Verses 1-16
Chapter 3
3:1-7 There is a
saying which everyone must believe--if a man aspires to the office of
overseer in the Church, it is a fine work on which his heart is set. An
overseer must be a man against whom no criticism can be made; he must
have been married only once; he must be sober, prudent, well-behaved,
hospitable and possessed of an aptitude for teaching. He must not
over-indulge in wine, nor must he be the kind of man who assaults
others, but he must be gentle and peaceable, and free from the love of
money. He must manage his own house well, keeping his children under
control with complete dignity. (If a man does not know how to manage his
own house, how can he take charge of the congregation of God?) He must
not be a recent convert, in case he becomes inflated with a sense of his
own importance, and so fall into the same condemnation as the devil
did. He must have earned the respect of those outside the Church, that
he may not fall into reproach and into the snare of the devil.
This is a very important passage from the point of view of
Church government. It deals with the man whom the King James and Revised
Standard Versions call the bishop, and whom we have translated
overseer.
In the New Testament there are two words which describe the
principal office-bearers of the Church, the office-bearers who were to
be found in every congregation, and on whose conduct and administration
its welfare depended.
(i) There was the man who was called the elder (presbuteros, Greek #4245).
The eldership is the most ancient of all offices within the Church. The
Jews had their elders, and they traced their origin to the occasion
when Moses, in the desert wanderings, appointed seventy men to help him
in the task of controlling and caring for the people (Numbers 11:16).
Every synagogue had its elders, and they were the real leaders of the
Jewish community. They presided over the worship of the synagogue; they
administered rebuke and discipline where these were necessary; they
settled the disputes which other nations would have taken to the
law-courts. Amongst the Jews the elders were the respected men who
exercised a fatherly oversight over the spiritual and material affairs
of every Jewish community. But more nations than the Jews had an
eldership. The presiding body of the Spartans was called the gerousia (Greek #1087),
which means the board of the elder men. The Parliament of Rome was
called the senate, which comes from senex, which means an old man. In
England the men who looked after the affairs of the community were
called the aldermen, which means the elder men. In New Testament times
every Egyptian village had its village elders who looked after the
affairs of the community. The elders had a long history, and they had a
place in the life of almost every community.
(ii) But sometimes the New Testament uses another word, episkopos (Greek #1985),
which the King James and Revised Standard Versions translate bishop,
and which literally means overseer, or superintendent. This word, too,
has a long and honourable history. The Septuagint, the Greek version of
the Hebrew scriptures, uses it to describe those who were the
taskmasters, who were over the public works and public building schemes (2 Chronicles 34:17).
The Greeks use it to describe the men appointed to go out from the
mother city to regulate the affairs of a newly founded colony in some
distant place. They use it to describe what we might call commissioners
appointed to regulate the affairs of a city. The Romans use it to
describe the magistrates appointed to oversee the sale of food within
the city of Rome. It is used of the special delegates appointed by a
king to see that the laws he had laid down were carried out. Episkopos (Greek #1985)
always implies two things; first, oversight over some area or sphere of
work and second, responsibility to some higher power and authority.
The great question is: What was the relationship in the early Church between the elder, the presbuteros (Greek #4245), and the overseer, the episkopos (Greek #1985)?
Modern scholarship is practically unanimous in holding that in the early Church the presbuteros (Greek #4245) and the episkopos (Greek #1985)
were one and the same. The grounds for that identification are: (a)
Elders were everywhere appointed. After the first missionary journey,
Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in all the Churches they had founded (Acts 14:23). Titus is instructed to appoint and ordain elders in all the cities of Crete (Titus 1:5). (b) The qualifications of a presbuteros (Greek #4245) and of an episkopos (Greek #1985) are to all intents and purposes identical (1 Timothy 3:2-7; Titus 1:6-9). (c) At the beginning of Philippians, Paul's greetings are to the bishops and the deacons (Philippians 1:1).
It is quite impossible that Paul would have sent no greetings at all to
the elders, who, as we have already seen, were in every Church; and
therefore the bishops and the elders must be one and the same body of
people. (d) When Paul was on his last journey to Jerusalem, he sent for
the elders of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus (Acts 20:17), and in the course of his talk to them he says that God has made them episkopoi (Greek #1985) to feed the Church of God (Acts 20:28).
That is to say, he addresses precisely the same body of men first as
elders and second as bishops or overseers. (e) When Peter is writing to
his people, he talks to them as an elder to elders (1 Peter 5:1), and then he goes on to say that their function is oversight of the flock of God (1 Peter 5:2), and the word he uses for oversight, is the verb episkopein (Greek #1983) from which episkopos (Greek #1985) comes. All the evidence from the New Testament goes to prove that the presbuteros (Greek #4245) and the episkopos (Greek #1985), the elder and the bishop or overseer, were one and the same person.
