I recently got a question about Bible commentaries…my answer was a good time…see…

Ephesians 4 lists the five ministry (doma) gifts that God has put in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. It is out of these gifts that God speaks dynamically to his church. They must speak according to God’s Word or they have no light, no life - their purpose is not extra-biblical revelation, but that the eyes of the hearts of God’s people might be open, that in all things the church might be built up.

The purpose of the church is stated in Ephesians 1.23 to be the fullness of Him who fills all things. As Paul throws out in 2 Corinthians 2.16 - “Who is sufficient for these things!?” We need the supernatural work of the ministry gifts God has placed in the church in order for us to actually be the church.

1 Peter 4.10-11 As every man has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God gives: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 11.1 Be followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Ideally, anyone who sat down to write a commentary on the Word of God would do so out of the supernatural doma ministry gift of the teacher (or even apostle). Whether it would be through speaking in church or through the written word would be of relatively little consequence. As Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 10.11: Such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present.

The difference today is that 95% of the people who perform these functions and occupy these offices that God has supernaturally placed in his church do not allow themselves to be held to the same standard that Paul required and held himself to. A thorough investigation of 2 Corinthians 10-13 reveals that Paul laid his life bare before all he ministered to as a pattern of the ministry of Christ Jesus himself - persecuted in every possible way (and so perceived as weak), yet supernaturally verified by God as one given authority in the church to minister, to build the church up (and so made strong in the strength of the Lord and the power of his might).

If the word I speak does not have to be supernaturally confirmed by God with signs and wonders (as laid out in Mark 16.17-20, Hebrews 2.1-4, and 2 Corinthians 12.12, for starters) - then I can say anything I want about God and his Word, and anyone who reads it can either agree or disagree. But then I’m just ministering out of the realms of human intellect, and all i can expect is human results. No wonder there are so many opinions and doctrinal positions floating around out there today! - we don’t hold ourselves to the same standard of divine verification that Peter and Paul and John and James and Luke and Jude and Mark and Timothy and Jesus did.

You see what i’m getting at? As those who will stand individually before Christ to give account for every last detail of our lives, we have to be incredibly careful who we allow to speak into our lives concerning the Word of God. Jesus ministered so that his disciples’ lives would end up looking like his. Everyone we read about ministering in the New Testament minstered so that the lives of those they ministered to would look like theirs, and in turn look like Jesus. So the question you have to ask yourself before you follow anyone is - do I want my life to end up looking like their life, and does their life look in every way verifiably like the life of Jesus?

It seems like a ridiculously high standard, but short of this - how can we expect to be anything more than a religious club? If on the other hand we do accept this standard, we begin to step up into the realms of being the church we see functioning in the New Testament, where God himself actually goes to church (Hebrews 12.18-29)!!

****To stop at the observation that 95% of modern church ministry is merely human, and then write the living church off (as found in the local assembly)…is a cop-out. God promises he is at work in his church, and that his purposes there will prevail no matter what man has attempted and fumbled. There are no promises for those who step outside and try to go it alone. Vital God-confirmed ministries exist all over the world! Get there and get planted deep..