The call of pastoral ministry should never be taken lightly. Certainly, this does not mean we should look for perfect men to fill our pulpits. Only One lived perfectly and then died for sinners, including pastors, and rose again to justify us by His grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Nevertheless, it is a high and serious calling to be a pastor. There are many reasons this is true, but one significant purpose is because pastors are to model what an active living faith looks like before their people. Consider Hebrews 13:7 –

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

God has appointed qualified men to shepherd His churches, in part, so that His people could have a tangible example of what it looks like to trust the Lord. This type of example is important in every season but is particularly necessary in tumultuous days like the present.

In these menacing times, brother pastors, we must seek God’s grace in order to give our people a faith worth imitating. In today’s post, I have four areas of exhortation whereby pastors can better model a tangible faith to their people. I believe the Scriptures warrant these four areas as having particular importance to the life of the church and even more so during seasons like these.

In the crucible of perilous seasons, where flames of doubt, fear, and lawlessness seem to portend our doom, godly pastors must stand as steadfast beacons of faith, their lives and teaching a testament to trust in the face of menacing times.

Where must pastors particularly model trust before their people? Here are four areas:

The Sufficiency of Scripture

From the beginning, Satan has attacked the Word of God (cf. Gen. 3:1). In every century, God’s people have felt the unrelenting barrage of the Evil One seeking to minimize the power and efficacy of the Bible. Our day is no different.

Thus, pastors must have a ready response to the devil, to the culture, and even to the church, when asked, Hath God really said?. That answer is, “Yes He has! Here is chapter and verse.”

Pastors must demonstrate to their people that the Bible really is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative, necessary, clear, and sufficient revelation of the triune God. They do this by not only preaching weekly what the Bible says in its context, but also by seeking to have the structure, worship, ministry, fellowship, and entire life of the church conformed to the Scriptures.

We must show the world (for truly, it is watching) and broader evangelicalism, that the Word of God does not change and sufficiently addresses every issue the church may face until our Lord Jesus returns. The qualifications for a pastor do not change in any age. The definition of the church does not change. Sin always has the same remedy: repentance and faith in Christ. We have a sufficient Bible.

Pastors must demonstrate to their people that the Bible really is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative, necessary, clear, and sufficient revelation of the triune God.

Pastors must not only carry the Bible with them into the pulpit, but into homes, alongside hospital beds, and in their hearts in such a way that their people truly believe, “these men really believe this Book and I should too!”

The Suitableness of Christ

Secondly, pastors must show their people what it looks like to rest wholly upon King Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. A pastor is not more acceptable to God because of his pastoring. He, as much as any other person, stands in need of the grace of God in the gospel.

Christ shed His blood for sinners’ redemption (cf. Eph. 1:7). Thus, a pastor must never seek to be Jesus to anyone – he could never be! He too stands in need of the justifying work of Jesus as applied by the Holy Spirit.

This means pastors can and must model what it looks like to humbly rest in Jesus as our only suitable and all sufficient Savior. They are to model repentance before others and forgiveness to others. They are to model evangelism as they show forth the suitability of Christ for any sinner who will call upon His name.

And they must never forget the great love God has for them! The pastor’s identity is not first and foremost in his pastoring. It is securely in our victorious Savior. So, while a pastor cannot be Christ to anyone, he is to be in Christ to everyone.

And when Satan shoots his fiery arrows at a pastor (cf. Eph. 6:16) – and he will – we do not seek to defend ourselves by pointing to our accolades or making paltry excuses for our failures. Rather, we hold up the shield of faith, singing, “upward I look and see Him there, who made an end of all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free, for God the just is satisfied, to look on Him and pardon me!”

The Sovereignty of God

In seasons of prosperity, it seems easy to say that God is on His throne. But it is all the more necessary to show our people the sovereignty of God when the days are dark.

It is a shame that the sovereignty of God is a source of contention for many professing Christians and churches today. The sovereignty of God is not revealed to the church for her to squabble about it. It is revealed for our comfort. For our pillow at night. For our defense. For our shield (cf. Gen. 15:1).

Church members need to see what it looks like for a pastor to really believe in the sovereignty of God. Has God really chosen a people in eternity past despite their unworthiness? Then missions and evangelism will be a priority! We are guaranteed ultimate success in gospel ministry because God is sovereign (even if we do not see immediate results always in the here and now).

Has God really decreed all things and is He presently working all things out according to the counsel of His will (cf. Eph. 1:11)? Then away with all cowardice. We can stand confidently in the midst of every storm because we have a sovereign God who is in complete control and His Word reassures us that He will never leave us or forsake us.

