Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry - John Piper Ministry  27 January  2025 | Topic: If God Pastors Me, Why Do I Need Pastors?   - Faithwheel.com
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 Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry  27 January  2025 | Topic: If God Pastors Me, Why Do I Need Pastors?  

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If God Pastors Me, Why Do I Need Pastors?

We’re reading the Navigators Bible Reading Plan together again this year, and we just wrapped up our first month of the new year with readings that included Psalm 23:1–3 and Matthew 9:36 and Matthew 10:6. David, a listener, is putting those three texts together in asking you this question.

“Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. There seems to be a divine, sovereign shepherd who can supply all our needs. And yet we still have need of human shepherds. So, how do these two tiers of shepherds work together? There’s a sort of, ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.’ But I still want. I still need a human shepherd too. God is a sufficient, all-sovereign shepherd who is enough for me. And yet he’s not enough for me. Of course, I’m thinking here of the important role my pastor plays in my life. So, how do you put those two tiers of shepherds together?”

How many ways can the diamond of God’s glory be turned so that facet after facet of the diamond reflects more and more of his varied wisdom and strength and goodness? How many ways can you turn that diamond? In Ephesians 3:10, Paul says, “Through the church the manifold [the many-sided] wisdom of God [is] made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” So the way God has set up the church — its people, its structure, its leaders, its gospel, its mission — is designed to turn the diamond of God’s glory and reveal side after side after side of the wisdom of God.

Life Among the Members

Christ was made the head of the church, and the head is the great guide and the great supplier, provider — the great protector. And so Christ could have ruled his church, his saints, directly, with no intervening influences (human or otherwise). He could communicate directly to every individual Christian and not have any leaders and not have any of those saints minister to each other in any way, lest they intrude upon the prerogative of the head. He could have done it that way, so that the church would be made up of little individual points of light, isolated Godward light, that have no relationship with each other and don’t relate to any leaders at all.

“The way God has set up the church is designed to turn the diamond of God’s glory.”

He could have done it that way. Why didn’t he do it that way? Well, just on the basis of Ephesians 3:10, we would say, “Because that way of ruling the church as the head — with no pastors, no shepherds, no leaders, no effective influence horizontally among the members — would not be the wisest way to turn the diamond of God’s glory in the church to show the many-sided wisdom of God.” That way of doing it would be defective. It wouldn’t glorify the panorama of God’s glory in the church as much as the way he actually did do it.

When we read the Bible, we cannot escape the amazing impression that God loves to do things indirectly through human agents. It’s everywhere. He created a world and he created a church in which the decisive things concerning redemption happened not directly (from God) but indirectly (from God through people to people). It’s everywhere. And therefore, I conclude that since God’s passion is to magnify in the world the many-faceted glory of his wisdom and grace and power, this way of doing it — through human agents, shepherds and sheep — reveals more of his glory than if he did it directly and did not indirectly do it through people.

Sheep Shepherding Sheep

So, it’s not just a question of why there are human shepherds (Ephesians 4:11) when God is our shepherd (Psalm 23:1) and Christ is the good shepherd (John 10:11). The question is also, Why has he appointed that in the church? We’re all priests. All the sheep are priests, like little mini-shepherds, and our salvation hangs in significant measure on how we minister to each other, not just from the shepherds. For example:

  • Hebrews 3:13: “Exhort one another every day” so that nobody falls away.
  • John 15:12: “Love one another.”
  • Romans 15:14: “Instruct one another.”
  • Galatians 5:13: “Serve one another.”
  • Ephesians 4:32: “[Forgive] one another.”
  • Ephesians 5:21: “[Submit] to one another.”
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:15: “Do good to one another.”
  • Hebrews 10:24: “Stir up one another to love and good works.”
  • James 5:16: “Confess your sins to one another.”

Whoa. God is really into doing his work through sheep. All of those human activities from sheep to sheep are designed by the chief shepherd to accomplish shepherding purposes of holiness and love and perseverance — and ultimately salvation.

God’s People, God’s Power, God’s Glory

Why did he set it up that way? The explicit answer turns up repeatedly in the Bible: when God’s people by God’s power do God’s horizontal and relational work, more facets of the diamond of God’s glory turn in the light and reflect more of him to the world. Jesus said, for example, “Let your good deeds [in other words, this horizontal ministry] be seen by others so that people will glorify your Father in heaven” (see Matthew 5:16). God gets more glory when there’s horizontal ministry done in the name of God by the power of God for the glory of God.

Paul said, “[Receive] one another as Christ has [received] you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). He said, “[Forgive] one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). In other words, show by your relationships what kind of God you have. Turn the diamond. Let another facet of the diamond be seen by the way you forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Paul unpacked what he meant by “[putting] on the new self,” for example, by saying it was created “after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10). In other words, the point of becoming new people in Christ as we relate to each other in the church is to show more about what our creator is like.

And Peter said that the use of spiritual gifts to one another in the church is a stewarding of the varied grace of God (1 Peter 4:10): the many-sided, many-colored — like the diamond — grace of God. In other words, it’s a turning of the diamond so that more and more facets of God’s grace can be seen and glorified as we minister to one another with God-given gifts.

Turning the Diamond

The same thing can be said now about why God has appointed human leaders (or shepherds or pastors or elders) in the church. When they do their work as they ought, as God’s word teaches them to do it, they do it “with joy” (Hebrews 13:17) — and so they show by the way they do their leading the preciousness of the one they serve. That’s what their joy does. They do it with humility (1 Timothy 3:6) — and show that they themselves are not the shepherd but only happy under-shepherds. They do it by cherishing and preserving and defending sound doctrine (Titus 1:9) — and show the value of the truth of the gospel. And they do it worthy of imitation (Hebrews 13:7) — and we all know that the only one ultimately worthy of imitation is Jesus. And yet he has appointed shepherds to be imitated as they imitate Christ.

That’s what turning the diamond means. And all of this is God’s design, because when shepherds function that way, more facets of God’s wisdom and grace are seen in the church than if there were no leaders.

And the same thing is true not just because of the way the shepherds lead but also because of the way the sheep follow. They’re supposed to submit to the shepherds (Hebrews 13:17). And when they do that gladly, they show their contentment in Christ and what a good Savior he is and that they’re happy with the way God has designed the church and reflected his wisdom. And they learn from shepherds because the shepherds are appointed to be teachers. And when the people eat the food that God provides through the shepherds and delight in God’s word, it magnifies the wisdom of God. And when shepherds are loving their people as Christ loved the church, and the people are imitating that love, the beauty of the community reflects the wisdom and the grace of God.

So, it’s all about the diamond. It’s all about the way the facets of the diamond are turned. That’s why God did it this way.

I think the answer throughout the Bible for why God accomplishes his purposes through human agents is that, in the thousands and thousands of ways that those agents trust God and conform their lives to the good shepherd and love each other, more facets of the beauty of God’s wisdom and grace and power are shown than if he did it another way.


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