the Babylonians we get a sweeping statement that confirms the validity of
Moses’ statement: “I will
forsake the remnant of my inheritance and hand them over to their enemies. They
will be looted and plundered by all their foes, because they have done evil in
my eyes and have provoked me to anger from the day their forefathers came out of
Egypt until this day” (2 Kings 21:14,15).
Notice the scope of this statement.
From the time of the Exodus and throughout their glorious history the
Israelites could always be characterized as a people who did evil in God’s
eyes and provoked Him. From their constitution as a nation until their
destruction it seems that there was never a time that
Israel
was a believing people who truly
followed after God.
But
we can’t forget about the restoration period.
The Israelites rebuilt the walls of
Jerusalem
, the temple, and they began teaching
the Word of God again. Did this
restoration period mark a final return of a group of believers who struggled for
generations to follow the God that they loved?
Not according to Malachi who had the final word in the Old Testament
about the Israelites: “Ever since
the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not
kept them.” (Malachi 3:7). The
Israelites are once again given a sweeping evaluation of being unbelieving.
They were characterized from their birth as a people until the last word
of the final Old Covenant prophet as being a disobedient people.
The Apostle John makes it very clear that we are to understand those who
are characterized by disobedience to God as unbelievers:
“The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands
is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1
John 2:4).
Of
course I am not arguing that there were no real believers in the nation of
Israel
. I am only saying that
Israel
as a whole was unbelieving. There was
always a tiny remnant of believers in Israel.4
But when the Old and New Testaments describe the nation of
Israel
as a whole, it is always described as
unbelieving. Jesus himself points
out
Israel
’s unbelief:
When
Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell
you the truth, I have not found anyone in
Israel
with such great faith. I say to you
that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at
the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the
subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew
8:10
-12).
Many
theologians want to look back to the nation of
Israel
in the Old Covenant era as the church
in the Old Testament. They look
back to the gatherings of the Israelites and model their church practices after
them. They have gatherings
where the pastor gets behind the “holy desk” above the people and speaks the
Word of God to the people as the prophets spoke to
Israel
.
The people sit quietly while the prophet/pastor scolds them because they
are so “stiff-necked.” I think
this is an unbiblical way of coming up with a model for how the church is to
function.
Israel
was not the church in the Old
Testament, but merely a picture of the true people of God, that is, the church
in the New Covenant era. As I stated above, God did not make a mistake in
constructing the Old Covenant as a covenant that could not save.
He did not “slip-up” by making this covenant with the consistently
rebellious Israelites. God’s plan
was to use the history of
Israel
as a teaching tool for the New
Covenant people of God. But God
does not use them as the example we are to follow:
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our
forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.
They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate
the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank
from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were
scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to
keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be
idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to
eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.” We should not commit
sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand
of them died. We should not test the Lord, as some of them did—and were
killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by
the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and
were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has
come (1 Corinthians 10:1-11, emphasis mine).
According to the Apostle Paul, the Israelites serve as the example par
excellence of what not to do. They
are the unbelieving people of God who rebelled.
The real people of God are to look back to learn from the consequences of
their sinful behavior and strive not to be like them.
So,
when we look back to the Israelites in the Old Covenant era we do not see the
church. The death of Jesus Christ purchased the church for God:
“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit
has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the
church
of
God
, which he bought with his own blood”
(Acts
20:28
). The New Covenant states that
everyone for whom Jesus died will receive forgiveness of all their sins and a
new heart. That means that every true believer will be a God-lover.
He is also saved into a body of believers that meet together to encourage
one another to live for God. A true
believer who lived during the era of the Old Covenant would have met with fellow
Israelites for worship, but he would have been in the distinct minority.5
He would have been a believer among unbelievers, a God-lover among God-haters.
The professed people of God, the nation of
Israel
, were only a picture of the true
people of God. They were a
rebellious people under a faulty covenant.
The
Church is for Professed Believers
During
the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists correctly understood that the local
church is only made up of those who give evidence that they are a part of the
New Covenant. Therefore a proper profession of faith included not just a trust
in Jesus Christ alone to save them, but also a desire to live for Jesus Christ.
The evidence of the changed life was a necessary ingredient to a biblical
profession of faith. The Anabaptists could not conceive of a church made up of
both believers and unbelievers, as did the Reformers. Since infants were not
capable of a biblical profession of faith, then they also could not be part of
the church. The Reformers ridiculed the Anabaptists for believing that the
church could realistically be made up of only true believers. The Anabaptists
did not hold to this view. They believed that unbelievers could indeed slip in
among the believers, but they could only do so if they were masquerading as true
believers. Scripture provides church discipline as the means to deal with those
who were only professing to believe but were in reality God-haters.
It
seems that most evangelical churches view the children of believers as an
integral part of the church. Much
time and energy is given over to entertaining and including them.
But, in light of the New Testament teaching on the New Covenant, we would
have to say that children of believers are not a part of the church unless they
give evidence that they are participants in the New Covenant.