Thus, while pastors should be good citizens of our country, and know what’s going on in our world today, they must never be immobilized by fear. They do not have to spend hours upon hours in the latest news cycle because they already know the most important thing: Christ is king! And all things are under His sovereign feet.

We can stand confidently in the midst of every storm because we have a sovereign God who is in complete control and His Word reassures us that He will never leave us or forsake us.

Further, we demonstrate trust in the sovereignty of God when we do things as He has shown us in His Word. We do church discipline, for example, because we trust a sovereign God. Obedience to God demonstrates our belief in His sovereign rule. Even when the world may say we are foolish, we do what God says because He is God and we are not.

The Success of the Church

Finally, pastors must show their people what it looks like to really believe in the importance of the local church. Whatever your eschatology may be, every pastor ought to be unremittingly committed to the local church and her success.

Christ is head of the church (cf. Col. 1:18). If Christ is the head of the church, and not the pope and not any human institution, entity, or committee, then how can the church not have victory? She is already seated with Christ (Eph. 2:4-6)! If Christ is the head and the church His body, do we think somehow the body of Christ will be defeated while the head prevails? No!

 Christ will never be severed from His Body. The Bridegroom will never be separated from His Bride. The Cornerstone will never be removed from the Building.

The church ultimately prevails because the Jesus prevails! Christ wins and so His body wins with Him and will be presented before God holy and blameless (cf. Eph. 5:25-27).

Now, it is true that individual churches may shut their doors. Conventions or denominations may cease to exist or even apostatize. Christians may face martyrdom. But the point is, as a collective whole, local churches win because they are united to Christ and He is King of kings and Lord of lords.

Friends, the church is not an afterthought to God. She is not a parenthesis to His plan. She is His plan! From the beginning, we see her, though not in her fullness, in the Old Testament saints and prophecies. We see her more clearly revealed in the New Testament. And we see that she is what God is doing in the world today (cf. Matthew 16:18).

The church ultimately prevails because the Jesus prevails! Christ wins and so His body wins with Him and will be presented before God holy and blameless.

The church is winning now. Christ is reigning now. Christ is building His church inside the enemy’s camp now. Society may be crumbling. Morals may be declining. Nations may faulter. But the Church is enduring. She is not forgotten. She is the apple of God’s eye. Local churches are enduring. The Spirit of God is working in them. The Kingdom is not retreating but advancing.

Consider that for the last 2,000 years Satan and this evil world have sought to snuff out the church. Constant berating. Constant persecution. Constant warfare. For 2,000 years. But where is the church today compared to the book of Acts? She is thriving. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth have received the gospel, and the church continues to march forward making more and more disciples for the glory of God.

The church wins. She will always face persecution in this life. She will always meet resistance. But God is building His church in the face of His enemies. No matter what may happen to one particular local church, the church as a whole, local churches as a whole, will endure.

Pastors, our people need to see this kind of belief in the church. And this is not because the church is worthy in and of herself, but because Christ holds her dear to His heart.

Conclusion

These are not the days for retreat. Before closing, let me offer these thoughts to you in a different way. Pastors,

We model trust in the sufficiency of Scripture so there is No Rerouting.

We model trust in the sovereignty of God so there is No Rattle.

We model trust in the suitableness of Christ so there is No Replacement.

We model trust in the success of the church so there are No Regrets.

The Bible is sufficient, we will walk in the way of the Lord and no other (cf. Jer. 6:16). God is sovereign, we will not be afraid. Christ is enough and there is no other. The church wins, so we will gladly spend and be spent for her sake.

Keep pressing on, brother pastors. Rest your failures in the glorious gospel. Let your people see a faith worth imitating. Christ is worthy. To God be the glory.

“… I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:14–15).

I became a Christian in the spring of my senior year in high school. That fall I went away to college and worked part-time in an insurance office to pay for my college education. Though it was difficult to both work and take a full college load, I was nevertheless excited about my new life in Christ. I was going to church regularly, studying the Bible daily, reading good books, meeting new Christian friends, learning to pray and growing in Christ. Those were very joyful and exciting times.

Toward the end of my freshman year I realized I was going to need more money than the seventy-five cents per hour I was making on my job (that was in 1955). I heard of a job on a large company farm near Chicago where college boys could make good money. So I loaded my belongings in a small black trunk, boarded a train and headed to Mendota, Illinois, really not knowing for sure what I was getting into. Shortly after my arrival, the canning company, for which I worked, assigned me and several other young men from across the nation to a pea farm, where they housed us in some rather plain barracks, fed us three meals a day and worked us seven days a week, often as much as sixteen to twenty hours per day. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work, but where else in 1955 could a college student earn up to $200 per week, with no living expenses?

