Albert Mohler once stated, “The Christian pastor holds the greatest office of human responsibility in all creation.” Yet of all the high positions one can fill in society—a member of Congress, a golf professional, a cardiothoracic surgeon, etc.—the pastorate wouldn’t even make the top ten in most people’s minds. Is the designation “greatest office … in all creation” an apt description or hyperbole?
Mohler continues, “[The pastor] is called to preach the Word, to teach the truth to God’s people, to lead God’s people in worship, to tend the flock as a caring shepherd, and to mobilize the church for Christian witness and service.”1 Now that’s a high calling!
Notably, Mohler’s view of the pastorate is no different than what we find in Scripture: “[God] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12).
Where does the pastor-teacher role come from? Who came up with it? According to Paul, God did. He put it in place as a gift to the church—a gift of the ascended Christ for His bride. The fact that the office originated with God Himself speaks to its immense value.
The pastor’s ministry is a gift that God’s people often neglect to their peril. If we are to honor the position that God has carved out in the church, then it’s vital we understand it. Ephesians 4:11–13 outlines the fundamentals and the functions of the role.
Fundamentals of the Pastor-Teacher Role
Based on Paul’s broader New Testament teaching on the issue, we understand the pattern of leadership to be one of both parity and plurality—that is, ideally, the pastor-teacher is an elder among the other elders in a church (1 Tim. 5:17). Still, within this shared leadership, there ought to be a leader among the leaders. The buck has to stop with someone. Wisdom would dictate that the person with the primary teaching role best fills this position. That way, he can steer the ship, so to speak, through the regular preaching of the Scriptures.
With the practicalities of the office in mind, what is the fundamental reason for which God established the pastorate in the first place? It’s stated in verse 12: “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry”—in other words, so that the body of Christ may be strengthened.
Interestingly, not all English translations render verse 12 properly. The King James Version inserts a comma after “saints.” (Keep in mind, there’s no linguistic authority for commas in Bible translation. The original languages don’t have them.) Here’s how the KJV reads, with part of verse 11 included for context: “He gave … shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
By adding the comma, the translators changed the verse’s meaning. It places the responsibility of equipping the saints and the work of the ministry squarely into the pastor-teacher’s hands. But the text, rightly translated, paints for us a different picture: The pastor equips for ministry; the saints provide ministry. This pattern is a matter not only of wisdom but also of divine instruction. It’s God’s appointed means for “building up the body of Christ.”
Functions of the Pastor-Teacher Role
With the fundamentals for the pastor-teacher office established, verses 12–13 address its functions. In other words, what happens when the pastor-teacher role is rightly understood in a church? Paul will answer this question with three words: ministry, unity, and maturity.
Ministry
Effective ministry will result from a properly functioning pastorate. Two words in verse 12 deserve a closer look: “ministry” and “equip.”
The word “ministry” is diakonia in the Greek, from which we get deacon or deaconess. It simply means doing the works of service. It’s the same word we find in Luke 10:40, where Luke tells us, “Martha was distracted with much serving.” The pastor-teacher serves his people when he teaches the Bible in such a way that the tools for ministry are placed in their hands, empowering them for work.
The second word, “equip,” is a medical term. It deals with orthopedics, used, for instance, in the resetting of a limb. It’s also used in the Gospels to describe the disciples mending their fishing nets (Matt. 4:21). With that fishing imagery in our minds, here’s what it means to equip: The pastor applies God’s Word to God’s people by the power of God’s Spirit, causing the tangled, knotted, and disjointed features of their lives to realign with God’s purposes.
How God’s people listen to God’s Word is vital.
This understanding radically changes the idea of God’s Word being taught. It moves us immediately from the idea of “Was it good? Did I like it? Did it make feel good?” to the more pressing questions: “Was I equipped as God’s Word was proclaimed? Did it prepare me to glorify God in my daily responsibilities?” How God’s people listen to God’s Word is vital , for God uses the pastor-teacher’s instruction to build up His body.
Accepting the authority of God’s Word in our lives is an integral part of being Christian. Hear James on the matter: “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:21–22). And Paul reminds the Thessalonians, “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess. 2:13).
