Question—Does Scripture teach that one going out with the gospel is responsible to the Lord alone as to his service?
We quote Galatians 1:15,16 to begin our answer. “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” Every passage of Scripture bearing on service proves the truth that the servant is responsible to his Lord. The following is an interesting and instructive extract from a letter by the late J.N. Darby.
“If Christ has thought proper to give me a gift, I am to trade with my talent as His servant, and the assembly has nothing to do with it. I am not their servant at all. If they wish me to teach them I will teach, but I do not go as into an assembly, but to teach those who are disposed to hear. I exercise my individual gift, the assembly has nothing to do with me. I refuse peremptorily to be its servant. If I do or say anything as an individual, calling for discipline, that is another matter; but in trading with my talent, I act neither in nor for an assembly, though I would be rejoiced to do it in fellowship with them. If ——-‘s doctrine was right, an evangelist could never exercise his gift at all, for he cannot do so in assembly as such. A teacher is just as much a servant of Christ as the evangelist, and bound to wait on his teaching. I believe it an effort of the enemy to deny ministry as service to the Lord.
“When I go to teach, I go individually to exercise my gift, and not into assembly at all. If this be denied, the authority of Christ and the liberty of the Spirit are denied to substitute for them the authority of the assembly. The lordship of Christ is denied by those who hold these ideas. They want to make the assembly or themselves lords. If I am Christ’s servant, let me serve Him in the liberty of the Spirit. They want to make the servants of Christ the servants of the assembly, and deny individual service as responsible to Christ.
“There is full liberty. Paul takes Timothy; Apollos will not go where Paul wishes, and Barnabas gets Paul to come. If they were thus teaching and preaching as in those early days, why should not those gifted be able to do so now? And if Paul and Barnabas were guided of the Spirit, why may not, in their measure, teachers be thus guided now? Who sent Titus to Crete, or left Timothy in Ephesus? Some say it was apostolic authority. Be it so; but do not let them pretend it is contrary to the liberty of the Spirit in those who serve. Paul went into the synagogue as his manner was; it was an arrangement. He separated the disciples, and discoursed daily in the school of one Tyrannus. This was arranged, and a lecture.
“Did this destroy the liberty of the Spirit? I am perfectly clear that all this is an attempt of the enemy to destroy the liberty of the Spirit, and the authority of Christ over His servants, and introduces another authority into the church of God.”
—J.N. Darby