In this week’s message from 1 Timothy 3, we see that an overseer must be above reproach, a man whose life gives no handhold for accusation. Paul’s first brushstrokes are a faithful husband who is self-controlled, prudent and orderly. None of us lives up to these perfectly, so we look to Jesus Christ, the supreme Overseer, and grow in his likeness.
Transcript
Once again, turn with me to the book of Timothy. We’re continuing our study in chapter 3. Last week, we began looking at the role of the overseers of the church.
A trustworthy statement, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it’s a fine work he desires to do.
Verse 1. We got as far as verse 1 last week. And one of the things that we talked about was the value of this office. The office of an overseer is the person, he is someone who is guarding over the church of Jesus Christ. He’s guarding over the assembly of those gathered in the name of Jesus, and he’s to protect them. That’s his role.
And one of the things we mentioned last week is that an overseer, we looked at it last week, but if you look at the book of Acts chapter 20, it becomes clear that an overseer, or if you have a King James Bible, a bishop, it’s from an old English word that means a supervisor, and that’s what they used to translate this, but the word literally means someone who guards over or oversees something. The word is used identically with elders and with shepherds or pastors. All three terms are talking about the same person who occupies this office.
And so, understanding that, you begin to see more of the relevance of this passage. The Apostle Paul thought that overseers were very important, and so he appointed elders in every church that he established, and he instructed Titus to do the same. And so it was very important to recognize the value of this office.
And last week, as we were talking about that, we mentioned that in valuing this and in valuing the character of people who lead the church, we should instruct our children. We should instruct our sons to desire to be able to be a servant in the church, to consider what that means, and to train our children in godliness so that they’ll be suitable for such a role. And so that was what we were looking at last week.
This morning, as we look at this verse, we’re going to look at verse 2. We’re going to get through part of verse 2 today, I think.
An Overseer Then
So as we look at verse 2, I want us to begin with that word then, an overseer then, because that’s part of our understanding as we introduce this passage to us again today. Why do we have that then there? Well, he’s just talked about the value and the importance of the office. And so what we need to notice next is that if that is true, then the character of such a person overseeing the church is very important.
An overseer, then, must be above reproach.
That’s what we’re going to begin looking at today. We’re going to look at the character of an overseer. And so let me read this, and then we’re going to talk about what it means to be above reproach. In fact, the whole sermon is going to be what it means to be above reproach as we unfold part of verse 2.
So let me read this. I’m going to back up to verse 1, and we’ll read this section having to do with the overseers, the elders of the church.
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
So we’ll stop reading there, and we need to ask God’s blessing on his word.
Father, we thank you for the beauty of this passage as you explain to us what is necessary in the character of a man who ministers to his church, of a man who is part of the leadership of a church. We thank you, Father, for this outline that we’re going to study today. And we realize, Father, that the application of this is broad, and it has to be made to our hearts by your Holy Spirit. So we ask, Father, that you guide us in the understanding of this so that we would be corrected and sanctified through your word today.
Bless us, Lord Jesus, as we study this. Guide us in your truth. Keep me in your truth, Lord Jesus. Father, please guide my thoughts and my speech so that I speak the truth of your word. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.
What It Means to Be Above Reproach
Well, let’s talk about the meaning of the word above reproach. It’s an interesting word in Greek, and I’m just going to roughly tell you what it means. The word that’s translated above reproach is a Greek word that’s based on a word that means to grab hold of.
So how do we get above reproach from grabbing hold of something? It has that word grab, you know, taking hold of, or like a police officer arresting someone, or like a wrestler grabbing someone to take them down.
My son Justin studied Brazilian jiu-jitsu for a little while, and the whole thing with jiu-jitsu is being able to grab hold of somebody in a certain way so that you can take them down and pin them to the floor. If you keep that image in mind, then you’ll better understand what this word’s talking about, because that’s the root, that’s the picture that’s underneath this word.
And in front of that word is the little word, in Greek, it’s the little word alpha. It’d be like an A in… I never do that. I’m sorry. It was like an A in English. If you put an A in front of a lot of English words, if you have the word moral, you know what moral means. If you are amoral, well, you know what that means. It means the opposite.
So there’s lots of words in English that we reverse the meaning by simply putting an A in front. We got that from the Greek language. So it’s exactly the same thing here. You have this word that means to grab hold, to take down, literally to take down, and they put an A in front of it, and it means unable to take down. It’s not possible for you to take this person down. That’s the idea of this word.
Teflon Versus Velcro
The idea is like the idea of Teflon versus Velcro. Velcro is designed for something to grab hold of. Some other fabric will stick to it. Teflon, you throw mud on that and it just slips off. It doesn’t stick. Well, that’s the idea of this word that means above reproach.
