Titus 1:6-9
Date: September 10th, 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Titus 1:6-9
Titus 1:6-9
Main Idea of Text: Paul gives Titus the qualifications he should seek in elders.
6-7a: An overseer must be above reproach.
A respectable husband
A godly father with obedient children
A good steward of what he has been entrusted
7b: The characteristics to be avoided
Not arrogant
Not quick tempered
Not a drunkard
Not violent
Not greedy for gain
8-9: The characteristics to be sought
Hospitable
A lover of good
Self-controlled
Upright
Holy
Disciplined
He must hold firm do the trustworthy word so that he can:
Teach
Rebuke
Main Idea of Sermon: An elder must be a man that is a good steward and has Godly character.
He must be a good steward of what has been entrusted to him.
He must be a man of godly character.
Five sinful characteristics to be avoided.
Not arrogant
Not quick tempered
Not a drunkard
Not violent
Not greedy for gain
Seven godly characteristics to be sought.
Hospitable
A lover of good
Self-controlled
Upright
Holy
Disciplined
He must hold firm do the trustworthy word so that he can:
Teach
Rebuke
Introduction
We have an epidemic of leadership in the evangelical Church. On average, 1,500 pastors quit the ministry every single month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention within their church. 50% of pastor’s marriage will end in divorce. In a study done by the Fuller Institute on Church Growth, 50% of pastors admit to using pornography and 37% admit to inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in their congregation.
The most popular Christian podcast in the last 5 years was a podcast that chronicled the rise and fall of Mars Hill, one of the largest mega churches in the country. There are three different documentaries released in the last year about the financial and sexual abuses that took place at Hillsong Church in New York and in Sydney Australia.
The evangelical Church has become corrupted by a society that is enamored with celebrity. The biggest churches have the most popular pastors and the most exciting social media accounts. Young are thrust into leadership based on their popularity and talent before their character has time to keep up with their fame.
The Church needs the instruction that we are going to see in our sermon text tonight. Through the Paul’s letter to Titus, God has given us clear instructions for the type of men that we should seek to lead us. Let’s read Titus 1:5-9 and consider the qualifications of an elder.
Titus 1:5-9
5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.
Sermon in Brief
Last week’s sermon was focused on how Titus could replicate what he had seen Paul do and represent him to the Cretans. As a good son, he will shepherd the Cretans like he has seen Paul care for all those entrusted to him by God. Last week was more of a character study. What can we learn from the elder Paul as if we were Titus about what it looks like to be a pastor? This week, the qualifications of an elder are set out as propositions, as clear statements of requirement that any candidate could be judged against. This list of qualifications can be divided into two primary sections, stewardship and character. The main idea of our sermon this week is this: an elder must be a man that is a good steward and has godly character.
The first part of the sermon will focus on the elder as a good steward of what God has entrusted to him. Paul tells Titus that he is to appoint men to be elders if they have demonstrated themselves to be good stewards that are above reproach. God has entrusted every single man with certain stewardships in his life: their wives or their children for example. A good man is a good steward. He is a caretaker of things that do not belong to him. He is meant to cultivate and care for the things that God has put into his hands. As such, the candidates that Titus should consider for eldership in Crete are those men that have already demonstrated the ability to care for the responsibilities that God has placed into their hands, because to be an elder is to oversee God’s most precious earthly possession: the Church.
The second part of our sermon will consider the elder as a man of godly character. To really understand an abstract concept sometimes the best thing to do is think of it in negative and positive terms. Paul gives negative and positive qualifications that describe the correct candidate for eldership. All of this can be summed up in the idea that the elder should be a mature believer that has godly character. We will consider how both the negative and positive statements help us create the picture of godliness that Christ requires of the shepherds of his Church.
The goal of this sermon is not to set the elder apart as this super Christian that follows Christ more closely than is possible for the rest of the body. Rather, I want you to see that there is nothing particularly remarkable about these requirements. Paul opens 1 Timothy Chapter 3 by saying this in verse 1:
1 Timothy 3:1
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.
It may not be the aspiration of every man in the Church to be an elder, but it should be the aspiration of every man in the Church to meet the qualifications of an elder, and it should be the aspiration of every woman to be a member of the kind of Church that has the maturity to produce such men. An elder must be a man that is a good steward and has Godly character.
