The Word is not dead. It is alive, and sharp, and filled with spiritual vigor. We can return to it in our time. As in the sixteenth-century, so may it be again, in our day, the twenty-first century.

Today, there is renewed attention being paid to the model of the pastor. What, exactly, is a pastor? In truth, Christians have asked this question for centuries. So it was in sixteenth-century Europe, the era often called “the Reformation,” when Christians returned to the authority of Scripture and the surety of Christic salvation.

But it was not only these doctrines that the Reformers reclaimed. They also returned to the early church’s conception of the pastorate. The Reformation thus represents both a reclamation of biblical doctrine and a restoration of the pastoral model of the early church. From his post in muddy Wittenberg, Martin Luther taught that the pastor existed for no greater purpose than to make clear the gospel and to present Christ to the people. There is considerable continuity between Augustine’s vision of the pastor and Luther’s, as we see in Luther’s lectures on Galatians:

Therefore we always repeat, urge, and inculcate this doctrine of faith or Christian righteousness, so that it may be observed by continuous use and may be precisely distinguished from the active righteousness of the law. (For by this doctrine alone and through it alone is the church built, and in this it consists.) Otherwise we shall not be able to observe true theology but shall immediately become lawyers, ceremonialists, legalists, and papists. Christ will be so darkened that no one in the church will be correctly taught or comforted. Therefore if we want to be preachers and teachers of others, we must take great care in these issues and hold to this distinction between the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of Christ.

The work of the pastor is at once a deadly seriousness business and a life-giving appointment in Luther’s mind. To get the law and gospel wrong is to fall away from “true theology” and obscure Christ himself, for one cannot know and understand Christ apart from a correct understanding of his righteous work. To preach the righteousness that is by faith is in Luther’s view to fulfill the fundamental mission of “preachers and teachers of others.” The pastor is thus commissioned by God to “inculcate this doctrine of faith.” The work of proclaiming “true theology,” that which would literally save and transform the people, required “great care” and unusual theological discernment. This was a high view of the pastoral office.

This conception of the pastorate was supported and even enhanced by Luther’s brother-in-spiritual-arms, John Calvin. Appointed in human terms to the Genevan pastorate by the fiery persuasion of Guillaume Farel, Calvin witnessed the profound blessing of the Lord on his doctrinally-charged ministry. More than Luther, and more than any other pastor in his day, Calvin fashioned a self-consciously theological pastorate in Geneva. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin defined the office of pastor as indissolubly connected to the Scripture:

Here, then, is the sovereign power with which the pastors of the church, by whatever name they be called, ought to be endowed. That is that they may dare boldly to do all things by God’s Word; may compel all worldly power, glory, wisdom, and exaltation to yield to and obey his majesty; supported by his power, may command all from the highest even to the last; may build up Christ’s household and cast down Satan’s; may feed the sheep and drive away the wolves; may instruct and exhort the teachable; may accuse, rebuke, and subdue the rebellious and stubborn; may bind and loose; finally, if need be, may launch thunderbolts and lightnings; but do all things in God’s Word.

This definition of the pastorate is as charged and electric as any other Reformation doctrine was. It represents a return to the early church’s belief, namely, that the ministry owes it power, all of it, to the Word of God. Calvin’s definition ties all agency and power in ecclesial service to Scripture. His full confidence as a minister was in the Bible, which he clearly believed called all to account, including those possessing “worldly power.” The pastor labors in many duties, but in all of them, he seeks to “do all things in God’s Word.” What a remarkable definition of ministry this is—it is nothing other than the performance of the Word in all parts of the pastor’s task.

Calvin’s primary act of influence was the sermon, and the model of his preaching was expository. Calvin, like so many other Reformers (including a great many whom he trained), preached continually through books of the Bible, interpreting the text in a simple yet learned style. At the end of his life, in his will, he summarized the aim of his preaching: “I have endeavored, both in my sermons and also in my writings and commentaries, to preach the word purely and chastely, and faithfully to interpret His sacred Scriptures.” To do so, Calvin studied ferociously in the week, straining the limits of his body in order to know the passage in question and give the right sense of it, a sense always conditioned by the grace of God in Christ. Then, his preparation concluded, he ascended to the high pulpit, opened his Bible, and preached without notes. This was a grand ministry, but it was grand not because of ornamentation or affectation, but because Calvin’s preaching lifted up a great and gracious God who built his kingdom through the humble yet powerful work of regular, focused, weekly exposition, one Sunday after another, one sermon after another.

In his preaching and his broader program, Calvin sought to provide not only exegetical instruction, but “moral oversight.” Calvin knew that he could not make people Christian, despite what some contemporary scholars would argue. But he did see to it that the pastors under his watch shepherded the city’s moral life. As Scott Manetsch has observed, “Geneva’s unique brand of church-sponsored discipline from biblical and theological reflection, as well as everyday practice.” Calvin, Beza, and the band of ministers they trained put great stock in the biblical fact that Jesus entrusted the “keys” of his kingdom to his disciples (see Matthew 16:19, 18:18-19). The “power of the keys,” as the Reformers called it, meant for the Genevan pastor-theologians that they were responsible to exercise ecclesiastical discipline. In the city, this meant the formation of “an elaborate system of surveillance and pastoral supervision within the city and countryside parishes.”

This system represented the realization, however imperfectly, of a theological vision for the Genevan church, one driven by the preeminent pastor-theologian of the era. To be sure, the Genevans did not always live up to their own high standards. It was their goal, however, to instantiate the holiness of God in the life of the people. We modern evangelicals can learn from this example. We can seek to “do all things in God’s Word” once more, eschewing practices aimed at drawing numbers and tapping into felt needs. The Word is not dead. It is alive, and sharp, and filled with spiritual vigor. We can return to it in our time. As in the sixteenth-century, so may it be again, in our day, the twenty-first century.

This material is adapted from The Pastor as Public Theologian by Kevin Vanhoozer and Dr. Strachan and is used with permission of Baker Books.