Leadership of church
Jesus Christ is the absolute head of the church. He sets leaders in the church to enable the whole church to grow into maturity. Christ’s authority in the church is acknowledged more by the church’s obedience to God than through any particular form of government.
Jesus Christ alone is head of the church
The Holy Spirit directs the church
The appointment of leaders in the church
God calls and equips leaders
Delegated leadership
The appointment of apostles
As founders of the church:
As leaders of the church:
Prophets as leaders
Evangelists as leaders
Pastors and teachers as leaders
Elders as leaders
Deacons as leaders
Qualifications for church leadership
The first apostles were witnesses of Jesus Christ’s life and resurrection:
Qualifications for elders and deacons:
Responsibilities of church leaders
To preach the gospel
To teach sound doctrine
To give direction in church life
To be an example in loving service
To train and appoint other leaders
To pray for the sick
To exercise discipline in the church
The church’s responsibilities to its leaders
To respect and submit to its leaders
To pray for its leaders
To support its leaders financially
The corporate government of the church
In choosing leaders
In implementing decisions
In building up the church
In discerning true and false teachings
In exercising discipline
The structure of the church
The pattern of church life
The house church
The local church
Churches in a region
The universal church
Referring to the local as well as the universal church:
FIGHTING (vv. 18, 19a)
A charge to fight well. This steadfastness, this forthrightness, this courage, this ability to carry out one’s task—to finish well—is what Paul wished for young, shy Timothy when he gave him this famous charge: “Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight” (v. 18).
Evidently at some specific time (perhaps at Timothy’s commissioning) heartening prophecies had been made about him. Though we do not know when or where this happened, information from other Scriptures allow us to form a picture. We know that when Paul recruited Timothy, “The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him” (Acts 16:2). We know that at some point there was an event in which three things happened to Timothy: 1) he was given a spiritual gift; 2) a prophecy was made over him; and 3) the elders laid hands on him. We know this from 1 Timothy 4:14 (italics added): “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.”
Very likely the gift he received was that of preaching or exhortation because Paul encouraged him in his second letter, saying, “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:6, 7). Paul’s urging Timothy not to succumb to timidity suggests that the gift he was to fan was preaching. And it appears that Timothy was wonderfully stirred by this event and made a memorable confession because in the final chapter of 1 Timothy Paul urges him: “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (6:12).
So the picture we get is of a great spiritual event in Timothy’s life in which wonderful prophecies were made about his future gospel ministry as various people spoke of his fitness and the powerful voice he would become. At that time the elders solemnly laid their hands on him and prayed over him, and he was remarkably gifted for ministry. It was such a monumental event that normally shy Timothy rose and made a “good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
Paul was inciting Timothy to remember his commissioning and was thus motivating him to carry out “this instruction” (more accurately, “this command”), referring to his charge to “command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies” (vv. 3b, 4a). The sense is, “This instruction that you are to give to the false teachers to desist from propagating their erroneous ideas is in keeping with the wonderful prophecies made about your spiritual usefulness. Remember these prophecies, Timothy. Live them out. Be strong. Carry out the command. And in so doing, fight the good fight!”
These high spiritual hopes that others held for him constituted a powerful appeal. We have all experienced the pulse-quickening motivation of others’ expectations upon our lives. Perhaps it was your grandmother’s hopeful belief that because you were the smartest child in your school, you would surely win that spelling bee. Oh, you tried, but rhinoceros did you in. Or maybe it was a football game, with the conference championship at stake. When you glanced into the stands and saw your family there, cheering you on, you played harder than ever!
I recall one Sunday morning, about a year after I’d come to College Church (which I still pastor), when the chairman of the Council of Elders ran up to me before the service saying, “Pastor, I have the most wonderful news! Dr. Stephen Olford and Dr. Alan Redpath are here for the service.” I felt a twinge in my stomach and smiled weakly. I do not think the sermon was exceptional that morning, but that was not due to a lack of effort!
The expectations voiced for Timothy at his commission were prophetic and from the Lord. And he did live them out and “fight the good fight.” Ultimately this charge is for all of us, regardless of our place and calling in life. The martial, fighting language is significant. Paul chose it deliberately and used it more than once, in various forms. We are to fight.
