Hey, everybody.
Happy Monday.
Thanks for being with us as we continue through 1 Timothy.
We’re grateful for you tuning in or listening later,
whichever is the case.
We move on to the third
chapter of Timothy, and
last week we had
Timothy kind of having a discussion with—or Paul having
a discussion with Timothy about
households, essentially,
or about society, maybe,
in some sense,
as well as the overlap with church.
We continue that focus today as it narrows to church,
and we move to leadership.
And this chapter,
or at least this part of the chapter,
is broken down into two sections.
We’ll look
maybe at the entire first one today.
We’ll see how far we get.
But it’s qualifications.
It’s interesting, Michael, that if you were going to have a conversation,
if you can imagine an older pastor having a conversation with a younger pastor,
giving them advice on church,
advice on recruiting and selecting leaders would be of vital importance.
And that’s where Paul goes today.
Paul shares some thoughts.
I would even go so far as to say
some instructions with Timothy about the kind of person that Timothy should be looking for
to serve as a leader in the church community.
Actually, I think what we’re about to jump into is in some ways more controversial than where we’ve been,
obviously not in the major sort of cultural lens.
I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time as church
dealing with late chapter two.
But if you have any sort of time that you spent in a church
leadership position, maybe you’ve served as an elder,
or maybe you’ve served as a deacon,
maybe you’ve served on some committees,
and you’ve had some role in helping the larger church family,
then I think you will know that every person in leadership,
and that is especially
true of pastors and here bishop or those who may be sort of at a different administrative level
in the Christian order,
that all of these are humans,
that they are human people.
And so they are flawed, they have weaknesses,
that they too stand in need of forgiveness and repentance.
And so in many ways,
this is a very,
very challenging list, especially if you read it,
you know, just literally right off the page,
if you made this the specific sort of operating instructions of your church,
it’s not to say it’s not doable,
but it is to say that this is a very pointed, clear,
strong language as to what that expectation should be.
Yeah, before we get into the text,
two observations.
The first won’t surprise you if you were with us last week,
the leadership that Paul
outlines here
presupposes our conversation last week.
And so there’s not,
this is all male
language, this is all he, he, he.
And the church, particularly the church that we live in,
the Presbyterian Church of the 21st century,
has not been compelled to stay within that framework.
And it’s easy to read this and perhaps be a little upset that it lands there.
But I would caution that instead of
being too concerned with that,
to try and listen to the
broader lessons of what is called for in church leadership and what is helpful,
because the other thing I would observe about this list is it is quite likely that everything
is listed has a place that Paul has seen it go wrong somewhere.
So every trait is probably a
corrective to a place that it didn’t work or there was a poor church leader.
So let’s jump in
and we’ll unpack some of this.
The saying is sure,
whoever aspires to the office of bishop
desires a noble task.
Let’s just stop there,
Michael, make sure we’re all on the same page.
Interestingly,
the word aspire means to stretch out your hand,
like to reach for.
And bishop here literally means overseer.
So this is a person who will oversee some of the work and ministry of others.
And we’re going to see qualifications of elders or deacons.
These are people who are
probably directly doing ministry.
This bishop is likely a person overseeing or supervising those people.
And that tells us a little something about the house church structure of Timothy’s community.
But it also says that this person is entrusted not only with practical leadership,
but with structural leadership.
And it isn’t interesting.
There are some interesting differences
in the way that the qualifications are listed.
An interesting thing to note here,
my commentator points out that here we have this sort of office being described.
You both get the word overseer,
but you can also get this sense of elder or leader.
So for a Presbyterian here,
we would sort of feel a connection to this,
the idea of those
laypeople who are serving in a real leadership position in the congregation.
They’re called and
Paul goes out of his way to make the case right up to this point.
It’s actually a noble task.
It’s not something to be ashamed of if one desires to be in an office of leadership in the church.
That’s a good thing.
And for all of the talk of humility that we’ve already had,
for all of the reality of recognizing that it’s not about us and it’s not about our own gain or our own prestige,
you know, here,
maybe it’s in that context,
a little surprising even here that
what Paul ends up saying is it’s a good thing to desire to be in a position where you oversee
if that is done with a person with the right heart.
