No Priest but One: The Pastor the New Testament Never Hired

Today I was at a customer’s house repairing a dent. Paintless dent repair has been my trade for nearly thirty years. While I worked, he asked where I went to church. I told him about my calling and theological education. He asked again. “Where do you go to church?” I answered, “I am the Church.” He asked again, so I finally told him that I do not attend one. He seemed genuinely troubled. He told me about his pastor and invited me to his church. He meant well, but the conversation exposed something that has troubled me for years. Western Christianity has quietly made the pastor, the building, and Sunday attendance into things the New Testament never makes them. Christians can even begin to judge another believer’s faithfulness by where he spends Sunday morning. The pastor becomes the center. The building becomes God’s house. Attendance becomes faithfulness. None of those equations comes directly from the New Testament.

Modern Western Christianity runs on a familiar model. One pastor leads. He preaches the sermon. The congregation listens. The congregation gives. The giving supports the pastor, the staff, and the building. A successful church is often measured by how many people come to hear the man preach. The New Testament certainly knows preaching, giving, leadership, and Christian gatherings. What it does not clearly give is this machine.

1. The Word the New Testament Never Uses

The Greek word for priest is ἱερεύς. The New Testament uses it for Jewish priests, for Christ in his unique priestly ministry, and priestly language for God’s people collectively. It never uses ἱερεύς as the title of a Christian minister. Peter calls believers a “holy priesthood” and a “royal priesthood.” This develops an older biblical promise in which Israel was called a kingdom of priests and Isaiah anticipated a people who would be called priests of the Lord (Exod. 19:6; Isa. 61:6; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10). The New Testament uses different words for local leaders. They are πρεσβύτεροι, elders, and ἐπίσκοποι, overseers. Paul summons the elders of Ephesus and then tells these same men that the Holy Spirit made them overseers who must shepherd the church (Acts 20:17, 28). Titus is told to appoint elders in every town, and Paul immediately describes the qualifications of the overseer (Titus 1:5, 7). Leadership is also normally described in the plural, with elders appointed in churches and overseers addressed alongside deacons (Acts 14:23; Phil. 1:1). Even ποιμήν, “pastor” or “shepherd,” appears only once as a noun referring to Christian leaders, and there it appears among Christ’s gifts to the Church rather than as the title of the single man who runs it (Eph. 4:11). Lightfoot recognized the significance of this pattern. He argued that presbyter and bishop originally referred to the same office and that the Christian ministry was not instituted as another priesthood.¹ Christ alone mediates between God and humanity. Elders may pray for the sick, but Christians are also commanded to pray for one another (1 Tim. 2:5; Jas. 5:14, 16).

2. Hebrews Closes the Levitical Door

Hebrews makes the priestly issue even sharper. The old priesthood could not simply continue after Christ because a change of priesthood necessarily brought a change of law. Christ possesses his priesthood permanently because death cannot take it from him. He does not hand that priesthood to another Christian priest. He remains the priest (Heb. 7:12, 24–25). The result is remarkable. Christians do not need another man to enter God’s presence for them. They themselves enter the holy place through the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:19–22). Their sacrifices are now praise, doing good, and sharing with others (Heb. 13:15–16). This matters when the Old Testament tithe is used to justify a permanent salaried clergy. The Levites received Israel’s tithes precisely because they had no territorial inheritance. Their support belonged to a particular priestly system (Num. 18:20–21). Hebrews says that priesthood has changed. The Christian does not need to finance another Levitical class because Christ has not replaced the Levites with pastors. He has replaced the old priesthood with himself.²

3. The Worker Deserves His Wages

The strongest texts on the other side must be allowed to say exactly what they say. Paul teaches that elders who rule well deserve “double honor,” especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, and he supports this with both the unmuzzled ox and the principle that the worker deserves his wages (1 Tim. 5:17–18). First Corinthians goes further. Paul insists that those who proclaim the gospel possess a genuine right to material support (1 Cor. 9:4–14). That cannot simply be explained away. Christian workers may be financially supported. Yet Paul immediately does something equally important: he repeatedly refuses to exercise that right (1 Cor. 9:12, 15, 18). He tells the Ephesian elders that his own hands supplied his needs and presents his labor as an example of helping the weak (Acts 20:33–35). He reminds the Thessalonians that he worked night and day rather than burdening them and explicitly calls his conduct an example to imitate (1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:7–10). The New Testament therefore permits financial support. What is much harder to find is the modern assumption that every healthy congregation should employ one professional pastor whose livelihood depends upon remaining its pastor. Permission to support Christian labor is not the same thing as establishing a clerical career.