Conflict—spiritual warfare—is especially the province of leadership. The evangelical cause owes much to Gresham Machen, the Princeton divine who so brilliantly stood against modernism in the 1930s. Of him Pearl Buck wrote: “I admired Dr. Machen very much while I disagreed with him on every point. And we had much the same fate. I was kicked out of the back door of the church and he was kicked out of the front one. He retaliated by establishing a church of his own.… The man was admirable. He never gave in one inch to anyone.”4 Machen’s life was that of the consummate Christian gentleman fighting a great fight!
How to fight well. The question we must ask is, how can we fight the good fight? Simply by “holding on to faith and a good conscience” (v. 19a). This short phrase is deceptively comprehensive because, as John Stott points out, it contains what is objectively and subjectively necessary to “fight the good fight.” On the one hand, we must hold on to the objective deposit of the “faith,” meaning the apostolic faith. On the other hand, we must hold tight to the subjective treasure of “a good conscience.”5
So we see first of all that if we are to fight well, we must have a solid grasp on the objective content of our faith, the essentials. As we asked several chapters ago, If you love God while knowing little about him, will you love him less by knowing more about him? Of course not! The deeper the knowledge of our infinite, loving, merciful, gracious, holy God, the deeper our love will become. The sad truth for so many Christians is that their love of God languishes due to their lack of knowledge of him. They simply do not know much about God. They may have a relationship with him, but it is stunted by their ignorance of him.
Evangelical ignorance is a fact. Most Christians cannot name the Ten Commandments. Many cannot even name five of them. Many do not even know where they are found. If we are to love God as we ought, we must know the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of salvation, just to name a few. But our knowledge must not come from textbook dogmatics but from the Bible—its history, its narratives, its poetry, its parables, its didactic passages, its apocalyptic sections. The Bible provides a multifaceted, many-textured, vital knowledge of God that anoints the mind and affections with love. I cannot urge enough the necessity of knowing the Word of God. Begin by learning one book, perhaps Romans. Know its theme, its divisions, its unity. What you know and believe about God is everything, because what you know and believe will determine how you live. Doctrine determines conduct. Right doctrine makes it possible to “fight the good fight.”
Second, we see that if we are to fight well, we must hold on to “a good conscience.” The conscience was an immense issue for Paul, like a looming planet that filled his whole horizon. Three other times in the Pastorals Paul referenced the importance of a healthy conscience. In 1:5 he told Timothy that the purpose for commanding the elders to stop teaching false doctrine was to bring them back to “love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” In 3:9 he taught that church leaders “must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.” In 2 Timothy 1:3 he substantiated his own ministry, saying, “I thank God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience.”
The rest of the New Testament testifies to Paul’s empowerment through “a good conscience.” He courageously took his stand before the Sanhedrin, looked them straight in the eye, and declared, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day” (Acts 23:1). Then standing before Governor Felix he confidently declared, “So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man” (Acts 24:16). To the Romans Paul voiced his amazing affirmation of love for his people as true because it was spoken with a clear conscience: “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 9:1). Thus we see that for Paul “a good conscience” is at the very root of fighting the good fight.
Not only that, but by coupling “faith and a good conscience” as he has, Paul was saying that “a good conscience” is key to maintaining a sound “faith.” John Calvin put this succinctly: “A bad conscience is the mother of all heresies.”6 That is all too true! I have seen friends with whom I spent a whole night praying for the world, or another who I never dreamed would stray, so chronically violate their consciences that they later gave up the faith. When morals slip, doctrine ebbs, and the fight is soon lost.
The necessity of a clear conscience should loom planet-like on our horizons. Conscious disobedience will kill our spiritual life. Obedience to Christ may appear to be legalistic by society’s standards, but our conscience calls out. Some habit may be okay for others, but for you it is wrong because your conscience says so. There may be an attitude or thought pattern that no one else can detect and you are free to nourish—at the expense of your conscience. It may be an attachment that is wrong, but the only voice telling you so is your conscience. If your inner voice calls to you, heed it. Do not sin against your conscience. This is all so hard—especially today when conscience is dismissed as a mere safety device, collectively created to protect civility. But God’s Word is clear—we must cultivate “a good conscience.”