And he’s certainly going to have a list of
sort of a track record of a good character.
And, you know, so that’s kind of an interesting
tension here in the church.
You know, obviously don’t don’t seek your own vain glory on one hand.
On the other hand,
don’t be afraid of desiring a position where you can contribute to the church family.
It’s one of those examples where Scripture often is very nuanced.
And when we slow down
enough to see it,
we can see that these things are all being held in this kind of delicate, delicate tension.
And then Paul gives Timothy some thoughts on vetting those leaders on the kind of qualifications
that they should bring to the task.
So now verse two,
“Now a bishop must be
above reproach,
married only once,
temperate,
sensible,
respectable,
hospitable,
an apt teacher,
not a drunkard,
not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome,
and not a lover of money.”
So that is a lot crammed into a sentence.
And let’s kind of go phrase by phrase here.
Above reproach means that they’re honest,
they’re trustworthy,
they can be trusted,
they are of good character,
they are genuine.
This is the place that Paul starts.
You know, of all these other things,
he begins with that they have to be the kind of people
that are genuine, that are authentic, that bring to the task not only a good reputation,
but a deserved reputation.
And it’s interesting, I think, that that’s the beginning word, Michael.
Yeah, I mean, how often, Clint, is the news headlines as it relates to the church.
Generally,
the exhibition of one of the church’s leaders,
who’s either behaving hypocritically,
or who has just simply, you know,
lapsed ethically.
And so the idea that Paul starts here,
I think it even makes sense in our experience that fundamentally there is something to be
valued in leadership that is not a front or a ploy,
but rather leadership that is
directly connected to one’s character.
That’s tricky.
Yeah, and this isn’t holier than now.
No.
This is a person who’s genuinely working to be faithful,
and again, above reproach.
Then we get an interesting phrase.
There’s been some translation and some discussion on this one,
“Married only once.” Some have read that.
In fact, you can find it translated,
“The husband of one wife.” There was still in Paul’s day the occasional practice of having
more than one wife.
It was waning by then,
not terribly common, but still happening.
The more likely explanation,
at least many think it’s more likely,
is that married only once
would certainly refer to not having been divorced,
but also if one was widowed to stay unmarried.
And Paul does say some things in other places of his writing where he sort of likes the idea
that if a person is not married,
it gives them an extra amount of time and energy to devote
to their work to the church.
He doesn’t really require that for people,
but he does kind of celebrate that if someone finds themselves in a single status,
it gives them a certain freedom and it minimizes their obligations outside of their faith,
outside of their church life.
And so,
likely, this is a reference to something like that,
married only once, not remarried and not divorced,
as opposed to having only one.
I think having only one wife would be presumed by Paul and nearly everybody else at that moment.
So, most likely, this is that second interpretation.
Yeah, and I think that it helps here.
I’m not going to dig in here because I think the context helps it as well.
I think as we get through some
of these other words,
you’re going to see there is a theme that links them together.
I think,
generally,
Paul’s not breaking
substantial new ground here.
This is not sort of like coming
down the mountain with the Ten Commandments.
I think there’s a sense here in which Paul’s trying
to make a case that a person should be very stable,
a person of good character.
And so, I think we’ll see that teased out.
This is specific.
I think it draws our attention because of its specificity.
But if you see some of the descriptions that come after,
I think we see
maybe at the end of this why it’s included in the list.
This one kind of gets recycled again in the list,
but temperate has to do with the idea of even keeled,
as I do with the idea of being fairly stable, being disciplined,
not flying off the
handle, not being random,
of sort of bringing a settledness,
an evenness to the task so that
people know what to expect.
That’s a good
kind of trait.
Sensible,
we move right along there.
Sensible,
that a person has some wisdom,
that a person has some what we might call common sense.
Respectable,
that they are a person worthy of respect,
that others could look at their life
and see in it a measure of something that they admire.
And it’s interesting, Michael, these are certainly qualifications for leaders,
but by virtue of being for leaders,
they’re also for everybody.
So, simultaneously,
Paul is pointing out what we want of our leaders
and giving us something to pursue as well.
Yeah, we maybe don’t talk about this as much as I think we see hints to it in the New Testament.
