John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. Today in our Bible reading, we read Jeremiah 23–25 together. It included a beautiful new-covenant text that one listener wants you to explain more. The listener is Matthew. He wrote, “Pastor John, hello to you. I find myself often in debates with friends and family over Calvinism and Arminianism. They’re all Arminian. I try to represent the other side with clarity and charity.

“One of the arguments that I come back to repeatedly is about free will and what I see in Jeremiah 24:7: ‘I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.’ What I see in this text is that, of course, we all have free will, the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire. So, what we need are new desires that want the right things. God must act to give us new desires or we are hopeless. This is sovereign grace in the miracle of regeneration. How much of your discussions over free will centers on this fact, that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart, a new will?”

First, let me commend Matthew for defining what he means by free will. That’s really unusual. I appreciate it very much, because in most discussions people use the phrase as though it were clear, when in fact most people have very different views of what free will means. He has defined it, so I can answer his question with more precision.

Defining ‘Free Will’

He says that free will is “the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire.” That’s a pretty shrewd and careful definition. Freedom of the will, he says, is the freedom “to do and believe what we most desire.” And I think that if we are going to affirm the existence of free will among fallen people like us, that’s the definition we need to use, because it answers the question of how people can be free whom the Bible says are dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:5), slaves of sin (Romans 6:20), under the dominion of sin (Romans 3:9), blind to spiritual reality (2 Corinthians 4:4), hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18), and unable to submit to God (Romans 8:7).

“God knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible.”

So, given Matthew’s definition of freedom, such dead, enslaved, dominated, blind, hard, impotent people have freedom of the will, because it means that they are free to do and believe what they most desire — namely, sin. That’s what they’re free to do. And I would agree that if we’re going to maintain that the will is free, that is the definition we should use. So, to speak of free will then is to speak of a will that is free to do and believe what it most desires — but is not free to desire God above all else.

What Arminians Want

What I have found, therefore, is that most people who reject Calvinistic or Reformed understandings of human depravity and sovereign grace — which is required to bring a dead, hard, blind person to saving faith — is that this definition of free will is not acceptable to them. It’s not acceptable because it still leaves a person unable to provide the decisive thing that leads to conversion — namely, the strongest desire to trust Christ. It leaves a person in the bondage of their strongest desires, which are against God.

Saying that a person is free to do what he most desires, but he’s not free to create desires for God, does not give the Arminian what he wants. And what’s that? A fair definition of what the Arminian requires is free will defined as the power of decisive self-determination. In other words, what the Arminian requires is that, at the precise point of conversion, where saving faith comes into being, it is man and not God that at that point provides the decisive and effective influence. That’s what the Arminian must have to make his views work. Whatever influences God may give prior to that point — call them “prevenient grace,” which is what the Arminian wants to call all the illuminating, freeing grace of God — the Arminian insists that the final, decisive creation of the strongest effective desire for Christ must be self-determined, human-determined, not God-determined.

So, Matthew asks me, “How much of your discussions over free will centers on the fact that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart and a new will?” My answer now is that I don’t usually start with Matthew’s definition of free will. It may be helpful in some discussions to define free will that way, but I find that it is most illuminating, most convicting, most clarifying to start with the definition of free will that Arminians really do need in order for their views to make sense — namely, the definition that free will is the power of decisive self-determination (or I sometimes use the phrase “ultimate self-determination”). With this definition, then, it appears that Arminians believe in such free will and Calvinists do not believe in such free will. I certainly do not believe there is such a thing as human free will defined as decisive self-determination.

Bound to Sovereign Grace

At this point in my conversations, what proves to be most clarifying is two things.

First is the abundance of biblical texts that describe the bondage of the will and the necessity of sovereign grace to bring a person out of spiritual deadness into life and faith. For example, in Ephesians 2:5–6, Paul does not say that when we were spiritually dead God gave us a kind of halfway regeneration where we now, in that new halfway state of life, provide ourselves the decisive, self-determining act of faith — the act of producing the strongest desire for Jesus that pushes us over the line to believe. What Paul says is that while we were dead, God not only made us alive but also raised us up with Christ and seated “us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In other words, God’s action is decisive — all the way from death through spiritual resurrection to our firm, saved position in the presence of God in Christ. There are many texts that teach the same thing concerning sovereign grace. That’s the first thing.

