"Esteem Them Very Highly In Love,For Their Work's Sake"
I Thessalonians 5:13
Any man who preaches the gospel of God's
free and sovereign grace in Christ and faithfully gives himself to the work of
the ministry in study, prayer and preaching is to be treated with the highest
possible respect and esteem by the church and people of God for whose benefit
he labors, and by all other faithful ministers of the new covenant with whom he
labors. It is true, the preacher is just a man,
sinful, frail and often erring. His faults are not hard to find. Therefore, he
must not be worshipped or blindly followed. But he is God's man, chosen,
ordained of God and sent forth to preach the gospel of Christ with divine
authority as God's ambassador to your soul. Therefore, he is to be loved and
highly esteemed.
This esteem must begin with your own
pastor, the man through whom God speaks to you and ministers to your own soul.
If God has given you a faithful pastor, one who is committed to Christ,
committed to the gospel, committed to the glory of God and committed to the
welfare of your soul, you are blessed beyond measure. Few people in this world
are so highly favored. If you do not so esteem your own pastor, it is not
likely that you truly esteem any other servant of God, because the basis of
this esteem is not the man but the work which he does. And all of God's
servants are involved in and devoted to the same work.
Yet, this esteem is not to be limited to
your own pastor. It is to be extended to all God's servants, who labor among
you. Any man who labors among God's saints, anywhere in the world, preaching
the gospel of the grace of God is to be given the same love and esteem you give
to your own pastor.
And this high esteem for God's servants is
the secret of peace in God's church. Paul admonishes you "to know them
which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to
esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among
yourselves." The connection is obvious. To a very great degree, the peace
and harmony of God's church, or lack of it, is determined by the loving esteem,
or lack of it, in which the servants of God are held by his people. Will you
not do your part to promote, rather than erode, esteem among God's people for
his servants?
Don Fortner