Holy Partakers of the Divine Nature
What Peter teaches is that God has allowed His people to partake of His power and His nature. This far exceeds the heretical teaching that we are divine in some way. We are finite, fallen human creatures. It is a testimony to the grace and mercy of God in Christ that we share His power and have been made partakers of His nature as we are united to Jesus and grow into His likeness.
We don’t need to spend much time watching the twenty-four-hour news channels or scrolling through social media to be discouraged about the bad shape that our world is in. Unfortunately, it is not hard to find things to be discouraged about in the church at large and, in some cases, even in our own local churches. This is not a surprise to those of us who follow Jesus. He told us that we should expect as much when He said that we would have trouble in this world (John 16:33).
This was especially true for those to whom Peter wrote his epistles. He wrote two letters: one to warn and then encourage believers about the persecution they may face from the world (1 Peter) and the other to warn and then encourage believers about the false teachers who may move in and be among them (2 Peter). It is primarily this second challenge that he is addressing in his opening words in 2 Peter 1. In this section, Peter says something remarkable about what God has done for His people in Christ:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. (1 Peter 1:3–4)
Peter wants to encourage his readers that we have been equipped to defend the truth and even beat back the false teachers and the heresy they are promoting. God has prepared believers for such a time as this—that is Peter’s encouragement.
God’s people’s having knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ figures prominently as Peter opens his second letter (2 Peter 1:1–3). This is not a removed or passive “knowing about” God and His Son.
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A Superlative Guide to All 15 Elder Qualifications
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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Are Mental Images of God Unavoidable?
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
The [Westminster] Divines confessed that inward images are forbidden: they are the root of the external images that are obviously forbidden. The rejection of internal images is a good and necessary consequence of the rejection of external images. The god we fashion in our hearts and minds are just as idolatrous as icons of the Father, the Son incarnate, and the Spirit.Q. 109. What sins are forbidden in the second commandment?
A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed (Westminster Larger Catechism, 1647
After the fall we humans are all idolaters at heart. By nature, our first instinct is to fashion gods for ourselves with our hands or in our hearts and minds. When the committee that produced the Westminster Larger Catechism got to the exposition of the Ten Commandments they re-articulated the Reformed rule of worship (i.e., the regulative principle of worship): we may worship God only in the way he has authorized. This rule is biblical and connects us to the ancient Christian church. Other traditions (e.g., the Lutherans, Anglicans, and Evangelicals) ask first whether God has prohibited something in worship. We ask whether God has authorized it. These are distinct views with different outcomes and consequences. Thus, following the consensus of the ancient church, which prohibited images of Christ until the iconodules overthrew that consensus in the eighth century, the Reformed churches across Europe and the British Isles removed images of the holy Trinity, including images of God the Son incarnate, from the Reformed churches and forbid their use.
However much even Reformed people continue to chafe under the rule of worship and the ancient iconoclast position, judging by the objections I have heard from seminary students, fellow ministers, and by the correspondence I have received over the years, one phrase in particular troubles critics and even those who would otherwise subscribe the Larger Catechism: the prohibition of mental images: “either inwardly in our mind…”. Is this phrase warranted or is it an example of over-zealous “Puritans” going just a bit too far in their desire to purify the worship of the churches and prosecute sin to the inner reaches of every man?
The English Reformed gathered at Westminster, who commissioned and comprised the committee did not go too far in Q/A 109. Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635–1711) agreed with the divines:
The seventh sin is to make physical representations of God in our minds. God reveals Himself to the soul of men as a Spirit, doing so in a manner much more devoid of the physical than can be expressed. When the natural man initially thinks upon God, however, he spoils this initial reflection upon God and changes that which is spiritual into something physical. One will either seek to maintain this physical representation of God, finding delight in creating various representations of God in the mind, or it will be contrary to the will of the person engaged in thought, who wishes to have spiritual thoughts of God but cannot do so—this being caused either externally due to people speaking of God, or due to Satan’s influence upon the imagination. The latter is not the sin of the person, but of Satan; that is, if the person is only passively involved, abhorring this, and laboring to resist it (John 4:24).1
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Watch Yourself and the Teaching
Pastor, persevere to the end of your days in keeping a close watch on both your piety and your theology. You will never reach a level of maturity or a time in your life when you no longer need this vigilance. Again, when Paul writes or speaks specifically to ministers, he basically repeats what he says here to Timothy. To the elders of the Ephesian church, he says, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28). When he says, “and to all the flock,” we know Paul is urging them to “Keep a close watch on . . . the teaching,” because in the very next verses he warns the elders that false teachers will soon come, “not sparing the flock” — men who will “draw away the disciples after them” (verses 29–30).
During the 24 years I served in pastoral ministry, I saw a continual stream of advertisements about how to grow a bigger church. In nearly 50 years of preaching and teaching, I have heard dozens of messages on evangelism, missions, and church growth. And yet I could probably count on one hand the number of times one of these ads or messages mentioned the only verse in the Bible that essentially says, “Do this, and you will see people saved.”
The message of this verse was so important to the apostle Paul that when he specifically addresses elders in the New Testament, he communicates its essence. This is also the only verse in the Bible (that I can recall) that gives the same exhortation three times. Think it’s important?
What is the verse? First Timothy 4:16,
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
For 28 years, I have turned to this text every semester on the last day of class. In the compact space of two short sentences are three imperatives and two promises. We’ll begin with the imperatives before turning to the promises.
1. ‘Keep a Close Watch on Yourself.’
How does a minister “keep a close watch” on himself? By cultivating faithfulness to and avoiding the erosion of his devotion to Christ. How does he do this? By obedience to a command earlier in this chapter: “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). And how does he do this? By consistently and wholeheartedly practicing the biblical spiritual disciplines, especially the disciplines related to the word of God and prayer, for these are the God-given means of godliness.
Godliness — a Bible word essentially synonymous with Christlikeness, holiness, and sanctification — is cultivated by the personal and interpersonal spiritual disciplines, both positively (vivification) and negatively (mortification). In other words, these biblical habits are the means through which the Holy Spirit works to help us experience God and grow in grace as well as to defeat sin.
Remember that this command was first given to a minister (Timothy) and then by extension to all Christians. So, do not think, pastor, that while your people will become more godly by practicing the spiritual disciplines, you will become more Christlike simply by being in the ministry. The temptations and pressures of the ministry will conspire to make you more ungodly if you do not train yourself for godliness. Mentally remove everything in your life that’s related to ministry. With what is left, could it be said that you are growing more Christlike?
I strongly urge you to read Richard Baxter’s treatment of 1 Timothy 4:16 — especially his eight reasons why you need to keep a close watch on yourself — in his pastoral classic, The Reformed Pastor. Particularly note his third reason: you are exposed to greater temptations than others. Satan is not stupid. He knows that if he can make you fall, it will have a more damaging effect on the church than if he fells the guy who comes once a month and sits in the back row.
Unless a pastor — new or old — devotes himself to the scriptural means of godliness, he will cease to be a godly man. And what healthy church wants a pastor who isn’t godly?
2. ‘Keep a Close Watch on the Teaching.’
In this pastoral imperative, “the teaching” refers to doctrine — to “the teaching” found in “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Put another way, “Study theology, pastor!”
Even to the end of his life, Paul was an example of diligent study. Despite his thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and all he had seen and experienced as an apostle, he pled with Timothy in the final chapter of his last inspired letter, “When you come, bring . . . the books, and above all the parchments” (2 Timothy 4:13).
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