Our 15-year-old daughter, Rebekah, is preparing for a hiking expedition in a few weeks as she works toward a particular award. She and her team will camp for a couple of nights in the hills and navigate their way along a nine-mile trail using a map and compass. A few days ago we were sent the list of equipment she will need for those two days, and it’s quite a list. Forty-five different items, some of which I had never heard of before. (Gaiters? Platypus? Bivibag?) Of course, this is Northern Ireland, where you can experience any, or indeed all, of the four seasons in a single afternoon, which may explain the length of the list.

Turning from hiking to the Christian walk, in 2 Peter 1:3, Peter tells us that God has equipped us with “all things that pertain to life and godliness.” We could easily spend a whole series of articles looking at each of those things, but for now let us just focus on one: the Scriptures.

Second Timothy 3:17 tells us that one of the overarching purposes of Scripture is that the man of God may be “thoroughly equipped” for every good work. If we want to equip laborers, we need to kit them out with as comprehensive, accurate, deep, and lively an understanding of the Word of God as we possibly can. In 2 Timothy, Paul is writing primarily to Timothy as the pastor of the church in Ephesus, and the phrase “man of God” refers especially to those called to the ministry of the Word. This means our seminaries must make sure that this is the focus of their curriculum. Not management technique, strategic thinking, or fundraising but the infallible and authoritative living Word of the living God. The Scriptures are what thoroughly equip men for every aspect of the ministry.

The faithful seminary will teach the original languages of the Scriptures so exegesis can be accurately carried out, so theology can be tested for its soundness, and so the Word can be preached faithfully to the people of God. Counseling will be rooted in the Scriptures, so pastors can learn to apply God’s Word with Solomonic discrimination to the tangled circumstances that sin produces rather than leaning on their own ideas or the latest fads in secular counseling. True spirituality will be a staple of such a seminary, teaching pastors how to feed their own souls on the pure milk of the Word, how to meditate on every word that comes from the mouth of God, and how to pray according to the will of God revealed in the Scriptures. We should certainly give thanks that God has given the RPCNA such a seminary and pray that He will continue to make these the priorities of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 that he should entrust the apostolic deposit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Having been equipped with a comprehensive, accurate, deep, and lively understanding of God’s Word themselves, it is the pastor’s responsibility to feed the sheep with this Word—teaching, reproving, correcting, and training in righteousness so that they too may be equipped for every good work: for growing in their knowledge of God and His will; for bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; for speaking to their neighbors and colleagues about the way of salvation with gracious words seasoned with salt, knowing how to answer each one; for speaking out against false teaching and social injustice as they encounter it; for building up the saints as they speak the truth in love; for dealing with suffering, grief, loss, disappointment, anxiety, and fear in a way that honors God.

But the chain of equippers does not stop with ministers and elders. In Romans 15:14, Paul describes the believers in the church in Rome as “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.” This work of instruction is especially the responsibility of the elders in a congregation, but God’s Word is clear that it is not just for elders—this is something that all Christians are able to do and meant to do. Ephesians 4:15–16: “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.” Is that how you think about your church family? Do you intentionally look for ways to encourage the other members of your church with biblical truth?

Let us all play our part in equipping the saints for ministry. Let us pray for those who teach in seminaries and for our pastors, that God the Spirit will enable them to rightly handle the Word of truth. Pray that each of us, equipped with the Scriptures through our pastors’ ministry, will be ready for every good work. Pray that we will all look for opportunities in our fellowships every week to equip one another as we instruct one another and spur one another on to love and good deeds.

Warren Peel | Trinity (Newtownabbey, N. Ireland) RPC