Two questions arise. First, if they were the same, why were there two names for them? The answer is that presbuteros (Greek #4245)
described these leaders of the Church as they personally were. They
were the elder men, the older and respected members of the community.
Episkopos (Greek #1985),
on the other hand, described their function, which was to oversee the
life and the work of the Church. The one word described the man; the
other described his task.
The second question is--if the elder and the bishop were
originally the same, how did the bishop become what he did? The answer
is simple. Inevitably the body of the elders would acquire a leader.
Someone to lead would be essential and would inevitably emerge. The more
organized the Church became, the more such a figure would be bound to
arise. And the elder who stood out as leader came to be called the
episkopos (Greek #1985),
the superintendent of the Church. But it is to be noted that he was
simply a leader amongst equals. He was in fact the elder whom
circumstances and personal qualities had combined to make a leader for
the work of the Church.
It will be seen that to translate episkopos (Greek #1985)
by the word bishop in the New Testament now gives the word a misleading
meaning. It is better to translate it overseer or superintendent.
This passage is further interesting in that it tells us something of
the appointment and the duties of the leaders of the Church.
(i) They were formally set apart for their office. Titus was to ordain elders in every Church (Titus 1:5).
The office-bearer of the Church is not made an office-bearer in secret;
he is set apart before the eyes of men; the honour of the Church is
publicly delivered into his hands.
(ii) They had to undergo a period of testing. They had first to be proved (1 Timothy 3:10).
No one builds a bridge or a piece of machinery with metal which has not
been tested. The Church might do well to be more strict than she is in
the testing of those chosen for leadership.
(iii) They were paid for the work which they had to do. The labourer was worthy of his hire (1 Timothy 5:18).
The Christian leader does not work for pay, but, on the other hand, the
duty of the Church which chose him for the work is to supply him with
the means to live.
(iv) They were liable to censure (1 Timothy 5:19-22).
In the early Church the office-bearer had a double function. He was a
leader of the Church; but he was also the servant of the Church. He had
to answer for his stewardship. No Christian office-bearer must ever
consider himself answerable to no one; he is answerable to God and to
the people over whom God gave him the task of presiding.
(v) They had the duty of presiding over the Christian assembly and of teaching the Christian congregation (1 Timothy 5:17).
The Christian office-bearer has the double duty of administration and
instruction. It may well be that one of the tragedies of the modern
Church is that the administrative function of the office-bearer has
usurped the teaching function almost entirely. It is, for instance, sad
to see how few elders of the Church are actively engaged in the teaching
work of Sunday schools.
(vi) The office-bearer was not to be a recent convert. Two
reasons are given for this advice. The first is quite clear. It is "in
case he becomes inflated with a sense of his own importance." The second
is not so clear. It is, as the Revised Standard Version has it, "lest
he fall into the condemnation of the devil." There are three possible
explanations of that strange phrase. (a) It was through his pride that
Lucifer rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven. And this may
simply be a second warning against the danger of pride. (b) It may mean
that, if the too quickly advanced convert becomes guilty of pride, he
gives the devil a chance to level his charges against him. A conceited
Church office-bearer gives the devil a chance to say to critics of the
Church: "Look! There's your Christian! There's your Church member!
That's what an office-bearer is like!" (c) The word diabolos (Greek #1228)
has two meanings. It means "Devil," and that is the way in which the
Revised Standard Version has taken it here; but it also means
"slanderer." It is in fact the word used for slanderer in 1 Timothy 3:11,
where the women are forbidden to be slanderers. So then this phrase may
mean that the recent convert, who has been appointed to office, and has
acquired, as we say, a swelled head, gives opportunity to the
slanderers. His unworthy conduct is ammunition for those who are
ill-disposed to the Church. No matter how we take it, the point is that
the conceited Church official is a bad debt to the Church.
But, as the early Church saw it, the responsibility of the
office-bearer did not begin and end in the Church. He had two other
spheres of responsibility, and if he failed in them, he was bound also
to fail in the Church.
(i) His first sphere of duty was his own home. If a man did not
know how to rule his own household, how could he engage upon the task of
ruling the congregation of the Church? (1 Timothy 3:5).
A man who had not succeeded in making a Christian home could hardly be
expected to succeed in making a Christian congregation. A man who had
not instructed his own family could hardly be the right man to instruct
the family of the Church.
(ii) The second sphere of responsibility was the world. He must be "well thought of by outsiders" (1 Timothy 3:7).
He must be a man who has gained the respect of his fellow-men in the
day-to-day business of life. Nothing has hurt the Church more than the
sight of people who are active in it, whose business and social life
belies the faith which they profess and the precepts which they teach.