“Without God’s sovereign grace, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.”

The other thing that I find clarifying and helpful in conversations with folks is to point out that free will, understood as the power of ultimate or decisive self-determination, is not taught anywhere in the Bible. Not a single verse, not a single text teaches that there is such a thing as the power of ultimate human self-determination. So, where does that idea come from that we must have ultimate self-determination? It comes from a philosophical presupposition that people bring to the Bible. The philosophical presupposition is that if we don’t have ultimate self-determination, we cannot be held accountable for our own beliefs and actions before God. Well, the Bible simply does not affirm that presupposition.

The Bible teaches that God has ways we do not understand and that he knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible, truly accountable — and he, at the same time, is truly sovereign. And oh, we should be thankful for this sovereign grace, because without it, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.

So, if you find yourself — and I’m speaking to those of you who are listening right now — if you find yourself unable to love God, unable to trust Christ, don’t despair. Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Resolve to seek him, come to him. Look to his suffering for the worst of sinners, and ask God for the grace to see and savor Christ.

To answer the question, “What authority do pastors have?” you have to pick a side in the polity debates. I choose elder-led congregationalism. My sense, however, is that many Christians and pastors avoid the topic of polity because it’s contested territory. Maybe it feels unimportant.

Besides, can’t we read through 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and passages like Acts 20:17–38 and 1 Peter 5:1–4, and easily answer the question? Elders have (1) a general authority of oversight over the whole church as well as (2) the authority to teach and conduct the ordinances. That much is straightforward. Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Anglicans, and elder-ruled independent churches all agree.

Furthermore, Protestants agree that pastors or elders (I use the terms interchangeably) don’t have the authority to dispense absolution for sin. We agree they are not a separate class of mediators. Martin Luther remarked, “There really is no difference between laymen and priests . . . except that of office and work, but not of ‘estate’; for they are all of the same estate” (Works of Martin Luther, 2:69). And we agree they can never sit in the so-called “chair of Peter,” speaking infallibly with an authority equal to Scripture. Pastors can make mistakes, and their words must be tested in good Berean fashion against the word of God (Acts 17:11). Think of how Peter himself messed up (e.g., Galatians 2:11–14).

These points of agreement are important. A wrong view of pastoral authority can undermine the gospel (by turning pastors into mediating priests who provide access to grace) and undermine Scripture (by giving their words equal authority to Scripture). So praise God for this consensus.

Inside of Protestantism, however, differences emerge that impact Christian discipleship and the good of the church. As an illustration, think of the difference between a monarchy and a democracy. Those larger structural differences impact the authority of the “leaders” as well as the culture and civic life of everyone. I don’t believe our Protestant differences are as dramatic as monarchies versus democracies. The point is merely that the larger structural context shapes what authority the pastor-elders have. Therefore, we have to account for it.

With all that in mind, consider one principle on context plus seven more on pastoral authority.

Congregational Authority

Principle 1: The gathered congregation possesses the final priestly authority to affirm the what and the who of the gospel — confessions and confessors.

Protestants from Martin Luther and John Calvin to the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) uniformly agree that every Christian is a priest. That expresses itself in the election of officers. It also means any believer can baptize in a pinch. Says Luther, “In cases of necessity any one can baptize . . . which would be impossible unless we were all priests” (67). Any believer can interpret Scripture: “An ordinary man may have true understanding; why then should we not follow him” against any errors of popes or bishops (74)? Any believer can reprove the pope or another erring Christian: “But if I am to accuse him before the Church, I must bring the Church together” (76–77).

