Introduction
Many in the church know that ordination is important, but they may struggle to articulate why that is the case. Ordination is one of the hidden gems of the Bible’s teaching on the church and church office. To appreciate its significance, we need to understand what ordination is, where it is found in Scripture, and how God intends for ordination to help the church.
What Is Ordination?
First, what is ordination? The PCA’s Book of Church Order defines ordination as follows: “ordination is the authoritative admission of one duly called to an office in the Church of God, accompanied with prayer and the laying on of hands, to which it is proper to add the giving of the right hand of fellowship” (BCO 17-2). (1) Two elements of this definition merit attention. The first is that ordination is inextricably bound to church office. Only those who are “duly called to an office in the Church of God” are eligible for ordination. As John Owen notes, “ordination in Scripture compriseth the whole authoritative translation of a man from among the number of his brethren into the state of an officer in the church.” (2) Thus, ordination is reserved for church officers, exclusively.
Second, ordination is the “authoritative admission” of one called to office. When a man is called by Christ to office in the church, James Bannerman observes, he has the “title to the possession of [that] office” but he does not yet have the “title to the exercise of [that] office.” (3) The latter is “conferred through the regular and outward appointment of the Church.” (4) In ordination, a man is “formally admitted to the office [to which he has been called], or invested with the right to discharge its functions.” (5) Ordination, then, is not a superfluous ceremony. It is a solemn act by which the church, acting through its officers, formally admits a man into the office to which he has been called. Only when he is thus admitted to office does he have the right to exercise that office in the church. (6)
What Is the Biblical Basis for Ordination?
Presbyterians do not practice ordination because of human wisdom, tradition, antiquity, or superstition. (7) They are persuaded that the ordination of men to church office has biblical warrant – “the Ordination of Presbyters with imposition of the hands of the Presbytery after Prayer and Fasting is a divine ordinance.” (8) In the New Testament, we see examples of the ordination (and installation) of officers to the work to which Christ has called them. In Acts 6:6, the men whom the church in Jerusalem had elected to serve them as deacons were “set before the apostles,” who “prayed and laid their hands on them.” Later, in Acts 13:1-3, the Holy Spirit tells the “prophets and teachers” in “the church at Antioch” to “set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:1, 2). Then, “after fasting and praying,” the prophets and teachers “laid their hands” on Barnabas and Saul “and sent them off” (Acts 13:3).
In writing Timothy, Paul reminds this younger minister of his ordination, when “the council of elders laid their hands on you” (1 Tim 4:14), and when Paul himself laid hands on Timothy (2 Tim 1:5). Just as Timothy was ordained to the ministry by the “presbytery” (1 Tim 4:14, NASB 1995), so Timothy himself likewise joins with other elders to lay hands on men whom Christ has called to sacred office (see 1 Tim 5:22). (9) Both Acts and the Epistles, then, prescribe ordination for the church in every age.
One constant in these passages that describe (and command) ordination is the laying on of hands. The laying on of hands, as Calvin observed, indicated that the “apostles … were offering to God him whom they were receiving into the ministry.” (10) This act does not convey the gifts requisite for church office. On the contrary, in ordination the Church, acting through its officers, acknowledges the gifts of these men for office. (11)
The Old Testament helps us to understand more fully the meaning of the apostles’ laying on of hands in ordination. There we read that “Israel laid hands on the Levites to present them to the Lord for sacred service (Num 8:10, 12),” and “Moses laid hands on Joshua when investing him with his office to lead Israel (Num 27:19, 23; Deut 34:9).” (12) In the same way, under the New Testament, church officers lay hands on men called to office in order to dedicate them to the Lord for their ministry, to induct them formally into their office, and thereby to authorize them to exercise the functions of their office.
What ordination publicly and visibly acknowledges is the biblical principle, given expression in BCO 3, that church officers uniquely exercise authority within the church. (13) As the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Committee on Women in Church Office has observed, “authoritative leadership is implied in ordination and special office.” (14) The officer, at ordination, is “fully invested with the office, and with all the powers and privileges which it includes.” (15) In an “authoritative” act, the church’s officers admit men, called by Christ to office, to exercise authority in the church in keeping with their office. (16) This state of affairs is true no less for deacons who serve than for elders who govern. To be sure, “the office of deacon is not one of rule, but rather of service…” (BCO 7-2). The Book of Church Order is saying here only that deacons do not take up the work of the elders, that is, governance. Theirs is a distinct work – service. But that service is an authoritative service. The deacons were tasked particularly with the care of widows (Acts 6:1-6). And this work, Paul tells Timothy, required authoritative decisions regarding which widows were qualified for the church’s benevolences, and which were not (1 Tim 5:3-16). The deacons, then, exercise the authority that belongs to their office when they determine “to distribute [the] gifts [of the people] among the objects to which they are contributed,” and, no less, when they make day to day decisions concerning “the care of the property of the congregation, both real and personal” (BCO 9-2).
