In Heb.3:6-14 and 10:24-29 we are faced with the sober reality that there is no place in the Christian profession for slothfulness. In both contexts apostasy is set forth as the alternative for those who neglect the gospel (3:1). But, also, in both places the same mutual duty is given as the God-ordained means of restraining apostasy and maintaining perseverance: “exhort one another daily...lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin (3:13).... not forsaking the assembling [as a church; Greek: episunagogen]... but exhorting [one another] (10:25).” In the process of the saint’s perseverance, then, a mutual responsibility stands as the primary revealed method of abiding in Christ and His house.
I dare say that there are too many professing Christians who have never considered the importance of the ministry of other brethren in their lives. We live in a society where it is “every man for himself,” and the whole idea of mutual dependence is foreign to our thinking. In light of the Heb.3:13 and 10:25 perspective, can we not see why it is important to practice the “one another”/”each of you” ministry in our gatherings as a church?
Heb.10:25, of course, is cited as a basis for people to “come to church.”
It is probably the strongest passage on such a responsibility in the N.T. But what, according to 10:24-25, is to occur in our assembling? Where in 10:25 can you find the idea that we are to come to hear the ministry of one man? We probably assemble together, but do our services allow for the exhorting of one an other? If we are going to employ 10:25 to press the duty of assembling together, must we not also use it as a guide for what transpires in our services? In light of our practice, it appears that we use about half of the verse rightly (“assemble”), but think little about the other half (“exhort” one another).
For example, Thomas Goodwin, in discussing the “communion of saints, which the members of a church ought to have with one another,” states that, indeed, mutual care “is a constant duty, and that we ought to seek all occasions of acting it” (Works, Vol.11, p.355).
However, conceiving of the church gatherings as focusing on the minister and the sermon, and believing that “in private occasional converse, one member may not have opportunity to discourse with another once in seven years,” Goodwin suggested that a separate “fixed meeting” was necessary, where the brethren could “know one another’s cases and experiences” (Works, Vol.11, p.353). “The duty enjoined” in Heb.10:24, he says, “is a duty distinct from assembling together, which follows in the next verse [10:25]” (Works, Vol.11, p.354). Thus, while the N.T. connects mutual ministry and our gatherings as a church, we have in our practice separated them without exegetical basis. Why? Because we have structured our “corporate public worship” around the “pastor,” and thereby relegated any mutual ministry to occasional meetings, perhaps “once a month” (Colin Richards, “Fellowship,” pp.91, 96, 97).
In light of 1 Cor.12:23, 26, 31 and Heb.10:24-25, is it not time that we either acknowledge the discrepancy or justify our practice? The traditional “order of service” appears to be at odds with the “each of you” principle in the N.T. Unfortunately, it ends up focusing on one ministry, and not on the body. To graphically illustrate this, observe the elements in public worship as articulated by the Westminster Divines in 1645:
The ordinances in a single congregation are, prayer, thanksgiving, and singing of psalms, the word read, (although there follow no immediate explication of what is read) the word expounded and applied, catechizing, the sacraments administered, collection made for the poor, dismissing the people with a blessing (“The Form of Presbyterial Church Gov’t,” p.216)
Everything in this order is done by the “pastor” and other officers, except the “singing of psalms.” This is essentially what we still practice today. Does this practice reflect a sensitivity to the glimpses of church gatherings we see in the N.T., or is it at odds with them? It seems to me that we have made normative that for which there is no Scriptural warrant (emphasis on one man’s ministry), and we have omitted that for which there is ample Scriptural support (emphasis on one another).
~ Jon Zeus
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