4. The Earliest Church Knew the Danger

The Didache shows how seriously some early Christians regarded money and ministry. A travelling apostle could stay briefly, but lingering too long raised suspicion. If he asked for money, the warning became sharper. A Christian traveller who wished to settle was expected to work rather than live idly from the congregation. The document even uses the cutting term χριστέμπορος for one who makes merchandise of Christ (Did. 11.4–6; 12.3–5). Yet the evidence must be allowed its full force. The same document tells Christians to give firstfruits to resident prophets and calls them “your high priests” (Did. 13.3). The early evidence therefore does not prove that every Christian minister was unpaid. It proves something more modest and perhaps more useful: the earliest Christians recognized financial support as legitimate while also recognizing how quickly religious authority and money could corrupt one another.³

5. No House for God

The New Testament also changes what is meant by the house of God. Stephen declares that the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands, and Paul tells the Athenians the same thing (Acts 7:48; 17:24). The temple language is instead applied to God’s people. The Church is God’s temple because his Spirit dwells within it (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21–22; 1 Pet. 2:5). Early Christians could therefore meet in ordinary homes without imagining that God was somehow less present there (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Phlm. 2). A church building may be useful. It may even be beautiful. But usefulness is not holiness. Brick, carpet, stained glass, and a mortgage do not turn a building into the dwelling place of God. His people are his house.

6. The Gathering Is Commanded, but the Audience Is Not

None of this means Christians are free to abandon one another. Hebrews explicitly warns believers not to neglect gathering together (Heb. 10:24–25). The gathering matters. The question is what that gathering is supposed to be. Paul’s description is strikingly participatory. When Christians assemble, one brings a hymn, another a teaching, another a revelation, another a tongue, and another an interpretation. The governing concern is that everything should build up the Church (1 Cor. 14:26). That picture is difficult to reduce to one professional speaking while everyone else watches. The New Testament gathering has leaders, teachers, order, and authority. But it also expects the body to function as a body. Christians gather not merely to consume ministry but to minister to one another.

7. The Pacifier

That leads to the real danger. A religious system can demand enough activity to make a person feel faithful while demanding too little transformation to make him faithful. Sunday attendance can become a substitute for Christian life. A sermon can become something consumed rather than obeyed. Giving can become payment for religious services. The pastor can become the Christian who studies, teaches, visits, evangelizes, prays, and ministers professionally while everyone else returns to ordinary life. This does not mean churches are evil or pastors are dishonest. Many pastors labor sacrificially and serve their people faithfully. The danger lies in the system itself. If the enemy could not silence Christianity, a remarkably effective alternative would be to make Christianity something people watch. Give them a building to attend, a professional to perform the difficult parts, and a weekly service that assures them they have done their Christian duty. The gospel does not call Christians to watch Christianity. It calls them to live it.

8. What Would Change

If local leadership looked more like the pattern repeatedly seen in the New Testament, several modern assumptions would change with it. Leadership would be shared rather than concentrated in one personality. Elders would be known primarily for character, teaching, and shepherding rather than platform ability. Financial support could still be given where necessary because Scripture plainly permits it. But salary would no longer define ministry, and ministry would no longer belong mainly to the salaried. The sent could be supported. The teacher could be supported. An elder laboring intensely in the word could be supported. Yet the congregation would remain a priestly people rather than an audience surrounding a religious professional. The crucial question would cease to be, “Who is the pastor?” It would become, “How is the whole body serving Christ?”

A Word About Where I Stand

My own position should be stated plainly. I am not a regular churchgoer. God called me on June 7, 1999, but that calling did not give me a pulpit or make Christianity my profession. My trade remained my trade, and ministry found other places to happen. That experience undoubtedly affects how I read these texts, and the argument should therefore be judged by Scripture rather than by my experience. The central claim is not that pastors are bad, buildings are bad, or supporting Christian workers is wrong. Scripture will not sustain those claims. The claim is narrower. The New Testament gives the Church one permanent High Priest, Jesus Christ. It gives local churches elders and overseers. It gives the whole body work to do. It permits financial support for those who labor in ministry. What it never clearly establishes is the institution modern Western Christianity often treats as indispensable: one professional pastor at the center, a congregation gathered principally to hear him, and a financial structure built principally to sustain the system. That distinction matters because Christ did not purchase an audience. He made a priesthood.

Notes

1. J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (London: Macmillan, 1913). ↩
2. F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), commentary on Hebrews 7:12, 24; Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, Anchor Yale Bible 36 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), commentary on Hebrews 13:15–16. ↩
3. Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912), Didache 11–15; Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), commentary on 11.4–6, 12.5, and 13.3. ↩