Who are we accountable to part II
Mat 20:25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
Mat 20:26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
Mat 20:27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:
Mat 20:28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
In this setting two of the disciples came asking to have places at the right and left hand of Jesus in his kingdom, places of authority. Jesus response to them was this, “ And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant”.
Jesus used the example of the kings and princes of the Gentiles that exercise dominion over their subjects as rulers. He said this shall not be the way among them. Yet in almost all Christendom we see this type of tyranny, where the pastor holds a place of dominion over the rest of the saints. To further this type of tyranny these pastors many times do not have anyone that holds them accountable . If they do it is almost always someone even higher in authority over them, not their peers.
Further the accountability goes down in number the higher it goes. Our churches are run like a business or dictatorship rather than the way we are instructed to be. In the last 1000 years we have been so ingrained with the idea put out by the RCC that we must have someone higher than us that we cannot see that this is never the intent of God from the beginning.
I do not see the role of accountability to go up in the kingdom of God but rather to go side ways. We have too long set our rules of accountability upon the worlds view. That the few rule the many yet we have one Lord that is Jesus. One higher authority that is God.
I have heard the phrase so many times “If we are not held accountable, or submit to authority then everyone would do their own thing, that we must have authority over us”. This is boulder-dash.
As Paul teaches us in Ephesians husbands are accountable to Christ and their wife, wife and children are accountable to the husband, no one is a dictator. Rather we are to be subject one to another.
Eph 5:21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Eph 5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Note that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church (body of Christ). As Jesus taught he came as a servant to all. Even to the laying down of his life for the church.
Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
The church is subject to Christ not to a pastor who is then subject to Christ. Earlier in Ephesians Paul taught that God gave gifts to the church. These gifts were for the equipping, perfecting, of the saints to do their own ministerial work and to edify the body of Christ. Not as many have taught that they the gifts of God were placed in the body to oversee and judge the rest of the saints and straighten them out as they felt led to do by their own interpretation of scripture.
God did not chose them as his mouth piece, he speaks to the individual through his spirit.
He put the gifts in the church to edify his body, to give the whole body the ability to work as ministers in the body.
I am surprised when I have taken a closer look at the hierarchy of the OT, when Israel took possession of the land, God was their king no one else.
I have heard it preached and taught that they had the judges to rule over them, this was only in times when they had turned from God and God would send them a leader to bring them back to him. And then to lead them against their enemy's.
Then they say that then the people had the prophets, I say please show me where these men took authority over the people in the dictatorship role many so called spiritual leaders do today.
Let me try and draw you a picture, we have a group of several thousand people, even several hundred thousand people, living by the commandments of God, they are divided by family units, starting by tribe, each tribe again consisting of several thousands of people. Each of these tribes are then broken down to the individual family groups of maybe, father, mother, 10+ children, their wives and children and maybe even another generation after that. This is the way the family units were broken down after Israel came out of Egypt. Twelve families went in twelve tribes came out.
Now let me take this a couple of steps farther, as I have heard the priest were given the job of keeping the rest of the children in line with the commandments of God. Where do we get this line of reasoning? Could it be from Leviticus where God commits the teaching of the laws he gave to Moses to the children of Aaron?
Lev 10:9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations:
Lev 10:10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;
Lev 10:11 And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.
The question is not if this is commanded of them but rather if this is the primary duty given to the Aaron and his sons as part of being the priest or whether it was a one time command?
Deu 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
Deu 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deu 6:8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
Deu 6:9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
This is the direct commandment given by God later when they were going to enter the promised land. Note the command is directed to the Parents not the priest. We find this same command given to the parents again in
Deut. 11:19
From this time until the kings, God dwelt with the individual family, only when there was a greater dispute than could be solved within the family unit did the people go to the the priest and judge in the land.
Deut. 17. The point is very clear should one study this out without the influence of man made traditions. God never intended his children to be under the dictates of a spiritual leader.
I leave this part with two more comments, Jesus gave us the promise of the holy ghost which was to come to each and every one of us after the ascension. In this promise he is explicit in saying that his spirit when it came would teach us and bring to our remembrance those things which he spoke of. He even further told us that when we came against others that did not believe that the spirit would give us words to say. The point is each and every one of us that has the spirit of God has the ability to hear from God without the outside influence of a higher earthly authority.
Finally the writer of Hebrews quotes OT prophecy found in Ezekiel when he says in
Heb 8, “ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.”
Many will tell you this has not come to pass that it will be in the future. I say read the chapter Jesus is the high priest and this is the time when we are under the new covenant the time when God speaks directly to the individual.
If this were not the case then Christ died in vain, and we are not better off than they were in the OT times.
To work as a body, there has to be give and take with each other. 
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