Bonafide Elders

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)

God has called His church to order and structure—so who are its leaders, and what qualifies them?

God Transforms Our Desires

Many of us can remember being five or six years old and knowing exactly what we wanted to be when we grew up. For me it was a firefighter—I had the red jacket, the red hat, and I'd make my dad take me to see the fire engines. By fourteen I wanted to be a pyrotechnician—the complete opposite—wanting to blow things up rather than put fires out. I became neither. Over time, our desires change.

Time changes our desires, but so does God. When you put your faith in Jesus, He begins to transform the things you desire. Three thousand years ago David wrote in Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." On its face this seems like an epic promise, and it is—but it is often misinterpreted.

Many teachers, on the radio and on television, treat this as a promise that if you delight in God He will give you whatever your heart desires. That sounds good, because the heart is a desire factory—running all day, every day, especially in a culture built to draw out our desires. I drive around and think, I want a Tesla, I need an iPhone 10, I want a caramel brulée latte, an apple fritter, my kids to obey. We start treating God like a cashier at In-N-Out: I want this, animal style, got it.

The Better Interpretation

That common interpretation doesn't fit the rest of Scripture, nor does it fit our observation of real life. A better reading is this: as you begin to delight in the good things of who God is and what He has done—discovered through the Bible and Bible teaching—God gives you new desires. As I shift my delights, God shifts my desires. Paul wrote that "it is God who is working in you, giving you desire."

This is one of the earliest evidences of salvation. When you are born again, you become a new creation, and one of the first indications 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. Just as a child desires to be something when he grows up, a new believer is given new desires to be and do something new.

A Universal Desire to Serve

Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:1, "This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work." In nearly twenty years of serving in a church, I've observed that as people follow Jesus, a desire to serve God naturally wells up within them. It is a good and universal shift in the Christian heart.

This raises a challenging point. If you say you're a Christian but you have no desire to serve God, it may be worth spending time privately in prayer this week: "God, search my heart and see if my delights are out of order." When our delights are fixed on things that have nothing to do with God, our desires land in the wrong place. A lack of desire to serve may indicate something off course in your life.

Desire Alone Does Not Qualify

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—if every week you serve in children's ministry or hospitality and wake up dreading it, unable to do it cheerfully, I'm not sure God is calling you to that role. Yet I've also seen God transform people: someone who used to say "I hate children" now loves serving in the third-grade classroom. That's God transforming you from the inside out.

In 1 Timothy 3 Paul names two groups of servants in the church. One is called bishops, elders, or overseers; the other, in verses 8–13, are deacons—a word that simply means servants. Both groups serve, but elders have a distinctive task of overseeing. Our church was birthed out of the Calvary Chapel movement and now partners with the Southern Baptist Convention. Calvary churches don't often use the words "elders" and "deacons," but every church has these people, whatever they call them. The point is that those who occupy these roles must be qualified leaders.

The qualifications are not training, degrees, or programs. They are transformative characteristics that God has worked in a person's life.

The Context: A Leadership Problem at Ephesus

We must remember the context. In 1 Timothy 3:14–15 Paul writes, "These things I write to you... so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." The 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, but when he returned he found it off course. Timothy drew the short straw and was left there to get it back on track. Often a church that is off course is off course because of a leadership problem. The most common leadership problem I've seen is that the people who are supposed to be leading are not leading. No one stands at the helm, and the church drifts.

Men, the Headship Question

Men, this is an important value here. Last week we considered the role of women in the church, and this passage continues that theme. If you are not doing the work God has called you to as a husband in the home, expect a problem in how the home is running. As we go through Scripture, we see God has established a created order and headship, calling men to be responsible for it both in the home and in the church.

When men drop the ball, a very capable wife will step in and lead. This is not an issue of capability—women in the church are very capable leaders. It's an issue of calling and created order. The chief mark of the leadership Jesus ordains is servant leadership. When we counsel a couple in conflict, and the husband says "she's not submitting," we ask, "Husband, are you loving your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her?" More than ninety percent of the time there's a sheepish look. Guys, take this one to heart.

That was the situation at Ephesus. Capable women were stepping up because the men were not, and Paul says this needs to be addressed largely by men occupying the roles God calls them to occupy. So when anyone desires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work. Our doctrinal position at this church is that the role of overseeing elder is for men. And if you want your wife to follow you as the Bible describes, take seriously the role of leader God has given you. If you don't know how, come talk to us—we want to learn this together. None of the pastors are perfect at this, but we let the Word inform how we are husbands, fathers, and employees.

The Good Work Requires Qualified Workers

Point three: the good work of elders requires qualified good workers. I could spend weeks parsing every term in the Greek, but you are reasonable people and most of these are not hard to interpret. If a word trips you up, read it in one of the other translations freely available on the YouVersion Bible app.

"Blameless" means above reproach—nothing in his life that could be rebuked, a good reputation that says he is walking after the Scriptures. "Temperate" means a good temper—how many of you have worked under a boss with a bad temper? Such a man shouldn't lead in the church. "Sober-minded" means even-keeled, not impulsive; impulsive people don't make good leaders. "Of good behavior"—you don't need a master's in divinity to spot good and bad behavior. "Hospitable" means generous with his things; a miser doesn't make a good overseer.

