Titus 1:5 For this cause left I you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city… Our Lord Himself is the sole source and origin of all ministerial power. He is the Head of the Church — none can take office in the Church except with His authorisation; He is our great High Priest — none can serve under Him, unless by His appointment; He is our King — none can bear rule in His kingdom, except they hold His commission. This ministerial power our Lord conferred upon His apostles. In the Acts of the Apostles and other parts of the New Testament, we learn how the apostles carried out this commission. Their first act after the Ascension was to admit another to their own ranks. St. Matthias was co-opted into the room of the traitor Judas. After a time the needs of the growing Church required them to appoint subordinate officers, they themselves still retaining the supreme control. These officers were, in the first place, deacons, whose special duty it was to attend to the due distribution of the Church's alms, but who also, as we learn from the subsequent history of two of them, SS. Stephen and Philip, received authority to preach and to baptize; and in the second place, elders who were appointed to still higher functions, to be pastors of congregations, to feed the flock of God and have the oversight thereof. We read of the elders first in Acts 11:30. The word "elder," wherever it occur in the New Testament, is a translation of the Greek word "presbuteros," from which our words "presbyter" and "priest" have come, the latter by contraction. If the word had been left untranslated, as the words "bishop," "deacon," and "apostle" were, and appeared as "presbyter" or "priest," the English reader would have been saved from much perplexity, and much danger of erroneous inferences. Thus the apostles, in order to keep pace with the requirements of the Church, shared, by degrees, their functions with others, admitted others by prayer and the laying on of hands into the sacred ministry. But one prerogative they still retained in their own keeping, that was, the power of ordaining others. Yet if the Church was to be continued, if the promise of Christ was to be fulfilled, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," this power also must be transmitted. And so we find that the college of apostles was gradually enlarged. One there was, St. Paul, who had received the apostolate, with all its prerogatives, directly from heaven. Others, such as St. Barnabas, were also admitted to the apostolic ranks and placed on an equal footing with the original Twelve. And, finally, in the Pastoral Epistles we come to the last link of the chain which connects the apostolic rule of the Church with the episcopal superintendence which followed. As the apostles travelled through the whole known world, and established Churches and ordained clergy in every city to which they came, they found at last that the oversight of all these Christians of whom they were the spiritual fathers had become too much for them. It was felt to be a necessity to place over each Church a local superintendent, who, within a fixed district, should be armed with full apostolical authority — with power to rule the Church, to administer discipline, to ordain clergy. When we open the Pastoral Epistles we find that it was to just such an office that SS. Timothy and Titus were appointed. And history informs us that immediately after the apostles' times the Christian Church in all parts of the world was governed by bishops, who claimed to be successors of the apostles, and who alone bad the power to ordain, with priests and deacons under them. Why the bishops did not retain for themselves the name of apostles we know not; but probably they thought themselves unworthy to share that title with such eminent saints as those who had been called by Christ to be His original apostles, and therefore they adopted a designation which had less august associations attached to it, having formerly been borne by clergy of the second order. For more than 1,500 years no other form of Church government was known in any part of Christendom. Turn where we will, north or south, east or west, or take any period of history previous to the Reformation, and we can discover no portion of the Church which was not governed by bishops, or where there were not these three orders of ministers. By the good providence of God, in the great crisis of the sixteenth century, we were permitted to retain the ancient organisation of the Christian Church. The Reformation in these islands was the act of the Church itself, which, while it rejected the usurped supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and returned in other respects to the purer faith of primitive times, carefully maintained unimpaired the three Orders of the Ministry. There was no severing of the link which bound us to the men to whom the Great Head of the Church said, "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." What abundant reason have we, clergy and people alike, to be thankful to God for this! We clergy can go about our work with no misgivings as to whether we are indeed ambassadors for Christ or no. We know that in all our ministerial acts He is with us, that He indeed is acting through us, and that our feeble, unworthy efforts to advance His kingdom and glory are backed and supported by an infinite Power which can turn our weakness into strength. And the people, too, should bless and thank God that, through His great goodness towards them, the sixteenth century proved in these islands a true Reformation in religion — not a Revolution, as it did elsewhere; that you belong to the very Church founded by the apostles, and that Church, too, released from medieval corruption, and saved from those debasing modern superstitions into which Roman Christianity has fallen; that you have free access to the means of grace which Christ appointed for His people; that the Sacraments which are generally necessary to salvation are here duly ministered according to God's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite for the same; that you have a ministry which can speak to you in Christ's name, and hear to you His message of reconciliation; for they have been set apart to their office by Himself — by Him to whom alone all power has been committed in heaven and in earth; that you are "fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone." On a valid ministry depends the very existence of a Church. On a faithful ministry depends the well-being of a Church. And how largely does the character of the ministry depends upon the people? How largely is it in the power of the people to assist the bishop in making a choice of fit persons for Holy Orders? I am not now alluding to the direct power the people possess to prevent the ordination of an unworthy man. It is for this express purpose that the Si quis, as it is called, of the candidate is appointed to be read in the parish church previous to the ordination. The name of the candidate is published, and the people are invited to object if they can allege any impediment. And another opportunity of the same kind is given at the ordination itself. I am now alluding specially to your prayers. "Brethren, pray for us," was the earnest request of St. Paul to the Christians of his day, and surely the successors of the apostles now need no less the prayers and sympathy of their people. (J. G. Carleton, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: |
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