I think in some letters,
it may be a little bit written sort of between the lines a little bit,
but there does seem to be a common refrain for Paul that Christians should not stick out
in society as being radically different.
And if you know church history,
some of the early
claims about Christians are very
sort of extreme about what Christians would do.
Some of the rumors
that were spread about what Christians believed were things that would make Christians socially,
if not reprehensible, certainly put them on the fringes of society.
So,
it appears that Paul,
in a list like this,
there’s nothing here that’s going to draw attention.
There’s nothing here that’s going to draw the ire of the world.
In fact, I think you can go back a few
words here in Timothy and you can see once again where Paul’s instructing.
Hey,
let’s be a group of people
praying for our leaders.
Let’s be a group of people who are positively contributing in the
place where we’ve been planted.
And once again, when I see this list,
Clint, this is what I’m
thinking of.
I’m thinking of that person who is above reproach,
they’re temperate,
they’re sensible, they’re respectable, they’re hospitable.
These are all positive cultural traits then,
as they are now.
And this puts a good foot forward for those Christians who are seeking
to evangelize, to share the good news.
And they’re certainly not going to be putting blockades in
between them and the people who they’re trying to share it with.
Right.
And so we just get to the last couple of words here on the positive side of the list,
hospitable and an apt teacher.
The word hospitable means to be kind to strangers or to love outsiders.
So they should be good to others.
And an apt teacher,
which I think shows the wisdom
of Paul, that a leader needs to be a person who can share the faith, who can instruct,
who can present things in a way that gain some traction and gain a hearing for people.
And then we finish the list,
having
listed what they should be,
we now turn quickly to some things
they should not be.
And these are fairly self-explanatory, not a drunkard,
not violent,
not quarrelsome,
and not a lover of money.
And it’s amazing to me in an ancient list,
if you look at where pastors in major stories have gotten themselves in trouble,
not drunkards,
not quarrelsome,
not loving money,
probably should be something about avoiding
temptation,
sexual temptation.
But other than that,
I mean, you’ve got some of the big issues listed here.
And Paul is, I think, wise in pointing out that some of these weaknesses
are especially damaging and especially dangerous in the church.
Yeah, this is where I do think it becomes a little nuanced here,
because we had, all the way back up at verse 1,
“Whoever aspires to the office or reaches for the office,
desires a noble task.”
It’s a noble thing to want to serve and to lead.
Yet, we know from human experience,
how often in that aspiring humans are actually acting out of their own pride.
They’re actually reaching out of a sense of their own arrogance and with their own hope and intention to achieve, to grab,
you know, they want attention or they want encouragement or they want all of the things
that we might hope other people would do to fill this hole that’s in our own hearts.
And what I think is very,
very wise about this list is it reminds us that fundamentally,
whoever leads and serves in the church needs to be mindful,
that they too need to manage alcohol.
They need to be careful of addictions that can,
in our own day,
come in so many different ways,
that they’re so accessible.
This idea that one must not be violent or one must not love money.
I mean,
this,
to your point, Clint,
this list is perfectly calibrated to help Christian leaders
recognize the ways in which they may be short circuiting their noble task into a self-serving task.
And I’ve not been doing this as a vocation as long as you have,
Clint, but I’ll say,
you know, I have learned how many different sort of camouflages these things might come in.
And, you know,
maybe for one person it’s not drunkard,
maybe that’s love of money.
Whatever it is, I think it’s very easy for Christian leaders to find themselves at the center and all the same
for anyone who finds themselves living in the faith in any context.
I think that this list is applicable.
Yeah, I think as a person who hangs around church, there’s a tremendous
amount of wisdom in this.
And to some extent,
this is just good leadership in any context,
but I think particularly in the church,
this is a very well thought out list and I think reflects
a deep understanding of what it would take to lead well among Christian people,
among a church community.
We’re a little long on time,
so we’ll break this one up into two.
There’s some interesting things tomorrow that it would be easy to read past,
but they have had some wrinkles in history,
some interpretation stuff.
And so we’ll give ourselves a little more time
to dig into them tomorrow as we continue through this passage.
So, thanks for listening today and I hope you can be with us again.
Absolutely.
Thanks, everyone.