Sanctification methods, the Competitive Principle, etc.

Update: I now question the legitimacy of church hierarchies, given that in Christ's words we have a commandment to practise equality (Matthew 23) and only the elevation of 12 apostles who would in future be the judges of the 12 tribes of Israel. 

____________

According to two Pauline letters (1 Tim 3:2, 10; Tit 1:6, 7), all leaders of churches (prebyteroi, episkopoi, diakonoi) must be “blameless” (anegkletoi). Is this really possible, and if so, how? Answers are given by at least three New Testament texts (John 8:31-51; Rom 6:1—8:17; Heb 10:1—13:21) that describe the mechanism of how a Christ-believer is set free from sin slavery. Precisely according to the Exodus anti-type, Christ-believers are given teaching, commandments and leaders, ransomed, baptized, tested, and chastized—a seven-part sanctification process.
      Specifically how Christ-ministers are made fit for service is described in a fourth text (2 Cor 3:1—4:6). Here, in broad accord with the Creation anti-type, Christ-converts are formed in the divine image, the primary agent is God’s Spirit, and God’s enemy is the agent for deception and blinding. Because real Christ-ministers have ministries only to the extent that they are Christ-converts, they also have experienced the sanctification process that liberates from sin slavery and “have renounced the hidden things of shame, neither walking in craftiness nor deceitfully using the word of God” (4:2). So they are able to conduct themselves blamelessly, able to manifest “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6), and therefore able to administer the process whereby Christ-believers are made into a “letter from Christ” written by the Holy Spirit (3:3).
      The NT’s descriptions of sanctification are usually overlooked, but this fourth text is ignored to an unusual extent. Why might that be? At least several possible factors can be considered: (a) The loss of sanctification traditions over the centuries, so that sanctification-oriented Bible interpretation (like Chrysostom’s, for example) is exceedingly rare; (b) The complexity of the 2 Corinthians text, so that its full coherence requires much effort to find; (c) The keystone that holds 3:1—4:6 together, making it a single, coherent sub-argument of the letter, is hidden by polysemy, a noted problem especially for Pauline texts (cf. 2 Pet 3:14-18); (d) The text is an example of the genre of competitive communication (pace, inter alia, Huang, Levinson, Grice[1]) that allows only some to understand it correctly (cf. Matt 13:10-15; Mark 4:10-12; Luke 8:10; John 6:22-68)....  (continued...)

_________
[1] Pragmatics, at least its Anglo-American tradition, is dominated by the hypothesis that all human communication is founded on what H.P. Grice first called the Cooperative Principle, which has been reformulated by Neogriceans, prominently Levinson and Huang. Cf. Yan Huang, Pragmatics, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.