1 Timothy 3:1

This is a faithful saying. If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence... Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. — 1 Timothy 3:1–7

When God saves a soul, He also begins to change what that soul wants—and one of the earliest new desires is the desire to serve Him.

Changing Desires

Many of us can remember a very specific childhood memory of what we wanted to be when we grew up. For me, it was not very original—I had a red jacket and a red hat, and I wanted to be a firefighter. By the time I was fourteen, that had flipped completely: I wanted to be a pyrotechnician, blowing things up instead of putting fires out. I became neither. Over time, our desires change.

Time is not the only thing that changes our desires. When you put your faith in Jesus, God begins to transform your desires. Three thousand years ago David wrote, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). On its face it sounds like an epic promise, and many teach it that way—as though if you delight in God, He will give you whatever you want.

What Delight Really Promises

The problem is that interpretation doesn't fit the rest of Scripture or our own experience. My heart is a desire factory, manufacturing wants from the moment I wake until I sleep, and our culture is built around drawing those desires out. We sometimes treat God like the cashier at In-N-Out, ordering whatever we want, animal style.

A better reading is this: as I begin to take delight in God—discovering through the Bible all He has done for me and is doing in me—God plants new desires in my heart. As I shift my delights, God shifts my desires. Paul wrote that "it is God who is working in you, giving you desire." One of the earliest evidences of the indwelling Holy Spirit is that your desires begin to change.

Point one: God's saving power transforms our desires as well as our souls. When you are born again, you become a new creation in Christ, and He gives you new desires to be and do something new with your life. That is the shift Paul describes in 1 Timothy 3:1—a natural, good thing for a Christian to desire to serve God.

If you say you are a Christian but have no desire to serve God, it may be good to take time privately in prayer and ask God to search your heart and see whether your delights are out of order. The desire to serve—and even to lead other believers—is a universally experienced shift in the life of the Christian, both for men and women. That is why many translations render it, "If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task."

Desire Is Not Enough

But just as my desire to be a firefighter didn't make me one, point two: desire alone does not qualify for service. Desire is important and good. If you are serving in some capacity—children's ministry, hospitality—and you cannot do it cheerfully and joyfully, I'm not sure God is asking you to serve there. Yet I've watched God's transforming power so often: someone says, "I used to hate children, and now I serve in the third grade classroom and love it." That is God transforming us from the inside out.

In 1 Timothy 3, Paul gives qualifications for two groups of servants in the church. One group is called bishops, elders, or overseers; the other, addressed in verses 8–13 next week, is deacons—a word that simply means servants. Both groups are servants, but elders have a distinctive task of overseeing and teaching.

Our church was birthed out of the Calvary Chapel movement, where we don't often use the words elders and deacons, though in recent years we've partnered with the Southern Baptist Convention, where those terms are common. Every church has these people; they may be called servants, volunteers, helpers, or leaders. The basic point of 1 Timothy 3 is that those who occupy these roles must be qualified—not by degrees or training, but by the transformative work God has done in them.

The Context: A Leadership Problem

We always have to remember the context. Look at verses 14–15: Paul writes so that Timothy "may know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." This whole letter is about how the people who make up the church should conduct themselves.

Paul had planted the church at Ephesus about a decade earlier, and when he returned he found it off course because of a leadership problem. Many churches go off course for exactly this reason. One of the most common problems I've observed in churches and other organizations is people who are supposed to be the leaders but are not leading. No one was standing at the helm, so Paul left Timothy there to lead.

Men, this is important. God has called you to be leaders in the household, responsible for the headship He established in His created order—and that same order is reflected in the church. When men drop the ball and fail to do the work God calls them to, a very capable wife will step in and lead. This is not about capability; women in the church are very capable. It is about calling and created order.

Nine times out of ten, when a couple comes for marriage counseling and the husband complains, "She's not submitting," we ask, "Husband, are you loving your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her?" More than 90 percent of the time there's a sheepish look. When the husband is not giving the leadership the Bible calls him to, breakdown follows. That is evidently what was happening at Ephesus, and it is why Paul addressed the role of women in the previous passage—capable women were stepping up because men were not.

