“For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church” (1 Cor. 4:7).

“As I teach everywhere and in every church.” There is great significance in that observation, particularly as it pertains to the concept of biblical authority. It argues a pattern - that the things we read about in a letter to one congregation are the very things that were demanded in other congregations. The requirements of God did not vary from congregation to congregation. Rather, those churches would have resembled each other. Their worship would be the same. Their teaching would be the same. Their organization would be the same. The aspirations of the members in each church would have been the same. Of course, this assumes the ideal. One group may have faltered in this or that, but what God wanted from them as directed by the apostles would have been the same. The different issues identified in the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2-3 illustrates that each group faced its own challenges. Yet, in objective, God desired the same things from each group.

When we read the New Testament, we can understand what God wants - because the things He wanted in Corinth were the same things He wanted in Ephesus, or Thessalonica, or Philippi or Rome. God’s Word is no hodgepodge of demands, but rather a record of His admonitions and instructions to different groups of Christians so that all could equally conform to His will. Thus, our churches should worship, think, act, and work just like those churches. We have no right to introduce other arrangements, other kinds of worship, other entities to do our work, nor other objectives to pursue. God’s churches today are to be what God’s churches were then. To do otherwise is to defy our Lord. Innovation is perversion - not a facilitation of God’s will. If we can dismiss the patterns found in scripture, then we might as well dismiss scripture altogether. Including what it says about grace, mercy, justice, sin and salvation. We simply do not get to pick and choose.

“As I teach everywhere and in every church.” May we recognize the import of that statement, and give proper respect to God’s revelation.