The priesthood of all believers, for a Protestant, means that church authority ultimately roots in every believer’s union with Christ. The nineteenth-century Presbyterian James Bannerman writes, “The primary grant from Christ of Church power is virtually, if not expressly and formally, made to believers in that grant which makes all things, whether pertaining to the present or the future, to be theirs in Christ Jesus” (The Church of Christ, 272). After all, that church on the desert island whose pastors all die “must have within themselves all power competent to carry on the necessary functions and offices of a Church” (273).

Beyond this shared position, however, the congregationalists and the non-congregationalists diverge. Advocates of elder-ruled (non-congregationalist) churches — like Bannerman and Luther and every Anglican or independent Bible church you know — have to make some kind of argument that, even if the whole church in some formal sense possesses final authority, that authority has been given to the elders to exercise. That distinction between possession and exercise can be found, for instance, in both the PCA’s and Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s (OPC) books of church order.

An elder-led congregationalist like me, however, would argue that, if you cannot exercise authority, then, logically, you do not possess authority. But never mind logic. In Matthew 18, Jesus explicitly hands the keys of the kingdom to the gathered congregation to render judgment on the what and the who of the gospel — confessions and confessors (Matthew 18:17–18; see also 16:19). And nowhere in the New Testament are these keys handed exclusively to pastors. In fact, Paul calls the Corinthian congregation to use them with the “power” of the Lord Jesus when they are “assembled” (1 Corinthians 5:4). He doesn’t tell the elders to use them on Thursday night in their elders meeting. Likewise, he tells not the Galatian pastors but the Galatian churches to declare anyone teaching a false doctrine “cursed” or anathema (Galatians 1:9).

“If you cannot exercise authority, then, logically, you do not possess authority.”

That means, Christian, that if one of your pastors starts to teach false doctrine, it’s your job to fire him, together with your other church members. And Christ will call you to account on the day of judgment if you don’t.

This priesthood of all believers within an elder-led congregation is the context within which the following points fit.

Heart of Pastoral Authority

Principle 2: Pastors have authority to lead the congregation in knowing which confessions to make and which confessors to affirm.

If the congregation as a whole renders final judgment on right doctrine, whose interpretation and teaching of the Bible will count as a church’s interpretation? One member may have one interpretation; another person another. If the judgments of the church as a whole bind every member, whose interpretation binds the church as a whole?

Answer: the elders’ interpretation. They’re the ones who say, “Church, these are the doctrines we believe.” The congregation then formally affirms, “Yes, those are the doctrines we believe,” making those doctrines a point of official and binding agreement (Matthew 18:19). The congregation makes the final judgment in matters of doctrine and membership, but the elders lead or tell the congregation which judgments to make. This is why the elders ordinarily preach and teach. This is why they ordinarily lead in the ordinances and in membership interviews and so forth. They’re the shepherds standing at the gate of the sheep pen.

Think again of 1 Corinthians 5. Paul tells us he has “pronounced judgment” on the man sleeping with his mother-in-law: remove him (verse 3). Yet is the deed done? No. He calls the church to “judge” the man in the same way (verse 12). Paul, I believe, is acting here like a pastor. He shows us the relationship between elder authority and congregational authority. The congregation has the final say, but the pastors tell them what that final say ought to be.

Extension of Pastoral Authority

Principle 3: Pastors’ authority of oversight includes other matters impacting the whole church.

Pastors also have authority to oversee other decisions of the congregation. Think of the Greek-speaking widows being neglected in the daily distribution of food in Acts 6. That was a big deal. The church was dividing, and widows weren’t getting food. High stakes. Therefore, the apostles, who preferred to spend their time praying and preaching, stepped in and recommended a solution. The solution heavily involved the congregation, yet the apostles, acting like good pastors, exercised oversight.

Likewise, pastors and elders should generally stay out of administrative details, like what color the carpet in the Sunday school classroom should be, or whether the nursery volunteers should wear matching T-shirts (this decision was handed to my elders once). In general, they should involve themselves only in the decisions that impact the whole church and the course of its ministry. Should we start a Sunday school class? What translation of the Bible should we preach from? Should our church support Joe and Kathy on the mission field?

