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How to Think About Pastors (1 Tim 3:1-7)

1 Timothy 3:1-7

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Eldership from 1 Timothy 3:1-7


“The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the Devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall in disgrace, into a snare of the Devil.”

This is God’s Word.

So then, How to Think About Pastors, except I’m sure you’ve noticed that the word pastor isn’t used in the text that was just read. It begins by saying, “If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer (or, older versions have a bishop) he desires a noble task.” But in the pages of the New Testament, the one office is sometimes described by the term overseer or bishop, sometimes by pastor, and sometimes by elder.

The notion of elder comes out of village and synagogue life, someone who is more mature. The pastor/shepherd category comes out of agrarian life. The shepherd looked after the flock, and overseer has some sort of notion of responsibility for leadership and direction. The three terms come together in certain parts of the Bible to show you they are referring to one person.

Here, for example is 1 Peter 5, “To the elders …” There’s the first term. “To the elders among you I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed. Be shepherds of God’s flock …” That is, pastors. That’s all a pastor means, a shepherd. “… that is under your care, serving as overseers [as bishops].”

It really wasn’t until post-New Testament times that the word bishop or overseer referred to a separate category. So this passage, in other words, gives a list of qualifications for those who are pastors. Here is how we are to think about pastors.

1. Note the unexceptional character of most of these qualifications that a pastor should possess.

There is nothing here said about superior IQ, about a superb education or a Type-A personality. It says they mustn’t get drunk. It says they’re supposed to be characterized by gentleness. The list is remarkable for being unremarkable.

Not only so, but when you work through the list, you discover that every single entry, somewhere in the New Testament, is mandated of all believers, sometimes with qualification as we’ll see, but it’s quite remarkable. So we’re not supposed to be given to drunkenness. Does that mean those who are not pastors have the right to get soused every weekend?

We’re supposed to be gentle. Does that mean the rest of us are permitted to be brutal? We’re supposed to bring up our children properly. Does that mean the rest are allowed to let them run riot? Even hospitable is mandated of all believers in Hebrews 13. Yes, there’s this able to teach category. There is something special about that which we’ll come to in due course, in some sense restricted to pastors.

Yet in a broader sense, all Christians are supposed to be teaching, aren’t we? The Great Commission, as reported in Matthew, finds Jesus saying that we’re to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you. So in our discipleship, in our instruction to new believers, over the back fence, one-on-one, small groups, in some sense we’re all supposed to be involved in teaching the Word of God.

To our children, for example, or when the writer to the Hebrews writes to his readers, he is upset by how little they know, and he says in the long warning of chapter 5 and 6, “By this time,” he says, “you ought to be teachers.” He doesn’t mean they all ought to be pastors, it means that they’re still slow and thick and not absorbing the Word of God and not able to pass it on to others. In one sense, we’re all supposed to be teachers, aren’t we, even if there is a restriction on that at one level or another?

What this suggests, then, is that pastors ought to exemplify the kinds of virtues that ought to be found in all the people of God. That’s the first responsibility. It’s not that pastors are a distinguished cut up, that they have a certain set of qualifications that nobody else can possibly have. It simply means they are supposed to exemplify consistently where the whole church is going.

Now there’s a stinger in the tail in that one, of course. You cannot start demanding virtues of pastors that you yourself are not pursuing, for although there is a certain kind of test that pastors ought to have in terms of maturity in these virtues, in one sense you are not to think of them as pursuing a separate stratum of holiness that only they can achieve.

So the list is remarkable, in the first place, for being unremarkable, and it suggests that Christian spirituality is measured first and foremost, not in mystical terms or sentimental terms, but in behavioral, relational terms effected by the gospel.

2. We can see how these entries work out in a pastor’s life by going through each entry one by one.

The list begins verse 2 with above reproach. Blameless, in that sense. There is no obvious inconsistency or flaw that everyone agrees is there and reproaches the man for. That does not necessarily mean that every rump crowd in a church that is disgruntled and constantly critical can disqualify a person simply because they find something blameworthy.

The church will always have its share of critics. It means, rather, that the entire congregation, as a whole, sees no huge behavioral flaw that stands out and disqualifies the minister from vocational ministry. The husband of but one wife. As I’m sure you know, this one has been variously interpreted.

Some think it means that he must be married; he must be the husband of but one wife. Well there are easier ways to say that. In any case, in the New Testament Paul elsewhere insists that both marriage and celibacy are gifts from God. Both are called charisma, they’re gracious gifts from God, and in this instance you cannot have both charismatic gifts at the same time.

