COME BACK TO THE RABBI’S YOKE

“I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:14-16.

This short paragraph tells me quite a bit about the early church, its leaders and the way it functioned.

After his grand and masterful presentation of the gospel, Paul becomes personal. He may not have yet visited Rome, but he knew much about the people in the Roman congregation, as the final chapter of his letter reveals. How did he know so much about them?

There was no social network to exchange information, no email or even an efficient “snail mail” system. Letters were carried by individuals and delivered to the recipients personally, and yet, there seems have been constant communication going on across the empire. People travelled quite extensively from one side of the known world to the other by both land and sea.

There was a special bond between believers because of the persecution that was slowly escalating against them. They were interested in each other’s welfare. They visited each other and exchanged news when they travelled to another city where there was a congregation of believers. They stayed in each other’s homes and shared their resources because they were ostracised and alienated from the outside world.

Paul took the trouble to commend them because the news he received about them was positive. In spite of their pagan origin, they were already mature and knowledgeable in the Scriptures. That points to a group of people who diligently applied themselves to a study of the Word. They were competent to instruct one another.

That leads to another important point – the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in them. There was no Bible School for them to attend to become “authorised” leaders. What makes one person more competent to lead than another? Not book learning, for sure! In the church, people emerged as leaders as their gifts and anointing were recognised. The Holy Spirit was the teacher. He raised up and anointed different people for different functions.

There is nothing wrong with formal training but people should not be self-appointed because of what they want to do. It is the general consensus of the body that should determine what individuals are gifted to do. In the early church, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in a believer took precedence over skills, abilities and competence. The seven deacons chosen to serve tables in Acts 6 were all men filled with the Holy Spirit.

I notice also, Paul’s boldness in appealing to his apostolic authority given to him by God. He was no upstart apostle. He had been appointed by God as an apostle to the Gentiles and he used his authority, not with arrogance but with confidence. His was no idle boast. As an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, appointed by God and anointed by the Holy Spirit, he had the responsibility of interpreting and binding the Rabbi’s yoke on those who became disciples through faith.

Pastors and leaders in the church would do well to learn that they have a sacred duty to understand and correctly interpret Jesus’ yoke before they bind it on the people in the congregations for which they are responsible. Disciples of a rabbi were never permitted to add to or subtract from their rabbi’s yoke. They were immediately disqualified from being a disciple if they did.

It was their duty correctly to understand their rabbi’s interpretation of the Torah and the way he lived it, and then to follow him without question. They were to bind his yoke on their followers, loosing them from any other teaching they had submitted to and baptising them into identification with their rabbi and his movement.

The implications are obvious. There are so many fanciful interpretations of the gospel which Jesus never authorised, that the church has become a hotchpotch of beliefs and practices which have very little or nothing to do with the truth. He is calling us back to His one simple instruction, “Follow me!” and to the authorised interpretation of His yoke – recorded in the New Testament – by His appointed apostles.

Acknowledgement

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.