The Lord has charged elders with the task of calling believers out of a culture steeped in sexual deviance and into a lifestyle of purity, where sexual immorality and impurity are not “even named among us” (Eph 5:3). He can’t do this with any credibility if he is not first and foremost the husband of one wife.

As elders, we must not only accept the fact that people are always watching our lives but should invite them to do so. Like Paul, we should be able to tell people to “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Our character and lifestyle should not be something we feel hesitant about sharing with others but should be regarded as an essential and powerful complement to our teaching.

Many a pastor has succumbed to ministry “burn out” because he has taken upon his shoulders the sole responsibility of shepherding the entire flock of God’s people. Ironically, such men end up suffering the consequences of the one-man-rule church model they have led their churches to embrace. Such an approach encourages the congregation to have highly unrealistic expectations of the pastor and the pastor to feel guilty or inadequate in the face of those expectations. It’s no wonder that the average tenure of a pastor is only a handful of years.

When we sit at the feet of Jesus to learn how to lead his people, we learn first that faithful undershepherds are stewards. The church does not belong to the elders, nor is it meant to serve them. Instead, they are entrusted with God's precious flock and are charged with loving and leading it, using God's means and for his glory.

Since, as God’s stewards, we’ve been entrusted with the tremendous responsibility of overseeing Christ’s invaluable church, we must stay fit for the job. To stick to the metaphor, the hard work of keeping watch over the flock requires that the shepherd be in shape. As spiritual leaders, this means remaining spiritually qualified for the job by tending to our own spiritual disciplines.

Spiritual shepherding requires compassion upon the lost, a willingness to seek them out, a sensitivity to their actual needs, and the ability to offer appropriate spiritual solutions. Then, when a sinner repents of their sin, a tenderhearted shepherd will rejoice, knowing that God in heaven is rejoicing along with him!

The Scripture is clear that God is a shepherd over his covenant people. What is also clear and quite surprising is that over time, the Lord would eventually call men to join him in his shepherding work. He would delegate the task of lovingly overseeing his people to faithful men. In other words, the divine shepherd would call earthly “undershepherds” to be faithful stewards over his flock.

So, don’t fall prey to the beachcomber approach to reading, just collecting a verse here and a verse there, and tucking them into your collection bag. Nor should you take the chapter-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away approach, which sees you read only one chapter, regardless of whether or not you’ve stopped in the middle of a narrative, or at the climax of an author’s line of reasoning. Instead, respect the bible as literature and follow the logical flow of the text, reading large portions and stopping where it makes the most natural sense

God’s children live differently, think differently, react differently, speak differently, and relate differently. They have a different value system, different morality, different priorities, and an entirely new perspective. In all ways, a Christian has become a new creation. However, as we learned in a previous lesson, these changes take place over time, through the Holy Spirit, as we exert personal effort. This process of sanctification sees us become less and less like our old selves, and more and more like Jesus. It sees us become like foreigners to the culture and peculiar among our peers.

Your salvation is entirely complete in the sense that you have been made spiritually alive, declared righteous, and adopted into the family of God. However, concerning the need to actually live-out your salvation, there is a lot of work to be done. Work which requires personal effort, self-denial, and the disciplined application of God’s means for spiritual growth. Sometimes this feels like a continual internal battle, but be encouraged because you have everything you need to be victorious.

This lifelong process of learning to let go of our sin, and to become more and more like Jesus, is what the bible calls sanctification. This is the process by which God, by his Holy Spirit, makes us increasingly holy. It is a process which lasts our entire earthly life. It is empowered by the Holy Spirit, yet requires our personal effort.

Sometimes we will face trials, and struggles in this life. These difficulties don’t mean that something has gone terrible wrong. Nor do they mean that God does not love us. In fact, such hardships are sometimes evidence that God is busy working in our lives, training us to love this world less, and love him more. Through trials, he is working to develop the character of Jesus in us, so that we can thrive spiritually (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Although he is the holy God of heaven, he invites us to come to him with confidence. Like the child of a King, who has the freedom to crawl up in his dad’s lap while others dare not approach, we have free access to our loving, heavenly Father. We can have the confidence that God is our very own Father, and that he delights to have us in his presence. With Jesus, we can cry “Abba!, Father!”

As we will see throughout this book, the bonds of membership are to be so strong that believers should be willing to reconcile when conflict occurs, restore one another when sin creeps in, and bear the burdens of one another when life becomes hard. The biblical language for church life is never casual. Instead, it is the language of a fully committed familial relationship wherein members are bound to one another in love, determined to oversee the faith of one another all the way until Christ’s return.

When you discover your spiritual gifts and find a place to serve in the church, you are making an invaluable contribution to the furtherance of Christ’s will on earth. You are serving as a faithful steward of the grace that God has given you. You are building his church along with him.

As we will see throughout this book, the bonds of membership are to be so strong that believers should be willing to reconcile when conflict occurs, restore one another when sin creeps in, and bear the burdens of one another when life becomes hard. The biblical language for church life is never casual. Instead, it is the language of a fully committed familial relationship wherein members are bound to one another in love, determined to oversee the faith of one another all the way until Christ’s return.

Whether or not we use the term “covenant” in our membership process, the relationship between members remains a covenant relationship. It is a relationship in which members commit to practically living out the spiritual unity Jesus has forged between them through the new covenant.

As you think about church membership, you should not think of it as joining a club or other social group. You should consider it as obeying Jesus’ design for his people to gather in committed relationships to act together as his representatives on earth. You should think of it as taking up the responsibilities Jesus has delegated to his church.

To bind and loose, as we will see, is the authority to declare who is a part of the church that Jesus is building and who is not. The authority of the keys of the kingdom may allow for more than this, but not less. It is this authority which has been entrusted to the members of every genuine church (Matt 18:17-18).

As you consider church membership, you are considering joining with such a local assembly - an outpost of Jesus’ kingdom, which has been built upon the foundation of the apostles and, as we will see, still possessing their authority

When Jesus says to Peter that he will give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, he is telling him that he will delegate to him, and all Christ-confessing believers, his own authority to administer his heavenly kingdom on earth.