When we began that summer there were a few believers among the crew and we had some rich fellowship on that farm. But soon the hard work, long hours and homesickness began to take their toll. Serious attrition began. Within a few weeks I was the only college student left on that particular farm. In order to complete the crops that summer, the company began to pick up men off skid row in Chicago and bring them to live and work on the farm. The result was that I was the only Christian there, with no one else left to provide me with spiritual fellowship. Many of the men were alcoholics and were foul-mouthed derelicts. Thus began some very lonesome days. I was starving for spiritual conversation. Yet I needed the money if I hoped to return to college that fall.

Finally, late in the summer we received a Sunday off in order to rest. That morning I hitched a ride into town and made my way to a small, white frame building, which housed the local Baptist church. But much to my dismay a sign was stapled to the door, which read: “Closed for the summer.” 

The remainder of my time there that summer was spent with no Christian fellowship. My only spiritual stimulation was my Bible and the few Christian books I had with me.

I now believe that this episode in my life was used by God to show me the vital importance of the local church. All one has to do to recognize this is to be without one. I am glad the Lord taught me this lesson early in my Christian life. Several times later while on mission trips, the need of a local church was made much clearer to me. In some of those areas of the world, there have been many villages where there were no Christian churches whatsoever. My heart bled for those individual believers who were forced to live and grow spiritually all on their own.

In America, particularly in the southern Bible belt, we are very spoiled. Churches abound. In some of these areas churches are on almost every corner. This is not true in many parts of the globe. To be without a local family of God is to miss some of God’s richest blessings. Just how important is your church? Consider the following:

• It provides you with daily and weekly fellowship.

• It warns and encourages you.

• It helps hold you accountable.

• It provides communion for you.

• It challenges you to use your spiritual gifts.

• It provides a place for those gifts to be exercised.

• It helps protect you from heresy.

• It guides you to godly living.

• It spiritually ministers to your family.

• It collectively supports Christian causes and missions around the world.

• It often means the salvation of souls (perhaps even your own).

• It helps you when you are spiritually, emotionally, physically or financially in need.

• It is the pillar and ground of the truth in your area.

• It disciplines you when you develop a sinful lifestyle.

• It helps bring down racial barriers.

These are just a few of the benefits of belonging to a good local church. Try to imagine where else you could receive such benefits and direction. Indeed, our Lord manifested His wisdom when He established both the universal and the local bodies of Christ. And we are the primary beneficiaries. Today, thank God for the grace shown to you in placing you in a sound, local church body. If you are not in one, either find one to join, or help start an evangelical church in your area. It will be an important key to your spiritual growth and service.

This article is an excerpt from Curtis Thomas’ book – Life in the Body of Christ: Privileges and Responsibilities in the Local Church. A new hardcover edition is now available for pre-order for $19.98 at press.founders.org

This article is part 12 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11).

The first of the ecumenical creeds was formulated in a council called by the emperor Constantine. According to historians Eusebius of Caesarea and Lanctantius, Constantine was converted to Christianity as he prepared for a battle with Maxentius in the year 312. His victory, which he attributed to Christ, made him the sole ruler of the western portion of the Empire. After a dozen years of gaining more knowledge of the church’s organization and doctrines, Constantine, aware of a theological controversy that stirred the church, made arrangements for church bishops to meet in Nicea (present day Iznik in Turkey) to settle the dispute. Around 300 bishops were able to come with only half a handful of representatives from the west.

The controversy that prompted the call to Nicea focused on the teaching of a presbyter of Alexandria Egypt named Arius (260-336). Arius strongly concluded that the monotheism necessary to Christianity eliminated the possibility of any other personal entity sharing the status of absolute deity. In a letter to his friend Eusebius of Nicomedia in 318 during the initial tensions of the controversy, he complained that Alexander “greatly injures and persecutes us . . . since we do not agree with him when he says publicly, ‘Always Father, always Son, ‘Father and Son together,’ . . . ‘Neither in thought nor by a single instant is God before the Son.’” Arius instead taught that “before he was begotten or created or ordained or founded, he was not.” He, that is, the one called the son, is not “a part of the unbegotten in any way” but was “constituted” by God’s “will and counsel, before times and before ages.”[1]