Nature of Pastoral Authority

Principle 4: Pastoral authority morally obligates but doesn’t structurally bind.

Insofar as the church as a whole possesses the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose on earth what’s bound and loosed in heaven, the congregation’s decisions are effectually binding — at the structural level. When they remove a member from the church as an act of excommunication, the person really is removed, with or without his consent. The congregation possesses what I have called an authority of command.

The elders, however, possess a different kind of authority, an authority of counsel. (It’s the same with husbands.) An authority of counsel is a real authority. It morally obligates members to obey, and Jesus does not countenance disobedience (see Hebrews 13:7, 17). Consequences exist. Yet the elders cannot dispense those consequences, which are eschatological. Jesus hands them out.

“There’s a sense in which elders possess authority to continually give it away.”

Sure, the elders should depose a foul-mouthed usher or approve a church picnic or plan the preaching schedule. Yet a pastor cannot invite you to his office and then excommunicate you all by himself, at least not if he wants to follow the Bible. Nor should he determine membership apart from the congregation. Membership depends upon the whole congregation’s agreement. That’s what I mean when I say pastoral authority morally obligates, but it doesn’t structurally bind.

The fact that elders (and husbands) possess an authority of counsel and not command dramatically shapes how that authority is used. While a parent can tell a three-year-old to go to bed “right now,” elders must teach “with complete patience” (2 Timothy 4:2). They’re working for growth over time, playing the long game. The goal is not to force decisions but to encourage regenerate church members to make good decisions for themselves. As Paul puts it to Philemon, “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you” (Philemon 8–9).

Here lies the most crucial point of distinction regarding polity differences between Protestants. Elder-ruled churches, whether independent or presbyterian or episcopalian in their structures, grant elders an authority of command. The elders can unilaterally excommunicate members, for instance. On the other hand, small-c congregationalists like Baptists don’t believe they can. And this difference impacts the culture of the church and the nature of its discipleship.

(For more on the difference between authority of counsel and command, see chapter 11 of my book Authority.)

Purposes of Pastoral Authority

Principle 5: Pastors possess authority to equip the church and to divest themselves of authority.

Building on the last point, an authority of counsel is more conducive to discipleship.

Imagine two exercise classes. In class 1, the trainer demonstrates burpees and squats, and then he sends you home. In class 2, the trainer demonstrates burpees and squats, and then he asks you to do them while giving feedback. Which class will better train you?

Now picture two churches. In an elder-ruled church, the elders make a decision about church discipline behind closed doors. In the congregational church, the elders explain what happened, giving just enough details that the church can render judgment with integrity, but not so many details that people stumble; then the elders recommend a course of action, just as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 5. Which church will better train them in Christian discernment, courage, and obedience?

If Paul simply removed the man in 1 Corinthians 5, the Corinthian church would have been deprived of an opportunity to be trained in discernment, courage, and obedience. Yet he involved them. As one commentator put it, Paul did not want the church’s fitness report to read, “Works well under constant supervision” (1 Corinthians, 168–69). Rather, he wanted to instill within them a sense of their joint responsibility for the holiness of the church.

People grow when they’re given opportunities. Not every man in the church will become an elder. But there’s a sense in which elders possess authority to continually give it away. They give others a chance to teach a Sunday school class, to chair a meeting, to lead an evangelistic endeavor, to host a missions reading group, to serve as deacons, to host a small group, to organize a women’s retreat, and so forth. They should even involve the congregation in matters of membership and discipline, which can sometimes get complicated. But this forces them to train the church (see Ephesians 4:11–16). Wise elder training, wise church. Bad elder training, bad church.

Pastoral authority, in short, does not say, “We’re the experts. We’re ordained. You guys can sit down.” This approach often leads to complacent, weak, and eventually doctrinally liberal churches. Rather, pastoral authority says, “Here’s how you swing the club, play the scale, program the computer, love the church. Now you do it.”