It doesn’t mean sinless, you know, as a qualification for office. If it were true, then none of us would qualify. It does mean free from glaring, unrepentant flaws or scandalous behavior, something that Satan could use to destroy the testimony of a person, to discredit them, and in doing so, discredit the gospel that they preach.
So that’s the idea of this word, above reproach. A person whose character is such that they can’t be maligned effectively. They’re not guilty of maybe an accusation that someone makes, and they are living in such a way that when someone makes an accusation like that, it’s disbelieved. People won’t accept that because they know the true character of the person. That’s what is being described here.
So the idea literally means not able to be laid hold of, cannot be seized, can’t be taken down. That’s the idea.
Why Character Matters
And so why is this important? Why is this important for an overseer? Why doesn’t Paul just tell us what the job is to be like? The only description we have here of the job is that he’s to teach and he’s to guard the church, and that’s just from the name overseer. Why does he spend so much time on the character?
Well, to help see that, look down at verse, I think it’s 15. Yeah, verse 15. Paul is writing Timothy, and he’s giving us the purpose of this book. He says,
I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness.
So the whole book is about how we are to conduct ourselves, the people of God. And he introduces here that theme about godliness. And as soon as he talks about the mystery of godliness, he breaks into a hymn about the Lord Jesus. Jesus, he talks about his incarnation,
who was revealed in the flesh, who was vindicated in the Spirit, seen of angels, proclaimed among the nations.
Now, I’m going to preach this passage sometime, and it’s pretty soon, so I’m not going to explain all of it. But one of the things that I will do when we get here is look at that theme of godliness. God’s people are to be godly people. They’re to live a good life. And the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God is that the Word of God works in our heart through the power of the Spirit of God to produce a godly life, so that we live in faith to the Word of God, so that we live and act in a godly way.
And it’s something that we have to practice. He tells us a little later in this book that we are to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness.
Discipline yourself, to exercise yourself for the purpose of godliness.
He says there that exercising yourself in godliness is better than physical exercise. Because if you train yourself in godliness, there’s benefit for that in this life, and there’s great benefit in that for the next life as well. And so it’s rich, and it’s blessing.
So we’re to be godly. All of God’s people are to be godly. And so who is to lead and oversee the church that Jesus shed his blood for, the church that Jesus purchased with his own blood? Well, it is a person who reflects and models that, who’s already experienced some strength as they’ve trained themselves in godliness. Someone who has developed this to the place where they can be seen as someone, you can’t take that person down. They are respectable. They are above reproach.
And so we’re going to look at that. And that word, above reproach, is the word that is really being described with every characteristic that follows in this section on elders, on overseers. Every description that we see in the next verses is an aspect of what it means to be above reproach.
And so that’s what we’re going to look at now. We’re going to consider, you know, Paul is painting a portrait of the character of a godly elder of a church. And so what we’re going to do now is, hopefully, we’ll look at the first four brushstrokes of that portrait. We’re going to look at the first four things that make up a person who is godly, a person who is above reproach.
A Faithful Husband
So first, to be above reproach means that an overseer must be a faithful husband. So we get this phrase next, the very next thing:
An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife.
So what does that mean? Well, there’s a lot of views on what this means, and I’ve had views over the years.
Must an Overseer Be Married
There are some people who say that if you’re to lead a church, to be in this role in the church, you’d have to be married. I experienced that myself. Before I was married, I candidated for a church, and it seemed to be going well, but the stipulation that they objected to was the fact that I wasn’t married. And you have to be the husband of one wife if you’re going to pastor a church.
So is that what that means? Well, if it does mean that, then it would probably exclude Timothy. There’s no mention that he had a wife. And it would certainly exclude the Apostle Paul here, because Paul, when he was ministering to the church at Ephesus, didn’t have a wife. And so, you know, there’s that problem. There’s several problems with that view. It’s probably not what he’s talking about.
A Prohibition Against Polygamy
There’s the view that it’s a prohibition against polygamy. You know, there are lots of people marrying multiple wives. This would certainly exclude that. If you were practicing something like that, then this would disqualify you.
But again, that’s not likely. I mean, there was a lot of immorality in the Roman world, but they didn’t actually multiply wives very often during that period. And so it’s not likely that he’s talking about that, and for several reasons. So we’ll keep looking here.
Marital Fidelity and Sexual Purity
So there’s finally the idea of strict marital fidelity and sexual purity. So how do you get that out of this? Well, let me explain something. When it says the husband of one wife, it’s using a word for man that means man or husband. And then, in the order of Greek, in Greek you put the word you most want to emphasize first, and here that is the word one.