The Doctrine of the Overseer

This is the doctrinal position we hold at Cross Connection Church: the role of an overseeing elder, with its distinctive tasks, is a role for men within the church. A side note to husbands: if you want your wife to follow you as the Bible describes, take seriously the leadership God has called you to. If you don't know how, come talk to us. None of the pastors are perfect at this, but we're seeking to let God's Word inform how we are husbands, fathers, and employees.

Point three: the good work of elders requires qualified good workers. I could spend weeks parsing the Greek of every qualification, but you are reasonable people and most of these are not hard to interpret. If a phrase puzzles you, read it in another translation on the YouVersion app. "Blameless" means above reproach—nothing rebukable, a good reputation. "Temperate" means a good temper; how many of you have worked for a boss with a bad temper? "Sober-minded" means sound mind, not impulsive—impulsive people don't make good leaders. "Hospitable" means generous with their stuff; a miser does not make a good overseer.

Point four, the simple principle: qualified elders must display the fruit of the Spirit. That phrase comes from Galatians 5—love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control, patience. These things begin to be seen in the life of anyone who has the Spirit of God in them.

Four Qualifications That Trip People Up

The husband of one wife. This does not require that elders be married—Paul himself was unmarried and was clearly an overseer. It means that if the elder is married, he must be a one-woman man. As one commentator put it, the biblical leader is not a playboy, an adulterer, or a flirt; he shows no romantic or sexual interest in other women, including pornography. This also reinforces that the overseeing role is for male leadership.

Able to teach. This is not a requirement to be a spectacular orator. That would disqualify Paul, who wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:1, "My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Teaching is a distinctive task of the elder. To Titus, Paul says elders must "hold fast the faithful word... that they may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict." The elder must know the Bible well enough to instruct others and bring conviction when someone is off course.

Not given to wine. This issue has divided entire churches and movements. The Calvary Chapel movement has been in an ongoing split partly over the use of alcohol. Look at the translations: "not a heavy drinker," "not given to drunkenness," "not a drunkard," "not an excessive drinker," "not addicted to wine." Paul is not forbidding alcohol; he is forbidding addiction and drunkenness. In fact, two chapters later he tells Timothy, "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities" (1 Timothy 5:23).

Nowhere in Scripture is wine forbidden, but drunkenness is always forbidden. Therefore, if you cannot drink in moderation, you cannot drink. If you have a background of alcoholism and one drink would set you off, you cannot drink. But we cannot be legalistic; for those who do not struggle with drunkenness, moderate use is permitted. My position on alcohol policy is simple: I will not prescribe any rule that would disqualify Jesus or Paul from ministry. Jesus drank—He was even accused of being a drunkard—yet He never drank to drunkenness. If your church disqualifies Jesus from ministry, you may have gone too far.

Children in submission with all reverence. First, this does not require an elder to have children—again, that would disqualify Jesus and Paul. Second, it does not require perfect children. I have four; our family ministries pastor has five; pastors' kids treat the church like an extension of their home, and we're constantly reminding them this isn't our house. Third, it doesn't even require adult children who are walking in righteousness, because our grown children are free moral agents who make their own decisions. What it means is that the overseer must seek to be a good father at home as he is a leader at church—no duplicity—governing his home as Scripture prescribes. As Paul says in Ephesians 6:4, "You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." How can a man take care of the church of God if he does not lead his own home well first?

Elders Can Be Disqualified

If there are qualifications to become an elder, then point five: by their conduct or misconduct, elders can be disqualified. Rarely does a year go by without some well-known pastor being removed from ministry—through adultery, through greed in taking from the church, or through simply being a jerk: rude, obnoxious, displaying the works of the flesh rather than the fruit of the Spirit.

This reminds us that the office of overseeing elder is honorable and should be held in honor by the one occupying it. Reaching the position does not mean you have arrived and may cast everything off; you can be disqualified. Paul told the Corinthians he worked hard in his private life "lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." The leaders of the church should seek to maintain conduct in line with these qualifications, because this is an honorable position—to lead as an under-shepherd beneath the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You for this church. As Paul would often do, compel our church body to pray for the leaders of this church, that we would lead well, in a way that exalts and honors Your name and Your church. Pour out Your Spirit upon us as a church body, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.