Soul Liberty

Galatians 1:12 KJV

For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The ministry of the apostle has been the model for all sorts of ministries:

• The missionary claims Paul
• The evangelist claims him
• The pastor (myself included) claims him

No doubt those involved in extra church and para church ministries also find in Paul some justification for their work and a model by which to accomplish it.

I see no problem with any of this. Paul's ministry as an apostle is unique to all modern ministries and is, in my view, set forth as a model for all legitimate ministry.

Paul here describes one of those qualifications belonging to him that exists in no ministry today; he was given his education from the Lord and no other man. This could not be said of any who come after the apostles, for the ministry of the apostles was that of teaching men. They received from The Lord and they passed on to us. The Bible then gives place for pastors, evangelists and teachers who instruct, equip and mature believers after them. All of us nowadays have been influenced by some teacher.

But I see in this passage an indication of one of the doctrines of the Anabaptists, and now most Baptists; individual soul liberty and the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. I would go so far as to suggest the responsibility to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. While none of us will receive true gospel from any source other than the Bible, there are no extra biblical revelations, the Bible is a direct communication to man from God. I am, just as is every Christian, responsible to go to the source of God's teaching and become persuaded of it on my own. I must never settle for merely assenting to the teachings of others, though I may come to the same convictions as they. I must search for myself to see if these things are so.

A Baptist church, then, should not be an institution where people are molded into one thought, but a place of enablement where believers are urged to receive for themselves the mind of Christ through free study and the exposition of the Word of God.