OBEY YOUR LEADERS

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clean conscience and desire to live honourably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon (Heb. 13: 17-19).

What is the church and who are their leaders? We have to look at the nature of the church in order to understand who and what its leaders are. The church and the kingdom of God are not synonymous but they are interconnected. The church is the visible representative of God’s kingdom on earth. Whatever the church is and does on earth is supposed to be the way God’s invisible kingdom works and the way He rules.

First of all, the church on earth today, in practical terms, is subdivided into innumerable denominations, so, which one accurately represents the kingdom? Is it the ones who set up strict rules and practise their religion through religious rituals? Is that how God relates to people? Is it the ones who focus on gifts and miracles and money and wealth and live for spiritual “goose bumps” with not much emphasis on anything else? Is that what the kingdom is all about?

What about those who are all about social justice – the “do good-ers” who are constantly trying to put the world right with this, that or the other project? Is that the evidence that God’s kingdom has come? And those who are sticklers for right doctrine? What they believe is the truth and everyone else is wrong. They will have nothing to do with anyone who does not subscribe to their belief system. Is that the true expression of who God is?

When we read the New Testament, we see a very different picture. We see the beginnings of the return to God’s original intention – to have a family of sons and daughters who were created in His image to be one with Him and with one another. His plan was for them to live in harmony with Him, their fellow men and the world as a loving family, caring for one another in a perfect environment with God in the midst of them.

Sin messed up His plan because Adam and Eve opted for independence. Jesus came to earth to show us the Father, who He is and how He rules, and died to rescue the human race from self-destruction and to restore us to union and fellowship with the Father. God’s plan is back on track now but, unfortunately, the church in the main has messed up again by turning family life into a religion in one way or another.

Jesus called twelve men to follow Him and gave them authority, once they had spent time with Him and thoroughly learned who He was and how God’s kingdom worked, to interpret His teaching in keeping with His disposition. He sent the Holy Spirit to be in them to help them continue to bring the kingdom of God into the world wherever the church is.

That same authority was passed on to every leader who has the responsibility of teaching people the Word of God in dependence on the Holy Spirit. True spiritual leaders are not those who have been voted in by the people, based on their charisma or popularity but those who have been chosen and set apart by the Holy Spirit for the task of accurately interpreting, teaching and living all the aspects of the kingdom according to Jesus’ “yoke” – His way of life in keeping with His interpretation of the Torah. (Of course we must remember that He is God and He wrote it, so He should know)!

It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4: 11-13).

Leaders in the church, then, are not to be a hierarchy to rule the lives of the people, but fathers in a family, responsible for leading the family and bringing them to maturity as they would their own children. The family is to live together in harmony with the Father and with each other as brothers and sisters, doing life together as a witness to the world that God is restoring justice and peace to a broken world and will complete what He started when Jesus returns.

Those who return to the family through what Jesus did on the cross, and submit to Him, are part of that family and are called to live in harmony with the nature of God – merciful, compassionate and generous. Those who refuse to return to God’s authority in the family will be excluded forever when they die. Our leaders in the church are Jesus’ representatives, authorised by Him to lead.

Our responsibility is to obey them because they, not we, are accountable to God for the way they lead us. What will those do when they stand before Him who have led God’s people astray? Our writer urges, “Pray for us. We are the ones who will take the rap for what we do.”

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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