The elder must be a man that is a good steward.
The first point of our sermon, the elder must be a man that is a good steward, comes from verses 5 through 7a. Let’s reread them together.
Titus 1:5-7a
5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach.
The first thing that we should address is what is an elder? The Greek word for elder is πρεσβύτερος. In general, it is a term for an elderly member of a family, a father or a grandfather. It can also be used in a formal sense to refer to a government official, but in the context of the Church, it is used synonymously with overseer, also known as bishop, and pastor. All three titles refer to the same office in the Church.
We can see that this is true in verse 7, specifically with the title of overseer, or some translations may say bishop. It is clear that Paul is giving Titus one set of instructions for one office that he calls elder in verse 5 and overseer in verse 7. That term, overseer in the Greek is ἐπίσκοπος, where we get the term Episcopalian. An overseer is a guardian or a supervisor. They handle the administration of something. Where elder seems to speak to the familial aspect of the Church and the elders responsibility to father God’s people, overseer has more pragmatic overtones. The office of the elder is the administrator and steward of the Church of God, handling all of God’s business as a caretaker of what does not belong to him.
To see the equivalency of the third term, pastor, with that of elder and overseer, we need to turn to 1 Peter 5, verses 1-4. Turn with me to 1 Peter 5:1-4, and lets read it together.
1 Peter 5:1-4
So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
Look at how Peter addresses this one group of men that he initially refers to as elders. In verse 1, he says, I exhort you elders as a fellow elder, so he is clearly talking to the leaders of the Church that is located in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. He has shifted from speaking to the churches themselves and turned to address their leaders, and he says one thing in two different ways to those elders.
First, he says shepherd the flock among you. The Greek verb here is ποιμάνατε which is a verbal form of the noun ποιμήν which is literally a sheep herder. So he says to shepherds that they need to shepherd the flock that is among them and without saying anything different to these elders, he tells them to exercise oversight, the verbal form of the same Greek word we see in Titus to refer to an overseer. The kind of leadership these elders are to exercise over their people is to perform the work of a shepherd by being an overseer. It is clear that Peter has in his mind the same connection that Paul has in his letter to Titus. The elder, the overseer, and the shepherd are all terms, in the context of the local church, that represent and refer to the same office.
Now before we return to Titus, I just want us to see a few other things that Paul and Peter agree on. First, Peter is encouraging these elders as a fellow elder, as a co-laborer, not as a pope or Bishop of higher office. Now, let’s be clear, Peter could have drawn upon his apostolic authority to command these elders, but he doesn’t. In so doing, Peter emphasizes, the connection between the plurality of elders and the local church. Peter is addressing these elders as a shepherd, but as a shepherd of a different flock. These shepherds are to shepherd the flock that God has given them, the ones that they are among (v. 2) as a charge of stewardship from God (v. 3). It seems that Peter assumes that the authority of every elder is limited to the local congregation that has been put into their charge. There are not elders over other elders, only apostles have authority over multiple congregations.
Second, the manner in which the elder is to care for God’s people is not as a lord over them, but as a servant among them. The Church has one and only one Lord and Shepherd, and his name is Jesus Christ, so every elder serves as one that stewards what does not belong to him, as an employee to receive a reward for his good service. We see this clearly in 1 Peter, and we will see that clearly in Titus 1. The church does not belong to the pastor. Let me say that one more time, the church does not belong to the pastor. So many churches have been destroyed by a pastor that saw the church as his own legacy, as something that belonged to him, and not Christ.
Lastly, the elder serves willingly and eagerly for two reasons. First, he serves because he loves his master. The greater your love and affection for God, the more you will begin to love the things that he loves and hate the things that God hates. God loves the Church, so pastor should love the Church, because they love God. Also, they serve in order to receive a reward. This might make some people uncomfortable, but I am in this to win a great reward. Peter does not explain what it is, but he calls it an unfading crown of glory. It is a reward that is specifically reserved for pastors. For those that serve well as a servant of God and an example to the flock, they will receive this great reward at the return of Christ, and that is a great motivator.
So, we can clearly see that the authors of the New Testament consider the three terms that refer to this particular role of leadership in the Church as synonymous: elder, bishop or overseer, and pastor all refer to the same thing. So, when we see Paul give Titus instructions in Titus 1:5-9 about appointing elders, we know he means the same thing that Peter is referring to in 1 Peter 5, and the same office that Paul gives Timothy instruction regarding in 1 Timothy 3. It is all one office.