The Christian office-bearer must first of all be a good man.
We have just seen that the Christian leader must be a man who has won
the respect of all. In this passage there is a great series of words
and phrases describing his character; and it will be worth while to look
at each in turn. Before we do that it will be interesting to set beside
them two famous descriptions by great heathen thinkers of the good
leader's character. Diogenes Laertius (7: 116-126) hands down to us the
Stoic description. He must be married; he must be without pride; he must
be temperate; and he must combine prudence of mind with excellence of
outward behaviour. A writer called Onosander gives us the other. He must
be prudent, self-controlled, sober, frugal, enduring in toil,
intelligent, without love of money, neither young nor old, if possible
the father of a family, able to speak competently, and of good
reputation. It is interesting to see how the pagan and the Christian
descriptions coincide.
The Christian leader must be a man against whom no criticism can be made (anepileptos, Greek #423).
Anepileptos is used of a position which is not open to attack, of a
life which is not open to censure, of an art or technique which is so
perfect that no fault can be found with it, of an agreement which is
inviolable. The Christian leader must not only be free from such faults
as can be assailed by definite charges; he must be of such fine
character as to be even beyond criticism. The Rheims version of the New
Testament translates this Greek word by the very unusual English word
irreprehensible, unable to be found fault with. The Greeks themselves
defined the word as meaning "affording nothing of which an adversary can
take hold." Here is the ideal of perfection. We will not be able fully
to attain to it; but the fact remains that the Christian leader must
seek to offer to the world a life of such purity that he leaves no
loophole even for criticism of himself.
The Christian leader must have been married only once. The Greek
literally means that he must be "the husband of one wife." Some take
this to mean that the Christian leader must be a married man, and it is
possible that the phrase could mean that. It is certainly true that a
married man can be a recipient of confidences and a bringer of help in a
way that a single man cannot be, and that he can bring a special
understanding and sympathy to many a situation. Some few take it to mean
that the Christian leader cannot marry a second time, even after his
wife's death. In support they quote Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 7:1-40
. But in its context here we can be quite certain that the phrase means
that the Christian leader must be a loyal husband, preserving marriage
in all its purity. In later days the Apostolic Canons laid it down: "He
who is involved in two marriages, after his baptism, or he who has taken
a concubine, cannot be an episkopos (Greek #1985), a bishop."
We may well ask why it should be necessary to lay down what
looks obvious. We must understand the state of the world in which this
was written. It has been said, and with much truth, that the only
totally new virtue which Christianity brought into this world was
chastity. In many ways the ancient world was in a state of moral chaos,
even the Jewish world. Astonishing as it may seem, certain Jews still
practised polygamy. In the Dialogue with Trypho, in which Justin Martyr
discusses Christianity with a Jew, it is said that "it is possible for a
Jew even now to have four or five wives" (Dialogue with Trypho, 134).
Josephus can write: "By ancestral custom a man can live with more than
one wife" (Antiquities of the Jews, 17: 1, 2).
Apart altogether from these unusual cases, divorce was
tragically easy in the Jewish world. The Jews had the highest ideals of
marriage. They said that a man must surrender his life rather than
commit murder, idolatry or adultery. They had the belief that marriages
are made in heaven. In the story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca it
is said: "The thing comes from the Lord" (Genesis 24:50). This was taken to mean that the marriage was arranged by God. So it is said in Proverbs 19:14
: "A prudent wife is from the Lord." In the story of Tobit, the angel
says to Tobit: "Fear not for she was prepared for thee from the
beginning" (Tobit 6:17).
The Rabbis said: "God sits in heaven arranging marriages." "Forty days
before the child is formed a heavenly voice proclaims its mate."
For all that, the Jewish law allowed divorce. Marriage was
indeed the ideal but divorce was permitted. Marriage was "inviolable but
not indissoluble." The Jews held that once the marriage ideal had been
shattered by cruelty or infidelity or incompatibility, it was far better
to allow a divorce and to permit the two to make a fresh start. The
great tragedy was that the wife had no rights whatsoever. Josephus says:
"With us it is lawful for a husband to dissolve a marriage, but a wife,
if she departs from her husband, cannot marry another, unless her
former husband put her away" (Antiquities of the Jews, 15: 8, 7). In a
case of divorce by consent, in the time of the New Testament, all that
was required was two witnesses, and no court case at all. A husband
could send his wife away for any cause; at the most a wife could
petition the court to urge her husband to write her a bill of
divorcement, but it could not compel him even to do that.