Arius’s affirmation, therefore, of the lordship of Christ could not mean that he was co-eternal with the Father and of the same nature. The phrases anathematized at the end of the Nicene Creed 325 represent some of the phrases that Arius used to define his understanding of Jesus, the Christ. Because only God is eternal, Jesus is not; and so, “There was when he was not.” Since he is begotten, he must have come into existence subsequent to the Father and, therefore, “begotten” is taken as a synonym for “created.” Since he is created, he cannot be of the same eternal immutable substance as the Father and is, on that account, of a different substance. Since he is a created moral being, even though the first of all created things, he is mutable and could have sinned. The Father, however, endowed him with the power of creation, set him forth to be the redeemer of the fallen race, a task that the Son effected without blemish and thus gained the status of savior. In order to be like us and succeed where we failed, he had to take our flesh. In his person, however, his humanity consisted only of the body while the created logos constituted the rational soul of the person Jesus.

This savior concocted by Arius, therefore, was neither God nor man. The views of Arius show that a single theological principle pressed with a relentless, but false, logic uninformed by other revelatory propositions leads to destructive conclusions.

Among the most important of the biblical theologians opposed to Arius was a young deacon at Alexandria named Athanasius (296-373). Athanasius had written a book entitled On the Incarnation of the Word.[2] In it he had discussed how the incarnation of the Son of God solved an apparent dilemma. God intended to bring his creature man to a state of glorious fellowship with God. He also threatened that if his creature disobeyed then death would be the certain outcome. How can God complete his purpose for man and at the same time keep true to his word? The incarnation is God’s answer to this apparent dilemma. The one who was both God and man could take the death man owed for “all men were due to die,” thus fulfilling the veracity of God’s word and the honor of God. At the same time, he brought to glory the human nature that he shared with the creature, thus fulfilling the divine purpose for man. Athanasius was well-armed in biblical knowledge and in theological reflection for the vital corrective that the Arian speculation demanded.

The views of Arius show that a single theological principle pressed with a relentless, but false, logic uninformed by other revelatory propositions leads to destructive conclusions.

Though the Council had negative fall-out in church-state relations and the eventual authority of canon law, the most important result of the Council of Nicea was the adoption of the creed. To show the pivotal importance of the substance of this creed we will point to five short insertions. Eusebius of Caesarea (the first church historian) proposed the confession used at baptism by his church (or something very similar) as a possible statement to bring unity to the deeply divided council. When the Arian party agreed to sign the proposed statement, the party led by Alexander of Alexandria (d. 328) and his young deacon Athanasius (296-373) knew that no real unity could be gained by such a tactic. A creed that simply embraced the serious doctrinal disagreements would only perpetuate substantial disharmony and lead to constant dispute. Preeminently, ambiguity about the legitimate object of worship would in fact endorse a principle of idolatry and capitulate to the impression that Scripture itself was not clear in its christological focus. The wisdom of God would be impugned for leaving us without clarity on the status of the one he called “My beloved Son.” What could be more absurd in Christianity that to leave the christological issue a matter of opinion, ambiguity, and diverse formulation?

Much of the clarification was attached to the phrase in Eusebius’s confession “begotten from the Father.” The first defining clarification is in the words, “from the substance of the Father.” This means that the Son’s existence is not an act of the will of the Father at a point outside his own eternity, as openly asserted by Arius. Athanasius contended, “Created things have come into being by God’s pleasure and by his will; but the Son is not a creation of his will, nor has he come into being subsequently, as the creation; but he is by nature the proper offspring of the Father’s substance.” The Son’s co-eternality is intrinsic to the very existence of the Father as Father. If God’s essential character is Father, then he could never be without his Son. One of the truths we know about God is his eternal paternity, and thus, from that substance the Son eternally exists as Son.

A second defining phrase is in the words “true God from true God.” Jesus was not inferior in his divinity; he was not constituted as a deity by dint of accomplishment; he was not granted the position or title as a reward for hard and faithful work. Because he was begotten of the substance of the Father, his deity is a true eternal deity, and his Sonship means that he is of the substance of his Father, truly divine. The Son of God is a true Son in the natural and moral image and likeness of his Father.

Third, the creed denied Arius’s understanding of “begotten” by saying “not made.” The idea of begetting is a different reality from creating. That which is begotten shares the nature of the begetter. In his hard-hitting, intensely doctrinal, polemical refutation of Arianism entitled Contra Arianos, Athanasius points to the use of the term begotten in Scripture as sealing the reality that sons are of the same nature as their fathers. “The character of the parent determines the character of the offspring.” Humans, as created, arise in time and beget in time and their begotten ones follow them in time; but they are not different in nature. “But the nature is one,” Athanasius affirmed, “for the offspring is not unlike the parent, being his image, and all that is the Father’s is the Son’s.”

