Last week, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever published a podcast in which they discuss the biblical validity of paying pastors in the local church: https://www.9marks.org/interview/episode-76-on-pastoral-pay/ I consider these men not only sincere brothers; I look up to them as men who have taught me much and whom I greatly admire. But, having listened to this recording twice and re-listened to a couple of segments in particular, I don't believe the biblical texts they mentioned can validly be used as a basis for paying local pastors/elders in the church. So in this post I want to offer a brotherly/friendly rejoinder by briefly looking at each passage Leeman and Dever mentioned and pushing back on its applicability to paying local pastors/elders in the church. I do so in the spirit of Acts 17:11 and my prayerful desire is that we all who bow to Jesus Christ as Lord would do the same. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eag...
As the people of God, we must hold to apostolic tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6) but reject human tradition (Colossians 2:8). Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day for making void the word of God for the sake of their tradition (Matthew 15:6). And He said they did this in many ways (Mark 7:13b). We are not immune to this error today. This blog exists to test (1 Thessalonians 5:21) our modern Christian traditions against Scripture to discern where we might have done the same.