That ecclesiastical authority is uniquely exercised by the church’s officers (elders and deacons) is directly related to the apostle Paul’s limitations of each office to men only. When Paul says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12), he certainly invokes the functions of the office of elder – teaching and governance. He thereby limits the office and functions of the eldership to men. (17) But the verb translated “to exercise authority” “refers … to [the] exercise of a leadership role or function in the church (the contextual setting).” (18) As such, one cannot exclude the deacons from Paul’s prohibition in 1 Tim 2:12. Deacons, distinctly from the elders but no less truly than the elders, exercise authority as office-bearers in the church. For this reason, both offices (elder, deacon) fall under Paul’s command in 1 Tim 2:12. (19)
How Does Ordination Serve the Church?
It is important to stress that the New Testament in no way promotes a clericalism that conceives those under authority in the church as existing for the benefit and profit of those in authority in the church. As Jesus reminded his disciples, the model for the exercise of authority is service, the very service that Jesus demonstrated in his own life and ministry (Luke 22:24-30). Office bearers are gifted in such a way as to serve the body of Christ as a whole. The elders exercise their gifts for the edification and establishment of the church (see Eph 4:11-16). The deacons exercise their gifts to exhibit the “sympathy and service” of the Savior and to “express also the communion of saints” (BCO 9-2, compare Acts 6:1-6).
The church’s elders and deacons are only some of the gifts that Christ has given to the church. But these gifts play a unique and critical role in the functioning and well-being of the body of Christ. Church officers exercise their gifts in order to equip, encourage, and enable their brothers and sisters to exercise their own gifts for the good of the church and the glory of God. To that end, Christ has peculiarly assigned the exercise of authority to office-bearers in the church. In this way he accomplishes his grand design of ensuring that his “body grow[s] so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:16).
Ordination is an ongoing reminder of the goodness of Christ to his church, seen particularly in the complete and sufficient pattern for ministry that he has given to the church in Scripture. When the church is tempted to fashion new offices or to extend the functions of church office beyond the officers of the church, ordination provides something of a reset. Ordination presents to the church those men whom Christ has already placed into office inducting men whom Christ has called, through his church, into office. We remember that our God has provided these gifted men to serve us, as elders and deacons, so that, by their unique ministry to us, we may “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:16). And, with the believers of the apostolic age, we accompany ordination with “prayer” (Acts 6:6, 13:3), expressing our dependence upon God, our desire for his rich blessing upon the ministry of our officers, and our thankfulness that our Savior, in his gift of these men to his church, has once again shown himself to be with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).
(1) This language dates back at least to the 1879 Book of Church Order of the PCUS.
(2) John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Volume XIII, ed. William H. Goold (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1967), 219.
(3) James Bannerman, The Church of Christ. 2 vols. (1869; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 1:430.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 432.
(6) “Ordination is the essence of a lawful external call to ecclesiastical office. It is that act, before which, the ecclesiastical officer is not prepared, regularly, to discharge a single function appropriated to the station to which he is elected; but after which, he is prepared for their regular and valid performance,” Samuel Miller, An Essay on the Warrant, Nature, and Duties of the Office of the Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1832), 286.
(7) Note the observation of Samuel Miller, “It is not part of the belief of Presbyterians, that Ordination imparts any direct influence, either physical or moral, to him who receives it.” It is, rather, “the actual induction into office of one elected to fill it,” Ruling Elder, 285. Compare Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, ed. John Bold, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 382.
(8) Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici, or The Divine Right of Church-Government, rev. and ed. David W. Hall (1646; Dallas, TX: Naphtali Press, 1995), 64, emphasis added.
(9) On Timothy as ordained to the ministry by the church’s elders as a court of the church, see Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 2:284-9. Compare Bannerman’s discussion of Acts 13:1-3 at The Church of Christ, 2:289-90.
(10) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1067 (=4.3.16).
(11) Miller, Ruling Elder, 288-9.
(12) Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 296.
(13) Recognizing that church power is “exercised by the people” in one way only – their “choice of those officers whom [Christ] has appointed in His church, BCO 3-1.
(14) “Report of the Committee on Women in Church Office Presented to the Fifty-Fifth (1988) General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,” III.A.2.
(15) Miller, Ruling Elder, 300.
(16) Ibid, 301.
(17) George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 142.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Note, further, the “unmistakably male categories” with which Paul speaks of the “deacons” at 1 Tim 3:12, so Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 171. Compare Luke’s expressly gendered language (in the Greek text) of the men who are ordained as the church’s first deacons in Jerusalem (Acts 6:3, “seven men;” 6:5, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”).
