Is it cor­rect to mark a Man of God as your spir­i­tual exam­ple? Tract [g16]

by David Cox [G16] v1 ©2008
This tract may be freely repro­duced for non-profit use.

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Remem­ber them which have the rule over you, who have spo­ken unto you the word of God: whose faith fol­low, con­sid­er­ing the end of their con­ver­sa­tion. Hebrews 13:7

It is a grave error in Chris­tian­ity of our day to gloss over as unim­por­tant the idea that each min­is­ter should be an exam­ple of a man of God 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1, which marks the require­ments of a man of God. We should insist that our min­is­ters be good exam­ples of what is a man of God, a copy of Christ, and if they aren’t, we should remove them, or leave that church.

Mark­ing what is Good

There is a pop­u­lar con­cept that goes some­thing like this, “don’t put your eyes on men, but on God.” Actu­ally this is not bib­li­cal, because God insists that those who min­is­ter, preach, teach, or direct activ­i­ties in the church absolutely have to be exem­plary men of God. This means that the “offi­cial” require­ment for a per­son to min­is­ter is that he “be a man of God,” con­sciously com­ply­ing with the require­ments that God imposes. We should demand this and uphold this. In other words, many will com­plain that the stan­dards of God are too hard for them to ful­fill. “Nobody can ful­fill these stan­dards”, they say. But to stop this, God insists that every church have at least one man of God over the church, and these be offi­cial min­is­ters, vis­i­ble, and in front of the work in every aspect so that they per­son­ally live the exam­ple of what a man of God is to be. It can be done.

1Peter 5:1–4 (To) the elders which are among you… Feed (pas­tor) the flock of God which is among you, tak­ing the over­sight thereof, not by con­straint, but will­ingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Nei­ther as being lords over God’s her­itage, but being ensam­ples to the flock… chief Shepherd.

What Peter is exhorts that there are require­ments for the lead­ers of the church (the elders) who are the ones who pas­tor (feed­ing the flock), that they have to be per­sonal exam­ples of Christ in their per­sonal life. Peter refers to this per­son as one of the “pas­tors” under the “Chief Shep­herd.” God is highly inter­ested in there being a good godly exam­ple of a man of God who has sub­mit­ted him­self to the stan­dards of God in order to pro­vide a per­sonal exam­ple to the peo­ple of God. More­over the flock should con­sider these peo­ple exam­ples in order to imi­tate their faith (Heb 13:7 on the front of this tract), and an absolute require­ment for leadership.

Mark­ing what is Bad

Satan has deceived many within the church to take an atti­tude of do noth­ing towards wicked­ness. Think­ing that they have “no posi­tion” towards evil (nei­ther in favor nor against it), they are “safe.” But the truth is that if one does not seek to oppose wicked­ness, then there is apa­thy in your life, and you your­self will lower your defenses and lit­tle by lit­tle you will accept this wicked­ness, and after a while, you will do this same wicked­ness that you thought would not affect you, and per­haps even at one time thought that you would never actu­ally do. This is the process of change, Satan strongly work­ing this process for his purposes.

Mat 7:15–20 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s cloth­ing, but inwardly they are raven­ing wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this­tles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a cor­rupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree can­not bring forth evil fruit, nei­ther can a cor­rupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Where­fore by their fruits ye shall know them.

The divine defense against doc­tri­nal error and the exam­ples of sin that we are pre­sented with by the false prophets is to exam­ine our lead­ers’ lives to dis­cern what their own lives have pro­duced spir­i­tu­ally speak­ing. Then God has com­manded us to be fruit inspec­tors. You deceive the peo­ple, but you can­not pro­duce fruit that is of a dif­fer­ent nature than you are. If a min­is­ter is not exem­plary, and every­body does what he does, then he should resign or be removed forcibly by the church. Being “blame­less” (not being able to lay hold on a legit­i­mate thing, error in doc­trine or con­duct) is a require­ment for the min­istry (1Tim 3:2; Tit 1:6–7). There are min­is­ters whose life is not like what Christ’s life was, and they are hyp­ocrites that pre­tend to instruct things that they them­selves do not prac­tice, and you can­not see them pre­sent­ing them­selves as exam­ples of Christ. This hypocrisy is against the prin­ci­ple and form of what the Bible teaches. Min­is­ters should be the first “liv­ing” exam­ple of Christ to the brethren. Their admin­is­tra­tion, author­ity, and power all hang on the fact of their com­ply­ing with the stan­dards of God. It is hyp­o­crit­i­cal for a pas­tor to say that all Chris­tians should wit­ness, tithe, sac­ri­fice, and pray many hours, and he him­self doesn’t do that. I remem­ber hear­ing one time of a pas­tor that called his church to fast one day every week to raise funds for a mis­sion­ary, and the peo­ple put the money they saved from not eat­ing that day into the offer­ing plate. But the same pas­tor left his kids with a church fam­ily on the fast­ing day, and the pas­tor and wife took the mis­sion­ary to a nice restau­rant to eat a good meal. Lead­er­ship is being first in doing something.