So what does Paul say about this office to his young, spiritual son, Titus? Like we have already said, he tells Titus that the elder is to be a man that is a good steward that is above reproach. The only men that need to oversee God’s Church are those men that have already proven themselves to be good stewards of the things that God has entrusted into their care. The examples that Paul gives of a good steward are those men that are the husband of one wife and have faithful children.
Both of these examples are meant to demonstrate that the elder candidate is a good steward; they are meant to be a tangible demonstration of his faithful character. The first phrase in the ESV reads “the husband of one wife.” At the very least, this means that an elder should not be a polygamist, but if it is meant to speak to his character, it probably is more likely a reference to the fact that he is the kind of man that is dedicated. He makes an oath to one woman, and he keeps it. He is the kind of man that can stand by the vows he makes, especially the vow of marriage. His faithfulness to care for his wife is a good indication of his faithfulness to care for God’s people.
It does not mean that a candidate is disqualified if at some point in his past he had been divorced. I know many elders that have been divorced in the past, either before they were believers or perhaps because of a situation that mostly out of their control. In that instance, it is the responsibility of the existing elders to fully understand all that has taken place in the past to make sure that his character is above reproach now. The issue is whether the brother is a good steward today. Has he learned from his previous mistakes and is he currently above reproach? Which also means that if a sitting elder gets divorced, it is highly likely that he would be removed from leadership. I say highly likely because every situation needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. There is no divorce that is one-sided, so it would be hard to imagine that an elder could maintain the blameless character that Paul requires if he is being divorced by his wife.
The second phrase in the ESV reads, “and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.” I have received multiple questions from the members over the last two weeks on this particular qualification. Does this mean that an elder’s children must be Christians in order to qualify or continue to qualify for the office? If a candidate has adult children that have left the faith, does that mean he is disqualified from the office of the elder? I do not think so, and this is why.
First, salvation is not the work of men, it is the work of God. In Isaiah 43:11, God speaks through Isaiah and says:
Isaiah 43:11
I, I am the LORD,
and besides me there is no savior.
In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul says:
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
And also in Romans 9:15-16, Paul says:
Romans 9:15-16
15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
The consistent teaching of Scripture is that God is the active party in salvation. He saves whomever he wills whenever he wills. So to make the salvation of a candidate’s children a qualification for eldership would not make sense given the broader teaching of Scriptures\. It is a father’s job to model and teach the Gospel to his children, but not to save them.
Unfortunately, I have known many men that carry deep guilt over the fact that their adult children do not follow Christ. Brothers, if that is you, I can only imagine the pain that it is to watch your children walk away from the Lord, but it is not your fault. Perhaps you could have been more faithful in teaching them the Gospel or been more careful with how you lived before them, but you cannot save them. No matter how much you desire for them to turn from their sin, you cannot make that choice for them. Only God can overcome their rebellious hearts and turn them back to himself. The guilt you feel is not from God, but from the Enemy. Put away your guilt, pray for your children, and trust God.
Another reason it would not make sense for it to be a requirement that the candidate’s children be believers is that all the other qualifications speak to the character of the candidate. None of the other qualifications are dependent on anyone, but the candidate himself, so why would this qualifications be any different? If Paul means this to be an example of how the elder candidate has proven himself to be a good steward, than the actions of his children would only matter in so far as they demonstrate that he is a capable father.
So, I do not think the ESV has the best rendering of the Greek. The NKJV has a better reading of the Greek text. It says,
Titus 1:6 NKJV
if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination.
The NKJV communicates more clearly what is expected of an elder. Not that his children must be believers, but that they are faithfully obedient to their father. They respect him and listen to him. They trust him because he is the same man in public as he is in private. It is not as if he is gentle and kind in public and abusive in private. They love him because he has cared for them well throughout their entire lives.
Furthermore, he has raised them to have moral character. Meaning, they may not be believers, but they understand right from wrong and what it means to be a contributing member of society. They are not given to debased and sensual living, but they seek to honor their father by living upright and honorable lives.
Both of these examples, a man’s relationship with his wife and the respect his children have for him as a father, demonstrate that he is a steward that is above reproach. When the closest people in your life genuinely respect and honor your authority, it is a testament to your qualifications to care for God’s people. It is an honest resume that testifies to the candidate’s ability to steward God’s people well.
