Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes, seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The “work of ministering” and the “building up of the body of Christ” are not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling. Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see that the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make each saint a minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership of Christ’s body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times. Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances. It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in 58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the spiritual energy of the body of Christ. The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting; although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (_i.e._, overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them “shepherd the Church of God.” In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon his “fellow-elders,” that they should “shepherd the flock of God, making themselves examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously called “Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true and false shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words familiar and dear to His disciples.