A few weeks ago, in commenting on my study retreat, I emphasized the need for solitude and prayer. I thought it may be helpful to elaborate on the necessity for pastors to watch over their lives.
A pastor must keep careful watch over his heart. Watchfulness is a discipline for every Christian, but there is an urgency to the practice for those fully devoted to the ministry. Paul tells the Ephesian elders, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Ac 20:28). Similarly, he instructs Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Ti 4:16). A pastor must watch over his life and his doctrine.
The foolish pastor tries to separate his life from his doctrine. Churches can foster pastoral isolation. Isolation breeds hypocrisy. Before long a disconnect emerges between the preacher on the stage and the man within his home. A schism between a preacher’s public persona and his private life shifts further apart, leaving a growing chasm for his public fall.
But life and doctrine cannot be compartmentalized. “The warp and woof of the Puritan era,” according to Dustin Benge, “was that preaching and personal holiness were tightly woven together with genuine care for people.”1 When Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he calls for them to remember not only what he taught but how he lived. “You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers” (1 Th 2:10). Pastoral ministry is not the mere public service of gifts but the private giving of one’s life. The holiness of the man is as important as the content of the message.
The man and the message often have an interconnected relationship as the Lord chooses to bless the ministry. The pastor is a sword, an instrument in the hand of God for his purpose. Robert Murray M’Cheyne, writing to another pastor, urges him to “not forget the culture of the inner man,—I mean of the heart.” He writes,
How diligently the calvary officer keeps his sabre clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword,—his instrument,—I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear his name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.2
Charles Spurgeon made a similar point, saying, “We are, in a certain sense our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order.”3 If the Lord will use us, we must keep ourselves sharp on the whetstone of Scripture. We need personal time in Word and prayer and the sharpening iron of Christian friendship (Pr 27:17).
We must resist the professionalization of ministry and remind ourselves that the food we provide for the flock, we also must consume. We need the gospel too. And the more we recognize our own need for Jesus, the more effective we will be his ministers. John Owen wrote,
A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the Lord which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them…. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.4
Dustin Benge, The Loveliest Place, 112.
Robert Murray MCheyne to Dan Edwards, October 2, 1840, in Bonar, Memoir and Remains, 282.
Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 8.
John Owen, Works 16:76.