We have to be careful that we do not misunderstand Paul’s point here. Paul is not saying that elders must be married and have families. That would be an odd requirement for Paul to lay down, because Paul was never married himself. Rather, the focus is on capability. The elder needs to demonstrate in some aspect of his life that he is a good steward of the serious responsibilities that God puts in his life. If he was a single man, the proof might be in the way that he runs his business, or disciples young men. It might be in his dedication to his studies or his service to the Church. Regardless of how the elder proves himself, he must demonstrate that he is a responsible and excellent caretaker of all the duties that have been entrusted to him in his life.
In this first point, we have seen that the terms pastor, elder, and bishop are synonymous in Scripture. So when Paul gives Titus instruction on elders, he is giving him instruction on the qualifications of the entire office, not just one aspect of it. This first qualification is the essential capability of stewardship. The elder must demonstrate that he has been faithful with all the important duties that God has placed in his life. But capability is not the only thing Paul speaks to. The candidate for eldership must be both capable and possessing of a godly character.
The elder must be a man of godly character.
Which brings us to our second point. The elder must be a man of godly character. Now, this section of the sermon might begin to feel bogged down, because it is just a long list of character qualities. Paul helps us by breaking the terms into negative qualities and positives qualities. He gives us five negative qualities that an elder is to avoid, and seven positive qualities that the elder should seek to cultivate in his life.
The 5 Negatives
Let’s consider the negative qualities first. All of the negative qualities come to us at the end of verse seven. The first negative quality is that an elder should not be arrogant. This term is only used two times in Scripture. Once in our sermon text and once in 2 Peter 2:10 where it is translated in the ESV as willful. The idea in 1 Peter is that these ungodly people ignorantly shake their fists and speak blasphemies at spiritual authorities. They are unaware of their own powerlessness in the face of the true power of God. Arrogance is swagger founded on ignorance, a predisposition to think that you are the most powerful and capable person in any room before you know who is behind the door. It is an unfounded boldness.
I want to draw a careful line of distinction between arrogance and confidence. To the unwise, they may seem like the same thing, but they are not. We need confident leaders, but if the foundation of arrogance is ignorance, then the foundation of confidence is knowledge. Elders should not be spineless. They need to have a confidence to lead, but that confidence cannot come from within. The confidence of the leader must come from a true knowledge of their inability and dependence on God’s promises. Confident leaders are not confident in themselves, that would be arrogance. They are confident in God, that he will do all that he promised, especially build his Church.
The second negative quality is that an elder should not be quick tempered. This word occurs nowhere else in the Greek New Testament, which makes it particularly challenging to interpret. There is a famous quote from Aristotle that says,
Aristotle
“Quick-tempered persons lose no time being angry, and do so with those they ought not, over things they ought not, and far more than they ought.”
Proverbs 22:24-25
24 Make no friendship with a man given to anger,
nor go with a wrathful man,
25 lest you learn his ways
and entangle yourself in a snare.
A quick-tempered person is a slave. They are ruled by their emotions. Whenever something sets them off, they just can’t help it. They give themselves over to their anger.
The elder is not to be ruled by anything or anyone but Christ. That is not to say that a mature Christian never gets angry. In fact, no one ever decides to get angry, or sad, or happy. Emotions, by nature, come upon us from external stimuli. However, when it happens, the godly man does not give into the anger. He is not carried along by the stream of his emotions. He controls his emotions so that he does not sin in his anger and so that he sets an example for God’s people.
The third negative qualification is that an elder is not to be a drunkard. This does not take much nuancing. The elder is not to be addicted to alcohol and he is not to allow himself to become drunk. The important thing to understand about this is that drinking alcohol is not the issue here. It is not a sin to drink alcohol. It is also not a sin to be completely abstinent. These matters are left up to each individuals own conscience. The issue here is being drunk.
The problem is that drunkenness is difficult to define. On one end of the spectrum, we could define drunkenness as the passed-out drunkenness of Noah. We can all agree that the Scripture clearly teaches that being drunk to the point of losing consciousness is a sin. Drunkenness can also be defined as an addiction. Isaiah 5:11-12 says that those that chase after wine and strong drink cannot see God. Proverbs 23:29-35 describe the life of an alcoholic and warns against the dangers of wine and drugs.