Look at Hebrews 8:11 which speaks about those who are part of the New
Covenant: “No
longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the
Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest.” This is not a reference to mere intellectual knowledge of God, but
this is about genuine love for God. That is, participants in the New Covenant
must not only make a profession of faith, but they must also give evidence that
it is genuine by exhibiting the fruit of a genuine love for God.6
The common practice of gathering the children together and having them sing
special music in the worship service for the purpose of leading the family of
believers in worship is an unbiblical practice. If they are not believers, then
they are not members of the New Covenant people of God and are not a part of the
local church. They are a very important field for evangelism but they are not a
part of the people of God.
The
Role of Elders in the New Covenant Community
The
function of the elder in the church is both as a pastor or shepherd (I Peter
5:1-3) and as a teacher (Titus 1:9). He shepherds or pastors by teaching the
believer how to apply the Word of God to his life. He teaches by systematically
equipping the believer with a biblical foundation. The elder is to be the
equipper, not the primary doer, in the family of believers. He functions
both as a coach and as a player. He is to work in such a way that the family of
believers is being equipped to do the works of ministry.
That means that when a believer is stuck in sin and a member of the body
brings it to his attention, he will often function simply as an advisor.
Each member of the body is able to admonish and care for his fellow
believers7
and the elder’s role is to aid the rest of the body in that process:
But
to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it...It was he
who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and
some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of
service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach
unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then
we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown
here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of
men in their deceitful scheming. Instead,
speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the
Head, that is, Christ. From
him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament,
grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work
(Ephesians 4:7, 10-16, emphasis mine).
The
elders who seek to be the ones who do all or even most of the ministry are not
fulfilling their function in the body of Christ.
In fact, they are stunting the growth of the believers they are
shepherding. Instead of being
“chief cook and bottle washer,” elders ought to be working themselves out of
a job. If they are discipling the family of
believers for works of ministry, then the better they do their job the more the
believers will do the ministry and the more the elders will experience a
lessening of the burden of being an elder.
It
is the individual members of the family of believers who are the real ministers
in the church. We ought to take back the use of the term “minister” from the
professional clergy and once again begin to use it in its biblical sense.
Each member of the body has a God-given vital ministry.
That is exactly what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 4:16, “From him
the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and
builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
The work order by God for the church is that each member of the New
Covenant community is to be involved in ministry, so that the whole body is
built up in the faith. This work
order includes teaching, admonishing, encouraging, meeting needs, comforting,
and a host of other activities that are too often seen as the exclusive domain
of the pastor.
This
is why having paid staff working in your church is not always a good idea. There
is nothing unbiblical with having paid staff at a local church. But the
temptation that often comes with it is the pitfall of having the paid staff do
the work of ministry. It is very time consuming and difficult to equip members
of the body for ministry. It is just easier to pay someone else to do it. Since
you are paying them, the issues of accountability and excellence are much easier
to manage. The local church must be set up in such a way that the very structure
of the church encourages each member of the body to do the works of ministry.
In
our church we have a number of infants and toddlers that need some looking after
on Sunday mornings. We have a
nursery schedule in which every able-bodied believing woman in the church is to
take a turn looking after the kids. The
believing men are on a schedule to teach a short gospel-centered bible study to
the older kids one Sunday a month. These
are family chores and no one is exempt. We
also give opportunities to all of the believing men in the church to lead our
time in the Lord’s Supper. We
have a time of sharing, encouragement, and prayer each Sunday morning that is
also led by various men in our church who are not elders.
But the elders oversee this time and help these men to grow in their
abilities to care for the body. Many
hands make the burden of ministry light. In
the process, our people are trained to love one another biblically.
If we were to hire a staff to do these jobs we would be robbing the body
of these vital opportunities to grow.
The
“Dumb Sheep” or Special Forces Soldiers?
There
is no such thing as a “dumb sheep” in the body of Christ.
Every member of the body is equipped by God and motivated for ministry.
We have already laid the theological foundation for this above.
It is the New Covenant (the work of Christ on the cross) that guarantees
every believer to have a desire and ability to minister in the body of Christ.
Because each believer is a recipient of the benefits of the New Covenant,
all believers come to faith in Jesus Christ with a love for God and a desire to
live for him. All believers are in
the process of being supernaturally motivated by the Spirit of God to live for
Jesus Christ. Every member of the
body is equipped and motivated for ministry.
Rather than thinking of most believers as dumb sheep we should instead
think of them as Special Forces soldiers. A soldier in the Special Forces of the
U.S. military goes through grueling and specialized training for a specific
task. He becomes an expert at the
task for which he is trained. Not every soldier has a flashy and high profile
job, but every job is vital to the war effort.
The Lord Himself trains every believer for a specific and important job
in furthering His kingdom. God the
Holy Spirit has given specific spiritual gifts to every believer for works of
ministry (the spiritual war effort).
Every gift the Lord gives is vital for the life of God’s people:
Now
to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one
there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message
of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit,
to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to
another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking
in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of
tongues. All
these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one,
just as he determines. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts;
and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ (1
Corinthians 12:7-11).
