When Do I Unfollow My Pastor?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, when do we unfollow our Christian leaders?
00:00:09.000 | When does our loyalty to God override our loyalty to a certain church?
00:00:14.000 | We get the question from a listener named Peggy.
00:00:17.000 | "Hello, Pastor John. I have a burning question for you to answer.
00:00:22.000 | As Christians, do we pledge our loyalty to church or to God,
00:00:27.000 | and when and how should that line be drawn?"
00:00:31.000 | The way I answer Peggy will depend on what she is referring to
00:00:35.000 | when she says "loyalty to church."
00:00:39.000 | Does she mean loyalty to the people of God as a whole,
00:00:43.000 | namely the church universal, consisting of all the children of God
00:00:46.000 | who were ever born again through the Holy Spirit, through the gospel?
00:00:49.000 | Or does she mean one particular local expression of that church?
00:00:55.000 | She may not even be thinking of that distinction,
00:00:59.000 | but it's an important one, so I'm going to answer her at both levels.
00:01:05.000 | So first, church universal, and then specific church.
00:01:09.000 | Three different witnesses in the New Testament—Paul and John and Peter—
00:01:15.000 | three different witnesses tell us that to be united to God in Christ
00:01:21.000 | is to be united in principle and in love to the people of God.
00:01:26.000 | We're not permitted to choose between belonging to God and belonging to his people.
00:01:32.000 | They go together, always.
00:01:34.000 | To have God is to have the family of God.
00:01:38.000 | To have the Father is to have his children as brothers and sisters.
00:01:43.000 | No escaping about it. That's the way it is.
00:01:46.000 | And to love the Father is to love the children.
00:01:49.000 | So here's John's testimony.
00:01:51.000 | 1 John 5:1, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,
00:01:57.000 | and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him."
00:02:04.000 | So you can't say, "I'm going to love God and be faithful to that relationship,
00:02:09.000 | and I'm going to have nothing to do with Christians."
00:02:11.000 | It cannot be done. You cannot say that. That's a contradiction.
00:02:14.000 | Here's 1 John 3:14, "We know that we have passed out of death into life
00:02:20.000 | because we love the brothers.
00:02:23.000 | The very reality of being born again and thus belonging to God as our Father
00:02:29.000 | can only be known if we love Christian brothers and sisters."
00:02:34.000 | You don't love them, then you can't know that you belong to God.
00:02:37.000 | And here's 1 John 4:20, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother,
00:02:43.000 | he's a liar." John is clear. He cuts a straight row.
00:02:48.000 | The text goes on, "For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen
00:02:56.000 | cannot love God whom he has not seen."
00:02:59.000 | So you can't honestly claim to love God or have loyalty to God
00:03:03.000 | where there's no love for his children, your brothers and sisters.
00:03:07.000 | So that's John's witness. Here's Paul.
00:03:09.000 | This is 1 Corinthians 12:12, "We, though many, are one body in Christ
00:03:14.000 | and individually members of one another."
00:03:20.000 | So to be grafted into Christ's body by faith, united to him,
00:03:27.000 | is to be members of one another.
00:03:31.000 | So to be in Christ is to be attached to other members of the body.
00:03:36.000 | You can't have it any other way.
00:03:38.000 | Here's Peter's testimony. This is 1 Peter 2:4, "As you come to him, Christ,
00:03:45.000 | the living stone rejected by men but in God's sight, chosen and precious,
00:03:48.000 | you yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house
00:03:57.000 | to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices."
00:04:01.000 | In other words, to come to Christ, the living stone,
00:04:04.000 | is to be built with other little living stones like yourself into a house.
00:04:08.000 | You cannot come to him on any other terms.
00:04:12.000 | So I conclude loyalty to God in Jesus Christ necessarily includes loyalty of love to his people.
00:04:24.000 | That's the universal church, Christians wherever you find them.
00:04:28.000 | Second, what about loyalty to a specific local church?
00:04:33.000 | And my guess is Peggy's talking about this.