We also understand that one drink doesn’t make someone drunk. In fact, alcohol affects everyone differently. So it must be left up to the individual Christian’s conscience. There is freedom in this issue. My warning is to be more conservative than liberal. Be careful with alcohol. It is a proven snare, and as it relates to the elder, there should never be a situation where the elder is drunk, and definitely not addicted to too much wine.
The fourth negative characteristic is that the elder should not be violent. At the very least, this means that an elder candidate should not be physically abusive, but it is unlikely that the Church would be even considering such a candidate. Rather, I think the more likely scenario is that an elder candidate would be a bully, meaning he is verbally and emotionally violent. It is very common for people to confuse brash and pugnacious leaders with strong and capable leaders.
The Church needs to be careful not to be attracted to the loudest voices in the Church, but the wisest voices in the Church. The candidate that should be made an elder is the man that is not a bully. He is meek and gentle and careful with the authority that he is given.
The fifth and final negative characteristic is that an elder should not be greedy for gain. This can come in two ways. He can be greedy for monetary gain, meaning he uses the Church as his own personal piggy bank or a means to enrich himself. If this seems shocking to you, just look up the Instagram account called PreachersNSneakers.
However, at App Grid Breakfast this past week, Max also brought up a less obvious application. The more subtle temptation that the Church must be careful of is elders that are seeking the office as a source of power. They are greedy for personal influence and the power to exercise authority over others. This is far more common as the Church seeks to establish a plurality of elders. It is such an easy mistake to begin to see the board of elders as the place for leadership and power. It is the place for alpha males and successful businessmen.
Church we must be so careful to understand that the board of elders is not the highest place of power in the Church, but the highest place of service. The authority that elders genuinely have over God’s people is not something to be coveted, but something to be stewarded for the good of the people. We need elders that do not seek the office because they want to be a decision maker, but because they want to be a caretaker.
The Seven Positives
These negative characteristics help us understand what an elder is not, but what are the positive things that we should look for in an elder candidate? Paul gives us seven positive qualifications to help us discern the godly character of a candidate.
First, an elder is hospitable. The Greek word for hospitality is φιλόξενος. The clever listener can hear two very familiar Greek words in this compound word, φιλόξενος. The first word is φίλος. You might be familiar with this word from the famous city, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Φίλος is one of the Greek words for love and is typically, but not exclusively used, to refer to friendly affection between acquaintances. The second word might be a little more difficult. Ξενος is the Greek word for stranger or foreigner. You might recognize it from our English word xenophobia, the fear or dislike of strangers. So the word Paul uses to describe hospitality φιλόξενος, which literally translates into the love of the stranger.
Elders should be the first to lead God’s people to love those that are stranger, that are different than the rest of us. Strangeness can have many applications. Someone might be strange because they are new and unknown. They might be strange because they are a different race or ethnicity, or perhaps they might speak a different language. They might be strange because they are older or younger, or they might be strange because they do not fit the social mold.
Regardless of what it is, an elder should demonstrate the kind of compassion for the stranger in our midst that Christ demonstrated for all of us. He came to us when we were his enemy, and paid the ultimate price to demonstrate his love for us. The least that we can do is demonstrate a fraction of his love to the strangers in our lives. So, the elder should have an open home and seeking heart, ready to welcome the strangest among us into God’s family.
Second, an elder must be a lover of good. What is good? What does it even mean to be a lover of good? Christ says in Luke 18:19 that the only thing that is good is God. God is the definition of good. There is nothing that is good unless it has its origin and ultimate purpose in God. So the simplest answer to the question is that the elder loves God.
But I think we can take it one step further. C.S. Lewis, in his Reflection on the Psalms, was perplexed by how constantly God tells us to praise him. Like a desperate lover, Lewis was repulsed by Gods constant neediness to be praised until he came to this realization:
C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise . . .
The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.
I think Paul has in mind what Lewis stumbled onto in the Psalms. The elder greatest enjoyment is to be good, the good, God, himself, and that enjoyment is to spill out of his life in praise and an invitation to join him.
This means, at the very least, we do not need curmudgeons as elders. Pessimism is not a Christian virtue. We need men that are so head over heels for God that they inspire us to follow them, to find the pleasure and enjoyment they have found in the one thing that can satisfy them. They need to be in love with God.
