Eldership

[Peter Debelak]

aron:

I appreciate your thoughts here. I often think that we bracket Christ's words in the gospels to issues related to the "individual Christian life; while the epistles are about the "body" - and, in the way we treat them, never the twain shall meet. That is, we perceive (explicitly or not) the Epistles as going further that Christ's ministry...

Recently I've been wondering if we look to Christ's words enough in determining what our "corporate life" should be and how "practical" we should approach its implementation.

In fact, I've had a liberal little thought: what if we consider the Epistles to be circumscribed by Christ's words in the Gospels. As a hermaneutic to interpret the Epistles?

Does that change our understanding of a lot of the seeming prescriptions in the letters?

Peter

[aron]

I now bring forth my next witness, the apostle John. I will do so by asking the question, Why isn't John mentioned in First Corinthians chapter one?

In Corinth, some were "of" Cephas, some Paul, some Apollos, some Christ. Parties were forming, enough so that the apostle got wind of it and admonished it at some length. Why no party "of" John? Why not any school, or sect forming? If anyone should have been at the head of a group of "blended brothers", post-resurrection, it should have been John the apostle. Yet no mention. Basically, after a brief cameo giving the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas in Galatians 2 he disappears. In Acts he is in the thick of it at first, then by Acts 15 he is receding fast, and is gone, to reappear as the aged apostle on Patmos, and after (I have heard that he wrote the fourth gospel after returning from exile).

John, it appears to me in the gospels, is extremely ambitious. Nakedly ambitious. But partway through Acts he vanishes from the scene. First I'll address the ambition, then the vanishing act.

The obvious place to start is the scene in Matthew 20 where the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes up, worshipping the Lord, and asking a question. "Grant that my sons sit, at your right hand and left, at Your kingdom." Are these guys ambitious or what? Yet, as I said, 'poof'...

At one point they call fire down from heaven, and are rebuked. Wrong spirit.

They are called the "sons of thunder". No surprise.

They are with Jesus when he puts everyone outside, to raise the dead girl, the daughter of Jairus the synagogue ruler (Matt. 9). They and Peter form the "inner troika", the inner ring of disciples. They and Peter are with the Lord on the mountain when He is transformed, and seen with Moses and Elijah. They are told to tell none others, even the other nine.

Peter is a leader by doing: he declares Jesus is the Christ, bids Christ to call him out of the boat in the raging sea if it is fact He, etc. He also leads in stumbling, in many places. He is bold, impetuous, rash, for good and occasionally ill.

I get a different impression of the sons of Zebedee. They seem much more calculated to me. The best way to get ahead is to be close to someone who's going places. It is a very time-worn (& successful) model. Think of Jesse Jackson latching onto Martin Luther King, for example. Or Alexander Hamilton, a 'nobody' artillery captain until he became George Washington's aide-de-camp. Washington would tell Hamilton to write a letter to someone and Hamilton could write "as" Washington. Pretty heady stuff.

What could be more heady than being in the inner circle of the coming Messiah? Nobody realized what was really happening; they all thought Jesus was going to set up an earthly kingdom. The gospels say repeatedly they didn't realize what was going on. What they thought was going on was the power-grab, career opportunity of a lifetime. Of any lifetime. And John and James were going to the very top. I don't think their mother dragged them unwillingly. All three were for it.

Thier mother was mentioned by name along with a few other women as being there at the crucifixion. They were the women who followed Jesus everywhere, ministering to Him. So their mother was in the "inner circle" of ministering women. Not without influence, even in a male-dominant society.

Several exegeses of the gospel of John have said that the second, unnamed disciple in John chapter one, who are with John the Baptist and leave him to follow Jesus, was John the apostle, the writer of the gospel himself. I think Lee mentions this in his Life-Study of John. I know I have read it in a couple of bible study books. I am not a scholar and can't cite them, unfortunately. Maybe someone who is a little more organized than I can weigh in on this and help me out. I think it is likely, and significant.