2Thes 3:7–9, 13–14 For your­selves know how ye ought to fol­low us: for we behaved not our­selves dis­or­derly among you;8 Nei­ther did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and tra­vail night and day, that we might not be charge­able to any of you: 9 Not because we have not power, but to make our­selves an ensam­ple unto you to fol­low us… 13But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing. 14 And if any man obey not our word by this epis­tle, note that man, and have no com­pany with him, that he may be ashamed.

God has the same process today as we see in the words of Paul. Paul him­self gave us his per­sonal exam­ple of work­ing hard to sus­tain our­selves. Paul did not work because he under­stood he had no right to live from his min­istry (1Cor 9:14) but because he wanted to teach through being an exam­ple. Those who do not com­ply with the norms and stan­dards of God are not saved, or at least are not spir­i­tual and have no right to be in the min­istry; they are disqualified.

Imi­tat­ing Christ

Eph­esians 5:1 Be ye there­fore fol­low­ers of God, as dear chil­dren; 1John 2:6 He that saith he abideth in him ought him­self also so to walk, even as he walked. John 13:15 For I have given you an exam­ple, that ye should do as I have done to you. 1Peter 2:21 For even here­unto were ye called: because Christ also suf­fered for us, leav­ing us an exam­ple, that ye should fol­low his steps:

We should real­ize that we learn by prin­ci­ple when it is demon­strated live to us (1 Peter 1:15). This is the only real way to learn and put moral prin­ci­ples in prac­tice. This is God’s way; there is no other. God has designed things so that we are strongly impressed morally when we see the cor­rect exam­ple of a godly life, and when we hear moral prin­ci­ples taught through the exam­ple of this person’s life along with the author­ity of God’s Word back­ing up the exam­ple of his life. This is the only way we “learn” morally. Pre­cept must be demon­strated by vis­i­ble, per­sonal exam­ple before our eyes. This is the only way a per­son is morally changed. Jesus said “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mat 11:29). We see the process in action in somebody’s life, and we learn from see­ing the bind­ing of the prin­ci­ple of God in a spe­cific indi­vid­ual. This is the rea­son that a false prophet is so dan­ger­ous, because he shows an unbib­li­cal prin­ci­ple in his life, and he drags peo­ple to hell through the exam­ple of his life.

Mark­ing or Imi­tat­ing the Man of God

1Corinthians 11:1 Be ye fol­low­ers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Con­trary to what many today are pro­mot­ing, we should exam­ine the lives and the fruit of those who pre­tend to be men of God, and those who min­is­ter to us spir­i­tu­ally. They should be imi­ta­tors of Christ so that the rest should fol­low their per­sonal example.

Philip­pi­ans 4:9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

God has struc­tured things such that those that direct the work of God should be pro­vid­ing per­sonal exam­ples, being and teach­ing the exam­ple of the stan­dards of God. If they do not do this per­son­ally, then why should we believe what they say when they tell us any­thing else?

1Corinthians 4:15–16 For though ye have ten thou­sand instruc­tors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begot­ten you through the gospel. 16 Where­fore I beseech you, be ye fol­low­ers of me.

The leader of a church is a pas­tor. What dis­tin­guishes a pas­tor of sheep, and a cow­boy (keeper of cows and bulls) is that the pas­tor leads by going before, and a cow­boy pushes from behind with a whip. Sheep fol­low from love. A cow­boy pushes from fear and pain, scar­ing the cows. Even today cow­boys use elec­tric shock sticks to move cows. A good pas­tor says, “Look at me, see my life, and fol­low what I am doing as I fol­low Christ.” Many pre­tend to have the author­ity and power of a pas­tor, but they will not pay the price per­son­ally to be an exam­ple. Don’t fol­low this type of per­son. It is very impor­tant to see that you should sub­ject your­self to a man of God that with con­fi­dence you can say, “I want to be morally like this man.” If he doesn’t con­duct his life morally like Christ, find another church, and dump the fraud.

Philip­pi­ans 3:17–19 Brethren, be fol­low­ers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensam­ple. 18For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weep­ing, that they are the ene­mies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruc­tion, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

There are many min­is­ters today that pre­tend to be good exam­ples that are not. They say one thing and per­son­ally do another. When you copy their life, they deeds, their bad habits, they will rebuke you that you are wrong. But they them­selves set a non-Christlike exam­ple. Paul calls these “ene­mies of the cross”. Isn’t it log­i­cal that you should get away from these types of peo­ple? Shouldn’t you find a liv­ing exam­ple of Christ to lead you spiritually?