In face of that situation, things came to such a pass that
"women refused to contract marriages, and men grew grey and celibate." A
brake was put upon this process by legislation introduced by Simon ben
Shetah. A Jewish wife always brought her husband a dowry which was
called Kethubah. Simon enacted that a man had unrestricted use of the
Kethubah, so long as he remained married to his wife, but on divorce he
was absolutely liable to repay it, even if he had "to sell his hair" to
do so. This checked divorce; but the Jewish system was always vitiated
by the fact that the wife had no rights.
In the heathen world things were infinitely worse. There, too,
according to Roman law, the wife had no rights. Cato said: "If you were
to take your wife in adultery, you could kill her with impunity, without
any court judgment; but if you were involved in adultery, she would not
dare to lift a finger against you, for it is unlawful." Things grew so
bad, and marriage grew so irksome, that in 131 B.C. a well-known Roman
called Metellus Macedonicus made a statement which Augustus was
afterwards to quote: "If we could do without wives, we would be rid of
that nuisance. But since nature has decreed that we can neither live
comfortably with them, nor live at all without them, we must look rather
to our permanent interests than to passing pleasure."
Even the Roman poets saw the dreadfulness of the situation.
"Ages rich in sin," wrote Horace, "were the first to taint marriage and
family life. From this source the evil has overflowed." "Sooner will the
seas be dried up," said Propertius, "and the stars be raft from heaven,
than our women reformed." Ovid wrote his famous, or infamous, book The
Art of love, and never from beginning to end mentions married love. He
wrote cynically: "These women alone are pure who are unsolicited, and a
man who is angry at his wife's love affair is nothing but a rustic
boor." Seneca declared: "Anyone whose affairs have not become notorious,
and who does not pay a married woman a yearly fee, is despised by women
as a mere lover of girls; in fact husbands are got as a mere decoy for
lovers." "Only the ugly," he said, "are loyal." "A woman who is content
to have only two followers is a paragon of virtue." Tacitus commended
the supposedly barbarian German tribes for "not laughing at evil, and
not making seduction the spirit of the age." When a marriage took place,
the home to which the couple were going was decorated with green bay
leaves. Juvenal said that there were those who entered on divorce before
the bays of welcome had faded. In 19 B.C. a man named Quintus Lucretius
Vespillo erected a tablet to his wife which said: "Seldom do marriages
last until death undivorced; but ours continued happily for forty-one
years." The happy marriage was the astonishing exception.
Ovid and Pliny had three wives; Caesar and Antony had four;
Sulla and Pompey had five; Herod had nine; Cicero's daughter Tullia had
three husbands. The Emperor Nero was the third husband of Poppaea and
the fifth husband of Statilla Messalina.
It was not for nothing that the Pastorals laid it down that the
Christian leader must be the husband of one wife. In a world where even
the highest places were deluged with immorality, the Christian Church
must demonstrate the chastity, the stability and the sanctity of the
Christian home.
The Christian leader must be sober (nephalios, Greek #3524) and he must not over-indulge in wine, (paroinos, Greek #3943).
In the ancient world wine was continually used. Where the water supply
was very inadequate and sometimes dangerous, wine was the most natural
drink of all. It is wine which cheers the hearts of gods and men ( 9:13). In the restoration of Israel she will plant her vineyards and drink her wine (Amos 9:14). Strong drink is given to those who are ready to perish, and wine to those whose hearts are heavy (Proverbs 31:6).
This is not to say that the ancient world was not fully alive to
the dangers of strong drink. Proverbs speaks of the disaster which
comes to the man who looks on the wine when it is red (Proverbs 23:29-35). Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler (Proverbs 20:1). There are terrible stories of what happened to people through over-indulgence in wine. There is the case of Noah (Genesis 9:18-27); of Lot (Genesis 19:30-38); of Amnon (2 Samuel 13:28-29).
Although the ancient world used wine as the commonest of all drinks, it
used it most abstemiously. When wine was drunk, it was drunk in the
proportion of two parts of wine to three parts of water. A man who was
drunken would be disgraced in ordinary heathen society, let alone in the
Church.
The interesting thing is the double meaning that both words in this section possess. Nephalios (Greek #3524) means sober, but it also means watchful and vigilant; paroinos (Greek #3943)
means addicted to wine, but it also means quarrelsome and violent. The
point that the Pastorals make here is that the Christian must allow
himself no indulgence which would lessen his Christian vigilance or soil
his Christian conduct.
There follow two Greek words which describe two great qualities
which must characterize the Christian leader. He must be prudent
(sophron, Greek #4998) and well-behaved (kosmios, Greek #2887).
