In this chapter we want to see how to carry out the New Testament priesthood of the gospel according to the Lord’s up-to-date recovery. In order to carry out God’s New Testament priesthood of the gospel, we have to take care of four steps. Each step is a must. The first step is to get sinners saved to make them members of the living Christ. In other words, we have to preach the gospel as New Testament priests. The second step is to have home meetings, not in our homes but in the homes of the new ones for the purpose of nourishing and cherishing them. In our preaching of the gospel, we surely will beget new babes. Therefore, we must continue to take care of them by nourishing and cherishing them as nursing mothers. The third step is to bring these new ones into the group meetings. The group meetings will have the fellowship, the interceding, the mutual care, the shepherding, and the mutual teaching. This will spontaneously perfect these new ones, carrying out the perfecting of the saints revealed in Ephesians 4:11-12. The fourth step, as a result of such perfecting, is to usher these ones into prophesying. In other words, we have to perfect them to such an extent and to such a level that they can speak for the Lord and speak forth the Lord to minister and dispense Christ into others. This is the top point for building up the organic Body of Christ, and this will fulfill God’s eternal plan according to His divine economy. These four steps will give the Lord a way to accomplish what He is after.
I would summarize these four steps respectively with four words: go, feed, perfect, and climb. To carry out the New Testament priesthood of the gospel we have to go, feed, perfect, and climb. To lead and to usher all the new ones into prophesying is really to climb a high peak. It is not so easy to do this, so we have to climb. Paul’s desire in 1 Corinthians 14 is not just for the gifted persons as prophets to prophesy but for every common believer to prophesy. Based on this revelation of the way to carry out the New Testament priesthood of the gospel, we all have to realize that in the past years, we Christians have wasted much of our time, our energy, and our being.
Last year the leaders of a denomination in the United States had a conference to fellowship about the burden to evangelize the entire globe by the year 2000. The conclusion of that conference was that they were short of manpower, despite their having many millions of members in the United States. This example shows that most of the Christians’ functions have been annulled. All of them have been disabled by the wrong practice of today’s Christianity. Christianity for the past centuries did a marvelous job in gaining millions of people for Christ, but at the same time their practice annulled the functioning of those whom they gained.
After a babe is born, this little babe normally has all the organs necessary for it to function properly. A newborn babe has a listening organ, a speaking organ, and a seeing organ, but all these organs need years to develop. Eventually, this babe will become a full-grown person who is fully and normally functioning. Because all his organs and members have been exercised, he can see, hear, speak, smell, walk, and do many other things. If infants were not allowed to use their eyes for a long period of time, they would become blind. Their eyesight would become useless because the capacity, the ability, of their seeing organ would have never been developed.
On the one hand, Christianity gained millions of believers, but on the other hand, the practice of Christianity killed their function because it took away every chance for their development. Nearly all the chances are given to a small number who are educated in seminary or some kind of theological school. This practice produces a clergy, and this clergy builds up a hierarchy, leaving all the common Christians as the laity without any chance to practice so that their functions can develop. The United States is a top nation because it affords opportunities to everybody. In the church life, everyone should have equal opportunity. The practice of Christianity does not give the believers equal opportunity to function as the organic members of the organic Body of Christ.
According to the New Testament, a local church should have elders, but these elders are not a clerical class. The elders are the overseers (Acts 20:17, 28), which the King James Version refers to as bishops. Ignatius in the second century taught that an overseer, a bishop, is higher than an elder. From this erroneous teaching came the hierarchy of bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and the Pope in the Roman Catholic Church. This erroneous teaching is also the source of the episcopal system of church government. As the overseers, the elders are leading ones. Every overseer is a leader. If this were not the case, the churches would be in a state of anarchy because there would be no leadership.
In Peter’s first Epistle, he says that the church is God’s possession and that God has allotted His possession to the elders (5:2-3). The churches are allotted to the elders as their allotments, their portions, entrusted to them by God for their care. The elders are the “keepers” who look after God’s possession. Although they are the leaders, Peter charged the elders not to lord it over the allotments. The elders should not be the lords to lord it over the churches. Instead, the elders should shepherd the flock of God. The elders in the church can only take the leadership (not the lordship), which all the believers should honor and follow (1 Thes. 5:12-13; 1 Tim. 5:17).
The function of the elders in the churches is absolutely necessary, but equal opportunity should be afforded to all the saints to speak in the meetings, to preach the gospel, to feed the new ones, to take care of the young ones, to perfect the saints, etc. In all things, opportunities should be afforded to each one of the saints equally. The United States is a top country because of its policy of equal opportunity. Furthermore, the United States endeavors to have a situation in which every citizen is working and producing.
