Government in the world has to be authoritative. We hope it is democratic, but there has to be authority in the world. The world is composed overwhelmingly of unconverted souls. This is not necessarily wrong for the world – it is God’s appointment – but in the world there is usually a hierarchical form of government. Lower local governors and up the pyramid it goes, until there is somebody at the top who is the chief executive in a nation in some shape or form. There has to be this system of authority, and those people have executive power over us, and they rule and they dominate, in the history of the world, sometimes in a cruel and capricious manner. But there has to be domination.
But in the church, where people are converted, then of course there is a different spirit and there is goodwill. There can be an entirely different kind of government. A government not only by consent but a government where nobody has absolute authority. The preachers, the elders, and the leaders must administer and rule from the word. In the church, nobody has personal, executive power over the lives of Christian people. Nobody is gifted or equipped to be an authority, to have his own authority over us. No, the word is our authority.
There is in the Church of Rome a hierarchical system: priests and bishops, all the way up to the pope, who has absolute control. Now Christ specifically says, that is not how it will be in the church. Even in the Church of England, where at the time of the Reformation, in came the gospel, and the preaching changed, and salvation was proclaimed. At least the doctrine of salvation was right, but they went on copying, more or less, the Church of Rome in the way in which the church was governed and administered, against the express command of Christ. Hierarchical government with bishops and archbishops and synods, more recently, quite different from how it ought to be.