We have translated sophron (Greek #4998)
by prudent, but it is virtually untranslatable. It is variously
translated of sound mind, discreet, prudent, self-controlled, chaste,
having complete control over sensual desires. The Greeks derived it from
two words which mean to keep one's mind safe and sound. The
corresponding noun is sophrosune (Greek #4997),
and the Greeks wrote and thought much about it. It is the opposite of
intemperance and lack of self-control. Plato defined it as "the mastery
of pleasure and desire." Aristotle defined it as "that power by which
the pleasures of the body are used as law commands." Philo defined it as
"a certain limiting and ordering of the desires, which eliminates those
which are external and excessive, and which adorns those which are
necessary with timeliness and moderation." Pythagoras said that it was
"the foundation on which the soul rests." Iamblichus said that "it is
the safeguard of the most excellent habits in life." Euripides said that
it was "the fairest gift of God." Jeremy Taylor called it "reason's
girdle and passion's bridle." Trench describes sophrosune (Greek #4997)
as "the condition of entire command over the passions and desires, so
that they receive no further allowance than that which law and right
reason admit and approve." Gilbert Murray wrote of sophron (Greek #4998): "There is a way of thinking which destroys and a way which saves. The man or woman who is sophron (Greek #4998)
walks among the beauties and perils of the world, feeling love, joy,
anger, and the rest; and through all he has that in his mind which
saves. Whom does it save? Not him only, but, as we should say, the whole
situation. It saves the imminent evil from coming to be." E. F. Brown
quotes in illustration of sophrosune (Greek #4997) a prayer of Thomas Aquinas which asks for "a quieting of all our impulses, fleshly and spiritual."
The man who is sophron (Greek #4998) has every part of his nature under perfect control, which is to say that the man who is sophron (Greek #4998) is the man in whose heart Christ reigns supreme.
The companion word is kosmios (Greek #2887), which we have translated well-behaved. If a man is kosmios (Greek #2887) in his outer conduct it is because he is sophron (Greek #4998) in his inner life. Kosmios (Greek #2887)
means orderly, honest, decorous. In Greek it has two special usages. It
is common in tributes and in inscriptions to the dead. And it is
commonly used to describe the man who is a good citizen. Plato defines
the man who is kosmios (Greek #2887)
as "the citizen who is quiet in the land, who duly fulfils in his place
and order the duties which are incumbent upon him as such." This word
has more in it than simply good behaviour. It describes the man whose
life is beautiful and in whose character all things are harmoniously
integrated.
The leader of the Church must be a man who is sophron (Greek #4998), his every instinct and desire under perfect control; he must be a man who is kosmios (Greek #2887),
his inner control issuing in outward beauty. The leader must be one in
whose heart Christ's power reigns and on whose life Christ's beauty
shines.
The Christian leader must be hospitable (philoxenos, Greek #5382). This is a quality on which the New Testament lays much stress. Paul bids the Roman Church to "practise hospitality" (Romans 12:13). "Practise hospitality ungrudgingly to one another," says Peter (1 Peter 4:9). In the Shepherd of Hermas, one of the very early Christian writings, it is laid down: "The episkopos (Greek #1985)
must be hospitable, a man who gladly and at all times welcomes into his
house the servants of God." The Christian leader must be a man with an
open heart and an open house.
The ancient world was very careful of the rights of the guest.
The stranger was under the protection of Zeus Xenios, the Protector of
Strangers. in the ancient world, inns were notoriously bad. In one of
Aristophanes' plays Heracles asks his companion where they will lodge
for the night; and the answer is: "Where the fleas are fewest." Plato
speaks of the inn-keeper being like a pirate who holds his guests to
ransom. Inns tended to be dirty and expensive and, above all, immoral.
The ancient world had a system of what were called Guest Friendships.
Over generations families had arrangements to give each other
accommodation and hospitality. Often the members of the families came in
the end to be unknown to each other by sight and identified themselves
by means of what were called tallies. The stranger seeking accommodation
would produce one half of some object; the host would possess the other
half of the tally; and when the two halves fitted each other the host
knew that he had found his guest, and the guest knew that the host was
indeed the ancestral friend of his household.
In the Christian Church there were wandering teachers and
preachers who needed hospitality. There were also many slaves with no
homes of their own to whom it was a great privilege to have the right of
entry to a Christian home. It was of the greatest blessing that
Christians should have Christian homes ever open to them in which they
could meet people like-minded to themselves. We live in a world where
there are still many who are far from home, many who are strangers in a
strange place, many who live in conditions where it is hard to be a
Christian. The door of the Christian home and the welcome of the
Christian heart should be open to all such.
The Christian leader must be possessed of an aptitude for teaching (didaktikos, Greek #1317).
It has been said that his duty is "to preach to the unconverted and to
teach the converted." There are two things to be said about this. It is
one of the disasters of modern times that the teaching ministry of the
Church is not being exercised as it should. There is any amount of
topical preaching and any amount of exhortation; but there is little use
in exhorting a man to be a Christian when he does not know what being a
Christian means. Instruction is a primary duty of the Christian
preacher and leader. The second thing is this. The finest and the most
effective teaching is done not by speaking but by being. Even the man
with no gift of words can teach, by living in such a way that in him men
see the reflection of the Master. A saint has been defined as someone
"in whom Christ lives again."