00:04:36.000 | I think all the New Testament language of membership in Christ and in the body
00:04:41.000 | implies taking membership in a local church very seriously,
00:04:46.000 | but this loyalty is not absolute like the loyalty to the people of God in general.
00:04:53.000 | And we know this because there are New Testament instructions
00:04:58.000 | which imply that a church leadership can be unworthy of being followed,
00:05:06.000 | which would imply no longer putting yourself under the ministry of that leadership.
00:05:11.000 | For example, 1 Timothy 5.19 talks about what happens when an elder ceases to be qualified to be an elder.
00:05:23.000 | Here's what happens.
00:05:24.000 | "Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses."
00:05:31.000 | What suppose you do have three witnesses? And they are guilty.
00:05:34.000 | "As for those who persist in sin, elders who persist in sin,"
00:05:39.000 | in other words, they're no longer qualified,
00:05:41.000 | "rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear."
00:05:46.000 | Now that implies that if this principle of handling unqualified elders is not carried out,
00:05:55.000 | the people may have no choice but to dissociate from unqualified elders.
00:06:01.000 | That's the meaning of unqualified. They can't lead anymore, so they're not going to lead us.
00:06:05.000 | And if they won't step down from leadership because of their disqualification,
00:06:08.000 | then we have to step out from under their leadership in order to be obedient to that text, I think.
00:06:14.000 | I would say this is the case in thousands of churches who have pastors who do not believe in the basic truths of the gospel.
00:06:22.000 | Two more examples. In 1 Corinthians 5.11, it says,
00:06:27.000 | "But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed
00:06:34.000 | or is an idolater or reviler or drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such a one."
00:06:40.000 | Well, what if it's your pastor who is sleeping around guilty of greed, an embezzler, idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler?
00:06:52.000 | What if it's your pastor who's living in sexual immorality?
00:06:55.000 | And what if the other elders are complicit and they're not bringing him to discipline?
00:07:00.000 | Or no denominational structures are being implemented to discipline him?
00:07:06.000 | Well, then the text says you're not supposed to have anything to do with him, so you clearly wouldn't sit under his ministry anymore.
00:07:14.000 | One more example. 2 John 1.10, "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, namely the apostolic teaching,
00:07:24.000 | do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works."
00:07:33.000 | Okay, so what if it's your pastor who's not bringing the apostolic teaching and the elders are doing nothing about it?
00:07:42.000 | The text says, "Don't even greet him."
00:07:45.000 | And if you're not supposed to greet him, how much more would you not attend his church?
00:07:52.000 | So my conclusion for Peggy is that she should realize that to belong to Jesus Christ and to be a child of her heavenly Father
00:08:02.000 | binds her together in a love relationship, a loyal relationship with all true Christians.
00:08:10.000 | She may not be indifferent to loving them, and that means fellowshipping with them in some way.
00:08:17.000 | And she should delight in this and seek to find ways to live it out.
00:08:22.000 | But her allegiance to any specific local church depends on the leadership fulfilling its moral and spiritual and doctrinal responsibilities.
00:08:36.000 | Wow, some really careful thoughts here about when to unfollow our leaders.
00:08:41.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the great question, Peggy.
00:08:46.000 | Well, you can stay up to date with this podcast by subscribing to our audio feeds,
00:08:50.000 | and you can search our episode archive, and you can even reach us by email with a difficult question you may be facing in life.
00:08:56.000 | You can do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:02.000 | Well, next time we meet, we're going to look at 1 Samuel 28 and how it was possible for Saul, the king of Israel,
00:09:10.000 | to speak to a dead man through a witch.
00:09:14.000 | Is that even possible in the first place?
00:09:17.000 | And no doubt we're going to get into a broader discussion of fortune-telling and necromancers and palm readers and the like.
00:09:24.000 | That's on Friday.
00:09:25.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:26.000 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, and we'll see you then.
00:09:29.000 | [End]
00:09:31.000 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:09:34.000 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:09:37.000 | you