You have either one charismatic gift, celibacy, or the other, marriage, gracious gifts from God, but not both at the same time. In 1 Corinthians 7, he makes it very clear that there are some advantages to being single in ministry, as he doubtless was at the time that he was writing this material. Others have suggested other explanations. I need not take you through the lot. Let me simply tell you my own conclusion in the matter. I think it means he must not be a polygamist.

Now it is true that in the first century, most people didn’t even consider polygamy an option. But in the highest levels of society, in the aristocracy, among the rich and the wealthy, polygamy was not all that uncommon. Herod the Great, for example, who ruled in Palestine when Jesus was born, had 10 wives, and in Roman circles, those who were at the upper level not infrequently had multiple wives.

The problem is that if you’re at the aristocratic structure level of society, then when you become a Christian you may start thinking that you also ought to be in the aristocracy of the church, as it were. For example, I have worked with tribes in Africa where it’s the village chief that is likely to have three or four wives, and then if the chief and a whole lot of others in the tribe become Christians, the chief still thinks that he has the right to be chief in the church, but that doesn’t necessarily follow.

The criteria for leadership in the church are not exactly the same as the criteria for leadership in the community. In this instance, marriage is so often portrayed in the Bible as a kind of model, a type, if you like, a picture of the relationship between God and his people, between Christ and the church, that you don’t want a picture that shows Christ has many churches. You don’t want a picture of what the ideal Christian family is that supposes this sort of thing, either. “In the beginning,” as Jesus would have said, “it was not so.”

Now obviously this does not have a huge bearing on us in Wheaton, in our time, but in many parts of the world this is still a very important point to observe. The extended bearing that it has on us, nevertheless, is pretty clear. Sometimes people are operating in businesses or in society because of their wealth or their gifts or their powers of governance at a high level of leadership. They are upper-middle or senior management, and they think, therefore, that when they become Christians they likewise ought to be senior managers in the local church.

That does not necessarily follow. Simply because you have certain gifts as measured by the criteria of the world in terms of leadership, whether many wives or what makes you an executive at IBM, is not exactly the same as qualifying you for ministry in the local church. We come back to the criteria that the Bible itself establishes.

So above reproach, the husband of but one wife … the next three all have to do with an orderly life. Temperate, many versions say. Sober-minded. Clearheaded, in that sense, self-possessed, not an extremist flying off the handle at every new fad that comes along. Self-controlled. After all, “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of self-control,” Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy. The kind of person who is flying off the handle is not qualified for leadership of the people of God.

Respectable. That’s a hard word to translate. To my ears, respectable sounds just too respectable, bourgeois, slightly pompous. Others have rendered it dignified, but that might be even more pompous. Well-behaved, perhaps. The word means respectable without any negative overtones. That is, someone who ought to be respected, someone who carries a certain kind of weight without being pompous.

The next two have to do with ministry. Hospitable and able to teach. The elder, the pastor, must not simply be a person who loves books and ideas but isn’t too keen on people, the sort of person who loves to spend hours and hours and hours in the study and loves the church in the abstract; it’s the people that he can’t stand. In other words, he must not only love the truth and to think about the truth and to tease out the truth, to understand the truth, but he must also love people with the desire to convey the truth.

It’s often in the matrix of hospitality that we find opportunities for conveying the truth, for showing the truth, for living out the truth, is it not? He must be a lover of people. And then able to teach. I will say more about that one in a moment, but at the moment let me say at least this, able to teach, competent to teach, presupposes at least two things: first, he has content to deliver, and second, he knows how to communicate it.

There are some people who know a great deal, but for whatever reason, they can’t communicate themselves out of a paper bag. They are simply hopeless at trying to convey those ideas to other people. No matter how much you know, if you are not able to communicate it, you’re not qualified to be a teacher in the church of God.

Alternatively, there are some people with the gift of the gab, able to communicate a great deal, or better, able to communicate very well even if there’s little to communicate, but that doesn’t qualify you either. There is content, biblical content, historic, doctrinal, ethical content, that must must be communicated, and so to be able to teach presupposes not only knowledge (we’ll come back to that one), but also an ability to get it across.

Then verse 3. Not given to much wine. That is, not a drunkard, not only free from drunkenness, but free from addiction. The slave of Jesus Christ must not be a slave of anything else. Not violent, but gentle. The word is often rendered forbearing. Not quarrelsome. Not contentious. Some people not only like to contend for the faith but to be contentious about the faith.

They love the text that says, “I have fought the good fight. They imagine all their handling of texts within this fight metaphor, and if we drop the adjective good that might be an advantage, too. They sometimes come from a background where their very fidelity is measured by their contentiousness. There is a place to defend the truth, an important place, yet there is a huge stress in these epistles on gentleness and not arguing over silly things and the like. We’ll come to some of those verses in 2 Timothy 2 in a moment.

