As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
1 John 2:27
Do you need a pastor, in order to be faithful?
I'm of course, speaking to those who already confess the words of Jesus to be binding and call themselves, Christian. For those of us who have spent much time and organized churches, it is an often repeated refrain that you need to "be under authority".
An Argument for Teachers
The actual biblical justification for this claim is usually a little specious. Moreover it basically depends on tradition rather than actual texts.
The argument for Bible teachers basically goes like this:
God has appointed shepherds to watch over souls, and to teach and preach the word to bring Christians to maturity.
If you are outside of the regular, preaching and teaching of God's word you won't grow, and you will be in danger of falling away.
(optional) there is some kind of mysterious ethereal protection in "being under authority".
But rather than listen to the arguments of men, let's listen to God.
An Argument for Christian Sufficiency
As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
1 John 2:27
In this text, John is talking to the church about remaining faithful to the truth. John says that Christians need no teacher, because the anointing teaches all Christians.
It's interesting to note that as John is telling Christians that they do not need anyone to teach them, John himself is teaching them. Nevertheless, John is trying to get a concept.
What indeed is John doing by writing this letter filled with teaching? If John is giving a human opinion, or teaching human knowledge, then there is no reason for the letter to be in our Bible. If however John is an instrument of God the Holy Spirit, then in some sense John is merely an extension of God himself.
John says that the anointing, or simply the presence of God the Holy Spirit within genuine believers, is the real teacher, and the source of discernment between truth and error (taking the context of the proceeding and following verses).
So, the reason that Paul is insistent, to Titus, for instance to set up elders over the assemblies in Crete, is because when the organized church is holy and well, then all the work of organized church really is in some sense done by God himself. Or another way of saying it is the anointing is the power and engine of genuine church - whether speaking of the assembly or the individual.
However, if we're going to talk about what is absolutely essential to a believer's health and welfare spiritually, we would say that a human teacher is not essential.
The essential component of the believers health and welfare - especially when it comes to knowing and following the truth - is simply that God the Holy Spirit genuinely dwell in that believer. If a person has every external thing that the world would say makes you a Christian, but lacks the internal presence of God the Holy Spirit, the world may think of that person as a Christian, but God does not. (And a human teacher they will definitely want because they have no way to know, understand, or follow the truth.)
Why John is Talking About the Need for Teachers
In 1 John 2, the apostle is warning Christians about too much affinity for the world. By “world,” John means the “cosmos” - or another way of saying this is the fallen state of the creation.
John says verse 15, “do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.”
In verse 18 and 19, John says that there are ‘antichrist’ humans, that have deserted the true church. Another words, antichrists are false Christians who have left the truth. This is connected with an over emphasis on the world (since these verses are group together).
They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
1 John 2:19.
Christians that love the fallen world of things as it is, are Christians in name only. You can see this type of "Christian" by their affinity for all things present:
Family,
friends,
money,
career,
marriage,
children,
and an earthly Christianity (Christianity merely in an organized fashion on the earth).
But the cool thing about being a true Christian is that you can take part in all the things I mentioned above while not loving them, and you can at the same time leave all those things if you need to, and not care.
This is because a true Christian does not love the world.
A true Christian is not obsessed with Christianity merely as something you do on Sunday or do on the earth.
A true Christian loves the truth and if the truth means Sunday morning, the Christian will be there.
But if following the truth means, you have to dwell in “holes of the Earth and caves” and wear “sheep and goat skins,” it actually makes a little difference to them.
The Christian is happiest when he knows, understands and follows the truth.
This is why John the Baptist faithfulness looked like eating, locus and wild, honey, wearing camel skins; and for Jesus faithfulness, look like eating and drinking like a normal person, and wearing normal person clothes for his day.
It is because following the truth in either direction: normalcy, or abnormalcy - is not something a Christian cares about a great degree.
As Jesus, Jesus says in John, 12:26 -
where I am, there My servant will be also
Every true Christian merely wants to be where Jesus is.
This looks like Paul and Silas singing Psalms at midnight at the Philippians prison (not knowing in the slightest that that would be their deliverance) - but it also looks like Philip going out to the middle of nowhere in the desert outside Jerusalem, and meeting a eunuch from Ethiopia, and enjoying the divine providence of a new child of God being made by his explanation of the Scriptures.
Being where Jesus is, might be utterly normal. You might work a job at an office. Or you might be the town kook that stands on street corners, yelling at people to turn or burn.
In this particular season of church history, I believe that it's important to remember that, even though God the Holy Spirit can certainly work through men to teach and preach, it is far more important to emphasize the sufficiency of God the Holy Spirit in ordinary believers. This does not matter whether they are wise or foolish, if God indeed is their God, if indeed, their body is a temple of God where God dwells, then they will be OK even if they have no pastor or human teacher.
Ignore all teachers?
With that said, I'm not trying to promote the idea that Christians should ignore the God honoring teaching of faithful men in human history. But I do want to emphasize the fact that the reason you should pay attention to such persons who taught the word and are worth listening to is merely because God was working through them. Not because *they* were anything.
In other words, there's only one thing you need to pay attention to in the church of the present, the church of the past, or the church of the future:
it is merely the anointing of God.
If anyone ever tells you that you are obliged to follow this tradition or that; If anyone ever tells you that ‘you are in danger of falling away’ because you do not follow their religious system; Understand this: the only person you are accountable to is God.
(This is both freeing and binding, just make sure that whenever the anointing leads you follow).
Anointing of God: lead into all truth.