On Church Offices and Officeholders
A position paper from the session of Christ Church Bellingham on God-given roles in the Bible & the church
One of the most important things we can ever ask about ourselves and others is, Who am I? Who is he or she? In the worldview of the Bible, the way we should go about asking what fundamentally defines us is inseparable from the reality of considering human beings to be what we might call officeholders. In other words, who we are is intimately tied to what God calls us to. That’s because the most original thing about any of us is that we have been created to bear the image of God. This is nowhere else more vital to understand than in the church, since we’re ultimately defined by bearing the image of Christ.
THE IMAGE OF GOD & OTHER OFFICES
Let’s keep focusing on the image of God. The nature of the image of God is rich, but it’s primarily an office or an official vocation. God called Adam and Eve to fulfill the office of bearing his image by faithfully reflecting God’s character back to him and faithfully representing him to one another and to the rest of creation. They were supposed to do this by communing with God continually; by multiplying and filling the earth with other human beings who knew God and would in turn spread that knowledge to their children; and by ruling the creation and subduing it in a creative and godly way reflecting the work of their holy Creator.
This universal human office of the image of God is analogous to the many other offices to which we’re appointed by God—not only as created human beings, but as redeemed members of Christ’s body with various callings and gifts. As with all analogies, there are differences alongside the similarities. Some offices or roles are permanent like the image of God—for example, being a parent or child, or being a spouse (at least in intention and in principle). Many offices are temporary, though, like being an elected politician with a term limit or being a student in a formal educational setting. Some are given directly by God, like Paul’s call to be an apostle (Acts 9) or the appointment of elders and deacons required by the New Testament (Acts 6:1–7; 1 Timothy 3:1–13; Titus 1:5–9). And some have been created by the church for the sake of fulfilling its ministry with wisdom and effectiveness, whether traditional lectors and acolytes, or contemporary college ministry directors and women’s ministry coordinators. We can describe an office in biblical terms, therefore, as any specific vocation or formal role, to which someone is authorized by God, either as mandated by Scripture or established in the wise judgment of the church. Few offices are as basic to answering the question of Who am I? as the image of God—but being authorized to hold various offices is a fundamental part of our God-given identity and affects every area of our lives, especially in the church.
AUTHORIZED VERSUS EQUIPPED
When we think about human offices biblically, we need to start with our original integrity, but we can’t end there. Adam and Eve were created not only with a vocation to bear God’s image, but they were also fully equipped to fulfill that office. In the Fall, they mysteriously and tragically rejected God and turned away from their calling. They were stripped of the glory that belonged to their office, and they lost the inherent righteousness and holiness that made them fully equipped to fulfill that office. Though we still bear the image of God, we continually struggle and fail to live up to it.
Ever since the Fall, therefore, human beings have wrestled with a disconnect between the demands of the office of the image of God and our sinful character and actions as officeholders (even for those of us who are being sanctified through faith in Christ). This disconnect regularly appears in our other vocations, too. All of us are called to be faithful disciples; many of us are called to be husbands or wives or parents or workers; some of us are called to be single. Each of us tries to be faithful in fulfilling all these offices, but we’re also painfully aware of how often we fall short. On the other hand, some of us want to be a husband or wife or parent or worker, and feel we’re more than ready for it—but we haven’t been called to those offices, at least not yet.
For us, ability carries authority along with it. Why is that?
All this is important for understanding offices in the church, because it leads us to recognize a complex relationship between whether someone is authorized to hold an office and whether someone is suitable or well-equipped for that office. The Bible is full of examples of this complexity:
• Sometimes a person is both authorized and well-equipped. Think of Moses as a deliverer, Elijah as a prophet, David as a king, Phineas as a priest (Numbers 25:6–13), Paul as an apostle, or Mary as a mother. We celebrate examples like these; they’re officeholders who (largely) fulfill their God-given roles with faithfulness, reflecting the way things ought to be.
• Sometimes a person is authorized but not suitable or well-equipped. Think of Eli’s wicked sons (1 Samuel 2:12–36), or Balaam and his donkey (Numbers 22:21–39) or, of course, Judas Iscariot. Eli’s sons weren’t personally worthy of the priesthood and were eventually punished for it, but before that they properly received sacrifices from the people and forgave their sins on behalf of God nonetheless. When Balaam refused to discharge the prophetic office God gave him, Balaam (indirectly) delivered the prophecy despite himself. Judas was a devil from the beginning, but he also participated in the powerful preaching and the miraculous healings belonging to the apostolic office to which Jesus called him along with the others. We often struggle with examples like these, because it’s hard for us to think that someone can really be authorized to hold an office if that person isn’t personally fit for it or at least somewhat good at it. But this is quite unsurprising from the Bible’s perspective—human beings are often given offices of which we’re not worthy. Being an unfaithful husband or father or wife or mother is displeasing to God, but it doesn’t necessarily mean God hasn’t called unfaithful people to occupy those (otherwise good) roles.