Qualified Elders Display the Fruit of the Spirit

Point four: qualified elders must display the fruit of the Spirit. That phrase comes from Galatians 5. If the Spirit of God dwells in you, certain things are produced in your life—love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control, patience. These should be evident in the lives of those who lead.

Now let me take the four qualifications that tend to trip people up.

First, "the husband of one wife." This does not require that elders be married—Paul himself was unmarried, and he was an overseer. It means a leader must be a one-woman man. As one commentator put it, the biblical leader is "not a playboy, not an adulterer, a flirt; he does not show romantic or sexual interest in other women, including depictions or images of women in pornography." He must be committed to his bride. This phrase also implies, again, that the overseeing role is for male leadership.

Able to Teach

Second, "able to teach." This is not a requirement to be a spectacular orator. Again, that would disqualify Paul, who tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:1, "When I came to you, I did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom... I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling... my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Paul wrote a third of the New Testament, but he was not a great public speaker.

So "able to teach" tells us that teaching is a distinctive task of the overseeing elder—unlike deacons, who are not necessarily set apart for it. In Titus, Paul adds that elders must "hold fast the faithful word as they have been taught, that they may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict." Elders must know the Bible well enough to instruct others and to correct someone who is off course.

Not Given to Wine

Third, "not given to wine." This issue has divided entire churches and movements. The Calvary Chapel movement has been in an ongoing split over alcohol since the death of its founder, Chuck Smith, in 2012. Some say alcohol is forbidden for Christians, or for leaders; others say it's permitted.

Look at the translations: the New Living says "not a heavy drinker"; the NIV, "not given to drunkenness"; the ESV, "not a drunkard"; the Christian Standard, "not an excessive drinker"; the NASB, "not addicted to wine." Paul is not forbidding alcohol—he is forbidding drunkenness, which Scripture always forbids. We know he isn't banning it because two chapters later, in 1 Timothy 5:23, he tells Timothy, "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities."

So our position: nowhere is wine itself forbidden, but drunkenness always is. Therefore, if you cannot drink in moderation, you cannot drink. If you have a background of addiction and one drink would lead you to lose control, you cannot drink. But we cannot be legalistic toward those who do not struggle and who never drink to excess. Pastors ask me my "alcohol policy" for staff, elders, and deacons. My answer: I will not prescribe any rule that would disqualify Jesus or Paul from ministry. Jesus drank—people even accused Him of being a drunkard, though He never sinned in it. Paul drank but not to drunkenness. If your church disqualifies Jesus from ministry, you've gone too far.

Ruling His Own House Well

Fourth, "having his children in submission with all reverence." This does not require an elder to have children—again, that would disqualify Jesus and Paul. Nor does it mean perfect children, thank God. Pastors' kids often treat the church like an extension of their home; mine come here and act like it's our living room, and we're constantly saying, "Settle down, this isn't our house."

It also doesn't mean an elder must have adult children walking in righteousness. Some churches have made leaders step down because a grown child left the faith. But our children become free moral agents who make decisions we don't always like; they may even stop going to church. This qualification means the overseer is seeking to be a good, godly father in the home, not duplicitous—godly at church and something else at home—governing his household as Ephesians 6:4 prescribes: "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 is not leading his own home?

Elders Can Be Disqualified

If there are qualifications to become an elder, then point five: by their conduct or misconduct, elders can be disqualified. Sadly, this happens, often publicly—rarely a year passes without a well-known pastor disqualified by adultery, greed, or simply being a harsh, obnoxious, mean person who displays the works of the flesh rather than the fruit of the Spirit.

This reminds us that the position of overseeing elder is an honorable one and must be held in honor by the person occupying it. Reaching that position does not mean a man has "arrived" and can cast everything off. Paul told the Corinthians he disciplined himself, "lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." The leaders of the church must maintain conduct in line with these qualifications, because this is an honorable role—to serve as an under-shepherd beneath the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Closing Prayer

Father, I thank You that You inspired Paul to write the qualifications for those who lead in oversight positions in the church. I pray You would raise up from our church more deacons—men and women—and more elders who would lead and serve Your church, so that we would fulfill the mission You've called us to. Help us to maintain our course, to stay on course, and to bring glory to You through the work of this church. Compel our church body to pray for the leaders of this church, that we would lead in a way that exalts and honors Your name. Pour out Your Spirit upon us as a church body, we ask in Jesus' name.

God, we thank You that Your saving power transforms our desires and our souls; may that be clearly seen in our lives this week. I don't know anyone but You, Jesus, who perfectly fulfills every qualification listed here. But by Your grace, by Your power, by Your Spirit at work in us, enable us this week to bring glory and honor to You in our conduct, our thoughts, and our words. And if in any way our lives or our church are off course, by Your Spirit help us to get on course, to bring glory to You and to fulfill our purpose. In Jesus' name, and now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.