1 Peter 5:1-4 The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ… It is quite plain that St. Peter is here addressing distinctively not elders in age, but eiders by office. Age might enter then, more than now, into the question of fitness; nevertheless, what made a presbyter was not age, but ordination. And when we see gathered together a goodly band of youthful ministers, we do well to say to them, Remember, you have an office given you which reckons not by years, but by graces; you have to walk the aisles of your church, to tread the streets of your parish, as men (in one sense) prematurely old — as men of that truest dignity, which consists not in wealth, not in rank, not even in age, but in bearing Christ's commission. St. Peter counts this so honourable an office that he will claim even for himself none higher. Another apostle, his friend and chosen brother, describes himself in like manner in two of his writings, only as "the elder" (2 John 1). They well knew, both of them, the higher compulsion of sympathy, above anything that mere power or official dignity can exercise. 1. I will say a word upon the dedication. The Christian clergyman is a dedicated man. Do you heartily believe that your motive in asking ordination is honest, truthful, pure? Is it the choice of your heart? Do you mean to give your life to it? You must not be satisfied with that sort of average ambiguous twilight state which the world considers good enough for a lay Christian. 2. Thus the dedication passes on into the commission. You dedicate yourselves to Christ, and He gives you His commission. It would be absolutely intolerable to one who knows himself to have to feel, when he robes himself in his vestry for the exercise of one of his clerical functions, that he is volunteering his counsels for that time to a body of rational spiritual beings who have just as good a right to teach him. Bearing this well in mind, still we say, Without Christ's commission we could not speak: with it a dying man may be bold to speak to dying men. 3. Next to the sanctity, the twofold sanctity, of the office, let me strongly urge upon you its Divine humanity. The secret of all influence is, Be human. One word of genuine kindness, of hearty compassionate sympathy, will be worth ten thousand expositions of your claim to reverence: it will open hearts otherwise barred against you, and, letting you in, will let in Christ after you. And as in your intercourse, so also in your preaching. Let it indeed assert strongly the direct revelation and inspiration of your gospel. But in the application of this Divine gospel, speak as a man to men; speak as one who knows its necessity to himself, as one who knows the nature, the life, the heart, to which he has to offer it, and has learned, not from hooks but from men, what is that heart sickness too, and eager inward thirst, to which Christ his Lord came to minister, and has of His infinite mercy set him to minister in His absence, in His presence! 4. Need I say, then, in the fourth place, that the Christian ministry is a work? It is no pastime. It is no outside perfunctory propriety. It is a work. Be able to say, I am an elder of Christ's Church, and therefore my time, my strength, nay life, is the Church's, is Christ's. 5. Who shall deny then this other avowal — that the ministry is a difficulty? Do you suppose, ye who pass by, that a clergyman's ordination sets him above the most trying snares of world, flesh, or devil? 6. Then let me record, for your encouragement, this one other characteristic — the ministry an honour, a privilege, and a blessing. There is a special coronet for the faithful presbyter, over and above that which he shall share with the lowliest of the redeemed. In this life if is his, if he be earnest in his work, to enjoy a gratitude scarcely given to another — the gratitude of lives remodelled, the gratitude of souls saved. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: |
    |