Note: This is the second of a two-part series. You can read part one here.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
Hebrews 13:17
- Within the church, elders/pastors have a unique authority that other believers don't have and believers are commanded to obey the elders/pastors in their church.
- God intends for a believer to enter into covenant membership in a specific church and it is those believers who are members of the church that elders/pastors in a church are accountable for.
Second, Hebrews 13:17 does not teach that God expects believers to enter into covenant membership in a specific church.
More than once, I have heard a brother convey that Hebrews 13:17 implies that there are specific believers that God entrusts to an elder/pastor to care for and this forms the basis of church membership. The sheep an elder/pastor is responsible are those who are members of his church. And he's not responsible for other sheep. As just one example, here is an excerpt from a blog post that communicates this idea:
Now, I don’t know about you, but I find [Hebrews 13:17] terrifying. The Lord will ask for an account from me, not just for my soul, nor how I led my family, but how I led my entire church. And it’s worse than that because it’s not just a generic account of my “leadership” but a very specific account for how I have cared for the souls of those in our church. The state of your soul, if you are a member of my church, is on my head! That is terrifying to me.
But if you have no membership, that verse is an absolutely killer because who are the people for whom you will give an account? If you are a church leader, who are you actually leading? If it’s not your members, minimally it’s every person who ever turns up at your church, even those who aren’t believers and those who bob in every now and then, only to get off just as quickly. Otherwise, it’s every person in your geographic area, or every believer in the world. But however you cut it, suddenly the means of knowing for whom you will give account becomes very difficult and – should you be held accountable – you have almost no way to fulfil this command without serious consequences.
I believe this brother is sincere and well-intentioned, for which I commend him. It's good to fear the Lord and the account we will give to Him. It's good to love God's sheep and to want to responsibly care for their souls to the best of your ability. But, those good intentions notwithstanding, I think he is simply proving too much from this verse.
First of all, Hebrews 13:17 says nothing about specific believers being assigned/entrusted to to any human leader. Scripture does not use the language of "my" or "our" church vs. "your" or "their" church. The language of 1 Peter 5, for example, is notable in exhorting elders to "shepherd the flock of God that is among you" (1 Peter 5:2). He doesn't say shepherd "your" flock, for example. Why? Because there is one flock of God and there are some members of that one flock that happen to be in close proximity to you. Words are important. The words we use say alot about what we functionally believe. I think it's unhealthy for any believer or church leader to think or speak about "my" church or "our" church to be distinguished from another church that isn't "my" church or "our" church (Hebrews 13:17 does say "your" leaders but Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 3:22 that all leaders in the body are ours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, so I don't believe the use of "your leaders" in Hebrews 13:17 is to suggest there are some leaders who are "your" leaders vs. other leaders who are not "your" leaders). At the very least, that kind of thinking is the seedbed out of which the weeds of factionalism grow, the very weeds Paul works hard to pluck up in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:12-13).
Second, there is another way to think about this account that leaders have to give in watching over souls. One way to interpret Hebrews 13:17 is to see an implication that specific sheep are assigned to specific leaders, thus forming the basis for church membership. And the leader will have to give an account for how he cared for each of these specific sheep that formed the membership roll. But at least one other way to interpret Hebrews 13:17 is that the leader will have to give an account for how he conducted his ministry of watching over sheep in general, as characterized by what he taught or didn't teach in general. In this case, the accountability is more with respect to what he taught and not so much who he taught.
What evidence exists for such a view?
When Hebrews 13:17 speaks of "keeping watch over your souls", the watchman motif is one that the Jews would have been familiar with from the Old Testament. Consider Ezekiel and how God describes his ministry as a watchman in Ezekiel 3 and Ezekiel 33. In both cases, Ezekiel's watchman ministry consists of speaking words that he hears from God's mouth. Notice how this connects to leaders being described in Hebrews 13:7 as those who spoke the word of God. As a watchman, Ezekiel's accountability wasn't so much based on the individuals that he spoke to in particular as much as it was based on what he spoke in general to the house of Israel. In speaking the words that he heard from God, he provided a warning that, if heeded, would prove to save the souls of his hearers (and would keep blood from being on his hands!). In this way, he was keeping watch over souls by speaking the words that he heard from God. In the same way, the leaders spoken of in the letter to Hebrews are keeping watch over souls by bearing witness to so great a salvation in Christ (Hebrews 2:1-5) in contrast to the inferiority of the old covenant that the Hebrew Christians are tempted to return to. They are speaking this message to any and all who will hear and will be called to give an account for remaining faithful to that message for the sake of preserving the souls of whoever would listen. A passage like James 3:1 coheres with this reading of Hebrews 13:17 in that James, within a context on the tongue and speech in general, says that teachers will be judged with a greater strictness precisely because they speak more than others. Their judgment will be on the basis of the word of God that they spoke, whether they were faithful to it or not.
Based on the context of the letter to the Hebrews, there is nothing in Hebrews 13:17 that explicitly or even implicitly teaches that God expects believers to enter into covenant membership in a specific church.
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