The Christian leader must not be a man who assaults others (plektes, Greek #4131,
a striker). That this instruction was not unnecessary is seen in one of
the very early regulations of the Apostolic Canons: "A bishop, priest
or deacon who smites the faithful when they err, or the unbelievers when
they commit injury, and desires by such means as this to terrify them,
we command to be deposed; for nowhere hath the Lord taught us this. When
he was reviled, he reviled not again, but the contrary. When he was
smitten, he smote not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." It
will not be likely that any Christian leader will nowadays strike
another Christian, but the fact remains that blustering, bullying,
irritable, bad-tempered speech or action is forbidden to the Christian.
The Christian leader must be gentle. The Greek is epieikes (Greek #1933), another of these completely untranslatable words. The noun is epieikeia (Greek #1932)
and Aristotle describes it as "that which corrects justice" and as that
which "is just and better than justice." He said that it was that
quality which corrects the law when the law errs because of its
generality. What he means is that sometimes it may actually be unjust to
apply the strict letter of the law. Trench said that epieikeia (Greek #1932)
means "retreating from the letter of right better to preserve the
spirit of right" and is "the spirit which recognizes the impossibility
of cleaving to all formal law...that recognizes the danger that ever
waits upon the assertion of legal rights, lest they should be pushed
into moral wrongs...the spirit which rectifies and redresses the
injustice of justice." Aristotle describes in full the action of
epieikeia (Greek #1932):
"To pardon human failings; to look to the law-giver, not to the law; to
the intention, not to the action; to the whole, not to the part; to the
character of the actor in the long run and not in the present moment;
to remember good rather than evil, and the good that one has received
rather than the good that one has done; to bear being injured; to wish
to settle a matter by words rather than deeds." If there is a matter
under dispute, it can be settled by consulting a book of practice and
procedure, or it can be settled by consulting Jesus Christ. If there is a
matter of debate, it can be settled in law, or it can be settled in
love. The atmosphere of many a Church would be radically changed if
there was more epieikeia (Greek #1932) within it.
The Christian leader must be peaceable (amachos, Greek #269).
The Greek word means disinclined to fight. There are people who, as we
might put it, are "trigger-happy" in their relationships with other
people. But the real Christian leader wants nothing so much as he wants
peace with his fellow-men.
The Christian leader must be free from the love of money. He
will never do anything simply for profit's sake. He will know that there
are values which are beyond all money price.
3:8-10,12,13 In the
same way, the deacons must be men of dignity, men who are straight, men
who are not given to over-indulgence in wine, men who are not prepared
to stoop to disgraceful ways of making money; they must hold the secret
of the faith which has been revealed to them with a clear conscience.
The deacons too must first of all be put upon probation, and, if they
emerge blameless from the test, let them become deacons.... Deacons must
be married only once; they must manage their own children and their own
homes well. For those who make a fine job of the office of deacon win
for themselves a fine degree of honour, and they gain much boldness in
their faith in Christ Jesus.
In the early Church the function of the deacons lay much more
in the sphere of practical service. The Christian Church inherited a
magnificent organization of charitable help from the Jews. No nation has
ever had such a sense of responsibility for the poorer brother and
sister as the Jews. The synagogue had a regular organization for helping
such people. The Jews rather discouraged the giving of individual help
to individual people. They preferred that help should be given through
the community and especially through the synagogue.
Each Friday in every community two official collectors went
round the markets and called on each house, collecting donations for the
poor in money and in goods. The material so collected was distributed
to those in need by a committee of two, or more if necessary. The poor
of the community were given enough food for fourteen meals, that is for
two meals a day for the week; but no one could receive from this fund if
he already possessed a week's food in the house. This fund for the poor
was called the Kuppah, or the basket. In addition to this there was a
daily collection of food from house to house for those who were actually
in emergency need that day. This fund was called the Tamhui or the
tray. The Christian Church inherited this charitable organization, and
no doubt it was the task of the deacons to attend to it.
Many of the qualifications of the deacon are the same as for the episkopos (Greek #1985).
They are to be men of dignified character; they are to be abstemious;
they are not to soil their hands with disreputable ways of making money;
they have to undergo a test and a time of probation; they must practise
what they preach, so that they can hold the Christian. faith with a
clear conscience.