Not a lover of money. Jesus Christ has promised all of his disciples enough for their needs, and Christian leaders must, therefore, reflect contentment with him and an ability to trust him. If I may say so, my own background has taught me to respect my parents in this respect enormously. My father was a church planter cross-culturally, and in those days, many decades ago now, there often simply was not enough money to go around.

But our parents disciplined us for attitude, not just for behavior, and one of the things they would not allow was whining, what the Old Testament calls murmuring, because whining, murmuring, complaining, is really a way of denying the providential goodness of God. It’s a form of massive unbelief. It is why it is so repeatedly condemned in the Old Testament, so we were simply not allowed to whine, to complain, and that meant that even in the material realm, likewise we were to express gratitude for what we did have.

I can remember times when I was very young, that we literally didn’t have any food in the house for the next meal, that sounds weird, I know, in Wheaton today, but nevertheless that’s where I was brought up, and my parents would gather us together and we would thank God for what we had enjoyed and pray that he would meet our needs, and he always did, in one fashion or another. I could tell you some quite remarkable stories.

But that meant I really didn’t know that I came from a relatively poor family until I went to university. This will really date me, but in those days people going off to McGill, which is where I went, needed a suit for at least some functions. Nobody goes to university today and needs a suit, but I needed a suit, so I bought one at a secondhand shop (it was what I could afford) and went off to university.

The first time I wore it at university, some of my friends from much posher backgrounds laughed at it, and it was the first time I remember self-consciously thinking, “Hey, I must come from a poor background.” Now that might reflect my own personal slowness, but it also reflects, no doubt, my parents’ quality of living, in that we simply had not exercised self-pity or whining in the house, and therefore, that was the way I was brought up.

Now the church of Jesus Christ must not be passionate about things. The ideal situation, then, is to have a minister of the gospel who really doesn’t care too much about those sorts of things. I know he’s got to pay his bills and send his kids to college and all that sort of thing, but he just doesn’t measure himself in those terms, and the church, meanwhile, for its part, is generous.

The worst situation is where you get a minister who’s grasping and a church with the attitude, “Lord, you keep him humble and we’ll keep him poor.” Not a lover of money.

Then, verses 4 and 5. He must manage his own family well. Graciously, gravely. The children are to obey him “with proper respect,” some texts say. Some English translations say, “submissively.” It is unclear whether this means they are to obey with dignity or that the father, by his dignity, calls forth a certain respect, but the principle is pretty clear. It’s the principle of the parable of the talents reported in Matthew, chapter 25. If a minister cannot, in fact, govern, rule, handle his own family well, how can he handle the church of God?

This does not mean that all the children must be lovely little plaster saints. It doesn’t even mean that they must all be Christians. It does mean when a wheel comes off he knows how to handle it, holding people to accountability, not bullying his kids and exasperating them, but at the same time modeling certain Christian virtues, handling matters of discipline appropriately, because precisely those are the kinds of things that show up in the administration of the church, too. It’s the parable of the talents.

Then verse 6. Not a recent convert, lest he be puffed up with pride, making his fall seem all the greater. This is, of course, a perennial problem in our broader society. If a football hunk or a rock star or a gorgeous movie queen becomes a Christian, then we’re likely to parade them to the front very quickly. This is a huge mistake. It should not be done.

Not a novice. Of course, this “not a novice” category is flexible. It depends on how many Christians there are around and how old they are. I was brought up in French Canada at a time when there were very few confessional evangelical churches around. As recently as 1972, in a population of about 6.5 million, there were only 35 or 37 confessing churches, and very few had more than 40 people on a Sunday morning.

Then between 1972 and 1980, these churches grew from about 35 to just under 500, and suddenly we had church after church, many of them with hundreds of people, made up of people who had been Christians for six months or eight months. You could find elders who had been Christians for 15 months or 18 months, because they weren’t novices compared with all the rest in the congregation.

It meant for a very exciting time but also a very dangerous time, because you had so many people who were babes in Christ in many respects, but whenever there is massive reformation, whenever there is massive growth, that sort of thing happens. It’s happening today in many parts of the world, and yet that does not mean that a person who is considered not a novice in Quebec in 1978 would be appropriate as senior minister of this church because he’s been a Christian all of 15 months.

