Take Heed to Yourselves

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. ACTS 20:28

In 1656 Baxter published a book intended for the ministers of Worcestershire, written to accompany their agreement to take up systematic personal instruction in their parishes. It was an occasional piece for a local purpose. It has never been out of print since, and it is still set for theological students three and a half centuries later. The Reformed Pastor takes its structure from Paul’s charge at Miletus, and it follows the order of the text exactly. Take heed to yourselves comes first. Baxter would not let anyone reverse it.

The unconverted minister

He opened with a possibility that most books on ministry decline to raise: that a man may hold office, preach competently, be respected by his people, and be unconverted. Baxter thought this was neither rare nor hypothetical. A man may enter the ministry as a career, learn its vocabulary fluently, and never once have dealt with God on his own account. He may spend his life urging others to a place he has not been.

Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? ROMANS 2:21

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 CORINTHIANS 9:27

That verse is Paul’s, about Paul. Baxter’s point was that if the apostle considered the danger worth naming, no minister since has grounds for complacency.

Preaching against sins you live in

His second warning is subtler and touches everyone who teaches. It is entirely possible, Baxter observed, to preach against a sin with real force while practising it. The pulpit provides a curious immunity: a man denouncing covetousness is not, at that moment, thinking of himself, and the very act of condemning the fault can produce a comfortable sense of being on the right side of it.

He was specific about the ministerial versions. Pride he named as the chief — pride in gifts, in learning, in reputation, in the size of a congregation, in being thought humble. Laziness, disguised as study. Worldliness, disguised as prudence about money. And contentiousness, disguised as zeal for truth. That last one he applied to himself without hesitation, and anyone who has read his controversial writings will agree that the diagnosis was accurate.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? MATTHEW 7:3

The example

Baxter’s third emphasis is that a minister teaches chiefly by what he is. The congregation is watching, and it learns more from how a man treats his family, handles money, responds to criticism and speaks of his opponents than from anything he says in a sermon. A discrepancy between the two is noticed immediately, and it does more damage than any amount of poor preaching.

Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. 1 TIMOTHY 4:12

He drew the practical conclusion that a minister’s private devotion is not a personal matter. A man who neglects his own soul is not merely damaging himself; he is depriving his people, because he can only give what he has.

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. 1 TIMOTHY 4:16

A necessary caution

Now a warning about the book itself, because it must be said. The Reformed Pastor is one of the most searching books in the English language and one of the most crushing. Baxter’s standard is extraordinarily high, his tone is relentless, and he shows very little interest in comforting the reader. Ministers who are already conscientious — which is to say, exactly the ministers who read it — have been driven by it into despair and, in some cases, out of the ministry altogether. That was not his intention, and it is a misuse of the book. Baxter was writing to rouse men who had grown complacent, not to finish off men who were already at the end of themselves. The safeguard is to read it with the gospel in the other hand. Every failure it exposes is a failure Christ has already borne. A minister who reads it and is convicted should repent and change one thing; a minister who reads it and despairs has forgotten that his acceptance was never based on his performance in the first place.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. ROMANS 8:1

Not only for ministers

One further note, because most readers of this book are not pastors. Everything in this chapter applies, at a smaller scale, to anyone who teaches anyone — a parent, a Sunday school teacher, an elder, a small group leader, an older believer who has taken a younger one under their wing. The order is the same. Take heed to yourself first. What you are will reach the people in your care more surely than what you say, and the discrepancy between the two, if there is one, will be noticed long before you notice it.

Baxter’s most useful question for anyone who teaches is short and can be asked tonight. Is there anything you regularly urge on others that you are not currently practising yourself?

Two particular pressures

Baxter singled out two areas where ministers most often fail, and both are places where the failure is visible to everyone except the man himself. The first is his household. Paul makes the connection explicit and gives the reason.

One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 1 TIMOTHY 3:4–5

Baxter observed that a man may give his best hours to the parish and arrive home with nothing left, so that the people who most need him receive the worst of him. He regarded this as a straightforward failure of duty rather than a regrettable side effect of zeal, and he warned that a congregation is not deceived by it for long. The second is money. Not, usually, dramatic dishonesty — but the slow accommodation by which a man’s standard of living, ambitions and choice of associates come to be shaped by financial interest without his ever having made a decision about it.

Not greedy of filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. 1 PETER 5:2–3

Baxter’s own practice was severe: he lived plainly, gave away a large part of a modest income, and refused preferment when it was offered. He did not require others to match him, and he did require that the question be faced. His test was to ask whether any decision in a man’s ministry over the last year had been influenced by what it would cost him. The answer, honestly given, is usually informative.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name one thing you regularly urge on others and are not doing. Begin doing it this week. 2. Examine yourself for the four ministerial sins — pride, laziness, worldliness, contentiousness — and identify which is yours. 3. Ask whether your own devotional life exists independently of your preparation to teach. If not, that is the finding. 4. If this chapter crushes you rather than convicting you, stop and read Romans 8:1. Change one thing; do not despair. 5. If you have never settled the question of your own conversion, settle it before you teach anyone else anything.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have urged on others what I do not practise, and I have denounced sins from a position that felt safe while I was denouncing them.

Search me. Show me the pride I have dressed up as conviction, the laziness I have called study, the love of money I have called prudence, the quarrelsomeness I have called zeal.

Keep my own soul, so that I have something to give. Let me take heed to myself before I take heed to anyone else.

And when I see how far short I fall, do not let me despair. My standing was never built on my performance. Amen.