A Pastor's Heart
1 John 2v1
28th February 2020
John begins the second chapter of his letter with these words:
1 John 2v1
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does
sin, we have one who speaks to the father in our defence - Jesus Christ the righteous
one.
Here, John addressing the members of the churches in his care as "my dear children". This causes me to pause and think. If I were to address the members of the church that I lead as "my dear children" it would feel a bit weird, frankly. So how is it OK for John to use such an expression towards his brothers and sisters in Christ?
We believe John was probably very old when he wrote this letter, probably in his nineties, so most or all of the church members would be considerably younger than him, perhaps by half a generation or more. Perhaps they were younger than his own children, if he had any. So for him to see them as, comparatively, children is understandable.
But there's more than that expressed here. Like any good pastor, John loved the people in the churches under his care. He described them all as "my dear children" – children in the faith – because he had a parental attitude towards them. He felt responsible for their wellbeing, as a good father feels responsible for his children's well-being.
Paul, a much younger man when he wrote his letters, had the same attitude towards the churches in his care. For example, in 1 Corinthians 4:14 he tells the members of the church at Corinth as "I am writing… to warn you as my dear children". Three verses later he describes Timothy as "my son whom I love".
Hebrews 13v17 tells us to "Obey [or trust] your leaders and submit to their authority". It says we should do so because "They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.". John took his call from God to watch over the people in his churches very seriously. He knew He had to give an account to God for his actions and words, and for the degree to which he sought to help them to live good Christian lives. So do all pastors.
A good pastor will love the members of his church as if they were his children. And a good church will respect their pastor and elders as they would respect their parents. Of course, there are bad pastors and elders, and there are bad churches. A bad pastor will abuse his church, and a bad church will abuse their pastor. Sometimes a church needs to remove its pastor, and sometimes a pastor needs to escape from his church. But in a healthy church, mutual love and respect will prevail.
In a healthy church, a good pastor will never demand obedience. And he will never need to, because his church will love and trust him enough to let him lead, and he will love them enough to put their needs before his own.
John, a pastor who truly cared for his church members, tells them "I write this to you so that you will not sin". A good pastor wants to help his people to lead good, healthy, productive, loving Christian lives, to follow God, doing the things God wants them to do, in the way God wants them done.
A good pastor knows that, since God is perfectly holy, we His followers must seek holiness too. If we love God, we will hate sin, because God hates sin. A truly Christian life is one lived in accordance with the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, and the job of pastors and teachers is to help us to live such lives, by their example and by their words.
No elders are perfect, but if the elders in your church don't set you an example of holy and loving Christian life, then those elders are failing you. If the talks you hear in your church don't lead you to live a holier life, then the preachers there are failing you. That is their function, their calling.
And John assures his church members that "if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the father in our defence - Jesus Christ the righteous one.b>"
A good pastor confronts his people with the need to put our sin to death, and he also encourages them that, although they will fail sometimes, Jesus will always represent them before God the Father, and plead for them. We'll look at this in more detail next time.