THE ESSENTIAL MINISTRY OF THE WORD

Colossians 3 specifically defines the nature of the essential private ministry of the Word that is the calling of the body of Christ. In this way Colossians 3:15–17 is very helpful:

  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Paul envisions a well-prepared body of Christ with the Word of God dwelling in their hearts, now ready to do what God has designed the body of Christ to do. And what is that? Again, Paul is very specific: teach and admonish. Now, let’s be honest. In most contexts, what Paul is describing would be quite radical, maybe even unsettling. He is actually proposing that every believer is designed to have a teaching function in the life of every believer. It really is an “all-of-God’s-people-all-of-the-time” paradigm. This means that it’s unhealthy for any church and its pastor if, in that church, the pastor is the only teacher. It is assumed here that every teacher, no matter where God has placed him or her in the body, needs to be taught, and all the people being taught need also to teach.

Now, notice again the two descriptive words that Paul uses: teach and admonish. To put the most basic definitions on these terms is to say that teaching enables you to see life God’s way. It is embedding the story of life in the larger story of redemption. Admonishing is helping you to see yourself God’s way. It is standing you before the perfect mirror of God’s Word so that you are confronted with the reality of who you really are. There is not a day when every member of the body of Christ does not need to be taught, helped to identify those remaining artifacts of an ungospelized worldview. There is also not a day when we don’t need to be admonished, confronted with the fact that we still look into the world’s carnival mirrors and carry around distorted opinions of who we are.

Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).