So it’s one woman, literally. The husband, the man of one woman, or one woman is in the genitive case, which is descriptive. So that means that it is a one-woman kind of guy. That’s the way I put it. It’s a one-woman man, but that’s describing the character of the man.
The point of these sections is talking about the character of the person. And so here he’s talking about, here’s a person who is pure in his sexual life. He’s devoted to his wife. He doesn’t look around. He’s committed to his wife, and he submits to the Lord and the covenant relationship that he’s established with his wife.
And so there’s that type of integrity, and there’s nothing in his life that would cause anyone to suspect that he’s not true in that way. It’s that type of character. It’s talking about the character of the person.
A One-Man Woman
You can see that because there’s an exact, it’s a different phrasing, different words, but I don’t know where it is in my notes, but, oh yeah, I think it’s chapter 5. Yeah, look at chapter 5 and verse 9. The words don’t repeat. The Greek construction is exactly the same, but it’s the wife. It’s a one-man woman is what’s said here.
A widow is to be put on the list only if she’s not less than 60 years old, having been a one-man woman.
That’s her character. Does that mean that she can’t… Let me tell you what this is first so you know the context. There was no social security system in the first century. Certain widows who didn’t have family would be taken in and supported by the church.
And this is a person, and in doing so, a Christian widow taken in and supported by the church, that woman gave herself to the ministry of the church, serving and praying and ministering, and she was supported by the church. But to qualify for that, she had to be a one-man woman. She’s a widow. She’s not married in that sense. But that’s the character that she must have. It’s talking about her character, just like it is with a one-woman man that’s given earlier.
I mean, obviously, he’s not saying that because she married, she lived faithfully to her husband, her husband died when she was young, she remarried, and now she doesn’t qualify because she married two men. Obviously, that’s not the case, because just a few verses later he says,
I want the younger widows to remarry,
and he instructs them to do that. So that’s obviously not the case. So it’s talking about the character of a person, and it is here. We’re talking about a one-woman kind of guy, someone who’s faithful and true to his marriage.
Self-Controlled
The next thing is that… Yeah, I’ve been trusting that clock, and I just noticed it’s not moving. We’re all in trouble.
Yeah, the next one is that to be above reproach means that an overseer must be self-controlled. Self-controlled. So the idea of temperate:
An overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,
in my Bible it says temperate. Some versions say self-controlled. What does that mean? Well, it’s sober-minded. The idea, the root of the word means sober-minded, or alert, or watchful, or vigilant, or clear-headed, not carried away by your passions.
When our kids were young, they competed in several Awana competitions. One of them was in Chicago, and we went out there, and sort of a family vacation was part of this. And so we went downtown to Chicago, and we spent the evening there in the heart of the town, which is beautiful. Lots of interesting things, the Navy Pier and all sorts of shops and things, which were very interesting. Rachel spent a good bit of time back then in the American Girl store. And so it was fun.
And then we are coming home, and as we’re coming home at night, driving through a little section of Chicago that happened to be really, really dark, there was lots of little places to stop. You had to stop, so you pulled up to a stop sign, and there were people, very strange people there, crossing the road and on the sides of the road. I wasn’t fearful, but I was very, very watchful.
We locked the doors. I made sure that the doors of the car was locked as we drove through that section. I was watchful. I was vigilant. I kept my wits about me as much as possible.
An elder in a church, there’s all sorts of dangers to the church. The threat to the church happens through immorality that’s in the body, through false teaching that comes in from the outside, or in the case of the Ephesians, from the inside of the church. And there’s lots of dangers that can derail the church and cause the name of Christ to come to be smeared in some way.
And so an elder, a leader in the church, must be vigilant. He must be careful, both for himself. Part of this meaning is self-controlled. And he has to watch himself, and he has to watch the church.
Prudent
And third, to be above reproach means an overseer must be prudent, be wise and disciplined in his decision-making. So the idea of prudent is sensible decision-making and a well-disciplined mind. The root of this is an inner self-mastery, so that you’re not carried away by your passions, but you can think clearly and rationally about the choice that you’re making.
You have good judgment. You master your own impulses. And so you have this type of stability. If you can’t rein in your passions when the church is in a situation to make a choice about something, then you’re going to go with the way you feel instead of making a sensible decision. And elders, leaders of a church, should not do that.
So because this person makes vital decisions regarding ministry, a balanced judgment to prevent the people of God from becoming vulnerable, that is absolutely necessary for someone who has this role.