• Sometimes a person is suitable and well-equipped but not authorized. Think of all the godly and capable people in the Bible whom God didn’t call to offices it seems they were otherwise highly qualified for: Boaz probably would’ve been a great judge of Israel; Barnabas probably would’ve been a skilled and effective apostle; the Proverbs 31 woman would’ve been amazing at virtually anything, even though she wasn’t called to everything. But again, we often struggle with examples like these, because it’s strange to think that God gives some people skills, talents, or experiences that would make them ideal candidates for offices he nevertheless does not call or authorize them to hold. We rather tend to think that the only reason such people don’t fulfill such roles is because they don’t get the opportunity or have the desire—and if they could have, they should have.
There are other ways this complex dynamic between being authorized and equipped plays out—there are people who’re authorized but not yet equipped; others who’re equipped but not yet authorized; others neither authorized nor equipped. Yet all these examples give us a very different understanding of what offices are and who officeholders are than that reflected in most areas of contemporary American culture.
OUR CULTURE’S COLLAPSE OF AUTHORITY INTO ABILITY
Indeed, our culture doesn’t think too often or too deeply about offices and officeholders in any sense (beyond reserving such terms for a select few white-collar jobs). In particular, why is it that we’re often so uneasy with the idea of someone being apparently suitable and well equipped to hold a certain office or occupy a certain role to which God does not call or authorize them. Or more pointedly, why does God’s word bar the door to certain offices in the church for some Christians who seem otherwise very well suited?
Many factors can come into play when we individually or communally wrestle with questions like this, but usually one of the most important factors is an assumption which at its heart stands in tension with the Bible’s way of seeing things: we tend to assume that being personally suitable and well-equipped for an office is a sufficient rationale for why a person is or should be authorized to hold that office. For us, ability carries authority along with it. Why is that?
”God didn’t call any of us to be his children because we were successful or strong or righteous; likewise, he doesn’t call us to one office or another because we’re so clearly well-suited to occupy them.”
Our culture, like the rest of the world in need of transforming grace, naturally operates under the conviction that, in the end, who I am is determined by what I do—whether it’s honoring the memory of my ancestors or discovering the cure for cancer or raising well-adjusted children or finding inner peace. What I’m able to achieve is always restricted by the opportunities available to me, of course, but in principle (especially in a society as privileged as ours) no opportunities to follow my deepest desires and accomplish my life goals which could be available to me should ultimately be denied me. And in a society as individualistic and democratic as ours, it’s also natural to feel that other people’s authorization or official capacities are primarily a function of moral authority. In other words, an office should belong to someone only as long as other people consider that person to live up to our standards of competence and consistency in their duties as an officeholder. As soon as someone starts to act like a terrible or incompetent boss, for example, we start to think that we don’t really have to keeping giving him or her the respect and esteem otherwise due to a boss.
OFFICES, OFFICEHOLDERS, & THE GOSPEL
The gospel logic of the Bible leads us to reason very differently. In his mercy, God did not withdraw from Adam and Eve their image-bearing office—but the office itself and the officeholders bearing that image both changed. In restoring human beings to his favor on the basis of the promised Seed of the woman who would bring salvation by crushing the Serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), God revealed two things. First, he exclusively located the true nature and ultimate fulfillment of humanity’s imagebearing office—and therefore of all God-given offices—in Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is the faithful officeholder on behalf of all wives, husbands, parents, children, pastors, greeters, judges, teachers, friends, and neighbors. And second, he inclusively announced that all human beings will faithfully fulfill our image-bearing office and all our other God-given offices only as we are joined by faith to this promised Seed.
Our heavenly Father who gives good gifts to his children will give us appropriate opportunities to exercise those gifts in accordance with his revealed word. The reality that he doesn’t open every office to any particular person (let alone to everyone) doesn’t make him stingy or any less devoted to our flourishing. God didn’t call any of us to be his children because we were successful or strong or righteous; likewise, he doesn’t call us to one office or another because we’re so clearly well-suited to occupy them. Rather, in his infinite wisdom God calls every Christian to exercise his or her abilities and gifts in certain offices and not others, never wasting the talents we offer back to him which he first gave us. In calling us to our offices, God promises to give each of us— none of whom are sufficient or suitable in ourselves to fulfill our duties—the repentance and faith we need to rely on his Spirit to give us the grace to grow into these roles. And though our offices make up so much of our identity, they are never our hope, because they do not define us apart from or outside of our Lord Jesus Christ.