Number three and number six go together. An elder is to be self-controlled and disciplined. As we have already discussed, no Christian should be ruled by anything but God; their one Lord is Jesus Christ. As such, the elder should be under control, acting seriously about the important job they have been given.
It is like parenting. As our kids have gotten older, Molly has taught me that we need to be careful not to let our emotions rise with the emotions of our children. Children are ruled by their emotions. When something upsets them, their response is dictated by their circumstance. It is very easy to respond to their escalating irritation with our own escalation. They get louder, we get louder. They get angrier, we get angrier. But a self-controlled parent doesn’t allow that to happen. They manage their own feelings for the sake for the child, holding a firm line and communicating in a calm tone.
Elders must be the same way. Sometimes ministry can be a pressure cooker and members are the heat. Elders must be self-controlled in order to care for God’s people.
So you might say that self-control is not letting negative external factors dictate my response in the moment. Our sixth characteristic is similar in that it considers the long term negative internal factors and seeks to remove them carefully and consistently from their life.
Elders are human just like every other Christian. They have sin struggles that they deal with too. So we should not expect an elder candidate to be perfect, because a perfect elder does not exist. The disciplined elder understands their weaknesses and is carefully attempting to work those weaknesses out of their life. This is done through consistency. Consistently working on their own personal relationship with the Lord so they be a consistent help to God’s people.
In the same way that three and six went together, it seems that four and five go together. An elder is to be upright and holy. The Greek word for upright is the same word for just or fair. It is one of the more common Greek word clusters in the New Testament, because it is used to speak of the justice and righteousness of God. The elder is to be upright in the sense that they are to be just. They care about and seek what is right and fair.
In this way, they are following God. God’s justice and righteousness is rooted in the fact that he is a holy God. This is the connection between uprightness and holiness. The elder candidate that cares about justice will also seek to live rightly in his own life. He will strive to grow in holiness because his God is holy. Again, this is not perfection, rather, the slow process of sanctification should be evident in his life. There should be sins in his past that he did struggle with that he no longer struggles with, because he is consistently growing in holiness. Which means, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 3, that he cannot be a new believer. That does not mean that he can’t be young, but he can’t be young in the Spirit. He needs to have walked with the Lord for a long enough time to have developed in holiness and discipline.
Finally, the elder candidate must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught. This means that he must be a conserver of truth, not an inventor of truth. There is no new doctrine. There are clarifications and new expositions of the faith, but the Word of God does not change. The faith we have received was received from the Apostles who received it from Christ. It was written down for us in this book and preserved by the power of the Spirit. The canon is closed.
The elder stands firm on this teaching that he has received from others, not adding to it or taking away from it, but wholly trusting on its self-authenticating power in his life. He does this by giving instruction in sound doctrine and rebuking those that contradict what we have received. We will discuss this more in the coming weeks, but this is one of the fundamental problems in Crete. Elder have a duty to teach and defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
In our first point, we saw that Paul gave clear instructions on how to discern which men would be good candidates to be elders. They were those men that demonstrated that they were good stewards of the responsibilities that God had already placed in their life, and they were blameless in how they cared for those duties. In our second point we have considered the negative and positive ways that Paul has defined godly character. We need men that are both capable of caring for God’s people and have the godly character necessary to do it.
Conclusion
The reason that we have an epidemic of leadership in the Church is because we have not been careful to raise up a plurality of elders in the Church that are both good stewards of the things that God has entrusted to them and have godly character. God has not left us in the dark. We do not need to guess at what we should look for in a leader.
The problem is not that elders do not exist in the Church, the problem is that we are not looking for them. The kind of man that carefully cares for his family and demonstrates godly character is not always the most flashy or exciting candidate. In the world of horses, the Church is constantly looking for a thoroughbred when God has prescribed sturdy work horses. We don’t need men that can run short sprints, but men that can faithfully plow fields.
Brothers and sisters, one of the things that we can learn from Paul as a young church with a young pastor is to be careful and slow in appointing elders. We need to pray for and cultivate the kind of men that Paul describes in Titus 1:5-9. Let the legacy of Mosaic Church be a longline of men with godly character that shepherd God’s people as good stewards who will give an account of their ministry.
Let’s pray.