An Honorable and Orderly Life
And fourth, let me see, that was third. Let me see, did we get to third? Yeah, we did. This is fourth. I’m right. This is fourth, which is good because we don’t have a great deal of time left.
To be above reproach means an overseer must live an honorable and orderly life.
Respectable
Now, if you talk about the meaning of the word respectable, it’s an interesting word, because the Greek word, I’ll just tell you, the word is kosmios. And you might be familiar with the word cosmos. Kosmos is the Greek word that means world. The Greek word that means world is interesting in itself. You remember in Genesis,
God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.
There was this darkness, the unformed creation. And then God puts his creation into order. He orders his world. When you think about the world that God created in its perfection, he created a beautiful, orderly world.
Now, the world that we live in is a world that has been touched by the sin of man, is under the judgment of God. So some of that order is broken, and yet a great deal of it is all there, the wisdom of God that created this world. That’s why you can define almost everything that we can see and touch mathematically. That’s why science works. It’s because God created an orderly world. It’s a reasonable world. Everything fits together just as it should.
That’s what it means. This word came from that word, and it means orderly. It’s the outward expression. We just talked about the inward self-control of a person. A person who is inwardly self-controlled lives his life in such a way that outwardly you see the benefit, the blessing of that self-control.
John Stott said it’s the outward expression of an inward self-control. So, in other words, what a self-controlled person is on the inside, a respectable person is on the outside. Their life is orderly.
None of Us Live Up to These Perfectly
Now, I want to say, you know, as I look at this list, there are places I need to work. I don’t live this out perfectly. And one of the places I don’t live it out perfectly is in this last one, because I tend to be absent-minded or something like that. And so it’s easy for me to become disorderly, disorganized, not disorderly, but disorganized.
You see, the thing is, none of us live up to these things perfectly. No one lives up to them perfectly. But none of these things should be something that is a mark of a person that discredits that person. It shouldn’t be to that extent ever, ever.
So yes, we need work. And when I’m talking about the fact that I don’t measure up to that perfectly, then we need to remember that all of us are to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness.
This Applies to You
By the way, if you’re looking at this list and you’re thinking, well, that’s a great list for people who lead the church, I’m glad it doesn’t apply to me. No, this applies to you. No, the people of God are to be godly people. All these things apply to the body, to the people.
And so the difference with an elder is that the elder should say, like was read just earlier from Philippians 4, or as Paul said, you know, look at me. The things that are true of me need to be true of you. The elder is someone who is to be an example to his people in leading them to godliness.
Jesus Christ, the Supreme Overseer
And yet, as I said, none of us do it perfectly. The church isn’t built on the perfection of elders. Let me just put that qualification in. The church is built on the perfection of Jesus Christ.
In 1 Peter 2, it tells us that Jesus Christ is the over-shepherd. He is the supreme shepherd of his church. He is, it says, the overseer of our souls. And Jesus Christ is the one who, when the devil came to tempt him, said,
The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me.
He was perfect. He was pure. No one could get a grip on Jesus and take him down. No, he laid down his life himself as a sacrifice for us. He is our hope. He’s our strength. And he’s the overseer, the supreme overseer of his church.
We are to follow him. And shepherds of a church are to model him and say, follow me as I follow him.
I think that’s a good place to stop. We’ll continue looking at some of the qualities of what it means to be blameless, to be above reproach, as we continue the study next week. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your care and kindness to us and giving us not only your word, but also gifted people, people that we come to know who model godliness, not because they worked it up themselves, though they involved deliberate faith in your word, the power of your Spirit, and their commitment to exercise themselves in godliness. They’re examples to us. And so we can look to them, model our lives as theirs, as they model Jesus Christ. We thank you for such treasures in the church.
And Father, we are sorry when that breaks down and causes the cross of Jesus Christ to come to be splattered with the mud of sin. And we ask, Lord Jesus, that you protect us, that you keep us from such error, that you guard us and protect us.
Father, we thank you for the blood of Christ, which takes away sin, and that when we confess our sins, you’re faithful and just to forgive us. And Lord, we thank you that the work that Christ has done on the cross is such a powerful picture. I mean, what we are about to do in taking the Lord’s Supper is a powerful picture of what Jesus Christ has done for us. We thank you for his body broken. We thank you, Lord, for the blood that was shed for us.
We thank you that through the sacrifice of Christ, we are able to feed on such grace, feed on the blessing, so that we have strength, so that we have actually eternal life in Christ. Thank you, Lord, for all your blessings. We ask, Father, that you bless the elements as we pass them this morning, and may we truly worship as we receive them. In Christ’s name, Amen.