Every
soldier in the Lord’s army is supernaturally trained to perform his vital
function. He does not determine his function on his own, but should to seek to
determine what God has given him8
and then develop that giftedness for works of ministry.
The work of ministry is the soldier’s work of doing battle in the
Lord’s army.
Since
all those who are a part of the New Covenant have been made God-lovers and are
gifted by the Spirit, it is clear, then, that each believer has a specific role
to fulfill in the body of Christ. It was not our idea to come to faith in Jesus
Christ.9
It was not our decision that determined what gift the Spirit would give
us.10
Each believer has a vital God ordained purpose in the family of God. Our
sovereign God has determined that the church should function in just this way.
To be a part of the family of believers and yet have no ministerial purpose is
impossible in the New Covenant community. We
make a grave mistake when we treat God’s Special Forces soldiers as dumb
sheep.
One
way you can tell if you have the dumb sheep mentality or the Special Forces
mentality at work in your church, is by considering the way your church goes
about making major decisions. Many church leaders simply do not trust the body
of Christ. They fear that if they allow the body in on the decision-making
process, then Pandora’s box will be opened and chaos will reign.
They fear that fights will break out and that they might even cause a
split in their church if they let the believers in on important church
decisions. This thought process and
practice does not do justice to the New Covenant.
The New Covenant guarantees that every believer will be transformed and
motivated by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:5-14). The Scripture describes each
believer as having the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Therefore, the
notion that the church body is somehow made up of dumb sheep that cannot be
trusted to discuss and discern biblical issues is absurd.
It would seem unwise to cut out of the decision-making process the wisdom
of the family of believers and limit the interaction to just the elders.
No elder or group of elders is so circumspect so as to be able to see a
situation from every possible angle. As an elder you need the wisdom of the body
to enable you to make an informed and responsible decision.
If the body is so untrustworthy that chaos will ensue if you include them
into the decision-making process, then you do not have a New Covenant community
but an assembly of unbelievers.
If
you are a pastor/elder you might be thinking that including the body of Christ
in the decision-making process might diminish your God-given authority.
Consider for a moment the relationship of husbands to their wives.
It is clear that the husband has the final authority in the marriage
relationship.11
Yet, with that being understood, it must also be stated that any husband would
be foolish to eliminate his wife from the decision-making process.
He should recognize that he does not know all that he needs to know, that
he has a limited point of view and that he has blind spots.
His wife will provide a very different perspective and will protect him
from himself. In the same way it
would be foolish to refuse to consult the wisdom of the family of believers, the
New Covenant community, when the leadership is seeking to make a biblically
sound decision. Why cut yourself off from a source of wisdom that the Spirit of
God has given you? The local church
has elders and they hold the final authority in the church.12
Yet elders are a part of a family of believers, and it is the whole
family of believers that has been the recipient of the transforming work of the
Spirit of God that was purchased by our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the High
Priest of the New Covenant.
Conclusion:
All Believers Are Priests in the New Covenant Era
The
Israelites could only be a kingdom of priests if they kept the Old
Covenant perfectly: “Now if you
obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my
treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine,
you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’” (Exodus
19:5-6). We have learned above that
they did not keep the covenant perfectly and God rejected them.
They never were a kingdom of priests or a holy nation. In the Old
Covenant era only a very few could become priests.
You had to be a male in the tribe of Levi between 30 and 50 years of age
and not disqualified by physical abnormalities.
It was only these precious few that had access to God in the sacrificial
process. They had the “holy
jobs” while the rest of God’s people simply hoped to be blessed by God
through them.
In
the New Covenant era, God guarantees that the every member of the New Covenant
is a priest. Once you are a part of
the New Covenant through repentance and faith, there is no condition upon which
a person in the church becomes a priest. Jesus
has made every member of the New Covenant a priest unconditionally:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you
out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Once you were not a
people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but
now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
In
the New Covenant community every individual knows God and represents Him in to
the rest of the community. This
means that every believer has a “holy job,” a service to offer the body of
Christ. God the Holy Spirit is in
the process of transforming each believer. The Spirit gifts every believer for
ministry. In the New Covenant era
every believer is a priest; every believer is a minister.
Any concept or structure of the church that does not biblically express
the priesthood of all believers is fundamentally unbiblical and does not bring
honor to the Lord of the New Covenant.
Author
Geoff
Volker is the founder and director of In-Depth Studies.
He earned an M.A. from Penn State and an M.Div.
from Covenant Seminary. He has been
a pastor for 25 years. Geoff is
currently one of the pastors at New Covenant Bible Fellowship in Tempe, Arizona.
Endnotes:
2
Ephesians 1:11
3
Exodus 31:18
4
Romans 9:27
5
Romans 9:27
6
Luke 9:23-25
7
Romans 15:14
8
He should seek to find out what his gift is by actually participating in
different ministries within the body and talking with people in the body who
have seen him in action to see if they think he has gifts in any particular
areas.
9
Ephesians 1:4-5,11.
10
1 Corinthians 12:11
11
Ephesians 5:22-33
12
Hebrews 13:17