For most American Christians today, the idea that the church and those in positions of church leadership have real authority over the lives of individual Christians has to a large extent been forgotten. If, as many Christians think, Christianity is about having a personal, individual relationship with Jesus, then the idea of the church having real authority over an individual Christian is highly problematic. If, as many Christians think, one does not even need to go to church in order to be a Christian, then it is impossible for the church to actually exercise real authority over the lives of individual Christians. However, these widespread ideas indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. Being a Christian is not something that is individualistic. Rather, it means being part of the people of God, the church. The church is not just a religious institution; it is a political community. And if the Christian community is a political community, there must be order, leadership, and genuine authority of the community over its members.
The New Testament clearly teaches that there are to be structures of authority in the church. In addition to asserting his own apostolic authority, the apostle Paul often speaks in his epistles of appointing elders or overseers to have authority over the various churches he founded. After placing Titus in charge of the church in Crete, tasking him with ordaining elders over the churches in each town, Paul wrote a letter encouraging him, telling Titus to “encourage and rebuke with all authority” (Titus 2:15). Paul commands Christians to “honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work, who preside over you in the Lord and admonish you” (I Thess 5:12). The first century writing The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles takes this a step further, telling Christians to “remember him who proclaims to you the word of God. Remember him night and day, and honor him as the Lord; for wherever he speaks, the Lord himself is there” (4:1).
Objections to Authority
Modern Western Christians instinctively react to the idea that the church has real authority over them. Don’t Christians have freedom in Christ? And what if the church and its leaders are in the wrong? What then? What about the clergy sex abuse scandal? Doesn’t this show that hierarchical structures of authority just give people the opportunity to abuse their power and harm others?
Yes, Christians are free in Christ. But genuine Christian freedom has nothing to do with being free to pursue our own individual desires and interests. Rather, it has to do with being freed from sin and self-centeredness and being free to love God, His church, and our fellow human beings (Gal 5:13; 2 Pet 2:16). Genuine Christian freedom thus consists in being willing to set aside what is best for us as individuals for the sake of what is best for the Christian community as a whole. It means being willing to give things up, even if we “know” we have a “right” to do them, for the sake of the rest of the Christian community (See I Cor 8).
Both church leaders and church communities as a whole can be wrong. Human authority, even in the church, is never infallible. There may be times when God calls an individual Christian to reject the directions of their church community or its leaders if following those directions would mean disobedience to God. (Christians must make sure, though, that when they do this it is for the sake of the purity of the proclamation of God’s Word and the faithfulness of the church, not because of some personal agenda.) But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Individual Christians must have the humility to recognize that it is more likely that they are wrong than that the church as a whole is wrong. If an individual Christian is going to defy the authority of their church community or its leaders, they must be very careful first to be completely certain that they are the one who is in the right.
Unfortunately, there are times, such as the clergy sex abuse scandal, when church leaders sinfully abuse their positions of leadership in the church to harm others. However, this is true of all positions of leadership. There have been countless times when government officials have abused their positions of leadership to harm others. No one sees this as a reason to do away with the U.S. government or to ignore its authority. It is an extremely serious problem when Christians prioritize the authority of a nation-state they are living in over the authority of the church. When church leaders abuse their positions of authority, this should not lead us to reject the authority of the church and its positions of leadership. Rather, it should lead us to work for reforms, and to be very careful to make sure that the right people are promoted to positions of leadership in the church, as the New Testament emphasizes (I Tim 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9).
The Problem of Authority
The church is a political community. But it is a political community that embodies a very different politics than the political entities of this world. If people refuse to acknowledge the authority of the state, the state can simply use force to imprison, harm, or even kill them; this is how it maintains its authority. The church, on the other hand, has no recourse to such methods, since they are inconsistent with the nature of God’s Kingdom. All the church can do is to tell people the truth and attempt to persuade people to live according to the truth. This is, of course, much more difficult than using the methods of coercion and violence.
This problem is compounded by the divided state of the contemporary church. There are tens of thousands of different denominations which Christians can choose from today. In this situation, it is very difficult for churches to create a real sense of authority over their members, since Christians can always just go to a different church that teachings things closer to what they want to hear. Christians bring their consumer culture mentality to their church life and go “church shopping,” choosing the church that best fits with what they already think and want. In this situation, the individual Christian has come to stand in authority over their church, rather than the other way around. This means that for most Christians there is a lack of serious commitment to their church community, since they are willing to leave and go elsewhere as soon as that is in their personal best interest. The result of such lack of genuine commitment is that church communities become superficial, and are unable to stand as political communities that visibly show the world what God’s Kingdom looks like.
There is no easy solution to this problem. The only way to begin to solve it is for Christians to change their attitudes towards their Christian identity and their church membership. Christians must reject a false individualism and instead find their Christian identity in being a member of the corporate entity of the church community, the body of Christ. They must find their political and national identity in being a member of this community. Christians must resist the temptation to transfer their church membership without having a very good reason for doing so. And Christians must choose to submit to the authority of their church community and remain committed to it, even when it is difficult and not in their own individual best interest.