Likely, because the second disciple is not named. This is John's m.o. Everyone else gets named. He is anonymous, unnamed. Likely, because it is first person, and so is pretty much all of John's gospel. John was there. The conversations are recorded verbatim. I never got the impression that John was collecting stories from others. Likely, because do the math. Most of the others are named, and that leaves John and a few others. I think Peter and Andrew are listed in another gospel as associates of James and John fishing in Galilee; one of the two disciples of John the Baptist in verse 37 of John chapter one is Andrew: he gets Simon, who gets Philip, who gets Nathaniel, etc. Do the math. Not a big pool left. I think maybe it's John. Anyway, I've heard this said elsewhere.

It is significant because John was a climber. He knew the Jewish religion from the inside. John the Baptist's father was one of the Jewish priests. John the disciple of Jesus, the son of Zebedee, knew the high priest and could go into his house unmolested, even as they tried Jesus. John went outside and got Peter. So John was not an illiterate peasant fisherman. His father had servants. And if he got is way, he would have a lot more, when the Messiah got His throne in Jerusalem.

Outta time. Gotta run. Hope this sparks some interest somewhere. Peace to all. More to follow soon, I hope.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Peter Debelak

I often think that we bracket Christ's words in the gospels to issues related to the "individual Christian life; while the epistles are about the "body" - and, in the way we treat them, never the twain shall meet. That is, we perceive (explicitly or not) the Epistles as going further that Christ's ministry...

Recently I've been wondering if we look to Christ's words enough in determining what our "corporate life" should be and how "practical" we should approach its implementation.

In fact, I've had a liberal little thought: what if we consider the Epistles to be circumscribed by Christ's words in the Gospels. As a hermaneutic to interpret the Epistles?

Does that change our understanding of a lot of the seeming prescriptions in the letters?

Peter,

For a possible strengthening of your notions, and to back up my assertion of "trampling the words of Christ to rush towards Paul", look at Don Rutledge's testimony in his "History" thread, on Ray Graver's program for "Serving the Ministry". Look at all the verses Ray chose to put together a "blueprint" for serving the ministry of Witness Lee.

All the verses are "deputy authority" verses from epistles to Colossians, Corinthians, Timothy, Titus, etc. Not one word from Jesus. No "love thy neighbor as thyself" stuff there. Just authority and submission. What happens with that blueprint, is that eventually when "love thy neighbor" and the institution created to "serve the ministry" come into conflict, who wins? The institution wins. And God's love for man, expressed in the person of His Son Jesus Chist, is nowhere to be found. We find instead an empty shell, an institution with lackies, flunkies, bureaucrats, social climbers, wanna-be's and assorted hangers-on. This is not restricted to the LSM version. But the LSM version, with its "Philip Lee is the Office" brand of nepotism, among other egregious abuses, could serve as the poster child.

Maybe we could mandate in all assemblies a 5-year moratorium, for the new ones anyway, of all the epistles, you know, the "solid food", and make them just read the Beatitudes over and over 'till they get that ingrained. Love one another, love one another, love one another....eventually when they get that they can discuss elders and deacons and whatnot. Let them drink the "pure milk" of the Word before they go trying to chew on steaks.

Just a little tongue-in-cheek humor there, folks.

[YP0534]

Just a side note, but I've discovered that some denominations look at Peter's verse in 1 Tim. 5:17 in a very different way.

They note that there are some who labor "in word and teaching" and others that only "take the lead well" and therefore devise that there are two classes of the office of "elder" - those that teach and manage and those that manage only.

So, I guess under Peter's reading, we'll have THREE kinds of elders: the elderLY, the teaching elders, and the managing elders.

Perhaps we can also devise a number of classes of believers and organize the assembling saints such that they will fit into an elaborate org chart? We should use different colors for each class and invent good names for each.

Just a suggestion, of course.

A modest proposal. :rollingeyes2: