The Holy Spirit does two things: inspires the writing of Scripture and indwells the people of God. As a corollary of both, he carries the divine writings into the hands of his people and guides them, as a people, in their interpretation. Scripture and Church, therefore, stand in harmony. 

Early on in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (in its completed 1559 edition), he discusses the authority of Scripture. After describing humanity’s natural sense of divinity (sensus divinitatis), Calvin turns to the necessity of the Word of God for saving revelation due to humanity’s clouded judgment. In order to establish Scripture’s authority, he first attempts to rebut the claim of the Roman Church that the authority of the Bible depends upon “the consent of the church.”[1] In seeking to secure the tyrannical claim that “the church has authority in all things,” his opponents trust more in the judgment of men than in the truth of God.[2]
Scripture, for Calvin, bears witness to its own authority. Since its source is divine, it exhibits the marks of divinity. Indeed, Scripture, he claims, is “self-authenticated” (autopiston).[3] “It is not right,” therefore, “to subject it to proof and reasoning,” or, more basically, to any judgment of men.[4] To ask for external verification for the truth and validity of the Bible is like asking, “Whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter?”[5] As Calvin puts it plainly, “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.”[6] Insofar as Scripture is concerned—putting to the side for a moment the question of individual apprehension—its authority is unquestionable. It is an obvious fact. Just as one could not describe the color black—“…it just is!”—so he cannot attempt to “prove” Scripture’s veracity.
What are we to make of disagreements among men concerning the truth (or lack thereof) of Holy Scripture? The answer lies in the internal testimony of the Spirit. According to Calvin, “the same Spirit . . . who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded.”[7] In other words, the authority of Scripture, since it is self-validated, cannot depend upon human judgments for its vindication. “We ought to seek our conviction,” rather, “in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.”[8] Thus, those who do not acknowledge what is plainly true about the authority of Scripture have simply not received the illumination of the Holy Spirit. But on the other hand, “those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture.”[9] The reception of the Spirit’s internal witness is the dividing line between those who recognize Scripture’s authority and those who do not.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Monday, September 19, 2022
Suffering knocks the edges off us. Pain is horrible, but can like all evil be used by God for good ends (Genesis 50). Wisdom grows in the soil of suffering. Woe betide the one who calls themselves wise, but the false humility of assuming we have no wisdom to share does no one any good either.

We should desire wisdom. “Get wisdom!” Solomon tells us (Proverbs 4). We see that eating from wisdom’s tree (Genesis 3) was Adam’s mistake but also the destiny he was supposed to bear. We also see that one of the ways we learn wisdom is by suffering.
Let’s not get this backwards, suffering is not our friend. God does permit us to suffer, the Bible is sometimes happy to use much stronger verbs than ‘permit,’ and God will mature us by testing and by suffering.
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Hebrews 5.8-9
If the sinless Christ became mature through suffering, how much more do we need to do so?
There were two trees in the garden, life and wisdom. Adam was given one to eat and the other to wait on. It’s a reasonable supposition that one day he would have eaten from it. Piecing together the hints we get around the Bible this seems to suggest that he would have had to ‘die’ much like he died to give birth to Eve (Genesis 2), and been anointed King of the earth.
These two trees—that correspond to bread and wine and the Old and New Testaments—are given to us to eat from too. It’s in Jesus suffering, first his Test at Gethsemane and then his death on the tree, that we are given the wine of wisdom to drink from by the Holy Spirit. We eat from wisdom’s tree, which required suffering to give to us. James Jordan in From Bread to Wine would argue it required us to be broken like bread. For most this happens slowly piece by piece through life, and some enter it much sooner through more dramatic circumstances.
We follow Jesus’ pattern, not in the extremity of his suffering perhaps, but in that our character is made in suffering. Or, more accurately it can be. As Nicholas Wolterstorff describes in his Lament for a Son, times of suffering can brew despair and bitterness, but also make character. Both options are open to us, “the valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making.”
It’s possible for us to fall headlong into bitterness in the midst of dark days. To drink deep the draught of despair found in the foul run-off at the valley’s base. To get lost in Mordor’s dark hills. I mustn’t deny it. It’s surprisingly common.
There is an alternative too though. There’s a test, if you like, hidden within it. Like the one Adam faced, and Jesus faced, and every character in the Bible did in one way or another, sometimes several times.
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As careful as pastor-elders must be to keep their churches from being influenced and shipwrecked by the world, they also must lead their people outward. Jesus gave an outward-facing commission. Our gospel is a growing, expanding gospel. God’s word runs and triumphs. It matters, in some measure (not absolutely) what outsiders think because we want to win them. We do not change our message for them. We do not cower to unreasonable demands from evil, twisted critics. And we should not suffer leaders in the church who are fools on the world’s terms just as much as Christ’s.

Most Likely to Sheep-Feed
Leaders. Our criticisms of them, cynicism toward them, conflicts with them, and controversies about them fill our feeds, queues, and real-life conversations. Perhaps a previous generation gave its presidents and pastors too much benefit of the doubt. But that is increasingly not our temptation.
Whether in society or the church, both a fascination with and a negative mood toward our leaders and celebrities (we’re increasingly unable to draw clear lines between them) pervades our age. Many today are confused, and often for good reasons. Stories of use and abuse abound, and multiply, with the aid of our technologies.
What Christ Requires
For Christians, we have our conflicts and controversies to grieve, and speak into, but the risen Christ has not left us confused about what to expect, pray for, and hold our leaders to account for. Scripture has a lot to say about our current crisis.

Pastor-elder David Mathis expands on the nature and calling of local church leaders as joyful workers for the joy of their people, through the framework of the elder qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

To my count, 1 Timothy 3 provides fifteen requirements for pastor-elders—the lead or teaching office in the church. Another list—again, I count fifteen—comes just pages later in Titus 1, with most of them mapping on precisely to the first list. Added to that, we have, among others, 1 Peter 5:1–5, 2 Timothy 2:22–26, Hebrews 13 (verses 7 and 17), and the words of Christ in Mark 10:42–45. Jesus has not left us without clarity.
Paul Really Knew
For more than a decade now, I’ve given unusual time and attention to lingering over the pastor-elder qualifications. Not only am I a pastor seeking to regularly rehearse what Christ requires of me (and grow, with his help, in these virtues), but since 2012 I’ve been assigned “the eldership class” at Bethlehem Seminary. This class is typically a cohort of 15–16 seminarians training to be vocational pastor-elders.
Over time, we’ve found the lists of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to be worthy of far more than a brief review or a single session of focus. In fact, in seeking to present to the class and address what Scripture teaches, and what I’ve found to be significant in pastoral ministry, I’ve found again and again that essentially all the relevant practical issues in preparing for eldership pair with one or more of the traits Paul lists in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1.
Imagine that.
Paul really knew what he was talking about—not just as a list of prerequisites to become an elder but as a catalog of the kind of virtues that elders need day in and day out to be healthy, effective elders in the long haul for the joy of the church.
What Kind of Men?
Semester after semester, I have found so much life, so much to learn, so much to say, so much to discuss, so much to apply in these elder qualifications. For one, the virtues mentioned here are not devoid of reference elsewhere in Scripture. Rather, in most cases, Scripture, from Old Testament to New, has quite a bit to say about these traits.
One avenue into these traits I’ve developed over time is finding a superlative for each. Perhaps this will help some readers, as it’s helped me, come at these traits from fresh angles and understand them, in theory, in practice, and in new dimensions. I’ll order them here under the three major headings I’ve come to use in the class—humbled, whole, and honorable.
Humbled: Men before Their God
The first is perhaps the most misunderstood: aspiration. “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1). In the age of the subjective, we often emphasize the self’s desire for, or aspiring to, the office of pastor-elder. That’s good and well, and so we should. Aspiration is here at the outset of the list, and it’s critical. Pastor-elders are to be those who labor with joy (2 Cor. 1:24), which is to the benefit of their people (Heb. 13:17), and which is why this line of work is not to be done reluctantly or under compulsion, but willingly and eagerly (1 Pet. 5:2).
However, what some in our day misunderstand is that their subjective desire, their aspiration, is not the end-all-be-all in being “called to ministry.” Rather, the heart of Christian ministry is not bringing our desires (however sanctified) to bear on the world but letting the actual needs of others (on God’s terms) meet with and shape our hearts. Often overlooked in Christian discussions of “calling” today is the actual God-given, real-world (objective) open door. Aspiration is critical but not a “call” in itself.
“Not be a recent convert,” then, we might call the most unactionable trait in the list. If you just came to faith, you are recent (literally, a “new plant”) and there is simply nothing you can do about that. So we might say this one is, in a sense, “most out of your own hands.” However, we might also add that “recent” is a relative word. And those who seek humility (Zeph. 2:3) and make some real headway in putting to death their pride, move forward in line with the concern of this requisite: that he not “become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Being genuinely humbled, and learning to welcome it, will make more recent converts seem less recent.
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