The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. – 1 Timothy 1:5 NLT
If you haven’t guessed, our focus is on ‘Preacher’s Kid’s, Elder’s Kids and Deacon’s kids and the focus of scripture is Paul’s letter to Timothy, Paul’s son in the faith and pastor of a church. So as to not get entangled in particular setting and certain persons, here it is in part.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope…
To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
To begin, note Paul’s greeting to this preacher’s kid (of a sort). Note Paul’s endearment of Timothy as not only his colleague in the faith who happens to be the pastor of an important church, but his public building up to the congregation (or gathering of his church) of Timothy as: “my true child in the faith.” Although Timothy was not a biological child of Paul, certainly the church would acknowledge him as a disciple of the Apostle, just as in an earlier time the Prophet Elisha would have been known as a disciple of the Prophet Elijah.
The church would be watching this ‘preacher’s kid’ to see how he would get about when the preacher was no longer present. He would soon be as a Joshua after Moses in leading the church through the difficult territory of the place of faith after the Apostles were martyred for Christ Jesus.
Paul continues:
I urged you… to … remain … so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths… rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers … without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Paul, by this introduction to the church, sets up a structure of leadership and accountability for the leaders chosen by the church. We have many names for these (in our different traditions): Pastor, Reverend, Rector, Father, Bishop, Brother, Elder, Deacon, Minister.
Although Paul, Peter, James, leader of the church of Jerusalem in the first century and John, only surviving Apostle to the churches who though not martyred was persecuted, tortured and exiled – although the Preachers of the early church entrusted the Gospel into the hearts of faithful disciples of their teaching; these prescribed neither hierarchy nor anarchy of committee for the direction of the church.
Rather, the Apostles and early leaders of the church agreed in the Spirit to continue in preaching Christ crucified, died, resurrected in the body and present in the Spirit for continuation of the Gospel to all the ends of the earth. It is never: Peter’s church or Paul’s church, Apollos’ teachings or John’s churches, John Mark’s writings or Timothy’s preaching.
For no leader or over-seer is of ANY importance in the light of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.
The church is no longer – in the sense of the Jews being the chosen family of God through Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David (and oh, did I mention Jacob, who God renamed: Israel?) – the congregation or gathering of the believers of God to worship is no longer a family in the sense of genealogy and ancestry; but a holy family in the true relational sense of being part of the household of God the Father and a brother of the Son of God, King and heir of the Throne of Glory, of which He IS a part, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Neither is the church to regard a holy family of Jesus in the worship of earthly ancestry. Worship the LORD only in the light of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, who together with the Father and the HOLY Spirit is glorified. No angel, no departed saint and no ancestry of example of faith is worthy of the worship deserved ONLY by God Incarnate, in the Person of Christ Jesus.
In a true sense of our family connected by the grace of Christ Jesus and the gospel of our certain hope by faith in the resurrection and our own eternal life, we are children living in witness of the Living God, a preaching member of the Royal Household of our Heavenly King, Christ Jesus, who IS and will return to this temporal earth once more in victory over sin and death.
To be continued… (Saturday, 28 June, 2014, God-willing)
