No, that cannot be the attitude. Listen to what John MacArthur says about empithymeo, the desire I spoke of in the previous post:
I mean, I never sat down and analyzed my gifts and talents. I don’t ever analyze myself. I don’t like to do that. I don’t know what my gifts are in that sense of human talents…I know what my spiritual gifts are, but I didn’t sit down and say, “Well let’s see, if I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief, let’s see…if I was going to be a pastor, or a school teacher or whatever, mechanic or something..what would I choose? Well let’s see. What are my talents. I better go take a personality inventory test.” I never said that. I never said anything like that. All I knew was that by the time I was mid way through college I had one thing in my heart to do and that was all I ever thought about. There wasn’t any option. There wasn’t any discussion. There wasn’t any analysis of that.
Now I don’t want to sort of push that subjectiveness in my own life off on everyone. You may be saying, “Well, I’m…I’m thinking about the ministry but I’m not sure.” Well maybe the Lord hasn’t yet set the fire yet in your heart and maybe that will come, I don’t know that because I can’t tell you how the Holy Spirit will work. I know people who have done a lot of things for a lot of years and all of a sudden in their mid thirties or mid forties felt a call of God into the ministry, and it was then that the compulsion was born in their heart. People have asked me that all my life. If you weren’t a pastor, what would you be? I don’t have any idea. I’d be dead. I would be out of existence. There’s nothing else. There’s…I don’t have anything else, I don’t know anything else. I can’t fix anything. I can’t do anything. I mean, you talk about a one‑ring circus, this is it.
I think that about surrounds the question. When considering the ministry it is an emptying of all other desires, setting them aside for this one. A man embarking upon this career track cuts off all opportunity to go another way. There is no junction ahead and the track behind is torn up as the train moves forward. There’s no returning to Egypt, the waters have closed behind.
The calling has a goal, a single-minded goal. That is in fact the sum of the qualifications. An Elder must be a one woman man, a man who is not double-minded. The word reproach as well as the other qualifications show this. Someone who is reproachable is one who can be captured by other interests, lead away, as it were, to abandon the trust charged for the lure of other interests. An Elder must lead surely for all those who follow depend for their lives upon the direction he takes them. Their lives are in his hands. Such a call is too precious to leave to those who can do… whatever.
Perhaps it is best summed up in the call of Peter as a shepherd:
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”
The exacting nature of the calling is so characterized as MacArthur states as compelling, another hand is upon the shepherd. But there is also in this passage the reason given. It is not about the shepherd, but the lambs whose lives are to be brought to maturity. It is from the lambs that sheep become. And no shepherd, having once been called, abandons them. That man Jesus mentioned before:
He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
The Good Shepherd says:
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
What or who the “these” in John 21:15 above indicate is a matter of question. However, seeing that Peter had just come ashore from fishing, it most likely was the fish that the Lord was referencing. In otherwords, Peters occupation, a reflection back to:
“Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
No, this is no common calling, not just another vocation in addition to others one might choose. To this calling one is compelled to go forth from the life that preceded it and complete the great commission it was assigned. And as with Jesus, as with Peter, in the end, it is a call to lay down ones life for the sheep. For there is no greater desire, no greater love, in the heart of one called to be an Elder.