In other words, “not a novice” is in some ways a relative term, depending on what the average age of the Christians all around you is. Still, the principle of not promoting people too quickly lest things go to their head is very important. Then, to mention a brief selection of other qualifications that are listed in these three epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

First Timothy 5:21. At all costs the pastor is to avoid partiality or favoritism. It can divide a church very quickly. This is one of the most Christ-like virtues. A church, for all of its failures, is a remarkably accepting place. It is a forbearing place, and that means most churches collect a disproportionate number of really awkward people.

Now maybe not this church, maybe you don’t have any, but most churches collect a disproportionate number of really awkward people, and then it is a sign of grace in the church if, all Christians ideally, but at least the leaders, treat everyone in the congregation exactly the same way.

So if they’re speaking to a senior saint who is a bank manager, gives generously to the church, is an elder of some considerable years of experience, is really good with people and a fine Christian, a mature model.… If he is speaking, conversely, with somebody who has been a Christian nine months and is really awkward, is embarrassing, says stupid things, and is frankly not the sort of person you want to go on holidays with, nevertheless he approaches both of them with respect and with good eye contact and listens kindly.

He treats them the same. That doesn’t mean that they all get promoted to the same level of office, that they all have the same voice of authority, the same experience. It does mean that in personal dealings there is a kind of integrity of relationships with all Christians that avoids partiality, that enjoys a freedom from favoritism.

Then he is to pursue all godly virtues. First Timothy 6:11–12. We’ll come back to this one next week, but it’s worth noting it. “You, man of God, flee from this [that is, the vice list from the preceding verses] and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.” In other words, we’re not drifting. We’re supposed to be pursuing the Christian virtues that Scripture itself lays down.

Then elsewhere in 2 Timothy, very frequently we are to expect serious difficulties and be persistent in the face of them, utterly committed. All of these things then, are indices of spirituality that are relational, bound up with behavior and integrity, not mystical or merely sentimental.

3. The one distinctive characteristic of an elder, of a pastor, of a bishop, is that he be able to teach.

As we’ve already seen, at one level that’s required, in some sense, of all Christians, but at another level, it’s the peculiar mandate of Christian pastors. That’s why James 3, verse 1, can say, “Do not be many teachers, knowing that you shall be the more severely judged.” I find that one of the most frightening texts in all of Scripture. Teachers will be the more severely judged, and I spend my whole life going around the world teaching people.

But this is true at every level, isn’t it? You’re held accountable if you’re a teacher, and so we’re not supposed to lay hands on people quickly. Although in one sense we’re all teaching at some level or another, in terms of having the actual role of teaching the Word of God in the church, there is a peculiar connection between this responsibility and the pastor.

It’s not laid down for the deacon, for example. It’s not laid down for others that are mentioned in the New Testament. It’s laid down for the pastor. His job is to feed the flock of God, and that means teaching, that means studying the Word of God and learning how to communicate it in all of its breadth and comprehensiveness, in its ethics in the outworking of life.

Now we need to think about this carefully. There are some people who learn an awful lot of Bible but, nevertheless, are not good at understanding it. There are cultures that learn to memorize vast quantities of material. By the end of the first century, the beginning of the second century, a rabbi was expected to learn what we call the Old Testament by heart and a body of oral tradition about twice as long, again, by heart.

There are cultures today with vast capacities to memorize. I knew a chap in Cambridge, England, who had this commitment and gift. I was in a laundromat when I was still single doing my laundry one day, and there he was with his Hebrew Bible open working through a text, and I said, “What are you working on, brother?” He said, “I’m reading through Amos.” “And why?”

“Well, because I’m just sort of checking out the translation I’m reading before I memorize it so that I’m really convinced it’s accurate.” “And why are you memorizing Amos?” He said, “It’s the next book.” I said, “Have you already memorized the New Testament?” “Oh yes, yes, and now I’m working my way through the Old Testament.”

Now I can’t do that. On the other hand, there’s something remarkable in our day when we, in our Sunday school classes, assign only half a verse, because a whole verse is too much! Nevertheless, I’m not guaranteeing that just because you know a whole lot by heart means that you can put it all together well.

There are some people who learn things additively, as it were, and they can memorize and regurgitate a great deal but they don’t necessarily understand a great deal. Whereas the pastor must not only know a lot of Bible, a lot of theology, he must know how it fits together, to be wise, to be perceptive.

Let me give you an example. There is today a movement, it’s got several faces, a movement in which the understanding of the Bible’s storyline runs something like this: In the beginning everything was good, but when we rebelled, we produced a world full of malice and hate and war. We destroy the environment. We destroy relationships. There is destruction everywhere. It works out in destruction of society and relationships, horrible things, and this generates genocide and social destruction and hatred of all kinds. It’s a terrible thing.