One new qualification is added; they are to be straight. The Greek is that they must not be dilogos (Greek #1351),
and dilogos means speaking with two voices, saying one thing to one and
another to another. In The Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan puts into
By-ends mouth a description of the people who live in the town of
Fair-speech. There is my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-Server, my Lord
Fair-speech, after whose ancestors the town was named, Mr. Smooth-man,
Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Any-thing; and the parson of the parish, Mr.
Two-tongues. A deacon, in his going from house to house, and in his
dealing with those who needed charity, had to be a straight man. Again
and again he would be tempted to evade issues by a little timely
hypocrisy and smooth speaking. But the man who would do the work of the
Christian Church must be straight.
It is clear that the man who performs well the office of deacon
can look for promotion to the high office of elder, and will gain such a
confidence in the faith that he can look any man in the face.
3:11 In the same way,
the women must be dignified; they must not be given to slanderous
gossip; they must be sober; they must be in all things reliable.
As far as the Greek goes, this could refer to the wives of the
deacons, or to women engaged in a similar service. It seems far more
likely that it refers to women who are also engaged upon this work of
charity. There must have been acts of kindness and of help which only a
woman could properly do for another woman. Certainly in the early Church
there were deaconesses. They had the duty of instructing female
converts and in particular of presiding and attending at their baptism,
which was by total immersion.
It was necessary that such women workers should be warned
against slanderous gossip and bidden to be absolutely reliable. When a
young doctor graduates and before he begins to practise, he takes the
Hippocratic oath, and part of that oath is a pledge never to repeat
anything that he has heard in the house of a patient, or anything that
he has heard about a patient, even if he has heard it on the street. In
the work of helping the poor, things might easily be heard and be
repeated and infinite damage done. It is not any insult to women that
the Pastorals specially forbid gossip to them. In the nature of things a
woman runs more risk of gossip than a man. A man's work takes him out
into the world; a woman of necessity lives in a narrower sphere and for
that very reason has fewer things to talk about. This increases the
danger of talking about the personal relationships from which slanderous
gossip arises. Whether man or woman, a tale-bearing,
confidence-repeating Christian is a monstrous thing.
In Greek civilization it was essential that the women workers of
the Church should preserve their dignity. The respectable Greek woman
lived in the greatest seclusion; she never went out alone; she never
even shared meals with her men folk. Pericles said that the duty of an
Athenian mother was to live so retired a life that her name should never
be mentioned among men for praise or blame. Xenophon tells how a
country gentleman who was a friend of his said about the young wife whom
he had just married and whom he dearly loved. "What was she likely to
know when I married her? Why, she was not yet fifteen when I introduced
her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest
supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see
anything, hear anything or ask any questions." That is the way in which
respectable Greek girls were brought up. Xenophon gives a vivid picture
of one of these girl-wives gradually "growing accustomed to her husband
and becoming sufficiently tame to hold conversation with him."
Christianity emancipated women; it liberated them from a kind of
slavery. But there were dangers. She who was liberated might misuse her
new-found freedom; the respectable world might be shocked by such an
emancipation; and so the Church had to lay down its regulations. It was
by wisely using freedom, and not misusing it, that women came to hold
the proud position in the Church which they hold today.
3:14-15 I am writing
these things to you, hoping, as I write, to come to you soon. But I am
writing, so that, if I am delayed, you may know how to behave yourselves
in the household of God, which is the assembly of the living God, and
the pillar and buttress of the truth.
Here in one phrase is the reason why the Pastoral Epistles were
written; they were written to tell men how to behave within the Church.
The word for to behave is anastrephesthai (Greek #390);
it describes what we might call a man's walk and conversation. It
describes his whole life and character; but it specially describes him
in his relationships with other people. As it has been said, the word in
itself lays it down that a church member's personal character must be
excellent and that his personal relationships with other people should
be a true fellowship. A church congregation is a body of people who are
friends with God and friends with each other. Paul goes on to use four
words which describe four great functions of the Church.
(i) The Church is the household (oikos, Greek #3624)
of God. First and foremost it must be a family. In a despatch written
after one of his great naval victories, Nelson ascribed his victory to
the fact that he "had the happiness to command a band of brothers."
Unless a church is a band of brothers it is not a true church at all.
Love of God can exist only where brotherly love exists.
(ii) The Church is the assembly (ekklesia, Greek #1577) of the living God. The word ekklesia (Greek #1577)
literally means a company of people who have been called out. It does
not mean that they have been selected or picked out. In Athens the
ekklesia (Greek #1577)
was the governing body of the city; and its membership consisted of all
the citizens met in assembly. But, very naturally, at no time did all
attend. The summons went out to come to the Assembly of the City, but
only some citizens answered it and came. God's call has gone out to
every man; but only some have accepted it; and they are the ekklesia (Greek #1577),
the Church. It is not that God has been selective. The invitation comes
to all; but to an invitation there must be a response.