To do something properly, a person needs a basic education. For someone to become a carpenter, he should finish his high school education and also learn the trade of carpentry. If a person is going to be a barber, he should finish his high school education and learn the trade of a barber. In the United States, everyone has an opportunity to receive an education. A high school education is even considered as a kind of compulsory education. Because of this, the United States is a strong country. Are the churches in the Lord’s recovery like this? Is everyone equal in everything?
Fifty-seven years ago, a church was established in my hometown, and I was a leading one there. Since that time I have seen many things. I have participated in the leadership throughout these fifty-seven years. According to my observation and understanding, I have not seen a church among us that has given equal opportunities to every member. Since I have been involved in the leadership in the churches, some may wonder why I did not give the saints equal opportunities in the churches where I labored. I did not have the intention of not giving equal opportunities to all the saints, but the system of our practice did not allow me to do this. In the way that we practiced the church life, there was no possibility for us to afford equal opportunities to all the saints. This is because the way was wrong.
To illustrate this matter of having a wrong system, we can consider two systems of government. People may talk about democracy, but their political system may be one of autocracy. If the system of government is autocracy, how can they exercise democracy? This is impossible. How can things be done democratically in a country of autocracy? If the people in that country want to practice democracy, they have to uproot their autocratic system and plant a new system, a system of democracy. Then their country will be a democratic country in which they can practice democracy. In order to practice democracy, the principle and the system of government need to be completely changed to a democratic system. Likewise, in order to carry out the New Testament priesthood, we need to uproot our “autocratic” way, our old way.
Our preaching of the gospel in the past is an illustration of an old system that did not bring all the saints into the preaching of the gospel. At a certain time, the elders would arrange to have either a gospel preaching meeting or a conference. Then they would appoint one good speaker who could be considered as an evangelist. Perhaps a number of people were brought to these meetings by the saints, and through these meetings a number were saved and baptized. No one can criticize this. The problem is that this practice became our system of gospel preaching. After this gospel preaching meeting or conference, most of the saints did not go on to carry out the preaching of the gospel in their daily life. Preaching the gospel has become an optional matter with many of the saints.
Furthermore, instead of the saints paying an adequate amount of attention to the preaching of the gospel in their daily life, they paid their attention to when the next gospel preaching meeting would take place. A brother may have said to his wife, “Do you know when the church will have another gospel preaching meeting? I am very burdened for my old schoolmate. I feel I owe him something. When we have our next gospel preaching meeting, I will bring him to get him saved.” This was our practice in the past. Unconsciously, it had become the system of our gospel preaching. To preach the gospel by any means is right, but in what kind of system are we preaching the gospel? What we do may be right, but the system in which we do it may be altogether wrong.
The traditional way of preaching the gospel, the old way, “drugs” the minds of the believers concerning the preaching of the gospel. Most believers do not have the consideration that the preaching of the gospel must be every believer’s obligation. Preaching the gospel is not just a matter of having periodic big meetings. The preaching of the gospel is a daily matter in the daily life of the believers. Therefore, the system of having only big gospel preaching meetings is altogether wrong. I do not mean that having big meetings for gospel preaching is wrong, but the system has to be uprooted. We have to plant another system in which every saint is a New Testament priest to carry out the New Testament priesthood of the gospel.
We may have preached the gospel in the past without having the thought that we have to be priests in order to preach the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is not done by an ordinary person but by a priest. A priest is a particular person. He is one who is very close to God, who contacts God moment by moment. Such a person is one with God, and he receives God’s word so that he can speak God out to others. He can bring God to man, and he can bring man to God. He has to bring God to his close relatives, to his neighbors, to his colleagues, and to all men.
Because we are priests, we have to have something to offer to God. A priest is one who offers sacrifices to God. The main sacrifices that a New Testament priest offers to God are not his praises or good works. The main sacrifices he offers to God are living persons, sinners who have been regenerated to become members of the living Christ (1 Pet. 2:5; Rom. 15:16). In the eyes of God, these regenerated sinners are living sacrifices, spiritual sacrifices. As the New Testament priests, we have to offer these sacrifices to God. How can we gain these sacrifices? Should we just wait until the church makes a decision to have a big gospel preaching meeting? That meeting will result in the offering of some sacrifices, but all these sacrifices will be offered up by only one or two brothers. Eventually, the rest of us only have a portion in a Levitical service. We are not functioning as priests, but the brother who speaks becomes the unique priest. Therefore, there is no equality. All the “laymen” among us need to be emancipated. I am doing my best to emancipate all the saints.