God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
There’s a good and vital reason Paul said, “Lay hands suddenly on no man” (1 Tim. 5:22). The biblical qualifications for elders are all characteristics of godliness and giftedness that must be proven over time. A man may instinctively know how to make a good first impression. He superficially appears to be keen-thinking, knowledgeable, mature, or supremely gifted as a teacher. But he could actually have serious character flaws that would disqualify him from eldership, and these sometimes become plainly evident only through long-term patterns of behavior. It is vital therefore that church leaders “first be proved; then let them use the office” (1 Tim. 3:10).
God didn’t dictate the whole Bible the way an executive mechanically dictates letters to his secretary. The human authors’ personalities are like musical instruments. If I play the same tune on a number of wind instruments, each will sound different even if I play the exact melody in the same key and even though it’s all coming from the same breath – mine. If I play “Amazing Grace” on a tuba, baritone, trombone, French horn, trumpet, oboe, clarinet, and flute, it is all “Andy- breathed” or “Andy-produced,” but it goes through the “personality” of the instrument. In one sense that’s how God produced the Bible through human authors.