But God, in his mercy, keeps intervening in history to overcome evil in various ways. He calls forth an Abraham, or he calls forth his people Israel, and ultimately he sends his own dear Son, so that the load of inherited bad behavior falls on him, and the kingdom of God dawns so that people live with another perspective, until finally the great consummation comes in at the end, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, with resurrection bodies and no more decay.

Is that biblical? You’re suspicious now, aren’t you? You see, at one level it accurately reflects one strand of Scripture, it does accurately reflect one strand of Scripture, but if that’s your whole interpretation of the Bible’s storyline, you will lead the people of God astray, for there is another strand that is even greater. It’s deeper; it’s more pronounced.

That is, this whole level of decay is bound up in the first place with rebellion against God. What makes God wrathful in the Old Testament predominantly is idolatry. It’s the de-Godding of God. It’s me being god. It’s me creating my own gods, and all the social decay and all the war and the rape and the hatred and all the other things are, in the first instance, the outcomes of defying God himself.

God stands over against us in wrath because of his holiness in the face of my sin, and then he nevertheless stands over against us in love because he is that kind of God; so when Christ comes, he not only comes, as it were, absorbing the centuries of decadence and decay and corruption, even more he absorbs the very wrath of God so God’s justice and his honor are satisfied.

That changes how you view the cross. It changes how you view what the cross achieved. It changes how you understand what idolatry is. It changes your sense of human responsibility. You have a responsibility not simply to the social order. You have a responsibility to God himself, and you must give an account to him. It changes the entire storyline. Do you see?

So the first view is not, strictly speaking, unbiblical in the sense that you can’t track it out that way, but it is unbiblical in the sense that it hasn’t got the balance of things right. A minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ must not only know a lot of Bible but have the maturity to put the pieces together responsibly, coherently, teaching the whole counsel of God.

Indeed, in the New Testament these teachers display a remarkable balance between authority and humble example. On the one hand, you find texts like this that stress authority. First Timothy 4:11. “Command and teach these things.” First Timothy 6:17. “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth,” and so on, so on, and so on. Verse 18. “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds,” and so forth.

On the other hand, there are many passages that stress entreaty, example. Thus, 1 Timothy 5. “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” Do you see? Here there’s not so much a note of command as example. Or even in 4:11, it runs toward example right away. “Command and teach these things.”

Then, verse 12. “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers.” Likewise then, in verses 15 and 16, “Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely.” That means the ministers of the church of God are to watch their life (that is, how they live), and their doctrine (that is, their teaching), in such a way that others see their progress.

Over five years, people say, “You know, five years ago he really was a good Bible teacher. He’s even better today. He feeds my soul. I see how God manifests himself through the Word more powerfully today than five years ago.” With similar comments, likewise, for the quality of his life, do you see? Watch your life and doctrine closely. Let all see your progress. And finally …

4. It is important to observe that Christian ministry is tied with two other huge themes in the Bible.

It puts everything in perspective. Those two themes are doxology, that is, praise to God, and eschatology, that is, living in the light of the end. They come together spectacularly in many passages.

I mention two: in 1 Timothy 6, verses 11 and following, “You, man of God, flee from these sins. Pursue righteousness,” and so forth. Then verse 14. “I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time.”

In other words, you serve, you teach, you evangelize, you disciple in the light of Christ’s return. That’s eschatology. “Which God will bring about in his own time, God the blessed and only ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever.” That’s doxology. Doing it with a single-eyed view to bring glory to God.

It’s not just in passages like this. In the Pastoral Epistles here’s Paul again, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 15. He is describing his ministry and he says, “All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are begin renewed day by day, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

That’s eschatology, and all of this, we’re told in verse 15, is so that people may offer thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. The fact of the matter is, it is easy for us to say we’re doing this for the glory of God and recite these things creedally and out of habit, isn’t it. It’s easy to do that, and yet our own self-identity can become so tied up with our ministry, whether we’re Sunday school teachers or choirmasters or organists or whatever we’re doing.

It can become so tied up with our ministry that how people respond to us depends on how they think of us doing our little bit for God, but in the Bible we serve genuinely to bring glory to God, and it transforms all of our ministry, doesn’t it? How we view things, what we cherish, what we value, why we do it; it changes our motives.

And this in the light of the end. We know that Christ is coming back. We will give an account of our stewardship, and we are building toward eternity, serving in the church of the living God, preparing men and women for the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness, and that changes everything. Let us pray.

So forbid, Lord God, that we should think of leadership in purely secularized terms, but bow before the Lord Christ, the servant leader, strong, yet who offered up his own life that others might live. Grant that we, too, may serve and live in light of the cross. For Jesus’ sake, amen.