FEED THE CHURCH OF GOD

Error is combated by the systematic presentation of the truth. It is the responsibility of elders to provide for this. There is the need to refute ‘distorted’, or ‘perverse’ teaching. The antithesis to perverse teaching is sound doctrine. In the same epistles that Paul describes elders, he also informs us what sound doctrine is. It conforms to ‘the gospel of the glory of the blessed God’, 1 Tim. 1. 11 RV, to the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Tim. 6. 3, to the words of the apostles, 2 Tim. 1. 13. It is based upon the word of God and includes encouragement, correction and rebuke, 2 Tim. 4. 2, 3. It not only encourages the saints, but refutes those who oppose sound doctrine, Titus 1. 9. Sound, or healthful, teaching produces healthy saints. What is involved on the part of the shepherd is not only feeding, but also the tending of the sheep, so the NIV translates ‘be shepherds of the church of God’; cf. John 21. 16 ff., and also 1 Peter 5. 2, ‘shepherd the flock of God’, ESV. The whole idea of a shepherd’s work is contained here, guiding, directing, protecting, as well as feeding.

What Peter calls ‘the flock’, Paul here calls ‘the church of God’. This church He has ‘purchased with his own blood’, that is, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Revised Version margin has ‘the church of the Lord’ though the greater evidence is in favour of ‘the church of God’. There maybe an intended contrast found in the Hebrew letter. Speaking of the imperfect priesthood of the past, the writer declared that the high priest entered into the holy place ‘with blood not his own’, Heb. 9. 25 RV. Here, on the contrary, is a people redeemed by a priest who has acquired them with blood which is His own. As in the person of the Lord Jesus there is that union of deity and humanity, His death was not that of an ordinary man. God came into such a relationship with humanity that it was possible for Him to bear, in the person of His Son, all the sin of the race and so to purchase, to acquire at the cost of blood, a people for Himself, ‘a chosen race ... a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness’, 1 Pet. 2. 9 ESV.