Character of Pastoral Authority

Principle 6: Pastoral authority depends upon character, integrity, and example.

To put all this another way, an elder’s authority is tied to his example. Elders don’t “domineer” but set an “example,” says Peter (1 Peter 5:3). Members, meanwhile, “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). We imitate them as they imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).

This is why more ink is spilled on the requisite character for pastoring than on the job description. Exemplifying and teaching Christian character is the job description. Pastors’ authority, in other words, is very much tied to their character and integrity.

Think of the qualification “husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6). An elder’s marriage may not be perfect, but he sets a good example for other husbands. You’re happy to say to other husbands, “Learn from his example as a husband.”

Integrity of Pastoral Authority

Principle 7: Pastoral authority is both unearned and earned, requiring trust.

Building on the last point, an elder grows in authority by gaining trust.

Now, in one sense, a pastor’s authority does not need to be earned. It’s an office given to him by Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). Members don’t so much submit to the man as they submit to the office, because that’s submitting to Jesus.

At the same time, an elder will clearly earn more authority for himself as he proves himself trustworthy. Suppose I’m watching two elders, one who treats his wife wonderfully and one who, by my lights, does not. Whom do you think I’m more likely to trust? Furthermore, whose Sunday school lectures on how to be a godly husband am I going to listen to more carefully? And assuming these two men separately correct me for how I’m living with my wife, whom will I more easily and joyfully submit to?

“Trust is the fuel that makes the vehicle of elder authority move forward. It’s the currency elders have to spend.”

Trust is the fuel that makes the vehicle of elder authority move forward. It’s the currency elders have to spend.

While it’s true that a policeman’s or parent’s authority of command will be improved by trust, this is especially true of an elder’s (or husband’s) authority of counsel. After all, policemen and parents can leverage the threat of immediate discipline even when they’re not trusted. An elder (or husband) cannot. And this structural difference that foregrounds the role of trust forces the elder to work harder at his character and integrity.

Location of Pastoral Authority

Principle 8: The difference between one elder’s authority and all the elders’ authority is quantitative, not qualitative.

Historically, Presbyterians have sometimes distinguished between the elders’ joint authority and their several authority. Their joint authority concerns those things they can only do together, like excommunicate someone from the church. Their several authority concerns those things they can do individually, like preach.

As a congregationalist, I would not affirm these two categories in formal or principled terms. Presbyterians need them because they’ve placed the keys of the kingdom into the hands of the elders, such that the elders will do weighty things like receiving or dismissing members, which I would leave in the hands of the whole congregation.

Still, it does seem reasonable to acknowledge that a pastor or elder should avoid some actions or decisions until he involves the other elders, and elders should always work to raise up more elders. Recommending an excommunication to the church is an obvious example of something a pastor should avoid doing on his own. Doing so may not be sin, but it would ordinarily be unwise.

Now consider the difference between one and several elders from the members’ perspective. Insofar as the Bible calls us to “submit” to our elders (Hebrews 13:17), should we think differently about submitting to the counsel of one elder in a conversation over coffee (“Jonathan, I would advise you to . . .”) versus submitting to the entire elder board of, say, six men (“Jonathan, we would advise you to . . .”)? I think the answer is yes. The difference, though, is not qualitative (joint vs. several), but quantitative. The instruction of the one and the instruction of six is made of the same kind of stuff. Yet the instruction of the six should weigh more heavily on my conscience. More men, more weight.

Pastors as Trainers

The topic of authority does not merely impact who gets to make which decisions; it impacts discipleship and the overall patterns of ministry in a church. Within an elder-led congregational model, the fact that elders must bring to the church any decisions that significantly impact the nature, integrity, membership, or mission of the church changes not just the church’s members meetings. It requires elders to do ministry a little differently all week. They approach their jobs less like judges and more like trainers.

After all, the shepherds are sheep too. So they work constantly to strengthen, build up, and equip the saints for their work of being priests and disciple-makers. Then the whole body grows as it builds itself up in love.