(iii) The Church is the pillar of the truth (stulos, Greek #4769).
In Ephesus, to which these letters were written, the word pillar would
have a special significance. The greatest glory of Ephesus was the
Temple of Diana or Artemis. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians" (Acts 19:28).
It was one of the seven wonders of the world. One of its features was
its pillars. It contained one hundred and twenty-seven pillars, every
one of them the gift of a king. All were made of marble, and some were
studded with jewels and overlaid with gold. The people of Ephesus knew
well how beautiful a thing a pillar could be. It may well be that the
idea of the word pillar here is not so much support--that is contained
in buttress--as display. Often the statue of a famous man is set on the
top of a pillar that it may stand out above all ordinary things and so
be clearly seen, even from a distance. The idea here is that the
Church's duty is to hold up the truth in such a way that all men may see
it.
(iv) The Church is the buttress (hedraioma, Greek #1477)
of the truth. The buttress is the support of the building. It keeps it
standing intact. In a world which does not wish to face the truth, the
Church holds it up for all to see. In a world which would often gladly
eliminate unwelcome truth, the Church supports it against all who would
seek to destroy it.
3:16 As everyone must confess, great is the secret which God has revealed to us in our religion:
He who was manifested
in the flesh: He who was vindicated by the Spirit: He who was seen by
angels: He who has been preached among the nations: He in whom men have
believed all over the world: He who was taken up into glory.
The great interest of this passage is that here we have a
fragment of one of the hymns of the early Church. It is a setting of
belief in Christ to poetry and to music, a hymn in which men sang their
creed. We cannot expect in poetry the precision of statement for which
we would look in a creed; but we must try to see what each line in this
hymn is saying to us.
(i) He who was manifested in the flesh. Right at the beginning
it stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It says: "Look at Jesus, and you
will see the mind and the heart and the action of God, in a form that
men can understand."
(ii) He who was vindicated by the Spirit. This is a difficult
line. There are three things it may mean. (a) It may mean that all
through his earthly days Jesus was kept sinless by the power of the
Spirit. It is the Spirit who gives a man guidance; our error is that we
so often refuse his guidance. It was Jesus' perfect submission to the
Spirit of God which kept him without sin. (b) It may mean that Jesus'
claims were vindicated by the action of the Spirit who dwelt in him.
When Jesus was accused by the scribes and Pharisees of effecting cures
by the power of the devil, his answer was: "If I cast out devils by the
Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you" (Matthew 12:28).
The power that was in Jesus was the power of the Spirit, and the mighty
acts he performed were the vindication of the tremendous claims which
he made. (c) It may be that this is a reference to the Resurrection. Men
took Jesus and crucified him as a criminal upon a cross; but through
the power of the Spirit he rose again; the verdict of men was
demonstrated to be false, and he was vindicated. No matter how we take
this line, its meaning is that the Spirit is the power who proved Jesus
to be what he claimed to be.
(iii) He who was seen by angels. Again there are three possible
meanings. (a) It may be a reference to Jesus' life before he came to
earth. (b) It may be a reference to his life on earth. Even on earth the
hosts of heaven were looking on at his tremendous contest with evil.
(c) It may connect with the belief of all men in the time of Jesus that
the air was full of demonic and angelic powers. Many of these powers
were hostile to God and to man, and bent on the destruction of Jesus.
Paul at least once argued that they were bent on the destruction of
Jesus through ignorance, and that Jesus brought to them and to men the
wisdom which had been hidden since the world began (1 Corinthians 2:7-8).
This phrase may mean that Jesus brought the truth even to the angelic
and demonic powers who had never known it. However we take it, it means
that the work of Jesus is so tremendous that it includes both heaven and
earth.
(iv) He who has been preached among the nations. Here we have
the great truth that Jesus was the exclusive possession of no race. He
was not the Messiah who had come to raise the Jews to earthly greatness,
but the Saviour of the whole wide world.
(v) He in whom men have believed all over the world. Here is an
almost miraculous truth stated with utter simplicity. After Jesus had
died and risen again and ascended to his glory, the number of his
followers was one hundred and twenty (Acts 1:15).
All that his followers had to offer was the story of a Galilaean
carpenter who had been crucified on a hilltop in Palestine as a
criminal. And yet before seventy years had passed that story had gone
out to the ends of the earth and men of every nation accepted this
crucified Jesus as Saviour and Lord. In this simple phrase there is the
whole wonder of the expansion of the Church, an expansion which on any
human grounds is incredible.
(vi) He who was taken up into glory. This is a reference to the
Ascension. The story of Jesus begins in heaven and ends in heaven. He
lived as a servant; he was branded as a criminal; he was crucified on a
cross; he rose with the nailprints still upon him; but the end is glory.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)