“A good conscience” is the mother of a sound faith and the wherewithal to fight the good fight. This has been my experience. I can stand up to substantial pressure if my conscience is clear. But without a clear conscience, there is no power to endure or resist.
In the last chapter we considered the early martyr of the English Reformation Thomas Bilney, who was burned in 1531, and also Hugh Latimer, who was burned in 1555. There were also two other martyrs who died within a year of each other—Nicholas Ridley who was burned along with Latimer in 1555 and Thomas Cranmer who died at the stake in 1556.
Thomas Cranmer had served as Archbishop of Canterbury. But he is most remembered for his 1549 and 1552 editions of the Book of Common Prayer. (I had the privilege of viewing the original during a private tour of Jesus College some years ago with my two sons.) Cranmer had been forced to watch the burnings of Latimer and Ridley, and after much pressure he signed a number of recantations. But on the eve of his execution his courage returned as he stood in St. Mary’s Church in Oxford. Instead of repeating his recantations, he repudiated them. Why? He said:
And now I come to the great thing which so much troubleth my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life, and that is the setting abroad of a writing contrary to the truth, which now here I renounce and refuse as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be.… And forasmuch as my hand hath offendeth, writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for when I come to the fire, it shall first be burned.7
When he came to the stake the next day, “Then it was, that stretching out his right hand, he held it unshrinkingly in the fire till it was burnt to a cinder, even before his body was injured, frequently exclaiming, ‘This unworthy right hand!’ ”8 What power there is in faith and a clear conscience! Thomas Cranmer fought the good fight!
Our warfare is far less dramatic. Nevertheless, God’s Word holds true. There are two necessities for staying on course to the end. First is “holding on to faith,” the objective deposit of the apostolic faith—right doctrine. Second is “holding on to … a good conscience”—the subjective treasure of a holy life. Armed with faith and a clear conscience the Christian can withstand all Hell! With faith and a clear conscience you will finish the fight well.
FAILING (vv. 19b, 20)
Notable shipwrecks. While some of the elders in Ephesus had fought well, others had failed miserably, and Paul noted them by name: “Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander” (vv. 19b, 20a). Their failure was rooted in the loss of “a good conscience.” The plural in the New International Version’s “Some have rejected these” is misleading because “rejected” refers in the Greek to “a good conscience.”9 Hymenaeus and Alexander willfully and deliberately rejected their conscience.
And they literally shipwrecked not “their faith” but the faith, as Gordon Fee points out.10 Their doctrine was on the rocks. We know that Hymenaeus went overboard on his eschatology because 2 Timothy 2:17, 18 mentions “Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.” Perhaps Alexander was also crazed by this “over-realized” eschatology. The point is, they wandered away from the gospel—and it all began with the deliberate rejection of their conscience.
Rescuing the shipwrecked. Did Paul write these two men off? Not at all! Rather, he “handed [them] over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme” (v. 20b). The purpose was remedial—so they would learn “not to blaspheme.” Paul used the same language in 1 Corinthians 5:5, where he said, “Hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.” Here Paul fervently hoped that both Hymenaeus and Alexander would be restored.
This “hand[ing] over to Satan” was excommunication. Paul cast Hymenaeus and Alexander out of the church—away from God’s care and protection and thus under the power of Satan. It was Paul’s intention that they be buffeted by Satan and that their separation from God in this way be brought home to them by their forced separation from God’s people.
Though it might appear otherwise, Paul’s attitude was one of grace, severe grace, as he explained in a different circumstance to the Thessalonians: “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother” (2 Thessalonians 3:14, 15). This is the proper work of the church, and a church that takes its work seriously will do this when the occasion requires.
The message is clear: We, like Timothy, are called to “fight the good fight.” Our method is twofold—hanging on to “faith” and hanging on to “a good conscience.” This is the way Paul and Timothy fought—as did their Reformation counterparts Thomas Bilney, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer.
Lord! Arm your people with faith and a good conscience. Amen.