The Son of God is a true Son in the natural and moral image and likeness of his Father.

That sons follow fathers in time is not essential to the reality of begetting but only an accident of our state of being created and thus limited by time. That our children follow us in time does not mean they are of a different nature, but only that in creatures the process of begetting proceeds from generation to generation.

God as a begetter relates to his only-begotten as Son to Father, sharing the same eternal attributes while also maintaining eternally distinguishing traits of personhood. For this reason the doctrine of eternal generation was important to Athanasius. Never has there been any point in God’s eternal existence when the Son was not begotten by the Father. If there had been, then the relation of Father and Son would be merely temporal and there would be no way of maintaining a singularity in the divine essence while affirming a real plurality of persons. Without generation as an eternal operation of God, tritheism or modalism are the only alternatives.

This truth of eternal generation helps in the interpretation of certain passages of Scripture. For example, no doctrine gives greater aid in understanding John 5:26 than this. “For as the Father hath life in himself; so he hath given to the Son to have life in himself” (KJV). Self-existence is an attribute of God only. The Father has this attribute necessarily and, as eternally generated by the Father, so that attribute distinctive of deity constitutes the self-existence of the Son. “In him was life” (John 1:4). The Jews understood this ontological relationship of Father to Son to involve equality of essence. When Jesus called God his Father in a distinctive way, therefore, the Jews “sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18 KJV).

Fourth, the council adopted a controversial word to assure that none could interpret Christ’s nature as inferior to or other than that of the Father in any sense. The word was controversial because it was used by a theologian named Sabellius in asserting that the essence of divinity has appeared in three modes as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of these manifestations is God, and, in sharing the same essence, are in reality only one person. Modalism, as it was called, was heretical and prejudiced some of the concerned against that word. The problem lay in the failure to define a difference between “essence” on the one hand, and “person” on the other. Tertullian (ca 160-ca 220) had successfully sustained the distinction in his Latin writings in deploying the terms una substantia and tres personae. His influence protected the West from the difficulty perceived in the mono-essentiality of Father and Son. In spite of the scary associations of the language among the Greeks, however, the creed affirmed that the Son is of “one substance with the Father.” If he is begotten of the substance of the Father, ascertaining that he is “true God of true God,” and that his begottenness can in no way be construed as createdness, then it is not only appropriate, but necessary that the term homousiov, same essence, substance, nature, be affirmed of the Son.

Never has there been any point in God’s eternal existence when the Son was not begotten by the Father.

Fifth, in light of the strange anthropology of Arius, the creed attached to the phrase “was made flesh,” the exegetical appositive “was made man.” Arius believed that the only thing really human about Jesus was his flesh. His rationality was constituted by the created word, or son. When John wrote, “the word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he never meant that Jesus had human flesh only but no human mind, affections or spirit. The phrase, “made man,” should not have been necessary to insert, but in light of the bizarre idea of Arius, this had to be defined.

Note also the soteriological concern involved in this. It was in pursuit of “our salvation” that he took our humanity into his eternal Sonship. Had he, the Eternal Son of God, not assumed our nature, he could in no wise be our savior. He could not have lived for us in order to grant us his righteousness; he could not have died for us to bear our load of sin, guilt, and punishment. “The free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many” (Romans 5:15).

The Creed of Nicea is not Scripture and has no authority as a creed. Its synthetic arrangement, however, of clearly biblical ideas, and its clarifying exegetical phrases give aid to the Christian in declaring with the mouth the esteem for and dependence on Jesus as Son of God and Savior that should be in the heart. This creed is a faithful expression of the announcement given by the angels at Jesus’ birth: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.” If we “Remember Jesus Christ,” with clarity, confidence, gratitude, and worship these confessional affirmations we can recite from the heart. This is my translation of the Christological portion of the Nicene creed of 325.

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things seen and unseen; And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten out of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God out of God, light out of light, true God out of true God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father, through Whom as an intermediary all things came to be, things in heaven and things on earth, Who on account of us men and on account of our salvation came down, and was enfleshed even to the point of true manhood, and suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and dead.

“Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, of a seed of David, as preached in my gospel. …If we deny him, he himself will deny us” 2 Timothy 2:8, 12b).

[1] Edward R.Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954) 329, 330.

[2] Hardy, 55-110.

This article is part 12 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ.

Join us at the 2024 National Founders Conference on January 18-20 as we consider what it means to “Remember Jesus Christ” under the teaching of Tom Ascol, Joel Beeke, Costi Hinn, Phil Johnson, Conrad Mbewe and Travis Allen.