We see, then, the vital role of the Scriptures in the Christian life broadly and in the pastor-teacher’s function specifically. It’s important to recognize, however, that Paul doesn’t establish a direct link between teaching the Bible (Eph. 4:11) and a mature church (v. 13). The missing link in many of our churches is verse 12: equipping the saints to provide ministry. It’s not enough to sit under good Bible teaching. We must also take it with us, meditating on its implications as we do the work of ministry.
Like an orchestra, in which every person has an assigned instrument and part to play, so each member of Christ’s church must work properly together if we would reach maturity (v. 16).
Unity
The properly functioning pastorate will lead not only to fruitful ministry but also but unity. Paul has already urged the Ephesians to maintain the unity that is theirs through Christ (4:3 ). And in verse 13, he speaks of the unity to which God’s people attain. In short, unity is both maintained and attained.
It’s not enough to sit under good Bible teaching. We must also take it with us, meditating on its implications as we do the work of ministry.
The church’s unity is what makes us unique. Indeed, church history testifies that we’ve always been most effective when we’re most countercultural. It’s when we attempt to assimilate into the culture that we become irrelevant. Many today have abandoned the church in search of the numinous—some existential dimension that isn’t met by the trivialities represented in churches that attempt to reach the world by becoming like the world.
But the church is intended to be radically set apart. And it’s because the church’s uniqueness is found in our unity—unity in the faith and in the knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:13). We aren’t like any other organization. We aren’t a club in which we grant admittance based on one’s achievements or social status. The entryway into the church is by God’s grace. Samuel Rutherford rightly said, “Down with your topsail. Stoop, stoop! It is a low entry to go in at heaven’s gates.”2
Our unity, Paul asserts, is brought about by knowledge of Christ. The question for our church members is clear: Do they know the Lord Jesus Christ? For those who might not, how can the pastor-teacher show them Christ? John Stott says the Bible “will give Christ to you … in an intimacy so close that he would be less visible to you if he stood before your eyes.”3 In other words, God’s people achieve the unity of faith through the consistent exposure to Christ that comes by the pastor-teacher’s biblical preaching.
Maturity
A well-functioning pastorate will produce ministry, unity, and, finally, maturity. Paul envisions the church growing “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Just as there are degrees of sanctity and unity, so there are degrees of maturity. How can we attain the maturity about which Paul speaks? We may think of maturity in corporate terms, with our own churches in view. We can raise four questions to help us think through corporate maturity in the church:
Is the Word of God the driving force that shapes our church’s life? To the degree that it is, we have the opportunity for maturity. To the degree that it isn’t, we diminish that possibility.
Is the Word of God dwelling in us richly, and are we, as a result, teaching and encouraging one another with all wisdom? That’s Paul’s instruction in Colossians 3:16.
Are we living in the unity that Christ has purchased and provided for His church? We are called to love every member of the body—even those with whom we don’t particularly agree.
Are we growing up in every way into Christ?
These are important questions with which we must reckon—questions we would do well to bring to bear on our churches, gauging our degree of maturity.
Christian unity is something to be maintained and attained.
“The Greatest Office of Human Responsibility”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the late Welsh medical doctor-turned-preacher, often said, “I would not descend from being a king to assume the role of the pulpit. I would be ascending to the role of the pulpit.” He had a high view—or what we may rightly call a biblical view—of the pastor-teacher office.
Will today’s pastor-teachers maintain the standard? The office is a high position because God Himself instituted it. We would be wise to approach the task with fear and trembling, praising God for carving out the pastorate as a vital part of the church.
This article was adapted from the sermon “Pastors and Teachers” by Alistair Begg.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., foreword to On Being a Pastor, by Derek J. Prime and Alistair Begg, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody, 2004), 9. ↩︎
Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ: From the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, 1600–1661, ed. Ellen S. Lister (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1794), 74. ↩︎
Introduction to Desiderius Erasmus’s Greek New Testament (1516), quoted in John Stott, The Incomparable Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 15. ↩︎
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