We have already seen that in the church, as originally constituted, organization, authority, and government proceeded from the divine and not from the human. The agents whom Christ used in performing his work and in overseeing his church were called and endowed by the Holy Spirit, and this divine endowment was the real basis of their authority and responsibility. Paul's authority and responsibility as an apostle, for example, was not positional authority, or authority proceeding from a certain position to which he had been appointed or elected. His authority was divine, and out of that divine authority grew his positional responsibility as the "apostle of the Gentiles." Over and over he affirmed that he was an apostle, "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:1). On the same principle the position, work, and responsibility of all the members of the body of Christ grew out of the gifts and qualifications possessed by them, and thus the church was divinely organized and divinely governed.
Original bond of union
The bonds which united primitive Christians in one body were essentially moral and spiritual. Christ was their ever-living and ever-acting head. Their life proceeded from him, and they were all one in him. While those living in widely separated districts consulted together concerning matters of general concern, or united in cooperative efforts to accomplish common tasks, there is not the slightest evidence that there was an external human organization of the primitive church—either sectionally, nationally, or universally—centralized under a human headship of the administrative, legislative, and judicial kind. Christ was the head of the general church, the head of all the local churches, the head of all the individual members of the church. In him, the source of their common life, the primitive Christians were essentially one, and by his Spirit he operated in all hearts, in all the individual churches, and in all the ministers whose particular gifts and qualifications fitted them for divinely appointed oversight, both local and general. By this means the primitive church was able to perform the work of Christ harmoniously and present to the world the grand spectacle of one body.
First steps to ecclesiasticism
Jesus taught the humble equality of the New Testament ministry. "All ye are brethren" (Matt. 23:8). According to the New Testament they were all of one general order or rank, although greatly diversified in gifts and qualifications and the kind of work accomplished by each. The first example we have in Scripture of positional authority in the ministry as distinguished from the authority of the Holy Spirit, is the case of Diotrephes, of whom the apostle John wrote in his third epistle. We are also informed as to the nature of the authority exercised by him and the direction in which it led. It was human authority, something additional and foreign to the authority and government through the Holy Spirit, and the first example of church government by a single man. It proceeded from the evil root of pride and ambition, the love of "preeminence" among the brethren; and this usurped power and authority led to a judicial process by which innocent brethren were 'cast out of the church.'
What a contrast this presents to that New Testament picture of the divine ecclesia, exhibiting the highest form of human society known to history, a body in which every member had his gift and use for it. Among these many activities, oversight and preaching had their place, but did not constitute the whole sum of Christian service. Paul describes Christ as the living head "from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. 4:16). The object of the ministerial function was "the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ" (verse 12, R.V.).
In his early epistle to the Philippians, Paul makes reference to the officers that guided that church. He sends greetings "to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons" (Phil. 1:1). Polycarp, writing to the same church in the next century, addresses the "presbyters and deacons," showing that the apostolic order was still preserved there.
Bishops vs. Presbyters
In the Ignatian epistles, however, written early in the second century, there appears positional authority of a new order. In place of the New Testament standard of a plurality of elders, or bishops, jointly teaching and guiding the local church, we find recognition of an office which was superior to that of the presbyters and to whose incumbents alone the term "bishop" was applied. A few extracts from his writings will make clear this recognition of a threefold order of the ministry—bishops, elders, and deacons. "Wherefore, it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also ye do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp" (To the Ephesians, chap. 4). "He is subject to the bishop as to the grace of God, and to the presbytery as to the will of Jesus Christ" (To the Magnesians, chap. 2). And again, in the same epistle he says, "I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbytery in the place of the assembly of the apostles" (chap. 6). "In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as the appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the Sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these there is no church" (To the Trallians, chap. 3). To the Smyrnaeans he writes: "See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father.... Let no man do anything connected with the church without the bishop" (chap. 8). "It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God" (chap. 8). "It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honors the bishop has been honored of God; but he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil" (chap. 9).